Author: Trefor Davies

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

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle – evil genius at work or just plain incompetent? #DEAct

Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle states that the costs to an ISP of processing a Copyright Infringement Report can only be known when that ISP knows how many CIRs it is going to have to process and that Rights Holders will not disclose this number until they know the costs.

If it was as simple as that we might be able to come to some arrangement but of course it isn’t.

The BIS consultation on Costs under the Digital Economy Act is not scheduled until October 2010. Work is going on now to prepare for this and yesterday Ofcom held a meeting with ISPs to take on board their views on the subject.

Continue reading “Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle – evil genius at work or just plain incompetent? #DEAct”
Categories
End User fun stuff

#BP oilspill map superimposed on to UK

The BP oilspill crisis only really hit home today when someone showed me this map of the spill overlaid onto the UK. The area is huge.

map of BP oilspill superimposed on South of England
map of BP oilspill superimposed on South of England

Check out this website to move the overlay to where you live. It includes live streaming from BP. I’ve captured it today so that you can check out the growth with time (macabre I know).

Categories
broadband Business

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 2 – Directions

Part 2 of an interview recorded for BT as part of their FTTC launch.

Categories
broadband Engineer internet

Broadband Fault – The Davies Household Grinds to a Halt

I woke up this morning to a fault on my broadband line. OK this kind of thing happens. There is a BT engineer coming tomorrow morning to fix it. Fine.

It does however bring home how reliant we are on the internet. I found out in bed at 6.30 am that that the “internet wasn’t working” (after I had been down to make the tea!). My wife’s instant reaction was “OMG what if I get any emails from potential eBay buyers asking questions about my sales items”.

“Don’t worry” I said, “in an emergency you can use my phone”.

Continue reading “Broadband Fault – The Davies Household Grinds to a Halt”
Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom Draft Code of Practice for the Digital Economy Act #DEAct

Just ploughing through the 73 pages of the Ofcom Draft Code of Practice for the Digital Economy Act.

There isn’t much time for the industry to respond here and I’m certainly not in a position to give it a comprehensive review after 10 minutes of scan-through reading.

A few points do immediately jump out of the page at me though.

Continue reading “Ofcom Draft Code of Practice for the Digital Economy Act #DEAct”
Categories
broadband Business internet

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 1 – Markets

First in a series of videos recorded by BT as part of their launch of FTTC.

Categories
Business internet

BT getting into content delivery with Content Connect

BT Wholesale looks like getting into the Content Delivery business with a service known as Content Connect.

You might wonder what this means and be saying to yourself  “the BBC is a content provider, BT ain’t”. Well content delivery and content provision are not the same thing and the problem for ISPs is that the delivery of content is very inefficient over broadband networks.

If a hundred people watch the same TV programme online the way the world currently stands is that that programme will be streamed 100 times over an ISPs “backbone”. This is made worse because you, the consumer of internet bandwidth, want more and more content.  All the time.

Major sporting and political events such as the Friday post election coverage have millions of people watching online using their PCs.  They even watch on their PC whilst watching different coverage on the TV in front of them.

BT Content Connect is, I have to assume, a product that allows ISPs to satisfy their customers’ content watching needs in a far more efficient way than is the norm today.  I imagine that this means BT hosting content servers deep in the network so that it doesn’t have to touch an ISP’s pipe.

When I have more info on this I will report back. In the meantime click here for BT’s online spiel.

Categories
Business internet

BT Ethernet enabled exchanges

I’ve just posted a list of BT Ethernet enabled exchanges.  This is likely to be of interest to businesses looking to see whether they can get hold of either Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) or Metropolitan fibre Ethernet connecivity. 

The initial list contains exchanges enabled as of the end of 2009 with a list of those that go live this year below.

If anyone wants more info on this just mail me at [email protected]

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

#DEAct costs should be borne by rights holders – Ofcom meeting 1st June

The next Ofcom stakeholder meeting on the Digital Economy Act (DEAct) is taking place next Tuesday June 1 at 3pm at Ofcom. The meeting will be looking at Ofcom’s work in relation to cost sharing under the statutory instrument, on which BIS is currently consulting.

The DEAct was heavily weighted in favour of rights holders and we should be seriously concerned that the Code of Practice does not adopt a similar bias.

ISPs are intermediaries that pass packets of information over their networks. ISPs neither benefit from, nor

Continue reading “#DEAct costs should be borne by rights holders – Ofcom meeting 1st June”
Categories
Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

A brief ISP take on the final coalition agreement #DEAct

The government published the final coalition agreement this week. The government proposes to:

End the storage of internet and email records without good reason;

This is good. The cost to industry was going to be enormous to do this. This might well also affect the government’s thinking in respect of the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP). IMP is a whole different can of beans whereby ISPs were going to potentially be asked for all sorts of interception and tracking involvement by the Big Brothers.

Continue reading “A brief ISP take on the final coalition agreement #DEAct”

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

ofcom #deact market benchmarking

Section 8 of the Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to report on the provision of lawful services, education and information campaigns, levels of copyright infringement and legal proceedings against infringers.

By January of 2011 the regulator must have set up an independent monitoring system so that there is data available to measure the success or otherwise of the Act.

Ofcom is proposing that monitoring should consist of three types of input: collation of existing data (eg existing industry reports, ISP traffic data and existing consumer research), consumer research and direct measurement of activity on file sharing networks.

Independant partners will be commissioned for the consumer market research and the direct measurement work with the tendering process beginning in June.

The market research will be conducted 4 times a year on samples of 5,000 persons each time. It will be interesting to see how accurate this research is. Will people tell the truth? I guess it will just be a contribution to the overall dataset.

The baseline data needs to be in place for the start of next year.

Categories
Business internet surveillance & privacy

work life balance, the internet, politicians and the repeal of the #DEAct

You might be interested in reading my latest guest post over at broadbandgenie.

Categories
Business internet

Timico Group is six times finalist for ISPA Awards – wahey

Today two Timico group companies have obtained a total of six nominations in the ISPA awards. Timico is finalist in both the Best Business Fixed Broadband and Best Internet Telephony categories. NewNet is finalist for Best Business Fixed Broadband, Best Consumer Fixed Broadband, Best Dedicated Hosting and Best Shared Hosting.

6 years ago Timico was founded with the ambition to become the first choice Communications Provider for business in the UK. Lofty ambitions and hopefully this endorsement shows that we are heading in the right direction.

The awards are in London on the 8th July. See you there. I’m the guy in the dinner suit.

Categories
Business internet Regs

Boris Johnson promises WiFi for London

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has promised full WiFi coverage of London in time for the 2012 Olympic games. It would be ironic if the Olympic Games WiFi coverage was shut down because someone had been caught indulging in online copyright infringement. As Mayor will he be the one having to turn up in court?

Categories
Engineer peering

conference freebies

Sometimes when someone is making a statement you just have to sit up and take notice.  In this case LINX69 sponsors Prolabs have impressed by giving us hardware.com branded  4GB USB memory sticks.  The new bar has been set.

Coincidentally I recently did a screen on all my kids’ USB sticks checking for viruses. They produced 14 of them for scanning ranging from 128MB (virtually useless these days) to a few 500MBs.  One memory stick had a virus. Beware.

Anyway if any other vendors want an obective assessment of their marketing freebies you know where to send them:-).

Categories
Engineer internet

100GigE – 5 years from initial idea to standard

Day1 of LINX69 had networking equipment vendor Brocade giving an interesting talk about the rollout timescales for the 100GigE standard.

The 100Gig standard has taken 5 years from initial ideas to fruition with ratification being expected in June 2010. Coincidentally the 40Gig standard will have taken the same amount of time with a parallel development aimed at the server market.

40Gig kit reuses some 10Gig elements which is what should allow it to fit in the appropriate part of the price/performance curve.

Whilst a number of vendors have announced 100Gig products it remains to be seen how rapidly some of these will be rolled out and adopted. During the last wave of network upgrades (1Gig to 10Gig) many equipment vendors had their fingers burned as industry uptake took a lot longer than anticipated. Nortel, for example had apparently predicted 2 million 10Gig port shipments by 2002 but actually took another 7 years to hit that volume. Somewhat symptomatic of the problems the Nortel business found themselves in methinks.

The upshot is that vendors are unlikely to rush out 100Gig products.

We expect of course that next gen technologies result in lower per port costs. Currently this is not the case for 100Gig due to high optics and component costs. Based on historical trends these are expected to drop in 2011/2012. For the moment 100Gig is therefore very much one for the early adopter.

The chart below shows the timeline between adoption of the standard for each technology. Considering that it takes 5 years to develop a standard and looking at the 2002 dot com bubble bursting date that the 10Gig standard was ratified  it is perhaps no surprise that 100Gig was delayed.

Ethernet technology adoption timeline - courtesy Brocade Networks
Ethernet technology adoption timeline
Categories
Business ofcom Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom #DEAct Code of Practice limited to ISPs with 400,000 subs & excludes mobile broadband

ISPA Secretariat met with Campbell Cowie and Chris Rowsell from Ofcom this afternoon to discuss the ongoing work surrounding the DE Act.

Ofcom explained that the Code will look at four areas: process – how a Copyright Infringement Report (CIR) is generated and sent and the notification process; appeals for consumers; dispute resolution between ISPs and RHs; and costs, which BIS will be focusing on.

The Code is due to be published within the next ‘couple of weeks’, though no date has been set. As Ofcom did not anticipate industry to come together and produce an effective code as per the DE Bill/Act, it had been planning what a Code may look like for some time and had not relied on one side of the debate to influence the content.

Due to the short timescales Ofcom has been working to, the Code will be instructional rather than setting out line-by-line what is required. For example, instead of dictating a standard approach for a CIR, those affected will have to tell Ofcom how they will go about it and Ofcom will then approve it or recommend changes.

The Code will initially be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers – currently 7 ISPs – and not including mobile broadband, but the long-term ambition is to target those ISPs with copyright infringing consumers. So downloaders who migrate to an ISP not included in the soft launch of the Code will eventually be covered as Ofcom follows the traffic. Ofcom has also been tasked with analysing the level of copyright infringement and barriers to innovative and emerging business models and report back to the Secretary of State, and would be actively seeking views on this.

My thanks to the ISPA Secretariat for this feedback.

Categories
Engineer internet

Is LINX getting too big?

An interesting question posed during the Board Election Hustings at LINX69 today was “is LINX getting too big?”

For the uninitiated the London Internet Exchange is a membership owned Internet Exchange where network operators peer with other network operators. This means that they pass traffic between each other free of charge. There is a cost for this – running the “exchange” involves buying and maintaining expensive bits of kit that all members connect to.

This cost however is far lower than the alternative of buying access to internet sites around the world from a commercial supplier – something known as internet transit. LINX membership in theory gives you access to around 70% of all internet routes.

LINX is growing rapidly. The organisation has 357 members with 22 new applications in 2010 to date. Network operators want to join because as LINX grows the benefits also grow.

The question at the hustings is valid though. The problem is that the internet was designed as a robust network able to withstand problems at any given single point. If those networks comprising the internet increasingly connect at a single place then this obviously counter intuitive to the way the internet is meant to work.

Now LINX does operate a very robust network – effectively two networks based on two different vendor equipments. It is becoming an increasingly attractive place to peer.

I can’t tell you what the right answer is. ISPs just need to make sure they have alternatives.

Categories
Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Ofcom goes quiet on #DEAct Code of Practice

Ofcom seems to have gone very quiet since the initial flurry of consultation meetings following the passing of the Digital Economy Act. This is somewhat concerning in my mind.  Ofcom has to produce a draft Code of Practice by the end of May.

The DEAct is such a contentious subject that the last thing we want is to find  that this CoP is not objective and is bisassed towards one set of stakeholders over another. It is a lot easier to get changes made before the initial draft than afterwards.

It is also hugely important for Ofcom to remain transparent here and it would make sense to me for the regulator to be asked to identify how many contacts and inputs have been had with each set of stakeholders during the compilation of the draft CoP.

Ofcom responsibilites in respect of the DEAct can be found here. There is one meeting planned for 20th May to present these duties. Doesn’t seem to be to do with the CoP subject matter.

Categories
Engineer internet

Google redirecting to Swedish site

For some strange reason as I travel down to LINX69 in London the on train wifi is directing me to Google’s Swedish website. It would be interesting to find out whether this is down to the service provider network being used by EastCoast Trains or something happening in the Google network itself.

I guess someone at LINX69 would be able to find out.

Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Diet of mince speeds Stephen Timms on way to recovery #deact

Former Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms was stabbed today whilst conducting a surgery in his constituency in East Ham. It is sad that this risk must be a by product of  public service for MPs.

Whilst I didn’t support what Stephen Timms did with the Digital Economy Act I did recognise that I was dealing with a good and honest man, regardless of whether we agreed with each other on what he was doing.

I’m sure that we all wish him a speedy recovery.

PS I’m sure he would appreciate it if anyone has a CD or two to lend him whilst he is in hospital. Hospital radio must get a bit repetitive.  No home made compilations please. Let’s be sensitive now.

Not to mention the mince…

Categories
End User mobile connectivity scams security

sms #phishing

Had a couple of sms phishing attempts in the last couple of days:

“FREEMSG: Our records indicate you may be entitled to 3750 pounds for the Accident you had. To claim for free reply with YES to this msg.  To opt out text STOP.”

The each appear to come from a different mobile number.  Needless to say anyone getting one of these should just delete them.  I wouldn’t reply STOP. I don’t think there is anything we can do other than deleting them.  Unless you start gettign a lot of these message s it is probably too small a problem for the networks to take onboard. 

I wouldn’t be tempted to reply STOP.

Categories
Business internet

NetOps roll out BS6008 internally in trials

As part of our process of continuous improvement the Timico Network Operations team has adopted BS6008 as an internal standard. In the absence of 100% accurate measurement tools we are currently having to use best efforts (ie a teaspoon) which does prevent us from gaining official certification.

However I am looking at the business case for investing in new kit (scales) for next year which might qualify us for formal certification, or at least self certification if we don’t believe the additional investment in the certification test is merited.  We will just have to wait and see what is left in the tea kitty.

I realise that everyone will be intimately familiar with the details of BS6008 but just in case you aren’t I have reproduced the key bits of the standard below and also provided a link for the full document.

BS6008:1980 – ISO title: Tea — Preparation of liquor for use in sensory tests

Fill the pot containing the tea with freshly boiling water to within 4 to 6 mm of the brim (i.e. corresponding approximately to 285 ml in the case of the large pot and 140 ml in the case of the small pot described in the Annex) and put on the lid. Allow the tea to brew for 6 min, and then, holding the lid in place so that the infused leaf is held back, pour the liquid through the serrations into the bowl (5.2) corresponding to the pot selected.

Whether you like it black or with milk is up to you but at least the base drink will be top notch. Long live PG Tips. Also you might want to invest in a water filter – I don’t care but the girls in the office swear by it.

The number in brackets corresponds to an illustration in the actual standard.

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

Orange and TMobile announce UK JV Everything Everywhere

Orange and TMobile unveiled their UK joint venture today. I was quite impressed with the slickness of the delivery of their online press pack, not that I often download press packs. It isn’t often I comment on purely mobile news. I’m into IP.

On this occasion however it is such a big announcement that it has attracted my attention. Such a large scale business has to figure out how to keep it’s messaging simple whilst communicating what is presumably a hugely complex change to the business. This I believe it has made a reasonable stab at:

  • Everything everywhere
  • Best for customers
  • Biggest network
  • Benefits begin this year with x-network roaming
  • Boost for sales
  • Brilliant service
  • Acceleration into the business market

Whilst in principle a bigger and better network should server customers better there are a number of things to watch out for here.

  1. Bigger and better often means slower to respond.
  2. Bigger and better often means poorer customer service
  3. The business market is a completely different kettle of fish from that Orange and TMobile are used to
  4. It isn’t clear to me how the jointly larger high street footprint will result in a boost for sales unless they are jointly going to spend more money picking up customers than they used to and this has it’s downsides in terms of operating margins. They have to keep the brands separate or the likely result is a lower overall sales level (which might of course be accompanied by lower operating costs)

I should mention that as an O2 and Vodafone service provider I have an interest to declare but I’m not really letting that colour my opinions. The success of this venture is going to depend on how well they can make the complex business of running a mobile service simple. Only time will tell.

PS I’d love to have their  marketing budget.

PPS It wasn’t immediately obvious to me that the name of the JV appears to be “Everything Eveywhere”. Marketing money well spent?

Categories
Engineer internet

2 recent slash 8 allocations brings IPv4 x-day forward by 5 months

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has just allocated regional registries RIPE and APNIC a /8 each this month.  For the uninitiated a /8 represents 2 to the power of 24 IP addresses or 167,77,216.

A /8 is the largest block allocation that can be made by IANA and these two have had the effect of bringing forward the x-date, the date for IPv4 exhaustion, by 5 months or so to April 30th 2011.

These blocks are subdivided into smaller subnets for further allocation to ISPs/organisations with smaller requirements  such as BT and Timico. Timico has a variety of block allocations ranging from  /16 to /20’s.

If you want to know more about IP addressing allocations check out wikipedia. The times they are a changing.

Footnote – a day later the date seems to have bounced back to September – don’t know what happened there.  Still not very far off though.

Categories
broadband Business internet

Workers All Watching the Election Shennanigans Online from Offices

Internet traffic is up significantly this morning as bleary eyed election-watchers come into the office and pick up where they left off last night.

Noon-time traffic on Timico’s ADSL network is up approx 25% on the same time yesterday. This percentage seems to be reasonably constant for all major online events. Similar burst have been seen in the past for the Olympics, the Ashes Cricket, US President Obama’s inauguration and the last budget speech. Video streaming almost exclusively acocunts for the increase today.

This does suggest that there is a community of people in the work place that regularly accesses online video for the big events. One wonders whether this is with the knowledge and consent of their employers.  Most of Timico’s customers are businesses. I doubt that they have TVs in the office so this may be to a certain extent a B2B ISP issue.

2 hours later – traffic growth is now up by 33%.  In my experience this is a record for an event.

Categories
Business internet

Smart 421 business process change and Hotel California

Continuing with our season of guest guitarists I present for your entertainment and delight Mr Hugh Hyndman, Solution Architect at change consultancy Smart421. Hugh was in today as part of a team brought in to assist with a major new project upon which we have embarked.

Timico has grown from very small beginnings with four of us in a room at the stables at Langford Hall to a company with around 140 (ish) staff scattered around two main locations – Newark and Fareham, the home of NewNet.

Having bought 4 ISPs en route we find that the processes that sustained us as a small company, ie blood sweat and tears, are no longer good enough to take us to the next level. That isn’t to say we don’t have processes but if we are to double or treble in size over the next few years we need to have the infrastructure to support the growth.

Having been through a couple of business change processes in the past I find this one reassuringly familiar and probably far more exciting, having a personal stake in the outcome and also having seen before the effect of such a project on a business.

Hugh, I am very pleased to say, is one of the more competent guest guitarists we have had in. He gave us a very recognizable rendition of Hotel California. Note the perfect Bm chord (4 strings only).

Hugh Hyndman of Smart 421 plays Hotel California at Timico
Hugh Hyndman of Smart 421 plays Hotel California at Timico
Categories
broadband Business

Timico FTTC Pricing Released

I note that Timico has launched Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) under the “Fibre Broadband” brand. Pricing starts at £39 a month. More details here.  Next up will be Annexe M followed by FTTP.

FTTC rollout plan here.

Enquiries to [email protected]

Categories
Business voip

GenBand set to rock and roll with Nortel acquisition

Next up in the guest stitched up to play the guitar in front of a totally uncritical audience is Jason Dackins of GenBand. Up until a few months ago I had never heard of Genband.  Now they are about to become one of my most important strategic partners as they acquire the Nortel carrier division, CVAS.

GenBand is being financed by One Equity Partners (JP Morgan) and is putting together what I believe will be a major force in the carrier VoIP market.  Other assets in the stable include the Session Border Controller NexTone. 

I was happy to entertain them and little did they know that they would be entertaining us.  Jason is playing Yviva Espana (I think).

Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Categories
End User gadgets

ipad or not 2 ipad

I’m not a bandwagon jumper-onner when it comes to gadgets.  I think it is because I am inherently a skinflint. In the case of the iPad I have waited for someone else to buy one for me to have a go. I’m sorry boys and girls but having had a go it isn’t compelling enough for me to now go out and get one myself.

The problem is that it is actually a third device.  I currently have a laptop and a Nokia N97.  I need a laptop and I need a phone.  The iPad doesn’t replace either of them. I would use an iPad around the house.  In fact sad though it may be I take both my laptop and N97 to bed with me. The iPad would by and large replace the laptop here as a device that will let me access gmail, facebook, twitter et al.  Not sure I would pay the price though. it needs to be down at the sub £200, maybe £150 and then it would be one of those gadgets you can hang on the kitchen wall or prop it up on the dresser.

Anyway that’s it for now on the iPad.  Photos below are Richard from Timico who is clearly pleased with his and who let me have a go.

a happy iPad owner
a happy iPad owner
Richard displays the near pencil like dimensions of his iPad
Richard displays the near pencil like dimensions of his iPad