Category: internet

another catch-all really for internet related posts

Categories
Engineer internet

miscellany submarine cables and submarines – dive dive dive

submarine cable map courtesy of http://www.submarinecablemap.com/Visiting my old alma mater today, Bangor University. It’s nice to get invited. We are opening a new Laboratory and then the Annual Engineering Lecture. This year it is entitled “Submarine Engineering across the years”  and is to be given by Rear Admiral (retd) Paul Thomas CB, FREng, FCGI, FIMechE, Hon FNucI, Hon FSaRS. That’s more badges than most of us could possibly dream of!

The subject is quite convenient because some time ago I bookmarked a website http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ thinking it was cool and would come in handy some day. Well now it has and whilst absolutely  nothing to do with today’s lecture it is fascinating to see where all the undersea cables are. The whole internet is underpinned by relatively few connections really.

If you click on an individual cable line it tells you who owns the cable, how long it is, when it was laid and where it lands. This is big business. Some of these cables are very long. SeaMeWe3 for example is 39,000km, stretches from Germany all the way to Australia and South Korea and is owned by a cooperative of 16 organisations.

Keeping it topical, some governments, ours included want to monitor the traffic running though these cables. When you look at the map it makes you realise how absurd this is.

I have visions of Rear Admiral (retd) Paul Thomas in his sub pootling along following the cables to find his way home – a bit like the pilots in their Sopwith Camels during WW1 following the roads and railway lines. Fiendishly clever. Splice the mainbrace, Klingons on the starboard bow, land ho, take her down number one, dive dive dive, etc etc etc.

I’ll let you know how the lecture goes 🙂

Categories
Engineer internet

The history of the Isle of Man Postal service by Kelly from the Isle of Man

Mail of MannJust reading “The Mail of Mann” – the story of postal services in the Isle of Man written by Robert Kelly. A fascinating read  if you like that sort of thing which I presumably do.

On September 3rd 1837 the Post Office in the UK despatched a surveyor to the island to assess what might be done to improve its postal communications. The transmission of data packets (ie letters) was very much adhoc, asynchronous if you like. In particular the service to outlying rural parts of the island was pretty hit and miss.

Unfortunately for those rural dwellers, which in particular included the Lord Bishop whose residence as you probably know is on the far side of the island between Kirk Michael and Ballaugh, the surveyor decided that it would be too expensive to set up a regular service to anywhere other than the main towns which would in any case cover most of the people sending and receiving mail.

The rural areas were left to people to sort out themselves. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Categories
Engineer engineering internet

the leaving of #UKNOF23 TfL bus number 205 to Paddington

Never let it be said that this blog fails to deliver. This time I present for your delectation a journey on the TfL number 205 bus which left Old Street for Paddington yesterday afternoon.

I had been at UKNOF23 at the Google Campus near Old Street and was headed for a rendezvous at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel with Paul Schwartz. Paul is an interesting bloke. He is CEO of Danish router manufacturer Icotera and member of the board of the Fibre to the Home Council (Europe).

Now some of you might wonder what on earth I am doing showing a video of a bus ride. This video is actually of a single hop between two stops: Old Street and Moorfields Eye Hospital on the City Road (of “in and out of the Eagle” fame). It represents a short window on the life of London and will potentially, when considered in conjunction with millions of other snapshots, contribute to the historical record of our great capital city.

The bus enthusiasts among you will also complain that a single stop is not enough. Give me more, more – I hear the clamour. Well there were two factors that prevented me from filming more. Firstly most people will not even watch the 52 seconds of this single hop. Then there was the fact  that my battery was running low and I needed to conserve it in anticipation of the need to call Paul because I had no idea what he looked like.

So there you have it. Those wondering why I left UKNOF23 during the afternoon coffee break now know and those who simply like to ride at the front of the top deck of double decker busses (which could well be the vast majority of the UK population) should also be happy.

And so to the video…

PS these videos are becoming increasingly popular. The one of “How to make steak tartare” has hit 60 views on YouTube! Life is good:)

Categories
Apps End User gaming internet

Electronic Arts infrastructure fails under weight of demand for FIFA2013

I had to pop into town yesterday to buy FIFA 2013 for my 12 year old. It was the price I had to pay for his cooperation with the BT case study filming when he got back from school. It cost an arm and a leg – somewhere in the region of £85 including 5,000 Microsoft points.

There would have been a lot of people getting around town without arms and legs because there must have been hundreds of the games  piled up behind the counter at Game Station, all on pre-order. In fact if you hadn’t pre-ordered it  you would have been out of luck as they were all spoken for.

My lad got home from school and immediately got down to business with the XBox. That’s when things started to go wrong. He traded 3,200 Microsoft points for 5,200 FIFA points. However the FIFA points did not appear. These are expensive virtual tokens (massive gross margin I’d imagine) and whilst I was sure that we would resolve the issue – @EA support has been great in the past – on this occasion the support was totally unobtainable.

I began to tweet my dissatisfaction – that’s usually a good way of getting a response (unless you are @eastcoastuk). Every minute I spent on hold I tweeted the fact with increasing levels of annoyance. Looking at the @EA twitter account I could see they had over 1 million followers. I gave up after 20 minutes.

Later the lad found out online that EA had had to switch off their points system because it had been overwhelmed. This was another Olympic ticketing/Ticketmaster moment. The next morning the system is still down for maintenance.

It surprises me that in this day and age of scalable online computing resources that businesses let themselves down like this. I often hear complaints in our house that the FIFA servers are down or too busy.

As I write the @EA twitter follower count is down to 999,901 – clearly a few disgruntled folks out there.

Categories
Business internet Regs

ISPA conference 12th November

If anyone is interested in attending the annual  ISPA conference registration is now open. I’m chairing an interesting debate on the draft Communications Data Bill. This conference is always jam packed with good subject matter and well worth going.

Full agenda is below:

0915  Registration and Coffee

0940  Introduction by Nicholas Lansman – ISPA Secretary General

0945  Keynote Address: tbc         

1005 Q&A Chair: Nicholas Lansman – ISPA Secretary General

1015  Does the Draft Communications Data Bill get the balance right between the needs of law enforcement, the privacy of users and impact on CSPs?

·   What has changed and how will businesses be effected?
·   Is retaining third party data proportionate and technically possible?
·   Is this an extension of existing powers? Are there enough safeguards in place to protect privacy?

Chair: Trefor Davies – Timico CTO and ISPA Council

Panellists: Conor Ward – Partner, Hogan Lovells; Dr Julian Huppert MP – Joint Committee; Nick Pickles – Director, Big Brother Watch; Professor Anthony Glees – Director, Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS) at the University of Buckingham; more speakers tbc

1115  Coffee and Networking                                 

1130  How can Britain’s broadband strategy best help SMEs and businesses?

·   Is the current focus too much on speeds and not enough on reach of service?
·   What are the next steps for the broadband strategy?
·  How best can we ensure that investment in broadband reaches businesses and consumers in all parts of the UK?

Chair:  Mark Gracey – Cable&Wireless and ISPA Council

Panellists: Earl of Selborne – Lords Committee; Barry Forde – CEO, Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN); more speakers tbc

1230  NETWORKING LUNCH

1400  Speech & Q&A: tbc

1410  Whose responsibility is it to ensure cyber security?

  • How can ISPs, law enforcement and government work better together to ensure a safer internet experience?
  • What can we learn from the experiences of other countries?
  • What is the responsibility of the user to protect themselves?

Chair: James Blessing – Limelight Networks and ISPA Council member

Panellists: Tony Neate – Chief Executive, Get Safe Online; Alexandra Birtles – PR and Public Affairs Manager, TalkTalk; more speakers tbc

1510  Coffee and Networking                     

1525  Review of the Communications Act

·   Update on what is happening with the White Paper
·   Is there a need for a wholesale review of the communications framework?
·   How is Government going to create a framework to make the UK a digital hub?

Chair: & panellists tbc.

1625  Drinks reception with selected members of the media

1800  Close

 

Categories
broadband Engineer internet

Penis Envy, Broadband Style: 1Gbps FTTP at Appleton & Eaton

Gigaclear gigabit broadband broadband week image - Gigaclear speedtest showing 1Gbps broadband speeds in Appleton & Eaton

Gigaclear speedtest showing 1Gbps broadband speeds in Appleton & EatonGigaclear gigabit broadband is blazing fast.

This is the nearest thing you can get to penis envy in the broadband world. It’s a speedtest, performed on the new Gigaclear gigabit broadband network in the fortunate communities of Appleton and Eaton.

I was recently gushing over the 20Mbps and 40Mbs speeds I have encountered at WiFi hotspots in London. Well, it won’t be long before properties in Appleton and Eaton get to London prices, as this amazing new network is sure to have a beneficial effect on valuations.

Gigaclear quote one of their customers as saying, “I run my business from home, and with only 1-2Mbps available before Gigaclear I had to plan well in advance when to upload and download”. Pricing starts at £37.

Gigaclear is digging fibre into a number of communities (check them out here).

Categories
Business internet

I love Lincolnshire.org <3 :))

I note there is a new website about where I live. Not about my house exactly. I suspect I’ll never merit a blue plaque. I’m talking about Lincolnshire.org. I’ve always felt that Lincolnshire was not as favoured with visitor information as it could be. I don’t even know why I was looking – I guess I like to find out stuff about my home town.

In fact way back when I first had internet access (dial up) I made a point of looking for Lincoln based websites. As I recall I could only find three at the time including Gino’s Italian Restaurant in the Bail which I remember as being quite good and thinking that it was quite enlightened at the time for a restaurant to have a site. Gino died last year but the restaurant is still going. I don’t remember what the other sites were – I lost the list of favourites in a pc upgrade/move sometime. Must have been a long time ago now (young feller me lad).

Although the web is a global phenomenon it very much applies to communities both small and local and there will always be plenty of opportunities to find niches where you can make a bit of cash. I’ve no idea how much money is made by Lincolnshire.org. It’s all down to advertising1 page impressions or click-throughs and referral fees for hotel bookings etc.

The key is clearly to make the site attractive and informative so that people will want to visit and more’s to the point link to from other websites. Lincolnshire.org could end up as a nice little business.

This brings us then to the completely new set of skills that a business owner has to acquire in this modern web based world. Not only does he or she have to understand the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimisation but putting together a website ain’t exactly plug and play. You can build very simple websites using tools provided by commercial web hosts (eg Lincoln’s very own WebHostingBuzz) or even use hosted platforms such as provided by wordpress.org but you will probably end up with fairly limited functionality.

So if you are a small business starting up you need to outsource your web design which of course you have to pay for. You can also pay for specialist SEO. It’s all cash out of the business before you even open the doors. Nothing new there then – all you are doing is replacing your shop fitting costs with different technical skills. Then it’s all about content – the modern shelf full of goods.

Kids grow up with this stuff. It’s their world; today. If you aren’t down wiv da kids don’t despair but you will have to work harder at it. Perhaps I’ll make sure one of my kids ends up as a web developer.

In the meantime good luck to Lincolnshire.org. Give it your support. Use it, link to it. Tell your friends and relations about it. It’s a great domain name and it deserves to succeed.

1 I’ve never considered carrying advertising on trefor.net but that is because I have a different agenda. I do link through to Timico wherever appropriate.

PS it was years before I actually visited Ginos and I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t leave it that long before visiting Lincolnshire – you can book through Lincolnshire.org 🙂

PPS It’s not my website btw 🙂

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity net neutrality

Broadband Stakeholders Group Open Internet Code of Practice

The Broadband Stakeholders Group today released an “Open Internet Code of Practice”. This is a voluntary CoP promoting net neutrality.

Specifically:

  • users should be able to access all legal content
  • there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry; and
  • traffic management policies should be clear and transparent

I’m not going to delve into the detail of the BSG announcement which is available here. What I am going to do is name the current signatories who are all in the main consumer service providers:

  • BE, BT, BskyB, KCOM, O2, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile, Three

The significance of this list is in who is not on it, particularly the mobile operators. You can work out who they are yourselves. Some of them are already known to block the use of Over The Top VoIP services (eg Timico’s own VoIP, Skype et al) on their mobile networks which of course goes against the principles of the CoP being announced today.

Whatever their reasons for not signing these mobile networks will have to change their positioning as 4G gets rolled out. The bandwidth requirement for VoIP  services will be relatively small compared with that required for general use on 4G networks so the “lack of capacity” argument should not work.

4G is a fairly major inflection point for mobile networks. I don’t have any forecasts but during the life of the 4G (LTE) technology we should see the mobile business model transition from being minutes driven to data driven.

I suspect that growth in “data bundle” income may not offset any reduction in voice minutes revenues so the mobile operators are going to have to work out how to find cash from elsewhere. This may come from advertising, financial micro payments, device and personal security and I’m sure many more that I haven’t thought of.

For the moment I’ll leave you to figure out for yourselves why the non-signatories have not stepped up to the plate. I can’t see how they can stay away for too long. It isn’t the actual signature but the principle of how they treat their customers who will end up voting with their feet.

Categories
End User internet mobile connectivity olympics

Preps in place for the punters and their phones – London2012 Olympics

Usain Bolt - billions of fans want to see him win at the London 2012 OlympicsI’ve discussed what BT has done make sure the athletes, journos and hangers on have a great communications experience during the Olympics. That’s fine. For me though the biggest test is going to be what kind of experience we punters have.  There will be far more of us and we will be wanting to upload stuff and tweet just as much as the highest profile media type.

Continue reading “Preps in place for the punters and their phones – London2012 Olympics”
Categories
Engineer internet

Vint Cerf, Tar Babies and the Dalai Lama

the very civilized scene at Jamie's 50th bash on Saturday night - spot the special guest to win a fabulous Timico mugWent to my mate Jamie’s 50th birthday  “geeks and bimbos”great band The Tar Babies - you should book them party in Sussex on Saturday night. Though I don’t class myself as a true geek compared with some of the guys in the office I was able to go just wearing my normal clothes. I wore my LINX 15th anniversary black T shirt with shorts and a pair of sandals with Jeep socks.

Great thing was there was a guy called Jon there carrying a TCP/IP manual and I of course was able to tell him I met Vint Cerf himself recently. We were the only two there who had ever heard of TCP/IP or Vint!

Some of you may know that I too have reached the notionally respectable half century milestone. Although the body can’t quite take it like it used to I did look around the room and wonder what this age thing is all about.

The party was a great evening. Not got many usable photos – they are mostly blurred. We danced hard to the 60s and 70s music of the Tar Babies, all sang along when instructed to do so – everybody knew all of the words. The concept of “acting your age” is dead.  Prize for the first to spot the  special guest at the party – it’s totally amazing how she does it at that age. Click on the header photo for a larger image.

In the Fareham office of NewNet on Friday and one of theprosciutto - where am I? guys mentioned that I seemed to enjoy my job and was always having a good time. I refer you to the lecture given by the Dalai Lama last week at the London School of Economics. In a nutshell he said “enjoy life and do stuff”. Recognising this there is another prize for the first to guess the restaurant where this last photo was taken.

Categories
Business Cloud internet

Rolls Royce visit Timico NOC as model example – well impressed

Rolls Royce visit to the Timico NOCIt’s hugely satisfying to get contacted by people out of the blue to be asked if they can come and visit your Network Operations Centre because they have heard that it is a great reference  model.

This was the case with engineering giant Rolls Royce who are building their own NOC and wanted to come and visit ours to give them some ideas. Ten of them turned up for a look around and I am pleased to report they went away mightily impressed. If anyone else out there wants a tour just drop me a line. We are proud of our NOC and the staff that operate it are a great bunch. I am always delighted to show them off to visitors.

PS they didn’t realise they were going to be photographed – it’s a security measure 🙂

Categories
Apps Business internet Regs

Communications Bill – is it going to look at the right subject matter?

Having mentioned the comms bill in my last post I now find that the expected Green Paper is not now going to be published. Instead over the coming months five seminars will inform the communications review.

The seminars will look at:

  • The Consumer Perspective
  • Competition in the Content Market
  • Maximising the value of spectrum to support growth and innovation
  • Driving investment and growth in the UK’s TV content industries  
  • Supporting growth in the radio (audio) sector

“The UK’s communications sector is one of the strongest in the world” said Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. “We must ensure the sector can grow by being at the forefront of new developments in the industry. It is essential that we set the right conditions for the industry to enable businesses to grasp the opportunities created by new technology.”

Communications Minister Ed Vaizey added “The communications industry is a key part of our economy. Through these seminars, we will look in detail at how best to drive investment and competition. We want to shape the Communications Bill so that we have the right framework to secure our place as Europe’s tech hub.”

Much of the blurb up until now is lifted straight from the DCMS website. I can’t argue with any of it though some of it seems to me to be very much born out of subject matter that government can get its brain around.

For example content providers, ie TV companies in the main, have been asking for a level playing field – the clues lie in the bullet points provided to us as a guide on what is likely to be discussed in the Seminar – how important is exclusivity in supporting investment and innovation, how much choice do consumers have and how open is the market to new entrants?

The bit about spectrum is also an easy one to grasp. Although there are legal minefields to tread at the end of the day it seems about making best use of the spectrum available.

This is all fair enough but I do find myself asking how much innovation and growth this is really promoting? It’s all about extensions to old business models.

I humbly suggest that what we really want is to create an environment that supports innovation in the new world we want to be encouraging the next Google or Microsoft to start up in the UK. We do see some signs of progress. The reintroduction of EIS Tax relief for entrepreneurial investors and the effort to create an emphasis on computer programming in schools spring to mind.

I think though that we need to think a lot bigger than we are doing. How about a 10 year moratorium on capital gains tax for new technology startup investment? I bet that would result in many Californian based VC companies moving to the UK.  How about government loans or matched funding for high risk high tech projects. How about creating an immigration environment that would encourage talent to want to come to the UK instead of Silicon Valley?

Perhaps I’m being naïve in thinking that “communications” extends beyond programming content and next gen mobile. Everything I do these days involves communications in some form or other.

The government wants the private sector to haul in the slack created by cuts in the public sector. It needs to come up with creative and innovative solutions to stimulate this. It also needs a level of understanding in government of issues relating to technology and the internet. Many of the noises that we have been hearing are counter-innovative and have been about constraining how we can use technology and not the opposite.  C’mon guys. Move it on.

Categories
Business internet Regs

New council members needed for ISPA – AGM 12th July

The ISPA AGM is coming up on Thursday 12th July 2012 at 16:30pm at 1 Castle Lane, London, SW1E 6DR.  If you or anyone you know is interested in standing for election on the Council this is your chance. Membership of the council is a really good way to meet people in the industry and to get to understand all the issues facing us.

The mix of organisations represented includes BT, O2, C&W, Timico, Zen Internet, LINX and Vispa. In my mind we have some gaps – maybe someone from Google or Facebook or both could get involved. We are talking internet services here – not just straight connectivity.

The rate of pace of change in our industry is growing fast. There are threats from over regulation that we need to keep on top of – the forthcoming Comms Bill for example. Being on the Council of ISPA puts you right at the centre of the debate and gives you a chance to influence decisions that could be very important to the future of your business.

Anyone interested in a Council role should contact [email protected] or phone Michaela Zemanova on 020 3397 3304. You can tell ’em I sent you if you like:)

Otherwise I hope to see you at the AGM.

All the best.

Categories
End User internet

this is a true revolution we are seeing – one for the ladies

My wife, whom I dearly love, said to me this morning “I’ve had an idea”. Ordinarily on hearing those words my body is programmed to sit down in a safe place and surround myself with cushions to stop me getting hurt when I fall over. As it happens we were still in bed so I was already in position, so to speak.

She continued: “I think I’m going to get rid of all my recipes and just use the iPad in the kitchen”. She has dozens of folders containing recipes collected over the years. They spill over the shelves in our utility room and are now apparently looking a real mess. Apart from the fact that the utility room will look tidier her point is that most of these recipes are now available online and despite the fact that she has spent hours lovingly filing them into categories – chicken, beef, bread, welsh rarebit – you get my drift – it is still far quicker for her to find the right recipe using the iPad.

I can see the comments coming. “that’s obvious”, “whey didn’t she think of this earlier” etc etc. This may be the case for the savvy internet users amongst you (ie pretty much everyone reading this blog) but there is a section of society that didn’t grow up memorising the html links on the side of the pram.

She does have a laptop but that is rarely used if the iPad is available because of the boot up time and the portability. In fact the laptop serves more as a media server for watching iPlayer on the TV screen (at which we all marvel 🙂 ).

So there you go. The digital revolution has passed another major milestone – 2012 the year the paper recipe disappeared from common usage. I would welcome inputs highlighting similar evidence of societal change from around the world wide web.

PS I realise that I was treading a somewhat fine line with the title “one for the ladies”. However in our house Anne won’t let me do much cooking as I take far too long and make far too much of a mess and likely polish off half a bottle of red wine whilst doing it. Not being very worldly wise I have made the assumption that this is a normal state of affairs. If I am wrong I apologise but the headline stays :).

 

Categories
Engineer internet

Submarine Networks and targeted marketing

Submarine Networks World 2012, Marina Bay Sands, SingaporeThere is a big pile of junk mail in my pigeonhole – downstairs behind reception. This morning I took the unusual step of looking at it. I have to do this once in a while because every now and again something turns up that is not junk. Very infrequently.

Today it was, as usual, junk. One flyer did catch my eye though. An invitation to “Submarine Networks World 2012“. I noticed it because I thought it was a wonderfully badly targeted piece marketing – a good subject for a blog post. Maybe they saw my piece on the Virgin undersea cable near the Isle of Man and figured I would be a good guy to have along.

The flyer arrived airmail from Singapore. Hmm, Singapore eh? I quite like Singapore. Before Timico I did quite a bit of globetrotting in my job and Singapore was a paradise in the Far East that one could rest at between visiting countries where the signs were totally illegible to the Western eye. I used to stay at the Hyatt Grand Regency on Orchard. Beautiful hotel, great bar, fantastic service etc etc.

So now I’ve changed my mind and I’d like to go to the conference. I don’t want it to cost anything mind you. Certainly not the S$4,190 it costs to attend or the business class airfare (it’s a long flight and I need to be in the right frame of mind when I get there). I don’t even want to pay the S$319 room rate at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel though I’m sure that’s good value for the quality of the accommodation.

In fact I’ve convinced myself that this is the one conference I absolutely need to attend in September 2012. If someone will stump up the cash – £7k will probably cover it – I’ll go. In return I promise to write a blog post condensing  my learnings into three concise, highly readable and absolutely on the money paragraphs  that will save you the effort of having to go (there could be a business idea here 🙂 ). The post will undoubtedly include pictures of palm trees and the Indian Ocean (Pacific?).

All that aside this is still not very well targeted advertising. This is surely a business model that needs to change.

Categories
dns Engineer internet

Still time to apply for your generic Top-Level Domain – dot llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch

Many of us own a domain name. I have a few – trefor.net, philosopherontap.com plus all the kids own name domains. Not many of us own a generic Top-Level domain though. In fact gTLDs (.com, .org, .uk etc) are typically managed by not for profit national infrastructure players such as Nominet although there are some in private hands.

In June 2011 ICANN announced that they would be looking to stimulate innovation on the internet by making it easier for you to own your own gTLD. You could have non latin script versions – for example Cyrillic, Chinese or Arabic. There was a rush of applicants, $185k payment in hand. Unfortunately the ICANN registration system had a bug in it and they were unable to complete the registration process on the originally planned date of 12th April. The system was therefore frozen whilst the engineers looked for their magic wands.

Looks like they fixed the bug on Monday and the system started working again. You have until midnight on 30th May (presumably Californ-eye-a time) to get registered. When the system went down they had 1,268 registrations. That’s a lot of new gTLDs. They won’t all end up as production entities but we are clearly going to see many new domains hit our screens.

We can’t see the actual domains applied for yet – they won’t release that info until the end of the registration process.  Most major cities will have one – London, Berlin, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch et al and I understand that Nominet has applied to have .cymru and .wales. I quite like the idea of having [email protected] but I expect there will be a few other Davies’ interested as well:)

I’ll write a post in Welsh when the .cymru domain comes out –  those of you not fortunate to have been brought up in God’s country can read it using Google translate.

More on the new gTLDs here.

PS don’t think it stops at $185k. You will need a few million to do it properly.

PPS They would have a lot of fun with .llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch – think of all the spelling mistakes/repeat attempts to get it right 🙂

Categories
Business internet

Search engine stats – the winner and losers (although you already knew this)

Just happened to notice which search engine is being used to access this blog today. Percentage numbers are Google 94.02%, Yahoo 2.99%, Bing 2.72% and Ask .27%.

In the UK the regulator has been forcing BT to lose market share due to its significant market power.  I wonder why it doesn’t do the same thing for search.

That’s all…

Categories
Business dns internet peering

Nominet non-executive board elections – vote Seb Lahtinen

Seb Lahtinen is very active in the UK internet scene andSebastien Lahtinen is standing for re-election as a non-executive director of Nominet amongst other things runs the LONAP peering exchange used by many of the country’s ISPs and hosting companies.

Seb is also a pal and is standing for re-election as non-executive director of Nominet, the UK’s Tier 1 registry for .uk domain names and safe pair of hands for what is one of our critical strategic infrastructures.

He is a serious minded individual and I’m sure makes an impactful contribution to Nominet’s board. I have already voted for him and thought I’d help out but giving him some airtime. I asked him three questions:

Continue reading “Nominet non-executive board elections – vote Seb Lahtinen”
Categories
Engineer internet

A bets a bet – £50 to get his CCIE by the time he is 40

This is simply a public record of a bet betweenWayne (right) bets Stuart (left) that he won't have his CCIE by the time he is 40. two guys. Wayne, pictured right has bet Stuart (bearded guy obv) fifty quid that he won’t get his CCIE before he is 40 in two and a half years time.

My money is on Stuart but Wayne has plenty of time to start saving.

It’s good to have a culture of self improvement and also to be able to make some money out of it as well 🙂

Categories
Business internet

The Cost of Sending Stuff by Post & Boston Consulting Group Report on UK Internet Economy

web front end for plumbersI sent my mum a mother’s day card. Posted it Thursday and she got it today. Actually I didn’t really send it, my wife did so I don’t know if a second class stamp is to blame for it not getting there for the weekend.

Last night I bought a book from Amazon.co.uk. I had the choice of delivery by 1pm on Tuesday for a fiver or 5 day delivery included in the price of the book. The book itself was only £9 so I went for the free option. It will be here by the end of the week I imagine. If I wanted to fork out a one year subscription for Amazon Prime (£49) I could get all my purchases delivered free of charge next day.

I also ordered a new part for my car on Friday. They have promised it will be here on Wednesday. The part was

Continue reading “The Cost of Sending Stuff by Post & Boston Consulting Group Report on UK Internet Economy”
Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

Being Back in the Land of Broadband Connectivity Feels So Good – Center Parcs WiFi

We have just been away for a holiday for a week. 2 days visiting the in laws and a 5 day break at Center Parcs in Cumbria. We had a good time. We go  every year with the kids to Center Parcs and do the same things every year. I won’t trouble you with the details.

This year we took with us some electrical equipment: 5 laptops, 1 iPad, 2 HTC droids, 1 Samsung Galaxy S2, a Nokia N97 and another Nokia so old that I can’t even remember the model number – it belongs to my wife.

The laptops did see some use but not nearly as much as they might because of the paucity of broadband connectivity. The iPad struggled with (failed actually) getting on the free wifi at the pool or Cafe Rouge (my Galaxy S2 worked from both locations). The mobile reception in most places showed typically no bars and occasionally crept up to one or two bars.  Two bars did not necessarily mean available data connectivity.

Fortunately Twitter is sufficiently lightweight to not mind the poor connectivity too much. My wife couldn’t understand why the internet didn’t work on the iPad. It did work but in her mind waiting two minutes for a page to load = not working.

So where am I going with all this? Should I mind that I can’t get connectivity on holiday.  After all it’s a holiday and connectivity often = work, at least working “in the internet business” as I do. Last summer I had a camping break that was completely offline. It was planned that way and we had a great time.

I must say though that the experience of having a holiday that was only partially offline was a frustrating one for all. It would probably have been better to have no connectivity at all than poor connectivity. The experience would have been better for all.

Center Parcs is also missing a trick. Having forked out £800 or so for 4 nights I can’t imagine there would have been many guests not willing to stick another £20 say on their bill to get decent wifi in their villa – especially considering the demographic of their customers – not many “holiday parks” stock Veuve Cliquot in the camp shop I’ll bet.

Just for their benefit I’ll do the sums. £5 a day per villa, say 200 villas taking up the offer on average adds up to a £365,000 revenue stream a year. For that kind of money they could afford to wire up the site, provide a 1Gig connection and have a hugely profitable contributor to the bottom line.

If Center Parcs want to get in touch I’ll tell them how to go about it.

That’s all. I’m still on holiday but back in the land of Wifi and HSPDA – yay.

PS no comments about the amount of electrical kit taken on holiday – this is the 21st Century, the internet age – get with it man

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dns internet

Domain disputes and cybersquatting

An invitation arrived yesterday to attend a Nominet briefing on dispute resolution for domain name registrars. It’s a breakfast job in London so I probably won’t go. With the invite came an interesting stat – one in every 3,000 .uk domains is subject to a dispute of some sort!

Considering that Nominet manages knocking on 10 million domains that’s a lorra (my wife’s from Liverpool) disputes. I imagine quite a number of these disputes relate to cybersquatters1 . I recently had occasion to look at some domains names to buy. There are a lot of domains out there that are owned but not used or simply point to sites that make money out of click through advertising.

These days the problem of finding a suitable domain is exacerbated by the fact that you also need to secure the corresponding Twitter name. I think it’s about time we started from scratch and changed the whole system. Bags I trefor.net 🙂

1 if you don’t know look it up.

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broadband Business internet media video

Netflix UK Launch Planned for 9th January, 2012 – Another Injection of Broadband Internet Growth

2012 is expected to be a big year for growth in broadband Internet use in the UK. We have the Olympics, para Olympics, the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon and the West Indies, Aussies and South Africa over on cricket tour (if I was them I’d be avoiding this country next summer but hey…). Oh and let’s not forget the European football championships from 8th June til 1st July. England qualified I believe?! 🙂

There is more sport but by far the biggest Internet traffic news item for 2012 is that Netflix is coming to the UK. For the uninitiated, Netflix is a movie screening service in the USA that accounts for something like a quarter of all Internet traffic in that country.

At LINX75 today the launch was a particular subject of discussion

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Business dns internet scams security surveillance & privacy

Nominet – judge and jury of the world wide web?

We, the world, are still finding our feet on the internet, or more accurately the world wide web. The www is a great place to be and at the same time full of pitfalls and nasties. Much like real, physical life really. I taught my kids not to take sweeties from strangers – that applies on or offline.  In recent years I’ve added “don’t click on links you aren’t sure of” and probably a few other words of advice specific to tinterweb.

That’s a piece of wisdom relating to the www that had he but known it shows Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in action. Survival of the fittest and all that.

It isn’t just the consumer that is still trying to understand the landscape of the www. Government is, business is, as I said we all are.

The good folks at .uk registry Nominet are also trying to understand where they fit into all this. Nominet has come under scrutiny in recent years over its corporate governance.

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broken gear Engineer internet

Broken internet

“The internet is broken”. Uh? This is a common complaint a) from my wife who isn’t particularly technology savvy and b) from people whose broadband connection has gone down for whatever reason.

Yesterday this complaint, slightly tongue in cheek, came from our development engineering team. US network operator Level3 had a problem with a bug in it’s Juniper routers. This affected access to quite a few websites worldwide and is certainly likely to have hit more than a few ISPs. Word is that this was BGP related and leads to the need to reboot the Juniper kit. In fact a number of ISPs issued emergency maintenance window alerts last night so that they could upgrade to newer versions of their Junos operating system.

Most of the time you can live with a bug – design around it perhaps.I’m sure the problem will get sorted. My observations here though relate to the

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Business gaming internet Net ofcom social networking UC voip

The Demographics of Communications

TV watching in decline amongst younger demographicIt’s a bit of a dank dismal day here in the shires and I have the office aircon on “heat”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind this weather – it reminds me of my childhood and in particular of wet Sunday afternoons spent watching the black and white cowboy film on BBC2, maybe playing a game of Monopoly and then the excitement of Songs of Praise with Harry Secombe after tea. The highlight of the day was the comedy on Radio 4 at 6.30 or 7pm.

I’m not sure why I’ve “gone nostalgic” all of a sudden especially when those Sunday afternoons were really boring and often used to lead to rows amongst us kids.

These days our kids still argue despite having an incredible range of things to do on a Sunday. After the F1 there’s the XBox and, well more Xbox. Then there’s the Xbox!

Reality is that other than the Simpsons the kids only watch TV when one of their parents decides

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Engineer internet

GigaOm roadmap conference looks great

It has always been the case that all the action in the tech industry has been in the USA. Today in the screaming plasma1 suspended between Silicon Valley and San Fransisco this is more than ever the case.

Next month GigaOm has organised a conference in San Francisco that illustrates my point.  Take a look at the schedule. The breadth of the content squeezed into one day is mind blowing. Am I alone in wondering how the brain can keep up with it all?  There is a live stream which in my mind will be well worth tuning in to if you can though nothing can replace actually being there.

It dismays me somewhat that you can’t get this quality of event in the UK. Even if we tried we wouldn’t get the same speakers.

I’ve pasted the schedule below. Not particularly original of me but lets you have a quick glance at what’s going on.

1 white heat doesn’t adequately describe it.

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Business internet

UK drops to 25th in league table of internet connection speeds, 15th in Europe – Akamai @edvaizey

Flicking, as one does, through the Akamai State of the Internet Report for Q2 2011 I note that the average internet connection speed for the UK in the second quarter was 5Mbps1.

The good news is that this is up 9% from the previous quarter and 28% year on year.

Unfortunately the bad news is that the UK is not keeping pace with its competitors. I last looked at these stats in January 2011. In Q3 2010 the UK was placed 17th globally for average internet connection speed with 11 European countries ahead of us.

In Q2’11 we are down to 25th globally with 15 other European countries ahead of us. 14 European countries had a higher year on year growth than the UK.

Now I’m sure someone from DCMS2 will come out of the woodwork with some other indicators that show how the UK is going  to have the best  superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015. I don’t think we really need to spend time arguing this one. Perhaps someone could just explain to me how we are going to do it. The Akamai stats suggest that we are going backwards not forwards.

1 I know I’m a couple of weeks late with this one but I was all at sea when the report came out and I’ve only just read it. Also I’m not sure how many commentators have really looked at the relative progress within Europe – from what I can see they have mainly chosen to comment on the gap between advertised speeds and reality.

2 Department of Culture Media and Sports – responsible for “the internet” within government.

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Engineer internet online safety security

Vint Cerf, Internet 2, Project Phoenix, Twitter, BYOD & #ITDF

Jonathan Radford our CFO is one of the least techy guys you could hope to meet.  He is often also the source of ideas for this “technical” blog because technology now reaches absolutely everyone on this planet one way or another.

Today he came up for a chat about Internet 2 and Project Phoenix and left me with a newspaper clipping from the FT (I said he wasn’t a techy – anyone else would have sent me a link). The point is though that the technology related article interested him because he could understand its implications for him personally.

The article concerned internet pioneer Vint Cerf’s comments re the need to start again with internet security. The internet is an open network currently running on the basis of trust. Starting again Cerf says he “would have put a much stronger focus on authenticity or authentication” and quoted Ori Eisen’s Project Phoenix as an example of the way forward (see original FT article for more on this).

You only have to note the recent spate of

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Business internet

ONS report on internet usage shows huge growth in mobile use

I assume everyone has already read The Office for National Statistics published data on internet access in the UK issued last week :). The survey found that there have been significant changes in the way people connect to and use the Internet in recent years. No surprise there then.

There are a few “no surprises” such as the fact that the younger you are the more likely you are to use social networking and that LinkedIn is used more by men than women (with the associated equality in business issues I’m sure, like it or not).

Also over half of us (66 per cent of all adults) purchased goods or services over the Internet. Even my aged parents buy stuff online. Interestingly 31 per cent of us 2010 sold goods or services online (up from 21 per cent in a year).

The biggest wow factor was the number of people using their mobile phone to connect to the Internet. This rose by 6 million between 2010 and 2011  (fastest among those aged 16 to 24) and now amounts to 45 per cent of total Internet users. The time will come when there are more mobile internet users than fixed – my input.

What is slightly disappointing is the fact that the most recent data for business internet use is based on 2009 data in a report published on 26th November 2010 (actually entitled E-commerce and ICT activity 2009).

Perhaps the business community does work a little more slowly than consumers these days but this is such a fast moving world that data that is almost 2 years old seems positively stone aged.

On a side note my son is about to enter his second year at University and his first year in private accommodation. The communications needs of the five lads in his house are 1) fast broadband with unlimited data package and 2) an iPhone. No fixed line telephony thank you very much.