Author: Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

Happy birthday me

As most of you know I’m normally a quiet, softly spoken kind of guy. I don’t shout out about things like it being my birthday. I’m 53 today.

Not entirely sure what to think or say. It’s either borderline mid fifties or early fifties, or both. I quite like it being my birthday. Fifties feels respectable although you and I both know that is hardly the case, innit.

I’m spending the night of my birthday having a quiet steak and chips in with Mrs Davies and our two youngest. The other two are away. There are enough parties going on to merit not bothering with one for my actual birthday which in any case a school night.

We began the party season last Thursday in Town with the ITSPA Xmas lunch. That was followed by our by now traditional (since at least 25 years ago) Xmas Market Party on the Saturday night of the Lincoln Christmas Market. We sing carols, drink lots and have a jammin’ session afterwards. I’m lucky enough to have musical kids and together with friends we mustered trumpet, piano, sax, geetar and drums.

Sunday night was a similar party at some friends. This week it’s the big one – the #trefbash2014 which in effect lasts two days. Saturday is a 50th birthday party black tie job.

The last week of term I already have local after work party invites on Monday (OpenPlan) and Tuesday (Wright Vigar) . Thursday is my annual carol singing night at The Morning Star in Lincoln followed by Jazz. We also have the LONAP board coming over that night. On the Friday night I have the launch party of The Lincoln A2Z Project. This is something I have been involved with for the last two years, writing 52 creative pieces for radio. Google it.

On the Saturday night we have a party at the Brittains around the corner on Curle Avenue and on Sunday we leave to visit parents and do the Christmas thing. Unfortunately that involves non stop partying until 30th December at which point we return home and immediately go out to a Pylons Gig at the West End Tap.

We don’t do New Year’s Eve so that is pretty much our quiet night in of the whole holiday season. I think Anne would like to do New Year’s Eve but tbh I’m a miserable bugger. Good thing probably.

So that’s it. It’s my birthday and a quiet night in with the kids beckons. I will need to build up my energy in time for #trefbash2014. The featured image gives you a taste of what’s in store!

Early doors anyone?

broadband Business

Vodafone looking at Virgin Media Acquisition

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 2 December, 2014
1 Comment on Vodafone looking at Virgin Media Acquisition

Further UK telecoms consolidation?

It’s all over the tech/comms news that the Big Red is looking at the possibility of buying Virgin Media’s parent company. Google it. There is a fit because both companies have bright red branding so they wouldn’t have to change much.

It was only recently we discussed the fact that Voda was looking into buying TalkTalk.

What’s more other recent rumours have suggested that BT are looking at buying either O2 or EE. BT of course sold off O2 all those years ago – what hindsight can tell you eh?

I think it is inevitable that there will be more consolidation in the UK telecoms landscape. We only have to look at the ISPs we follow in trefor.net brand BROADBANDRating. Of the six we look at, BT, Virgin, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Sky and EE EE has by far the fewer subscribers and this would appear to be reflected in their social media engagement.

If you look at EE’s twitter stream it is very busy. However it is mostly people complaining about/discussing their EE mobile service rather than broadband. So if we thought that the future world was going to revolve around broadband then you wouldn’t bet on EE being one of the winners, even though they are trying to change this with the intro of EE TV (etc).

O2 already gave up on their broadband project. One wonders at which point EE would do the same although you would then think that this would write them off as a long term player.

It feels as there is going to be further consolidation in the UK telecoms market and we are going to end up with just 4 players in the UK, remembering that Plusnet is owned by BT.

I’d guess

BT + O2 (or EE?)

Voda + Virgin

TalkTalk (+EE or O2?)

Sky (Sky could buy 3 for good measure)

This could all be a load of rubbish but there’s no harm in speculating. If I’m right it will make me look good. If I’m wrong I could just delete the post… 🙂

There is an argument that says that even 4 players is too many but I can’t imagine many people would want there to be fewer – the competition has been great for prices and product development in the UK.

Engineer peering

IXLeeds 4 this Thursday

IXLeeds 4 is on this Thursday – that’s the day after tomorrow

If you’ve been umming and ahing about going umm and ahh no more. The IX Leeds people are a great crowd and they put on terrific meetings. They do of course have the benefit of AQL’s conference centre at Salem Chapel which again, if you haven’t been to you need to go.

These meetings are attended by a wide range of engineering types including people who are real experts in their subject. Their beauty lies in the fact that everyone is very approachable – you could be sat having coffee with someone who turns out to be very handy for advice when it comes to solving your latest problem/pointing you at suitable suppliers etc.

Having spoken at a previous IXLeeds I can tell you that the audience is very receptive and asks highly intelligent questions so you’re going to learn stuff you hadn’t considered before turning up.

The other great aspect of the meetings is the post conference social. These are usually very generously supported and the pubs around the Salem Chapel are great. Moreover they are a short walk from Leeds train station so it is easy to get in and out. IXLeeds 4 is an afternoon job – the agenda is here.

I was last at the Salem Chapel for EuroIX earlier this year. The output was a load of guest posts which can be viewed here:

UK internet history – The Early Days of LONAP by Raza Rizvi
INEX’s IXP Manager – Tools to help manage an Internet Exchange by Barry O’Donovan
Regional Peering in the UK by James Blessing
Co-operation makes internet exchanges future proof by Pauline Hartsuiker
Experience of launching an IXP in North America by Ben Hedges
The evolution of an IXP network engineer by Rob Lister
Why does Scotland need an Internet Exchange? by Charlie Boisseau
IX Manchester – It’s quiet up North by James Blessing

I expect quite a few of the guest authors to be at IXLeeds 4 so tap them on the shoulder and say hello.

That’s the plug for IXLeeds 4 over and done with. I guess we are coming up to the party season with conferences supplemented with socials. I will be at the ITSPA Christmas Lunch this week and of course next week is the culmination of the season with #trefbash2014. If you’re coming see you there. If not there is always next year:)

Ciao amigos.

food and drink fun stuff

#trefbash2014 SOLD OUT

All tix are now SOLD OUT for #trefbash2014. If you are a mate you may be able to still get in – just message me. If you are a Corporate Sponsor you can still buy a ticket. If you have already got a corporate ticket but not yet signed up your guests then I still have the space for them – just let me know. Otherwise thanks for everyone for their continued excellent support.

Don’t forget this year’s bash is a beach party. You are expected to make some sort of effort to fit in with the theme. I’ll leave the detail to you. Looking forward to seeing y’all on the night.

People tend not to schedule much for the Friday after the bash. If this is you join us for breakfast at Silva’s on Shaftesbury Avenue at around 9.30 on the Friday and thence a few pubs around Covent Garden for a hair of the dog.

Catch ya later.

ecommerce End User

Black Friday stuff

Black’s Black Friday – 15% off full priced items

I was lying in bed this morning when Black Friday was all over the news. If this blog is the only media you ever take notice of you need to know that Black Friday is an Americun import designed to try and make people rush to spend money by thinking they are getting fantastic deals on stuff.

So I picked up my trusty phone and looked up Tesco online. Not with a view to buying anything you realise. What do I need? Just to see what kind of bargains were available. Oo, Tesco’s website was busy and I couldn’t get on it. At 7.30 in the morning. People need to get a life!

In the interest of research I went on Amazon. I could access Amazon.co.uk. That’s what happens when you own a massively scalable cloud resource. Nothing on there to buy that jumped out of the page though so I visited PC World. The “bargains” on PC World appeared to all have 10% off. Oh.

Now don’t get me wrong. 10% off is a good thing but it doesn’t really seem to be the level of discount that should justify the hype around “Black Friday”. Maybe I’m just an ungrateful sod. Maybe these products are already sold at such competitive prices that it’s difficult to knock the price down any further. No so sure about that when you consider the manufacturing costs of electronics these days must be rock bottom – just look at the components of my dissected Chromebook in yesterday’s post. PC World seems a bloated inefficient organisation to me (allegedly, own opinion etc). Never make the mistake of telling them you are buying something for your business. It takes about 15 minutes to process a credit card when 5 seconds is the norm.

I’m sure that if you shopped around online you would probably find that product you were considering clicking “buy” for available elsewhere at that Black Friday reduced price. Time spent doing due diligence for product purchases online has replaced time spent wandering around the shops. At least in my world it has. Especially when it comes to buying train tickets. Let’s not go there.

Just to round off this somewhat negative post I’d like to share with you the fact that my walk to work takes me by Blacks, the outdoors shop. Their window dressing was using “Cyber weekend” as their promo as opposed to Black Friday. Obvs trying to avoid confusion. I think they missed a trick. They could have called it “Blacks Friday” and demonstrated leadership.

Blacks’ Cyber weekend promo is a perfect example of what I’ve been talking about in this post. They are offering 15% off “full priced” items. Who buys full priced items these days? Maybe I’m just tight…

broken gear chromebook Engineer google

This Chromebook is Dead

Deceased, kaput, no longer of this world – dead Chromebook motherboard

It is with ~~a tinge of~~ no real sadness that I present to you an image of a dead Chromebook motherboard. The Samsung Chromebook too is dead, on account of the non functioning motherboard.

It wasn’t a huge loss because these things are so cheap they are almost disposable. And disposing of it I am indeed doing. The dismembering of the Chromebook, I hesitate to call it a computer because that makes me think Microsoft, has been done for two reasons.

Firstly out of simple curiosity to see what it looks like inside. Secondly although I didn’t keep much data on the 16GB solid state drive there would have been some files of I know not what provenance and so it seemed to make sense to permanently delete this memory. Just what you would have done in the old hard drive days but slightly different.

As you can see the ssd now has a nail in it, driven firmly in by my handy Leatherman Multi-tool. No one should be without one.

The dead Chromebook motherboard itself is worth dwelling on. It’s diminutive nature represents beauty and the plastic shell in which it was mounted, consisting mostly of screen, keyboard and a couple of speakers, evidence of how cheap these things really are to churn out.

It is the future. Low cost, disposable computing resource and User Interface.

I include an earlier photo of the dead Chromebook motherboard for comparison together with

Tags Chromebook, Samsung

Business fun stuff

Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal at #trefbash2014

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
No Comments on Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal at #trefbash2014

Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal at #trefbash2014

Yo all. With #trefbash2014 coming up fast on the rails/looming on the horizon/being just around the corner I thought we’d do something a little different this year with a Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal.

First of all check out this vid, kindly produced by @TomAndThat of Eyupentertainment and starring Alex Lester of BBC Radio 2 fame.

The palm tree appeared in a video Alex Lester, The Movie – you can check it out here.

The palm tree has been sat in the Radio 2 studios for a few weeks gathering celebrity signatures. It features the likes of John Cleese, Hugh Grant, Mick Jagger and Bono not to mention all the Radio 2 presenters – Chris Evans, Steve Wright, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Simon Mayo et al (whoever Al is).

Now seeing as #trefbash2014 is a beach party we thought it would be particularly appropriate to use the palm tree (we should give it a name but we haven’t) as an auction lot for charity and because Children in Need is supported by the BBC it is particularly appropriate to let that good cause have the cash.

To make it interesting I’m also going to throw in a month’s sidebar advertising on trefor.net worth £1,400.

So when you come along to #trefbash2014 bring your pencil sharpener/cheque book, raise your arm and get stuck in to the auction action. You will also get some prolonged PR on trefor.net as we will be producing a video of the night which of course will run and run…

Engineer peering

IXScotland4 meeting Dec 1st

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
No Comments on IXScotland4 meeting Dec 1st

IXScotland4 is happening on Monday 1st December, in Scotland. If you’ve never been to Scotland it’s a great time of year to go. Whisky tastes a heck of a lot better when it’s ‘orribly cold and wet out there. Oh and dark.

Only joking. 55 people from 36 organisations have so far registered to attend. Its a good level of interest considering IXScotland’s membership currently numbers 13. It’s also fair going for what is still a nascent operation carrying on average below 40Mbps of traffic. At that level of bandwidth there’s a long way to go.

However go it will. The policy of opening regional exchanges is a good one. What’s the point of hauling traffic hundreds of miles and back again when a short cable under (or over) a corridor will do. Peering exchanges are all about the customer experience. Speed. Adjacency. Networks connecting at IX Scotland will be providing their customers with the best possible internet connections. People do notice these things¹.

Traffic will grow and having the exchange there will also encourage this. The UK has a number of regional exchanges, ie those outside of London. IX Leeds is independent but LINX operates IXPs in Scotland, Cardiff and Manchester. A regional IXP will normally need some kind of support to get it going be it from the membership, local government or as is the case in Scotland, LINX.

The model doesn’t necessarily work everywhere. It really needs a carrier neutral POP. A town where there are lots of independent datacentres would have each datacentre wanting to host the IXP with the others reluctant to participate as it would look as if they were supporting their competitor.

You can find the agenda here. An interesting afternoon in prospect. LINX tell me there will be more on their recent pricing announcement plus “A major provider of anycast DNS services is about to set up a node at IXScotland.” Oo. Wonder who it could be:).

Of particular interest is the panel debate:

How do we improve connectivity in Scotland?
Panel will consist of representatives of Scottish government, commercial and community broadband access provision in Scotland, content provision in Scotland.

This is an universal question that could be the subject of discussion anywhere. Scotland of course probably has a significantly higher proportion of beautiful open countryside that is the root of the problem connectivity problem. It’s a dilemma.

Anyway if you fancy a trip to bonnie Scotland in December this is your chance. See you there? Also read loads of great peering contributions in our peering category here. Och aye.

¹I had occasion to look up a website in Liberia recently. Took minutes to load a small 90 seconds promo video. I subsequently found out that the only connectivity in to Liberia were 16E1s vi satellite link. It’s an extreme comparison but people fast connectivity is becoming increasingly important.

Business security

Theresa May anti terrorist stuff

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 November, 2014
No Comments on Theresa May anti terrorist stuff

Government proposing to introduce legislation to make ISPs keep IP address details for customers.

This one periodically raises its head. In order to properly police the growing terrorist threat the Government wants ISPs to keep records of who had which IP address and when.

When this sort of legislation gets introduced the government normally pays for any work that must be done as a consequence. So if an ISP has to put a lot of effort into developing systems to keep the data Dave Cameron and his gang would stump up the cash.

The problem is that this always comes up against the hard rock of diminishing returns when it comes to smaller ISPs. In other words the implementation of such a system might often be considered to represent a disproportionate amount of work for a company with a small engineering team. If for example an ISP only had a couple of sys admins and a couple of network guys, to have to take on of these engineers away from the day job in order to do government related dev work could be a serious disruption to the normal business operations of the company.

On the other side the government would be paying out to set up a system that might cover a relatively few number of end users. They usually end up just asking the bigger ISPs to adhere to such a law (aka Digital Economy Act where only 7 ISPs are involved). This would then leave a huge gap in the fence for the terrorists to swarm through.

I once had a conversation with someone from the Home Office about this. The HO guy could only say “how would they find out about it”. That’s a pretty naive position. What’s GSoogle for? Lets hope our security forces have little more something about them.

One might also be a little concerned about the fact that this legislation, if passed will be another of those rushed through without proper scrutiny. Again remember the DEAct. The election isn’t far off now…

Business google

Bad links

Google webmaster guidelines

This is an interesting one. I got home last night from London having been to a charity lunch at Lords Cricket Ground as a guest of my friend Mehdi Nezarati of esna. It was a great afternoon and will suffice to tell you that lunch was timetabled to finish at 18.30 for you to understand the nature of the “session”.

Before I hit the hay I noticed an email:

We wish to thank you for linking to our site xxxxxx from trefor.net. Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that this link is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

It is important for us to bring our site into compliance with Google’s terms.

Please remove our link from the following page(s):

I’ve removed the links from this post though not from the blog. The two “offending” posts were one that I had written and one which was a guest post from a senior exec in the VoIP industry who also happens to be an old friend.

I replied to the email with the words “you are talking balderdash” (I actually didn’t use the word balderdash but it did start with b) and left it at that. It’s always a bit of a risk to reply to emails like that having spent the afternoon at a charity lunch that drifts into the evening but hey…

This morning I woke up to an email conversational trail that basically agreed with my statement. There is a story behind it. Names are withheld but basically a competitor to my friend’s company had identified hundreds of links to the company’s website and reported them to Google as not being natural.

Google ranks websites by the number and quality of the links into that website. trefor.net for example gets linked to by the BBC, telegraph guardian and others. This is good in Google’s eyes as these are all highly rated platforms in their own right. I don’t do anything to get these links. They just happen.

Now website owners often pay to generate links. I get many such offers as well as solicitations from people offering free content provided they can insert a link. I turn them all down. If Google were to suspect that trefor.net was indulging in such activity, or that we were trying to artificially generate links in to us it would be looked upon badly and would begin to affect how we feature in search engine results. ie we wouldn’t feature.

This business can get dirty. Some websites have been know to pay to have such bad links into their competitors’ sites and even to get links in from totally inappropriate sites such as those promoting porn and gambling (I’m told these do exist).

Legit business have to then systematically find these bad links and work their way through the hosts asking for the links to be removed. Alternatively they have to ask Google to not recognise the links.

This is the first time I’ve seen this happen “in the wild” but it is interesting. We did discuss naming the companies involved but concluded this would be too high risk. This stuff all happens in a murky internet underworld and doesn’t get seen by the general public.

Getting back to the lunch. Mehdi is a really top bloke and has spoken at a couple of trefor.net events the past. His company esna is doing very interesting things in the Google UC space. His guest list represented a roll call of heavy hitters in the communications world. You should expect to hear more from esna.

The lunch was organised by a company called Superskills Experiences run by former rugby players Will Greenwood and Austin Healey. They raise a tremendous amount of cash for good causes. Yesterday was no exception with some of the lots going for £40k or so! Lots of rugby celebs there including Lawrence Dalaglio, Jonny Wilkinson and Sean Fitzpatrick being interviewed on stage In the featured image.

Wales v All Blacks tomorrow. I’ll be there.

broadband Engineer engineering

Openreach engineering visit

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 19 November, 2014
No Comments on Openreach engineering visit

Openreach engineering visit fixes one fault and finds another

The doorbell rang yesterday just after lunch. It was an Openreach engineer. Good news. He had come to fix our phone line. I wasn’t expecting him but there again wasn’t going to turn him away.

Out phone line has been jiggered since Saturday. It’s ok as the broadband was still working fine and the only persons that call us on our home phone are scammers and my mother in law. In one sense that was a bit of a result although funnily enough that was not my wife’s view on the situation.

The fibre to the cabinet connection only needs one wire but the phone needs a pair so it is quite possible for one to continue working without the other.

So the engineer turns up and does a few tests both inside and outside the house and proceeds to find two faults. One is the one on the ticket which turns out to be a short circuit somewhere in the house (hoover bashed the socket!?). We fix that by just disconnecting that socket.

The other, which was a bonus, hasn’t been fixed yet and relates to a mismatch between the impedance profile on the two wires, or something along those lines. I wasn’t totally listening.

Our telephone wiring has been butchered about no end of times over the years so it comes as no surprise that there is a fault. It all started when I got so annoyed with BT that I ordered a second line and had a second ADSL line installed with a different provider. Funnily enough after getting the second line put in I got a sales call from BT trying to sell me broadband.

Having two lines coming in to the house has confused things from time to time especially when one of them was no longer in use. During one Openreach engineering visit a couple of years ago the engineer reused one of the spare wires from the second line to fix a fault in the first. This I think is where this current problem lies.

I’m not getting involved. Just leave it to the Openreach engineers who are actually quite a competent bunch of lads. Their (openly stated) problem lies in the fact that the whole copper network is just a pile of cack and it’s a difficult job to stay on top of the faults.

BT do from time to time make announcements to the fact that they are taking on more engineers (go to BT jobs pages here if you are looking around). The time may well come that the cost of maintaining the ageing network will outweigh the cost of rolling out fibre everywhere.

It’s gonna be a while. The only way I can see it happening short term is if we all go out and steal the copper lines. If the whole network was pinched then it would probably make sense to replace it all with fibre. Glass is cheaper than copper. Please don’t try this one at home though. It was merely a throwaway jocular remark intended to raise a smile. It was not intended to be genuine guidance for the frustrated home owner looking for reliability and genuinely high speeds in their broadband connections. Also it would be illegal. You have been warned!

Anyway back to my outstanding fault and the Openreach Engineering visit. My broadband speeds have been a bit up and down of late. I’ve been reluctant to raise a fault as I’d be getting in to a maze of engineering no shows and the possibility that they wouldn’t find a fault anyway as the problem is intermittent. Also it’s not helped by the fact that whenever I do a speed test using one of the network ports in the kitchen it runs at the correct speed. I just didn’t fancy wasting hours trying to improve the home wifi performance.

So I’ve been burying my head in the sand and avoiding the issue. Now thanks to the inadvertent discovery during my other Openreach engineering visit the problem may get sorted. Yay.

Don’t forget you are all invited to the trefor.net xmas bash. When the tickets are gone they are gone.

Business Mobile

TalkTalk, Vodafone & Telefonica

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 18 November, 2014
No Comments on TalkTalk, Vodafone & Telefonica

Of Mergers and MVNOs

Interesting mix of news this week as TalkTalk ditch Vodafone’s MVNO in favour of Telefonica O2 whilst at the same time Vodafone are rumoured to be looking at buying TalkTalk.

I’m not going to dwell much on the subject. The web will be awash with industry experts analysing the subject, holding it upside down and shaking it.

I’ll just fade momentarily to the Vodafone boardroom (cue ethereal music) …

“Sir, Sir, looks like we lost the TalkTalk MVNO business to O2”

“Hmm bugger, that was incompetent. It’s going to hurt our market share. What’s your answer to the problem?”

“Well Sir we could buy O2…”

Music swirls and brings us back to the present. ~~John Wayne gets on his horse and rides into the sunset.~~ Wrong story.

It does seem clear that the world is moving more and more towards one bill for all communications services. Vodafone need to join the club or lose out. One might consider that O2, in ditching their broadband offer, have already given up on that race.

An MVNO deal whilst good for subscriber numbers can’t be that great for margins and O2 will have had to dive in with a very aggressive offer to tempt TalkTalk away from Voda (don’t know the whole story here – maybe they were getting poor support). Having ported numbers away from an MVNO at Timico I know what a hassle it can be to swap services.

In the communications world it does feel as if mobile is just becoming a bolt on to fixed line services. I wouldn’t have made that statement a year ago and I may be wrong now but that’s certainly how it feels to me.

This is odd as the mobile is increasingly becoming the device of choice for making phone calls. For example our home phone is currently out of action. The broadband still works ok so I’m surmising its a broken bit of kit on the voice path in the exchange. For most of us in the house not having a phone line it isn’t a problem as we all use mobiles.

The only person who can’t call us is the mother in law who at the age of 81 doesn’t want to mess about learning new numbers.

EE have up until now, and since O2 left the game, been the only mobile operator aggressively chasing fixed line services growth, at least in the consumer market. And EE still have a long way to go to catch up with BT, Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk.

I suspect that TalkTalk would be an expensive acquisition for Vodafone. Their management will feel they are doing alright as they are which I very much believe to be the case.

If nothing else it all serves to show that our world is a constantly changing world. It’s what makes it exciting to live in.

Ciao bella:)

Engineer events food and drink fun stuff

#trefbash2014 – the “accessories” have been ordered

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 17 November, 2014
No Comments on #trefbash2014 – the “accessories” have been ordered

With only 24 days to go until #trefbash2014 the excitement is building.

Well it is in the trefor.net offices anyway. #trefbash2014 is the culmination of the business year, after which it is very hard to get much done. Usually the next few days are a write off.

This year we have pro teams on the photography and on video production. We also have a fantastic interactive “facility” which you can only find out about on the night. Sgonna be good though.

We are also for the first time having a fantastic one off charity auction and I hope to be in a position to post a photo of the prize this coming Friday. It’s something you will be proud to have on display in your company reception:) We will also have a special guest star there to present the prize to the winning bidder. Tune in Friday to find out more.

122 people have signed up so far which is roughly par for the course with three and a half weeks to go. Last year we had around 180 turn up. All the Surf Bum tickets have gone. This ticket seemed to strike a chord with people. Cold Beer Billy tickets are about to sell out and then it’s neck and neck between Lifeguard and Coconut Delight. Beach Bartender seems to be least popular. Don’t worry. You won’t be expected to serve drinks.

The accessories have now been ordered. Well it is a beach party. What will the best dressed beach party goer be wearing this year?

If you still want to get your brand up there on the night it is still not too late. We have commissioned a special video that will be running all night, interrupted only by our special interactive feature. Lots of exposure and recognition opportunities.

We now have a menu:

Main Course Hot Fork Buffet
Hot and Spicy Jerk Chicken
Steak and Black Pepper Burger
Vegetable Jambalaya
Creole Fish Curry

Side Dishes
Cornbread
Tomato Relish
Tortilla Chips, Soured Cream & Garlic
Caribbean Salad, Honey & Lime Dressing

Ian the chef at the Phoenix Artist Club is a top operator. Knows that engineers have sophisticated tastes but also like a few carbs to soak up the champagne. I’m ordering the champagne next week. Last year we went though over 80 bottles!

If you are planning on coming but haven’t yet signed up get yer names down here. More deets here on the blog.

#trefbash2014 – a trefor.net production:)

broadband End User

Calling the fibre broadband rollout team

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 17 November, 2014
No Comments on Calling the fibre broadband rollout team

B4RN broadband BT rural broadband reinvestment B4RN business model broadband vision

Fibre broadband rollout not reaching “parts that other rollouts cannot reach”

My heart goes out Jazz – see tweet below. We hear that metropolitan areas get new tech rollouts because of their population densities make the return on investment faster and more attractive than say rural areas.

@SkyHelpTeam hence why I would like to speak direct to the rollout team. What is stopping a borough of London moving to the 21st century?

— Jazz (@jazzjuttlay) November 15, 2014

Reality is not all city slickers get the fast stuff early. There are many possible explanations for this. For example Jazz could be unfortunate enough to live near an industrial estate.

BT tend not to upgrade cabs next to industrial estates because compared to residential there will be fewer subscribers in a given area. The cynics amongst you will no doubt say the real reason is that BT want to keep selling businesses their more expensive Ethernet services. Come now. Surely not.

Another reason could be purely logistical. There could be a problem with the existing cab., planning permission issues maybe, a blocked duct or insufficient power. It could be that the cost to BT of sorting out the problem was such that they prefer to spend their money elsewhere

Unfortunately for Jazz it isn’t just a question of having a word with the fibre broadband rollout team. BT would have so many people wanting to talk with that fibre broadband rollout team that they would never get any work done.

We can only hope that BT hasn’t actually finished in Jazz’s area and moved on leaving him as one of an unfortunate few left on the legacy “normal” broadband.

In all fairness to BT they are cracking on with their fibre broadband rollout generally (I know @Cyberdoyle will have a go at me for calling to fibre broadband but hey…).

The purists amongst us will not settle for less than Fibre to the Premises but that is another story..

Ciao amigos. Skinny latte in the trendy coffee show around the corner anyone?

Engineer fun stuff travel

Rosetta project uses components manufactured in Lincoln UK

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 13 November, 2014
No Comments on Rosetta project uses components manufactured in Lincoln UK

Rosetta spacecraft parts manufactured in Lincoln

Just had a quick phone call from my mate Terry that almost gave me a mild orgasm. Years ago we worked at a company called Marconi Electronic Devices (MEDL) in Lincoln. I ran the radiation hard components product line and Terry was the chief designer. Terry reminded me of the Rosetta spacecraft parts manufactured in Lincoln.

We used a technology called Silicon on Sapphire (SOS). This was manufactured just like a normal silicon chip/semiconductor except that the substrate was Sapphire, an insulation material. SOS was extremely resistant to the effects of the radiation that satellites encounter in space and was therefore in great demand for many projects.

They were halcyon days. I’d get trips to glamorous locations all over the world working on exciting projects. These projects still come back to roost from time to time as they are all long term missions – Space is a very big place.

The last one to surface was the Cassini mission which landed a probe on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. We made the spacecraft processor for the Titan lander. It was a 3 MIP 32 bit processor called the MA31750 – used the old Mil Std 1750A software instruction set.

Although the company is now long gone and wasn’t really a great employer the people were terrific. I still have some SOS wafers containing 31750 die at home. If I remember I’ll take some photos. They’re in the attic somewhere.

We also made memory chips (64KB) and other peripherals – the idea being that you could design the whole processor board using our parts.

It opened doors all over the world. I met astronaut Buzz Aldrin and even went along to Moscow by invitation of the VP of the Russian Space Agency to give a talk – in front of Russia’s top space scientist. Also did a talk at CERN for scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project which has been in the news of late.

Now we have Rosetta. It’s hugely funky to be able to say I was part of that project. I have loads of stories from that time but I feel as if you’ve indulged me enough.

If I can dig out more on the Rosetta electronics I’ll share it.

Purely coincidentally Terry and I went to see the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum on Tuesday morning after the Albert Hall Pylons Gig. Cool stuff 🙂

End User security

Potential TalkTalk Router Security Flaw?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 13 November, 2014
No Comments on Potential TalkTalk Router Security Flaw?

encryption adult content filter snoopers charter revisited TalkTalk Router Security Flaw ashley madison

Interesting tweet describing a potential TalkTalk router security flaw

Picked this one up on Twitter. It describes a potential TalkTalk router security flaw. I can’t for the life of me think how this scenario happens unless somehow TalkTalk are using the same IP address for more than one router – I guess with Dynamic IP addresses it will happen.

If that was the case then he certainly shouldn’t be able to access the router. Suggests there is a default username and password in play. Maybe the routers are only locked down from people outside the TalkTalk network. Seems strange to me.

@TalkTalkCare so when I type in the router IP, should I be able to see the details and password of my neighbour’s talktalk router?

— King ♔ Dominic (@CyningDom) November 12, 2014

Should really be locked down for everything. Bit of a worry really especially when you consider that most people will have no idea what is going on. Someone could be browsing your unsecured laptop or phone. Most will be unsecured. Laptops at least. People tend to have a pin number on their phone to stop Fraping.

Anyway though this one was worth sharing. If anyone from TalkTalk engineering would care to comment that would be great. Suspect they will keep stum though and get on sorting it out.

The whole subject of personal security where the internet is concerned is a difficult one. It’s hard for most people to get their brains past anything other than just installing anti virus software and even then it is rarely maintained. ISPs need to take responsibility as far as they can for their customers safety.

It’s in their interest really. The last thing they want is for a customer’s PC to be compromised and to be spamming the world. Gets the ISP blacklisted.

As far as the TalkTalk router security flaw goes I’m sure there must be a simple and innocent explanation. Hope so anyway.

That’s all folks. Ciao bella.

Apps Engineer peering

Slack Instant Messaging

Using Slack Instant Messaging for our LONAP communications

Just trying out Slack Instant Messaging for now. My first reaction when one of the boys suggested it was “oh no, not another IM system. Why can’t we just use hangouts, or messenger, or anything we already have.”

I’ve changed my mind. Having a system that is essentially private for one company is great. I get notifications on my Android when a Slack IM comes in. Normally I check my mail for LONAP messages but only do it periodically. We don’t use gmail which is my normal platform for everything else.

I also have slack for my Chromebook. It’s a web based service so no plugin. At least not one that I am using. I can enable desktop notifications but have happily left this switched off as I prefer the notifications to come in on my phone. I do like the fact that you can choose keywords for alerts.

It’s generally early days for us with Slack but the omens are good. We are expecting it to turn us into a more responsive organisation. It’s all about serving our members 🙂 We are a very distributed team all working remotely so good comms are essential.

If you don’t know or haven’t been following recent posts, LONAP is an Internet Exchange Point that connects eyeball networks with content providers. We have some major global names as members: Twitter, Google, Netflix etc.

There is a good chance that if you are using social media in the UK you are reaching it via LONAP which has a great reputation as being a network run by engineers for engineers.

As far as Slack goes I have been a user of Instant Messaging almost from the start and have grown sceptical as to whether anyone needs a new service. There seem to be loads of them all over the place.

My mind has been changed, by Slack. I’ll still use Facebook to chat to the kids and Hangouts for the trefor.net businesses but where LONAP is concerned, Slack Instant Messaging it is.

Tags Instant Messaging

Business internet

Plusnet website down

Plusnet website down – not great for an ISP

Saw on Twitter that the plus.net website is down. Somewhat of a faux pas for an ISP. We’ve probably all suffered from such situations but it is usually extremely embarrassing for the team responsible.

I daresay we will find out what happened in due course. This is a fairly major event because one assumes that plus.net will have a high availability platform for their site – load balancers, multple ip addresses and servers etc etc. All the usual good stuff. They will also have multiple DNS and multiple connections into the platform.

What it says is that nothing can be guaranteed to have 100% uptime. In many industries these days downtime of such a service will be measured in lost cash. The likes of Amazon, eBay etc.

The industry traditionally most sensitive to such scenarios is finance. I recall years ago a pal telling me he’d been to a data centre in the USA where a major bank had a cage. Inside the cage sat three engineers playing cards. They were there in case there was a network problem. Expensive but just part of the cost of insurance.

This isn’t practical for most businesses so they have to rely on a good partner. I don’t think plus.net do any hosting but this would probably harm that side of their business if they have one.

Having been in the situation of running a network which also had data centre resources I can tell tell you that the only way to ensure a good night sleep is to invest in resources. Qualified staff and quality network design and equipment.

Plusnet will certainly have done this and still have a problem. Hey.

All I can say is that with the plusnet website down the alarm bells will have been ringing at the ISP and a team of guys will be rushing around like blue arsed flies looking to see what is wrong. The best way to get it sorted is to leave them to it.

End User fun stuff

Hitler, he only had one ball…

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 11 November, 2014
No Comments on Hitler, he only had one ball…

The Pylons at the Royal Albert Hall

Having spent all last week in Hammersmith at RIPE69 the start of this week saw another two days in London. This time the visit was to see T he Pylons at the Royal Albert Hall at the Music For Youth Festival – the Schools Proms.

I’m very proud to tell you all that my son Joe is a member of The Pylons. Keyboards, trumpet and vocals. The Schools proms are billed as three days of music from the best youth talent in the uk. Ordinarily I wouldn’t blow trumpets like this but last night was a seriously top class evening of musical entertainment and with a totally vested interest I’m doing it anyway.

There were groups there who you could consider to be world class. If we consider The Pylons, each band member is a multi-instrumentalist to a high level. They have all already played the Albert Hall on a number of occasions as members of different youth orchestras and big bands. This showed in the composure and professionalism with which they appeared on stage.

I have no photos of the actual set. I was too busy watching and enjoying the show. The Pylons were accompanied by a cameraman for the whole trip so we will have a professionally done video to show as a souvenir of the day.

Safe to say the show was fantastic. I’m still emotionally exhausted from the evening. I’m sure The Pylons will go on to great things. The lads are still only aged between 16 and 18 and they should see the Albert Hall as just a stepping stone.

Although most of the family headed back to Lincoln and the mundanity of school the next day although Joe was playing the Last Post in the local village remembrance ceremony. I fortunately was able to stay in town to celebrate. We ended up with a 1am finish at The Phoenix Artist Club, venue of the forthcoming trefor.net Xmas Bash. No doubt this has contributed to my exhaustion.

zzz…

End User security

Virgin Media net nanny parental controls make internet unusable

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 November, 2014
No Comments on Virgin Media net nanny parental controls make internet unusable

Virgin Media net nanny parental controls cockup

On Saturday Twitter was awash with complaints from Virgin Media customers unable to surf their weekend entertainments. Apparently the Virgin Media net nanny parental control system had gone tits up. Presumably during some maintenance.

Some Tweets for your info – then scroll down for some thoughts on the subject.

Watch out if on @virginmedia as their net nanny web safe is blocking all websites unless you have already disabled it. Sigh!

— Debs Cooper (@debscooper) November 8, 2014

Poor @virginmedia – blocking most of internet on a Sat night, but leaving Twitter online. Didn’t think that one through… #websafe

— Dr Edward Packard (@paxcyclist) November 8, 2014

Hey, @virginmedia why is your websafe bollocks, which I didn’t opt into, blocking half the internet?

— JamesW (@jwrw) November 8, 2014

If @virginmedia websafe is giving you grief, then change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

— JamesW (@jwrw) November 8, 2014

The danger with this kind of technology is that it will break the internet. Normally the issue is accidental blocking of legit sites who carry on innocently with their business not knowing that a chunk of their target market has been denied access to them.

Last weekend this was taken to the extreme as most websites were blocked. I don’t really have a problem with parents being able to opt in to parental controls (ie have to switch them on as opposed to others having to switch them off) although it is worth pointing out that any kid with a soupcon of street wisdom will know how to circumvent the system.

At my kids’ school it is a daily battle between teachers and taught to limit access to proscribed sites. More on this kind of subject here and ‘ere.

Also quite a few Twitter fuelled posts that you might find an interesting read over at broadbandrating.

So long…

internet

RIPE69 wrap up – Karaoke BoF

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 8 November, 2014
No Comments on RIPE69 wrap up – Karaoke BoF

RIPE69 karaoke – excruciating 🙂

T’was a week of excess. Excess conference sessions, excess coffee and excess alcohol. It would be difficult for an outsider to understand that the internet is actually fuelled by coffee and beer. That’s what makes those packets move. No sleep is involved. There is also whisky.

On Thursday night, deep in the bowels of the Novotel, far below anywhere you might see a member of staff at night, unless in pairs, the Karaoke BoF was in full fling. Excruciating, gruesome noises emanated. Wild men sprang from their laptop cocoons. Cockroaches scuttled for the safety of the air-conditioning ducts. Loud music thundered. Lights flashed and dazzled.

Men and women danced in their free conference t shirts. Beer, whisky, whisky, beer. Lights, music, whisky beer. As the night drew on more people arrived to press the momentum of the Karaoke. Microphone fodder.

That night the internet was invented, disassembled and reinvented. DNS, BGP, dark fibre, SDN, IPv6.

5am came. Then breakfast, for the few. There is a rule. Work hard, play hard, and work begins at 9am no matter how hard the play. So the internet keeps working, for the people. Breakfast is optional. The @lonap sponsored coffee station worked overtime.

Then came the wrap-up plenary. After that the doors were closed, 750Mbps of internet pipe shut off and the meeting went into its final session¹.

Afterwards we hailed an Uber and made our way to KIngs Cross Station. Preparation for the journey North. Fish and chips accompanied by pints of London Pride. Then we went our separate ways, back to our homes and loved ones and an early night.

What do I remember most about the week. The excellent WiFi access. It is as you would expect from an internet conference. Next time it is in Amsterdam and they will have 10Gbps of connectivity. That’s a proper broadband connection.

Have a good day now…

¹Nod’s as good as a wink to a blind ‘orse.

Engineer engineering internet

Prince Harry special guest appearance at #ripe69 social

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 5 November, 2014
No Comments on Prince Harry special guest appearance at #ripe69 social

RIPE69 social sponsored by LINX on their 20th birthday

Whoever said the conference game is a nice little cushy few days out of the office has clearly never been to one. RIPE69 is in London this week and has an action packed schedule. There is very little downtime.

This is partly because as soon as the day’s official business is over the official unofficial business begins, in the bar. These events are big budget gigs and most evenings there is a social of some kind. A social for the 600 people attending RIPE69 is no small organisational challenge and comes with no small price tag.

Last night’s social was at the Jewel Bar in Picadilly Circus. Jewel directly opposite the tube entrance and was a very easy hop from the conference venue at the Novotel in Hammersmith. RIPE69 also coincides with LINX’s 20th birthday and LINX last night were very generous sponsoring the evening. The internet runs on beer and LINX have done a very good job in organising a number of parties during the year to demonstrate leadership in this space.

Last night was such a big event in the London party calendar that it attracted a number of A-listers. The featured image shows me with Prince Harry. You can see he was surprisingly bashful about having his photo taken with me. Don’t worry. I was able to keep the conversation going.

Being a quiet living type I left before the end to make sure I caught the last tube home. Not everyone was as sensible. A number of walking dead have been seen around the @lonap sponsored coffee station injecting espresso directly into their veins.

I don’t recommend this method of revival. Far better to make yourself get up early and go for a 5 mile run. Clears the head in no time. Never done it meself but I do hear it works wonders:).

Today is only Wednesday. There are three more days of RIPE69 to go!!!

As we are talking about working hard and playing hard I’ll take this opportunity to remind readers that they are invited to #trefbash2014. Link here password is “friendoftref”.

Engineer internet Net

RIPE69 wireless LAN

RIPE69 wireless LAN is terrific

You have to hand it to our industry. Whenever I go to a conference the WiFi internet access is usually terrific. On this occasion at the Novotel in Hammersmith we have 600 or so engineers crammed into a meeting room. That’s a lot of folk using the internet whilst listening to the talks – most people have their laptops open, just like I have when typing this post.

600 people needs quite a hefty network. In this case you only have to look under the tables to find out how they do it (see featured image).

I’m currently getting 50Megs down and 62 Megs up. Happy days. RIPE69 is my first RIPE meeting. I can’t see it being my last!

fun stuff

RIPE69 coffee breaks are sponsored by @lonap

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 3 November, 2014
No Comments on RIPE69 coffee breaks are sponsored by @lonap

RIPE69 is in town this week – look me up

Am at RIPE69 all this week. Working hard on behalf of LONAP who are sponsoring the coffee breaks.

If you don’t already know, LONAP is a not for profit Internet eXchange Point (IXP) where members connect with each other to share their internet traffic, a process known as peering.

Peering is what makes your internet experience a good one. Good in terms of low cost. Peering is the cheapest way for an Internet Service Provider to connect to the internet because they have only to provide a single connection into a communal hub.

Good also in terms of user experience because peering effectively provides a direct connection between ISPs with far fewer router “hops” in between. In this way latency, or speed of connection is optimised.

Uhuh you say. Well a fast speed of connection is important for a number of reasons. It isn’t just about bandwidth which is a representation of how much data you can shovel down a given connection in a given amount of time. It’s also about how quickly that data packet gets to your laptop/tab/phone.

The model is similar to to that used in financial exchanges in the city. Dealers are desperate to get financial data as quickly as possible becasue improvements measured in terms of milliseconds can result in millions of pounds of profit (don’t ask me how exactly).

In the internet world there are statistics that support why a faster connection makes more money for websites. Amazon claim that a 100 milliseconds improvement in page access time results in a 1% revenue improvment. Yahoo increased traffic by 9% with a 400 milliseconds improvement and Google say that slowing down the search results page by 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user of -0.2% to -0.6%.

That’s why ISPs peer. LONAP, with around 150 members, is one of the worlds biggest IXPs, ranking in the top 20 out of 450 or more around the globe. LONAP are based in London which ranks as the most connected city in the world hosting the most AS numbers. An AS number is a number assigned to a network operator that allows it to host IP addresses. The explanations go on. I stop here.

LONAP, as I said, are sponsoring the coffee breaks. When you get coffee the mugs have tearaway sections that tell you whether you have won a prize or not. We are giving away some terrific prizes including the one in the featured image of this post. If you want a LONAP branded phone charger get drinking coffee. You’ll need to search out someone wearing a LONAP shirt to get your prize.

If you are at RIPE69 look me up. Also check out more connectivity related posts here.

Engineer peering

Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary Day 2 pm

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 October, 2014
No Comments on Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary Day 2 pm

Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary Day 2 pm

Was too busy doing stuff this morning and much of it was tutorial, AGM, elections so didn’t do any live blogging. This afternoon am back on the case. Yesterday’s coverage of day 1 here.

Apps Business Cloud End User storage backup & dr

office 365 unlimited storage

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 October, 2014
No Comments on office 365 unlimited storage

Microsoft message to renegade professionals I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but in fairness to the company they are working hard on making their cloud products competitive. The latest is their announcement of free office 365 unlimited storage

Microsoft announce office 365 unlimited storage

I’m not a big fan of Microsoft but in fairness to the company they are working hard on making their cloud products competitive. The latest is their announcement of free office 365 unlimited storage. Course it isn’t free. It costs. £5.99 a month for a single user or £7.99 a month for a household of up to 5 persons. This sounds like a very good deal to me considering a single copy of Microsoft Office can cost over a hundred quid (or it was when I last bought one).

Apart from being an aggressive move in a market that they absolutely have to succeed at, and which indications suggest they are not doing badly, the great thing for me is what this is likely to do for the competition. A Google account is free for personal users and it gives you most of the functionality of Microsoft Office, although I accept that the equivalent Google features may not be as mature and functional.

With Google though you only get 15GB free storage. I worked out earlier this year that the free Google account with a Terabyte of storage is around £70 a year. Whilst a Terabyte isn’t unlimited it’s not far off at the moment, to all intents and purposes.

Maybe £70 is the base market price for this kind of cloud service. Most people won’t need a Terabyte, or an unlimited amount of storage, at the moment. I use around 400MB on my NAS box and that is mostly photos. If I had unlimited storage I might start to push the boundaries on what I choose to store.

I’ve no idea what that is at the moment. It might, for example, mean I get a CCTV app that keeps all the video footage ¹ ever recorded by the camera/s. A bit of a waste but why not. It’s free. Add to that the fact that unlimited usage broadband packages have become the norm and hey presto, all barriers removed.

In one sense Microsoft might be making a rod for their own backs here but I think it is great. It can only be of benefit to us all. Where does this all go? What happens when everyone’s product looks the same and costs the same? I suspect that we will start to see differentiated cloud services, speed of access, mining tools maybe. But that is all in the future. For the moment it’s well done Microsoft. Competition is good.

They still have a lot of work to do on their mobile strategy though…

¹ use of the word footage seems somewhat anachronistic

peering

Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary – Day 1

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 27 October, 2014
No Comments on Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary – Day 1

Euro-IX 25 Bucharest live commentary – Day 1.

Business fun stuff

Announcing #trefbash2014

Bar at London's Phoenix Artist Club #trefbash2014

Here it is kids – trefbash is back with #trefbash2014 11th Dec.

The UK internet industry’s biggest bash of the year is back. Now in its 5th year, the trefor.net Xmas bash is again at Soho’s exclusive Phoenix Artist Club. #trefbash2014 is a beach party – the full coconut with straw hats, garlands and a mandatory Hawaiian shirt dress code (or coconuts – you choose). A good time is absolutely guaranteed for this, the culmination of the internet tech industry’s party year.

Music is provided by the high class sounds of the Jeff Brown quartet supported by international jazz pianist and Ronnie Scotts regular Colin Dudman. This year also, as an added bonus we have a special feature that includes a celebrity inflatable palm tree. You’ll have to be there to find out more!

One of the features of a trefbash is the terrific food and chef Ian is providing us with a fantastic bbq spread to suit all palates. And then there’s the champagne… Check out this video from a previous trefbash. Link to eventbrite page here or sign up below the list of sponsors. This is by invite only to readers of trefor.net – password is “friendoftref”.