Category: internet

another catch-all really for internet related posts

Categories
Business internet media

Internet bandwidth use by press corps at the Edgebaston Test Match #cricket

There is something comforting about the start of a new day in a cricket test match, especially when your side is doing well. We don’t want any excitement, just the occasional run and maybe every now and again a boundary. There is plenty of time, no rush.

Test Match Special is on Radio 4 and cricinfo.com for a glance now and then at the statistics. It feels as if all is well in the Empire, and coming from a Welshman that is saying something. It’s all comfortable establishment stuff and far away from any trouble at t’ mill.

Which makes it somewhat bemusing when in the pre match commentary on cricinfo I read the following:

11.10am An entertaining diktat from ECB at Edgbaston. As reported by NG, “It has been detected that there has been inappropriate use of the bandwidth in the press box with people downloading music, movies, programmes, skyping etc. If you are found doing that today your computer would be blocked. Full Stop.”

This can be read in two ways. Either the occupants of the press box are upsetting the authorities by indulging in copyright infringing activites, which I’m sure they can’t be 😉 or one of our major test cricket venues has inadequate internet connectivity and doesn’t want to clog it up with streaming media.

Actually I would have thought that the press corps would be heavy users of streaming media – watching the game live and simultaneously online for example to catch repeat showing of runs scored, wickets taken etc.

If someone from the ECB wants to get in touch I will happily sort them out with some more bandwidth 🙂

PS the header photo is of the pavillion at Owmby Cricket Club in Lincolnshire. Owmby is one of those beautiful little rural grounds that make it a pleasure to follow village cricket.

Categories
End User internet

Holiday offline

our wild campsite on Mull

It seems a long time ago since I actually set off on my offline holiday. That is partly because it somewhat reaffirmed the third law of the internet. This is one where time goes far more quickly when you are using the internet.

Without the internet the pace of life is far more relaxing – proof is this video of Highland Cattle. They look pretty chilled to me and I bet not one of them has ever been online.

So what does a person do when not online? In no particular order reads a history of the UK after the Romans had left, plays scrabble with son, keeps a diary, goes walking in the hills, swimming in the loch, visits the Abbey at Iona and Fingal’s cave, picnics at Calgary Bay, camping in the hills around Loch Ba and at the shores of Fidden, has coffee on the terrace looking out over the bay at Tobermory, visits Duart Castle, sees red deer, roe deer, sea eagles, mountain hares, dolphins, minke whales, goes to bed when he feels like it and wakes up early, hears nothing but the sound of running water, the wind off the sea and the lapping of the waves on the beach, visits a distillery, sees cheese being made, visits the local agricultural show, sees sheepdogs in action, cattle and sheep being judged, talks to walking stick makers and traditional tartan cloth weavers, visits the Boathouse on Ulva, pitches the tent in the rain, takes the tent down in the rain, catches the sun and watches it set over the islands in the West, fights off midges, washes the dishes in the stream, hears the eagle chick cry out across the loch for food, eats well, drinks only water and tea made from the water taken from the stream, drives 6 miles off the road to the campsite, gets rides off a friendly farmer and an estate owner and dries walking boots in front of a log fire.

I’m back now but the time did not seem to race by and I feel as if I have had a long and great holiday. Whilst I have been away there have been global stockmarket crashes, riots in London, tanks rolling in in the Middle East. They should have all gone offline.

If you are going on holiday leave the internet behind. Nothing will really have changed when you get back.

Categories
End User internet

radio silence in 2011

It’s Friday, five thirty and the beginning of my summer holiday. This year it is split into two. A week camping at the beginning of August and a week surfing in the Gower at the end of August.

This first week is going to be an interesting one because the camping trip is going to involve absolutley no technology other than wheels to get us there and a map and compass to get us around. I’m off with son2 (kid3) to the Isle of Mull and there will in any case for the most part be very little connectivity even if we wanted it. It’s going to be social networking the old fashioned way.

I am going to be recording the trip using a pen and notebook with the once concession to technology being the digital camera. It almost feels as if I am about to parachute onto a different planet. Watch this space for the report on this sociological experiment, but not until I get back.

If you are taking some time off this summer then have a good holiday wherever you are whoever you are.

Categories
End User internet

The technology / family life balance

An international study into how we interact with technology, led by the University of Cambridge, has found that a third of parents feel modern communications technology is disruptive to family life, and that one in three people have felt overwhelmed to the point of needing to escape from modern communications technologies.

Coincidentally this is a subject I have been giving some thought to myself, partly because when you have your head buried in a computer/phone/iPad life seems to whizz by (see original research output on the 3rd Law of the Internet).

The pace of life need slowing down so that we can enjoy our environment and our families before the axeman cometh!!

I have already been culling social networking platforms – my 4sq, Scoville & Empire Avenue accounts are being left to wither and die. Facebook is retained for the moment for contact with the family. Google+ is emerging but as you may know though, Twitter is king.

Part of the problem is that I want to minimise the time my kids spend zombie like in front of screens – if I am one of those zombies – or at least a deaf mute – I don’t have a strong argument. Screens do not equal balanced family life with kids happily out playing sports, doing their homework or practising musical instruments in other rooms whilst we grown-ups get on with useful and fulfilling adult tasks, basking in our success as parents1.

We, the world, have not yet worked out the optimum technology/life balance – probably because the right technology is not there yet. The organisations that provide the platforms to do this (I use the plural because we need this to be a competitive arena) will be big winners. We may already know their names but I am not sure we can say for certain who they are.

If you are a Twitter follower and wonder why there are henceforth gaps in my tweets of an evening it is almost certainly because I have started to read Britain after Rome by Robin Fleming.

I have hundreds of books in my house and part of the life balance process is to read real books again. Of course my wife can’t really differentiate between books and computers – I still don’t hear her when I am reading! Hmm 🙂

1 Look I know this isn’t what happens in real life but you all know what I do for a living – I have my head right up there in the clouds.  In the meantime look out for my next post on Google+ 🙂

 

Categories
Business internet online safety Regs

ISPA Parliamentary Advisory Forum – ISPs likely to promote opt in parental controls to block kids access to porn

Attended the ISPA Parliamentary Advisory Forum this week. The debate, sponsored by Claire Perry MP was on the subject of online child protection. The issue, as previously posted (just search for Claire on this site), is that Claire Perry wants ISPs to block access to pornographic websites by default, requiring people who want to go to these sites to opt in.

This must have been one of the most informed debates I have been to with an A-Z of stakeholders (100+ people) present ranging from what looked like the committee of the local parish church, academics, libertarians, ISPs, MPs, security technology vendors, press, child safety organisations etc etc.

Several things stuck in my mind:
Internet Minister Ed Vaizey and MP Claire Perry emphasised their position that ISPs need to do something to protect kids or they will legislate.

Many references to studies on the effect of pornography on children were made.

Continue reading “ISPA Parliamentary Advisory Forum – ISPs likely to promote opt in parental controls to block kids access to porn”
Categories
Business internet online safety piracy security

Psst wanna buy a racehorse? #silkroad #bitcoin #torproject

silkroadmarket

Yesterday I read a flurry of reports on a new web service called silk road. This is a “totally anonymous” website that looks like it has initially been set up to facilitate drug deals. Payments are made using Bitcoin, a “virtual” digital currency that allows “untraceable” transactions to be made using distributed Peer to Peer technology.

A quick Google search for Silk Road last night revealed nothing but changing search terms this morning I found it.The first result took me to the following post:

Hi everyone,

Silk Road is into it’s third week after launch and I am very pleased with the results. There are several sellers and buyers finding mutually agreeable prices, and as of today, 28 transactions have been made!

For those who don’t know, Silk Road is an anonymous online market.

Of course, it is in its infant stages and I have many ideas about where to go with it. But I am turning to you, the community, to give me your input and to have a say in what direction it takes.

What is missing? What works? What do you want to see created? What obstacles do you see for the future of Silk Road? What opportunities?

The general mood of this community is that we are up to something big, something that can really shake things up. Bitcoin and Tor are revolutionary and sites like Silk Road are just the beginning.

I don’t want to put anyone in a box with my ideas, so I will let you take it from here…

-Silk Road staff

This is a fairly astonishing post in itself. It was published on 1st March and has since then attracted 36 pages of responses and comments.You can see for yourselves.

Continue reading “Psst wanna buy a racehorse? #silkroad #bitcoin #torproject”
Categories
End User internet

shortcut to google account brings up interesting search results

I find the quickest way to get to my Google admin page is to type in some random letters and bring up a search results page. My account details are then on the top right hand corner of the page.

Funny thing is this invariably brings up some real Google search results.  I just did it with fdgfdsgfg which seems to actually mean something in Chinese!

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6 ofcom

#WorldIPv6day marked with industry summit in UK

Just come out of committee room 19 at the House of Commons where a “summit” was held to discuss the state of IPv6 readiness of UK plc. The summit was chaired by Ed Vaizey, Internet minister and together with Timico had representatives of the other top network operators aka BT and Virgin. The mix was enhanced by Cisco, Nominet, Ofcom and other stakeholders.

Reality is that most ISPs have IPv6 covered, or at least a plan in place. The issue is that the rest of UK industry doesn’t. There has been extreme apathy in the corporate sector to push this technology forward.

This is completely understandable. Currently there is no problem. Considering this given a choice between spending money upgrading the corporate network or investing in a revenue generating service the former is a difficult sell for a CIO.

Businesses do need to guard against complacency though otherwise they might find themselves with a problem that will either cost a lot of money to fix quickly or take years of planning.

Neither is government prepared, as far as we can see. This compares with other parts of the world where governments are either mandating IPv6 (eg Malaysia) or are cracking ahead with full blown implementation projects (US Navy/NATO apparently).

In the UK it would appear that IPv6 is seen as a more expensive short term option for projects, at a time where cost control is clearly important. There was a general consensus amongst the 15 or so attendees that the Government should lead on this and that this would spur industry into action.

I agree with this. The cost argument is not a real one but the complacency is. Also we run the risk of other countries being ahead on the innovation curve as they think of ways of exploiting the huge number of IP addresses that now become available with IPv6.

There isn’t a desperate panic here but UK plc does need to get a wiggle on.

Check out the DCMS press release on the summit here http://www.culture.gov.uk/news/news_stories/8205.aspx

Categories
Business internet online safety Regs surveillance & privacy

What a complex world wide web we have woven #UN #LaRue #deappg #DEAct

I have on many an occasion written about the complexities of life on the internet and the difficulties imposed on governments wanting to flex their controlling muscles thereon.

We have recently seen the Bailey report (child protection) and Hargreaves (Intellectual Property) and not so long ago it was The Digital Britain Report (economics), The Byron Report (children) and others, I’m sure before I started commenting.

These reports all look to a greater or lesser extent at how we should conduct our lives in the internet world.

Now, from the United Nations we have the La Rue Report of the “Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression”.

This is very interesting because it works as a counter to some of the forces being unleashed by the other reports mentioned.

For example website blocking is being sought by a number of interest groups including those wanting to protect children from online pornography, those wanting to protect their own private commercial interests and those wanting to protect the rest of us from people with extreme political views.

The United Nations

  • comes out against website blocking with the one exception of tightly controlled blocking of child pornography
  • emphasises the importance of freedom of expression – you better be really sure about a site’s illegality before doing something about it (ie taking it down/blocking)
  • considers the disconnection from the internet, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property right law, to be to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
  • wants the right to online privacy and anonymity guaranteed
  • thinks that ISPs as intermediaries should be protected as mere conduits of data to and from the internet

This is a very important report and worth a read. There is an element of “Magna Carta” about it. Not being a lawyer I am unsure as to where it stands in respect of legality of the points it makes but I’m sure someone can chip in here.

It would also be worth getting some feedback from the UK government as to how it might affect its stance regarding some legislation such as the Digital Economy Act.

Categories
End User internet online safety scams security

Internet scam awareness

I’m very proud of my wife. She got one of those phishing calls yesterday saying that a problem had been reported with a virus on her PC.

She is one of least technically savvy people going but told the caller (who was, from his accent, not from ’round here) where to go without batting an eyelid.

She said we have Radio 4 to thank as she had heard an item regarding such scams on the Today programme sometime recently. Good old Radio4, good old Mrs Davies.

Categories
Business internet

Internet Hero and Villain Finalists 2011 – a truly international bunch

There is a truly international outlook to this year’s ISP Heroes and Villains nominations. The world wide web recognises no boundaries 🙂  Such is the repute of the annual ISP Awards that I know that not only will the nominees for Hero be basking in quiet contentment but that those up for Villain will likely be sat staring blankly at a wall contemplating their future.

The individual nominations will be known to most and are presented here for your approval. You will have to wait until the Awards night on 7th July to find out the winners.

Hero

• Rory Stewart MP – For his trailblazing efforts to bring broadband to his rural constituency of Penrith and the Borders
• Twitter – For its role in helping people communicate during the Arab spring
• Judge Colin Birss QC – For his considered and damning judgement on the ACS Law that it was “chaotic and lamentable”’
• The Australian Internet Industry Association – For taking the lead and launching a voluntary industry code on infected machines in Australia
• Prof. Ian Hargreaves – For authoring a review that makes recommendations on how IP can be made fitter for the digital age

Villain

• ACS Law/Andrew Crossley – For demanding payments from members of the public on behalf of certain rights holders with poor evidence which brought the “legal profession into disrepute”, and for failing to secure the data of those accused
• New Zealand Government Commerce Minister Simon Power – For being the latest country to put in to law a three strikes rule enabling the disconnection or prosecution of the owner of an IP address alleged to have infringed copyright three times
• Commissioner Barnier – For the lack of transparency and cooperation with industry and other commissioners on the IPR enforcement and IPR strategy as a whole
• Tayfun Acarer, the chairman of the Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority – For looking to impose mandatory filtering on all ISP connections in Turkey against “international norms”

Categories
Business Cloud internet

The Website, the Little Boy and The Cloud – Part 1

A modern day parable, well-told and deserving of a sequel.

an original picture of a cloud

In the beginning there was a website.  People saw that it was good and wanted one.  The website became so popular that soon hundreds of millions of people had one and it was used for many different things.

The website was kept on a special computer called a server that was shared with other websites. As the website became ever more popular the other websites on the server didn’t like all the attention it was getting so they asked it to go away and use a server of its own.

In time the amazing popularity of the website meant that it would be kept on two or more servers, often a long distance apart so that if one server stopped working the website would still be available elsewhere. This too, in the eyes of the people, was good.

Continue reading “The Website, the Little Boy and The Cloud – Part 1”
Categories
Engineer internet

The rise of the photon, the Tb laser and the FFT

If you ever ask yourself “how much further can we go with the internet” my advice is don’t. 7 years ago when we started Timico the typical broadband connection was anything between 512k and 2Megs. Today 100Megs is being sold.

Just over a year ago we saw the first commercial terabit routers hit the market (not cheap mind with entry levels at around $90k).  Now we hear that the first 100 terabit per second laser has just been demonstrated using Fast Fourier Transform techniques.

This tells me we still have a long way to go with internet speeds.  Most thrilling of all it is the first time I have heard mention of Fast Fourier Transforms since I left Bangor university with a BSc in Electronic Engineering. I hated FFTs with a vengeance and in 28 years of work have never come across a single mention of one let along an application that needed it. I’m sure there are many – in the early 1980s I recall our lecturer telling us that 90% of the world’s computing power was dedicated to performing calculations using such beasts – probably the equivalent of a desktop PC today:) .

Anyway today we are celebrating two things – the 100Tb laser and the coming of age of the Fast Fourier Transform.  Long live progress.

PS original “nature photonics”  paper here – it’ll cost you though.

Categories
End User internet

lament for a book #Amazon

It is with great sadness that I reflect upon Amazon’s announcement that they are now selling more eBooks than books you can pick up, touch, feel, flick through and leave on top of the pile by the bed in the hope that you will one day get around to reading them.

I am as guilty as anyone in abandoning the printed form for kindle running on my iPad but I don’t feel good about it. For some reason this is the one  casualty of the internet age that I am not happy about.  I don’t care about newspapers – I now get them online and through Twitter, Flipboard et al and don’t ever find myself thinking that this is yesterday’s news and out of date.

Books are the one thing I don’t want to let go of. I like the problem of having to go out and buy a new bookcase because we have run out of shelf space on the existing ones.  I like looking along the rows and seeing the different colours and sizes and wide range of authors and topics that display an active mind and wide literary interest. I even like knowing that I have a specific book somewhere but not being able to find it because I can’t remember exactly which shelf it is on in which room.

But because of the internet I rarely read anymore. Even the books I have on Kindle are out of copyright classics, free to download but stored electronically and not read. I just have them because I can and the one book that I have recently read electronically is Kipling’s Jungle Book and I also have a paper copy of this one (a timeless classic – read it if you haven’t yet – you don’t have to be a child to enjoy it).

The internet/world wide web/whatever you want to call it is a fantastic and exciting entity that provides me with a living.

It isn’t all good though and at this point I’d like us all to observe a few moments of silence to reflect on what we are giving up when rushing headlong into a world that steals our time and blurs the seasons into one confused timezone…

Categories
Business dns internet Regs surveillance & privacy

Where is the evidence? Thoughts after the @Nominet .uk Policy Forum #DEAPPG #DEACT

David Lowe of Intellectual Property Office - regulations must be evidence based

I sometimes get the feeling that we are seeing a modern day version of continental drift in action. In our case the move is inexorably into a virtual world that is called the web. It is happening at light speed – not centimetres a year as we are used to the with rocks out houses are built on.

The new world order is bringing about changes, uncomfortable for some and worrying for others. It was to provide a platform to discuss these changes that .UK registrar  Nominet organised its first .UK Policy Forum in London yesterday. In a day where many subject were discussed it is difficult to pull out the key messages but some stick in my mind.

Internet minister Ed Vaizey who, due to commitments overseas,  appeared in a pre-recorded video in which he emphasized that the government’s approach was one of light touch and the encouragement of self regulation.

Self-regulation in such a fast moving world as ours is often the only way to work. Governments still base their schedules using the old centimetres model. The internet industry is largely self regulating. Competition and common sense morals do most of the work for us.

That isn’t to say this is always going to work but

Continue reading “Where is the evidence? Thoughts after the @Nominet .uk Policy Forum #DEAPPG #DEACT”
Categories
Business Cloud dns internet

Amazed by the Queues for Social Media Talks at Internet World #iw_expo,Nominet

queues at Internet World yesterday

I went along to Internet World at Earl’s Court yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find out how useful an afternoon it was. I saw something that I had never seen before and that was people queuing around the block to hear the seminars.

These were largely internet marketing and social media related. The only seminar I saw that was practically empty related to “the cloud”. Nobody at this show was interested in the nuts and bolts clearly although there was a good spread of exhibitors across a wide range of internet technology areas.

I find it difficult to get excited at all the trendy social media stuff that is going on.  For me it is more about the obvious and intuitive rather than the science.

For example I get very disappointed when I look at the list of my new followers on Twitter. 3 times out of 4 they are accounts trying to sell me something. They never seem to have interesting tweets and don’t get followed back. In a few days they have unfollowed me (in a  huff!) and moved on.

Now people claim to make a living out of imparting this kind of information but at the end of the day after a few short hours of playing with Twitter it is blindingly obvious.

There were a number of exhibitors selling Virtual Servers and Storage.  This is going to be a very interesting area of development. Vendors are going to have to be careful that they get their strategy/pitch right particularly in the wake of the Amazon EC2 outage. Demonstrable quality is going to be a big selling point.

Photos are: header – queues outside one of the social media seminars, me at the Nominet booth and an overhead shot of some of the exhibits (fwiw). Click on any of them for a bigger shot. Definately worth a visit I thought though they need to invent parking sensors for mobile phones – so many people wandering around immersed in their iPhone/Android/BlackBerry etc.

PS it was nice to meet with Twitter friend @markmapes in the flesh. His American accent took me completely by surprise though with hindsight it shouldn’t have done:)

Categories
Business internet online safety security social networking

Consumerisation of the workplace – part 2 #TREF @EmpireAve

This morning I joined Empire Avenue and got the ticker symbol TREF – v important I’m sure you agree. I did it because people I interact with on Twitter have done so and being a sheep I followed. I hooked my Empire Avenue account up with Linked In, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and then bought 100 shares in eBay.

Whether this was a sensible thing to do I know not – the account hook-ups not the eBay purchase which I don’t care about either way. I am really trusting the application.

After a bit of a browse I decided not to waste any more time and left. TREF was secured. At this point the responsiveness my wireless keyboard and mouse began to slow down significantly and I was hit with anti virus messages on my screen. Uhoh.

To cut a long story short thanks to Michael our IT guy I eventually got rid of the screen and am running full system scans using AVG and malwarebytes.

The last time I picked up a virus it wiped me out for a week and we had to rebuild my machine. That was the week I really road tested the iPad and found it deficient. So this time you can imagine what was going on in my mind. I can’t afford to be without a PC for any length of time.

I write all this because I am also currently thinking about device security

Continue reading “Consumerisation of the workplace – part 2 #TREF @EmpireAve”
Categories
End User internet

Twicket lovely twicket #digitalbritain #deappg

The domestic cricket season is well under way and my lad plays his first U11s game this coming Friday. Village cricket has also started as witnessed by yesterday’s #twicket match between Wray and the Rest of The World.

The result is immaterial although the home side won (it is sometimes difficult for the likes of Andrew Strauss and Brian Lara to click in at a standard lower than they are used to).

The real result was the broadcast of the match live online on twicket.info using Wray’s new 30Meg symmetrical connection. The game was watched online by thousands with thousands more tweeters following the #twicket hashtag.

The game was played in a farmers field and this broadcast is a great example of how rural communities might benefit once they have decent internet connectivity.

Continue reading “Twicket lovely twicket #digitalbritain #deappg”
Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

APNIC starts to ration IPv4 addresses #ipv6

The Asia Pacific Regional Registry APNIC has, as of today, begun to ration IPv4 addresses. Down to its last /8 block (around 16 million addresses) APNIC will now only be issuing  existing users with /22 blocks of 1,024 addresses and is urging its customers to accelerate their adoption of IPv6.

European registry, RIPE, is expected to be down to its last /8 sometime this summer. In the UK around 60% of LIRs (Local Internet Registry) have yet to even apply for their allocation of IPv6 – check out the stats here.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

testing your endpoint for ipv6 readiness

IPv6 is very much in vogue at the moment.  test-ipv6.com is a useful site you can visit that tells you how prepared you/your connection/your ISP are for IPv6.

I’ve run some tests on two connections for you to compare the results. One is IPv4 only and the other dual stack IPv4/IPv6. The difference is self explanatory.

The site itself will tell you that the most important test is the Dual Stack DNS. If this one fails or takes too long then you will have problems once people start rolling out IPv6 only sites. Clicking on each image will bring up a larger version. Both sets of tests come from Timico connections  – the one on the left is dual stack and the other IPv4 only. Also click on the header of this posts if you want to see more of the successful test results.

ipv6 test screenshot

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

The Day The Routers Died – official video #ipv6

This is the official video of the song “The Day The Routers Died” sung by Gary Feldman at Last week’s “Move over IPv4 Bring on IPv6” event in Covent Garden, London

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

The day we nearly lost the internet #ipv6

Euphoric from the success of bringonipv6.com we hit the town in London last night. Adrian Kennard of AAISP had brought along his “internet in a box” as a laugh.

For those of you not in the know the TV programme “IT Crowd” have a box with a flashing LED light on top of it that they tell their manager is “the internet”.

So we went out to a pub with an identical copy of this box. Plonking it on the bar we asked the barmaid if she knew what it was. The completely unprompted response was “it’s the internet”.  Result!!!

Of course this was a huge responsibility. Having just left a party to celebrate “the end of the internet as we know it” imagine the furore had we actually gone and “lost” the internet due to carelessness in a bar. Brings back memories of the FA Cup…

Thanks to Adrian for the photo – click to see more of it.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

bringonipv6 event London Transport Museum #ipv6

last /8 block handover by Leo Vegoda of IANA to Nigel Titley of RIPE NCC at bringonipv6.com

We have moved over IPv4 and brought on IPv6. Last night’s event at the London Transport Museum turned out to be a raging success.

300 or so people queued around the Piazza at Covent Garden to get in. Many more were watching the IPv6 twitter hashtag which had 1,235,715 impressions with exposure to 250,000 people. That’s a huge reach. Thanks to @lesanto for his most professional help here.

I’m not going to try and relive the whole evening in a blog post but I will be publishing videos of the event as soon as the film comes back from Boots the Chemist (only joking – but this high quality video takes a lot of rendering).

Photos are available here thanks to @Paul_Clarke. They are worth a look – this isn’t point and shoot stuff – it is art.

I’ll be thanking all the sponsors and speakers individually but you can see who they are on the event website.

I’m sorry for those of you who couldn’t get tickets or make it to this sold out event – you missed a cracker. More anon.

Categories
Engineer internet

Bit Nibble Byte Chomp – a call to action

As we count the minutes down to the Move Over IPv4 Bring on IPv6 party tonight it seems appropriate to talk about nibbles.

We will all be familiar with bits (0/1) and bytes (8 bits). You may even know that 4 bits is a nibble or a single Hexadecimal digit which makes a byte two Hexadecimal digits. IPv4 is a 32 bit addressing system with four time three lots of decimal characters.

Where is all this going do I hear you ask? This basic first year engineering degree primer!

Well tonight’s event is about IPv6, a 128 bit addressing system which has four blocks of four Hexadecimal characters. It looks like this 2001:1A20:1006:1001::/64.

Seeing as IPv6 is going to become commonplace there is now an ongoing discussion to come up with a name for those 16bit, 2 Byte, 4 x Hex character blocks. The currently proposed batch of names are presented below for your delectation.

Chazwazza, Chunk, Column, Colonade, Colonnade, Doctet, Field, Hexadectet, Hit, Orone, Part, Provider number, customer number, network number, Quad nibble, qibble, quibble, Segment, Tuple, Word.

These are all worthy proposals in an Internet Draft (click on the link to see the contributors names) which expires/due for next edit on 6th April. None of them stick with me though I do like Chazwazza because it is a cool name not because I think it works in this instance.

The Timico engineering team has started to use the word “chomp” to represent two bytes or the 4 Hex character block in IPv6.

Chomp is clearly in the mould of bit, nibble and byte and I would be grateful if you could chew this one over with a view to supporting the idea – we are submitting it as a suggestion when the above Draft expires.

That’s it. Time for a spot of lunch 🙂

Categories
Apps Business internet mobile connectivity

Job Vacancy – Domestic CIO, Davies household

Tower of London

At the Cisco Manged Services Seminar yesterday at the Tower of London Chris Lewis, GVP International Telecoms and Networking, IDC introduced the concept of the domestic CIO. This was new to me (ok I’m probably behind the times) but it certainly struck a chord.

There are so many aspects of life in the office that are now present at home. In the Davies household we have 8 active SIMs supporting 5 smartphones, an iPad, a dongle and a battered old Nokia that my wife uses (her decision). Some of these SIMS are pay as you go and some are contract. We have a mix of Vodafone, O2 and Orange.  This isn’t necessarily an efficient way of working. If this was a business scenario we would harmonize onto a single network and group bundle. We would also have managed backups of the directories.

7 out of the 8 mobile devices also support wifi as do the 2 laptops, 4 desktop PCs and the XBox. In an ideal world we would have a home password management system, changing the password on a regular basis.

When it comes to passwords we use them for online banking, shopping with M&S, eBay, Tesco online, EastCoast trains,  Superbreak,  Lastminute.com, iTunes, Travelodge. We also have passwords for Twitter, Facebook, gmail, telegraph online, guardian.co.uk and I’m sure many other portals I’ve forgotten about and some I’ve never heard of.  How do we keep track of them all?

I operate a calendar that synchronizes on my phone, iPad and laptop. My wife uses a paper calendar on the kitchen wall that doesn’t synch with mine other than via an ad hoc manual process known in the Davies household as “diarising”.  This does sometime lead to clashes – “OMG who’s going to pick so and so up from the friend’s party” or “we can’t already be going out because we have just been invited somewhere else for dinner”. Plenty of room for improvement here.

Then there’s the IT support, “the internet isn’t working”, “yes it is I’m on it”, “why isn’t my document printing”, “we have run out of ink”, “can I have your credit card number please dad” !!!

Chris Lewis was right. I need a Domestic CIO. I don’t want to do it. Interested parties should apply in line through the usual channels. Hours 24x7x365 (no you can’t have Christmas Day off – that is one of the busiest days of the year for a Domestic CIO). Salary on application.

PS the Tower of London is a great day out for the family. Have your PA coordinate a trip there or mention it to your Domestic CIO.

 

Categories
End User internet video

Japan Earthquake – live as it happens on the internet

Japan earthquake

I watched the news of the Japanese earthquake on iPlayer on my iPad. I watched it in bed, whilst having breakfast and then whilst in the shower (the iPad wasn’t in the actual shower cubicle). Coming out of the shower room I bumped into one of the kids  who said he had been watching it his room on his PC.

On my way in I listened to it on the car radio and then the iPad 3G connection kicked and the video started  in my bag in the boot (actually in the Jeep it is called a “trunk”). This was a bit disconcerting. The newsreader said that people on Japan had been standing in the streets in Tokyo watching the news streaming on their mobile handsets.

Coming into the office by 9am the video bandwidth usage on our network had doubled over the norm and I have iPlayer playing in the corner of the room.  We live in a totally connected world.

Our thoughts must go out to the people affected by the Earthquake. It is unbelievably amazing to be able to watch the destruction happening in real time broadcast live from a camera in a helicopter.

Categories
Engineer internet

Google transparency report on Libya shows traffic drop off from Thursday – Gadaffi slow off the mark

The Google transparency report should be of interest to readers. It shows Google traffic levels to/from a given country. If you click on the link it shows that traffic out of Libya ground to a halt on Thursday evening.

I am somewhat surprised it has taken the Gadaffi regime this long to kill the traffic – assuming that is what has happened.

Categories
Engineer events internet ipv6

Move over IPv4 Bring on IPv6 event sold out but more sponsorship secured – expect more tickets to be available

click to register

The first tranche of tickets has all but sold out for this event. If when you register there are no more spaces don’t worry – just get your name on the waiting list. I’ve been able to secure additional sponsorship and expect to be able to increase the number of partygoers.

The demand for tickets has been amazing and I think reflects the fact that there is a lot of interest in both celebrating the exhaustion of the IANA IPv4 address pool (the end of the internet as we know it) and wanting to see what progress is being made re IPv6 implementation.

I am also pleased to say that we have a special star guest signed up for the event. I’m keeping his/her identity a secret for the moment but it will be worth the wait 🙂

I am just waiting for confirmation of one more panelist in the IPv6 debate before publishing the final lineup.

More anon. Click on the icon in the right hand column of this blog to go to the event website.

Categories
Engineer events internet ipv6

Moveover IPv4 Bring on #IPv6 Party

click to register

We are marking the end of the internet as we know it with a celebratory event on the evening of 22nd March at the Highly Prestigious London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.

This gig isn’t just to bury IPv4 though. It is also a serious look at where the world is at with the roll out of IPv6.

If you are a techie in the internet community, a tech journalist or just as importantly an IT manager/CTO/CIO who might want to understand the relevance of IPv4 exhaustion to your business then you need to be here.

We have a nice little retrospective look at the history of the Internet in the UK by early Pioneer and colleague of Vint Cerf, Prof Peter Kirstein.

Also on stage will be speakers discussing the actual state of IPv6 rollout, the practicalities of implementation and the problems yet to be overcome.

Then we will be peering into a crystal ball and taking a look at the future of the internet and the www!

Finally there will be a ceremonial bit of fun whereby IANA will do a re-run of the handover of the last block of IPv4 addresses to RIPE.

Bring your camera. You will want to remember this one

What: Move Over IPv4 (Bring on IPv6)
Where: The London Transport Museum, Covent Garden
When: 18.30 – 21.30 Tuesday March 22nd (ceremonials commence 19.00hrs)
Agenda:
  • A brief history of the internet and the www by internet pioneer Prof Peter Kirstein.
  • What next? Is the world ready for IPv6? What are the problems?
  • The future of the internet!
  • Ceremonial repeat of formal handing over of the last IPv4 blocks by IANA representative to RIPE representative.
  • Party Time!
Cost: This is a free event but entry is by invitation only.

Registration (click here to go to the event site) for “bringonipv6” requires a password as attendance at the event is invitation only. The password is freely available from industry sources or will have already been mailed to you. If we have missed you out you can contact Trefor Davies at [email protected] with your details.

Many thanks need to go to the sponsors that have made this event possible. These are Nominet, LINX, Timico, ThinkBroadband, NewNet, AAISP, Brocade and 6UK.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Significant IPv4 announcement to be made in Miami tomorrow #IPv6

Those of you who have been following the countdown to exhaustion of the IPv4 address space will want to tune in to a webcast coming out of Miami tomorrow at 9.30 EST (GMT+5hrs). It is an open secret that this will be the IANA handover of the last 5   /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses.

We in the UK will be marking this important milestone in the history of the internet at a date in March. Look out for an announcement very soon. In the meantime you will be able to watch the ICANN ceremonials and press conference here.