Category: internet

another catch-all really for internet related posts

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Business internet video

Polycom Telepresence impresses ITSPA

I’ve only seen a single screen telepresence demo before and that was on a noisy exhibition floor.  At Polycom’s City Executive Briefing Centre yesterday I was treated the to a full blown demo and boy was it impressive.  The quality was astounding.

Attendees at the ITSPA Summer Forum sat on one side of an oval conference table that was mirrored on 4 large screens in front of us. A Polycom representative (sorry didn’t catch his name) did the spiel from the other room located in Slough.

It was as if he was in the same room and he could even hear the side conversations going on on our side of the table.

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Engineer internet voip

VONGA is dead – long live FVA? – Openreach

BT has killed off VoNGA. Bit of a shame really because I was kinda fonda VoNGA. Voice over Next Generation Access or VoNGA was BT Openreach’s initial stab at voice over fibre and initially at least notionally aimed at new developments where it didn’t make sense to put legacy voice infrastructure into an exchange.

Now BT has strangled VoNGA in the womb. We never really heard it’s first cry.

Don’t get me wrong. It was only the acronym I liked – I thought it sounded good. The product itself, a reduced feature

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Business internet

ISPA Awards 2010 Winners

Here’s a list of winners from last night’s ISPAs. I have to declare some involvement in that I voted for both “successful” Hero and Villain and that NewNet, winner of the Best Dedicated Hosting category,  is a Timico Group business – well done lads. I’m proud of you 🙂

Best Shared Hosting winner is: Namesco

The judges were impressed with Namesco’s high level of customer satisfaction, with good use of security and technical support complemented by a clear pricing structure.

Best Dedicated Hosting winner is: NewNet

In an extremely competitive category, the judges decided that NewNet’s wide product range, provision of 24/7 technical support and a dedicated account manager set them apart from their competitors.

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Business internet piracy Regs

BT TalkTalk ISPAs Judicial Reviews and Feargal Sharkey

Much in the news yesterday was the request from BT and TalkTalk for a judicial review into the Digital Economy Act. Nobody I spoke to from the ISP industry had any further details of this other than to say that Sky and Virgin were notably absent from the story line.

This is likely to be because the latter two are far more closely aligned to the content provision industry with BT and TalkTalk being really just (or largely in the case of BT) connectivity providers.

People should not get too excited at the prospect of a Judicial Review. This is just a process of checking to see that the legal process was followed. Did it receive the required number of readings in Parliament? etc.etc

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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

@tom_watson MP is the ISPA Internet Hero for 2010 #DEAct #digitalbritain

2010 ISPA Internet Hero Tom Watson MP
2010 ISPA Internet Hero Tom Watson MP

At tonight’s Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA)  Awards Labour MP for West BromwichTom Watson was announced as the Internet Hero for 2010. This is just a bit of fun at the one time in the year that the ISP industry lets its hair down, but it does have its serious side.

The work that Tom Watson did in opposing parts of the Digital Economy Bill was highly creditable. He stood up for human rights and fairness. It shows that Members of Parliament do have a conscience and are willing to speak out when that conscience troubles them.

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broadband Business internet

Broadband Local Architecture: FTTC and FTTP

FTTC and FTTP broadband local architectures? We’ve got the pictures!

FTTC broadband continues to be a popular subject on this blog. It gets linked to from all sorts of non-telecom forums.  There is clearly a hunger for information on faster broadband.

In the interest of adding to the body of information out there I’ve added some more info in this post.  Firstly pictures of both the FTTC broadband local architecture and the FTTP  broadband local architecture, and a link to the BT Openreach FTTC / FTTP product page. Note the larger cabinet for FTTC.

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broadband Business internet mobile connectivity

O2 BE broadband

Met with O2 and BE today for a general chat about the BE broadband network. They are pushing a wholesale offering and are now one of only four Tier 1 broadband wholesalers in the UK – BT, TalkTalk and Cable and Wireless being the others. Reality is I don’t see C&W doing much so probably there are only really three of them.

Telefonica has been backing BE and making not insignificant investments in their network. Their current ADSL2+ offering is competitive. The longer term question for them is really the same as for TalkTalk and that is how to leverage a new (ish) high capacity backbone once ADSL2+ becomes old hat and the world has moved on to greater and faster connectivity.

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dns Engineer internet

Nominet non-exec election results out @sebtweet

Congratulations to Seb Lahtinen and Thomas Vollrath on their election as non-executive directors to the board of .uk registrar Nominet.

I did an interview with Seb nobbut two days ago and I’m sure that his return to the board will provide value for Nominet.

Nominet has been much in the news this year as the previous government gave itself powers to intervene in the running of the not-for profit org if it felt that the existing Directors were not doing their job.

It is important that we have a steady hand at the helm of the registrar looking after our .uk domain names as businesses become more dependant on the internet.

You can see the Nominet election results here. The system is quite brutal in that your progress as a candidate is highly visible.

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Business internet

Guest blog post over at Broadbandgenie

My monthly guest blog post is up at broadbandgenie.co.uk. World cup stuff.

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Apps Business internet

TfL & twitter highlight need for reliability in cloud

Two weeks ago I got excited that you can now plot the progress of trains on the London Underground. Unfortunatley so popular was this service that the Transport for London server providing  the data has ground to a halt.  I’d like to think it was because of the publicity it they received from trefor.net but I doubt that was the case.

This morning twitter is slow as a tortoise, at least from platforms such as tweetdeck that rely on using the twitter API.  This is just as organisations are learning how to use the service to their advantage. For example I retweeted a National Rail tweet this morning in the hope of winning £90 worth of Oyster Card top up.

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Apps Business internet

TfL & twitter highlight need for reliability in cloud

Two weeks ago I got excited that you can now plot the progress of trains on the London Underground. Unfortunatley so popular was this service that the Transport for London server providing  the data has ground to a halt.  I’d like to think it was because of the publicity it they received from trefor.net but I doubt that was the case.

This morning twitter is slow as a tortoise, at least from platforms such as tweetdeck that rely on using the twitter API.  This is just as organisations are learning how to use the service to their advantage. For example I retweeted a National Rail tweet this morning in the hope of winning £90 worth of Oyster Card top up.

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Business dns internet

Challenges for Nominet – An Interview with Sebastien Lahtinen

Sebastien Lahtinen is probably most well known for being behind the independent broadband advice website thinkbroadband.com which helps broadband users to get the most out of their broadband connection. He has also been involved in the policy development and governance processes of Nominet, and is a candidate in the current elections for a seat on the Nominet board.

What are the key challenges for Nominet in the next four years?
The next few years will be a critical time for Nominet as it looks to respond to the need for change. Nominet will face challenges both internally within its own organisation as well as externally.

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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

Julian Huppert MP Early Day Motion needs help #DEAct #digitalbritain #DEBill

On 25th May Julian Huppert MP tabled an Early Day Motion calling for the repeal the Digital Economy Act 2010. To date only 34 MPs have supported it!

It is hard to see what we can do to raise the profile of this issue, other than by continually banging on about it. We may have to wait for some high profile failures of the process, by which time of course the ISP industry will have spent a fortune implementing the systems required under the Act.

In the words of the EDM “large repercussions for consumers, civil liberties, freedom of information and access to the internet”

The suffragettes used to chain themselves to railings and throw themselves under horses.  This is not worth losing a life for but there must be a way.

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Engineer internet

100GigE std ratified but 10Gig is still where it is at

The IEEE has just ratified the 100GigE standard. We all knew it was coming. It was foretold.  I’m not that excited though.  I doubt that many people are because 100GigE is currently in the domain of the few. Not many networks have enough traffic to merit using it.

What I am excited about is our own plans to roll out 10GigE across our core network. For me this is a big step forward. Having started an ISP 5 years ago with a 1Gig core it is quite  a momentous event. It is being driven by the amount of high speed Ethernet connections being sold to businesses in the UK. There is literally an explosion of them. I have more bandwidth orders in provisioning for the next three months than sold in the previous 5 years.

We are in the UK, I believe, currently seeing a new wave of connectivity in the same way that broadband has grown over the past few years.  Broadband has levelled off but in the business world there is a hunger for faster and more reliable connections.

For us the 10Gig investment actually gives us up to 40Gig of capacity and represented a major board level decision. This is not a low cost play. The decison on where to spend valuable capital is sometimes a gamble, albeit one based on careful research. I don’t think this one is such a risk.  There is a lot of business out there.  You just have to have the right funds to buy into the game.

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Business internet media

UK is 21.3% of Global internet traffic during England v Slovenia #worldcup match says Akamai

Global content delivery network Akamai is showing its UK traffic today as 21.3% of the global internet traffic.  Whilst it isn’t true to extrapolate this to say that the UK represents 21.3% of all global internet traffic today it is a reasonable indicator as to the UK share of overall usage.

This is certainly being seen at Timico where our streaming traffic is up 357% which is even higher than yesterday’s reported budget watching traffic.  This was itself a record 309% increase. Twitter is struggling this afternoon and the live football stream from the BBC on my 100Mbps connection is not great so – now you know why.

Photo below is a screenshot showing global network hotspots.

Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia
Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia
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Business internet media

#Budget eclipses #worldcup #wimbledon #cricket for online video streaming

Wimbledon doesn’t appear to be starting online until 14.40hrs. The budget speech is online, the England v Australia 1 day cricket match is online, there is no World Cup football until 15.00hrs. So what eh?

So video streaming has hit another high. It is up 309% on the norm. The World Cup has seen a 171% increase so many more people are interested in the budget than in the world cup. 

All the recent major political events have seen large spikes in internet traffic online. This goes back to Obama’s inauguration, the last budget speech under the Labour government and the day after Polling Day in the recent general election, which was in itself a local maximum, to use my A Level maths.

Fortunately for ISPs the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies are a fairly static lot.  In other words the only bit of moving is the occasional waving of an order paper (or whatever they call them in Parliament – “The Dandy” probably). This means that the bandwidth usage hasn’t gone up in proportion to the number of users online in the way that it does for the sport. Movement means change which means lots of bandwidth usage when it comes to video streaming.

Tomorrow is the biggie.  The last England Group match and one that they have to win.  It’s all there: passion, excitement, intrigue, dissent, highs, lows, vuvuzelas,  tears and tattoos but no romance – the WAGS have stayed away.

Read all about it on trefor.net.  Order, order! No hang on the budget speech has finished. Everyone has started doing some work again.

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Apps Engineer internet media

Sport streaming on the internet this afternoon #worldcup #wimbledon

At work I have a 100Mbps of uncontended bandwidth to play with.  It does me. I thought I’d watch some sport this afternoon, in between stuff. This was partly because I drew Chile in the office sweepstake – they are playing Switzerland as I write – and partly because I’m taking one of my lads to Wimbledon on Thursday – centre court – keep an eye out for me in the crowd.

Both sports are being covered on BBC  iPlayer this afternoon. I can of course watch both at the same time – and that’s despite being a bloke (or is it because of it?) –

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Categories
Apps End User internet

Real time tube map of London Underground

There are lots of bad things about the wild wild web but the good things can seriously outweigh them.

This morning I picked this up off twitter. It is, as near as matters, a live map of the London Underground system showing the real time positions of trains. It is in the same vein as the live air traffic control map that I posted about during the volcanic ashcloud crisis. If nothing else it is a bit of fun but it does show the power of technology.

You might want to bookmark this post so that you can compare what it looks like during one of the periodic tube

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broadband Business internet

Digital Vacuum Sucks in Digby? Fibrestream NextGenUs #FTTP #finalthirdfirst #digitalbritain

I braved the elements of a windswept rural Lincolnshire on Saturday to visit the Digby Fete. Digby is in the middle of nowhere. It’s two main distinguishing features are the fact that it is the home of RAF Digby and that it is the next village on the map to Ashby De La Launde.

The proximity to Ashby has become an irritant to the good parishioners of Digby because their neighbouring village has just announced that it is getting 100Mbps Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). Up until now neither village could get decent broadband connectivity.

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broadband Business internet Regs

@tom_watson @andrewpercy Questions to @edvaizey on Broadband Miscellany #finalthirdfirst #digitalbritain #FTTP

It’s Friday afternoon and the first time this week I have been able to sit down and blog, this time about broadband miscellany. It could be a full time activity if I had the time as so much stuff passes my way.

I note that Minister for Communications Ed Vaizey has been demonstrating his politcal sidestepping skills by answering MP Tom Watson’s request for a definition of “super fast broadband” with:

“Super fast broadband means broadband of sufficient speed and quality to deliver the services that will lead to Britain having the best broadband network in Europe. The technology used to deliver this could be fixed or wireless but will represent a significant upgrade on today’s fixed and wireless networks.”

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End User internet

#WorldCup streaming popularity contest – Spain v Switzerland lead so far

You can tell which teams hold the most interest based on how busy the network is on any afternoon this week.

It all started with England’s warm up game last week. Quite a few people watched that online but not as many as watched the Opening ceremony. Yesterday’s Spain v Switzerland match is the most popular to date.

1 Wednesday 16th Spain v Switzerland
2 Friday 11th South Africa v Mexico
3 Tuesday 15th New Zealand v Slovakia
4 Tuesday 15th Ivory coast v Portugal
5 Monday 14th Netherlands v Denmark
6 Monday 14th Japan v Cameroon
7 Friday 11th Opening Ceremony
8 Wednesday 16th Honduras v Chile
9 England pre-tournament friendly
9 Thursday 17th Greece v Nigeria
9 Thursday 17th Argentina v South Korea

This doesn’t look at evening matches which I imagine most people will watch on their TV or in the pub. It is also only based on Timico’s network so other ISPs may have different rankings (for what it’s worth – there is no money changing hands here – yet).

Just a bit of fun.

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internet mobile connectivity

iPhone Nokia N97 iPad Apple consumer versus business

My mobile phone, an N97, ran out of battery yesterday. It normally lasts 2 days but there was a network problem and it kept searching for a GPRS signal. It wan’t really the phone’s fault but it does go to show that battery technology has still some way to go with mobiles, especially as we are trying to do more with the device.

The N97 is supposed to be targeted at consumers.  It has a 30Gig hard drive so all my music fits on it. It also has a nice Facebook widget and I regularly use the camera, the voice recorder and make notes.

I don’t really see a difference between consumer and business applications for these high end phones. People want to listen to music whilst on the move with work.  Business people take photos (mine are usually for the blog), make recordings and notes (I do it because I can never remember things otherwise), update twitter, pick up mails, VPN into the office network etc etc etc.

At Timico there is an increasing demand for the iPhone from our business customers. In fact I think that consumer technology has outpaced what is provided specifically for business use so it makes sense that business people want to use consumer tools.

The iPad is not currently a business tool but that type of device will soon be used by business for all sorts of mobility applications.  Whether the Apple device specifically is it will depend on the applications that reside on it – I suspect not.

It is all going to be highly reliant on connectivity, and battery life, and cost, and functionality, and ease of use, and I’m sure the list goes on…  Anyway all that stemmed from the battery running out on my N97 – streams of thought:)

PS the N97 is the best phone I have had so far.

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broadband Business internet

Broadband ISP Life: #Microsoft Update meets #WorldCup

The broadband ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.

The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.

30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm.  This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is).  But this is not England playing here…

Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.

You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere.  Football? What’s football?

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broadband Business End User internet

Broadband ISP Life: #Microsoft Update Meets #WorldCup

The broadband ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.

The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.

30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm.  This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is).  But this is not England playing here…

Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.

You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere.  Football? What’s football?

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internet surveillance & privacy

#englandfootball #WorldCup #HDvideo demand poses big questions for ISPs #DEAct #finalthirdfirst

Timico’s video traffic grew by around 30% when England were playing their pre tournament “friendly” football match in South Africa yesterday.

ISPs have been speculating as to what might happen during the tournament itself and especially on June 23rd which is England’s first midweek daytime match. At the recent LINX meeting in London it was suggested that the BBC is

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Business internet

ISPA Awards Internet Villain and Internet Hero Finalists Announced

ISPA, the Internet Service Providers’ Association, has announced the finalists for the 2010 Internet Hero and Internet Villain awards. Among the finalists are Lords Mandelson and Clement Jones, Tom Watson MP and the campaigning group 38 Degrees.

The highly-prized Internet Hero award is bestowed upon an organisation or individual who has made a significant

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Business internet Regs

EU goes bananas – food safety tech to be used to catch paedophiles and sex offenders?

I had to stare at this for a bit to understand it. In a Written Declaration the European Parliament has called on the Member States to coordinate a European early warning system involving their public authorities, based on the existing system for food safety, as a means of tackling paedophilia and sex offending.

They are also talking about applying the Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC) to search engines.

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broadband Business internet

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 5 – Future Capabilities

Final part of an interview recorded for BT for their FTTC launch.

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broadband Business internet

The BT Broadband Interviews – part 4 – Future Demand

Part 4 of an interview recorded for BT for their FTTC launch.

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Engineer internet

IPv4 down to 6%

I’ve been tracking the run down of the IPv4 address pool. This morning another two /8s have been allocated and the number remaining has dropped to 6% of the total.

Nov 16 2009 10% – dropped through 400,000,000 mark
Jan 20th 9%
Feb 25th 8%
May 10th 7%
June 2nd 6%

I make no comment here other than it is getting peculiarly exciting. We have effectively used up 5% of the address pool in 7 months.