Category: Net

connectivity and networking posts – both fixed and mobile, fast and slow

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broadband End User

Breakfast, Broadband Speeds and Bandwidth

I got home last night, reopened my laptop, had food (enchiladas) and started working again. 4 hours later at 11.30 after significant online usage I went to bed.

This morning I had a very refreshing cup of tea in bed, opened my laptop again and kept on going. At breakfast I had all bran and a banana which I ate whilst tweeting and then I cracked on again with some work.

A little later, having sussed the problem I had been working on, I downloaded some Open Source software (phplist if anyone is interested) and began to upload it to a test site.

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Engineer internet ipv6

Top IPv6 websites – none of the big guys in it

Work done by Mike Leber of Timico peering partner Hurricane Electric suggests that of the Alexa top 1 million domains only 2136 of them are IPv6 ready – that is to say they are running native IPv6.

With less than a year to go ot IPv4 exhaustion this suggests there is still much to be done.

It is brought home when you compare the top 50 sites with the top 50 IPv6 enabled sites – none of the domains in the former is listed in the latter. Now this doesn’t come as much of a surprise – big sites need to tread carefully as they

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Engineer internet

The size of the internet & the curse of deaggregation

There has recently been quite a bit of interest in the IPv4 exhaustion date. Understandable. It is coming up fast and sounds game changing. What perhaps isn’t obvious to the casual watcher of the Gadget Show or reader of newspaper technology sections  is the underlying complexity that surrounds the approach to the end of this IPv4 world.

In reading this blog your ISP will have directed your http request across the internet from its own network to the Timico network and to the server hosting the website.

This server has a public facing IP address, part of a contiguous block  that is advertised to the whole internet. The

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Business internet mobile connectivity voip

Orange HD voice – when will the whole world go HD?

Mobile operator Orange has hit the headlines today with the launch of its HD voice service. Trials for this service, which uses the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec (AMR-WB – otherwise known as  G722.2), began in June this year in the south of England.

The service is initially only for Orange HD handset to Orange HD handset.  This is quite easy to do as “on-net” HD calls using the same codec don’t require transcoding and also do not therefore enter into the black art world of interoperability. 

HD voice has been the subject of discussion amongst the VoIP community in the UK this year.  A fair few vendors

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broadband Business internet

Broadband Connectivity: Superfast IP Networks, 21CN and MPLS Mixing and Matching

Superfast all IP networks are not just around the corner they are here already, at least if you are a business. The big growth area in business networking is in Ethernet data circuits that are rapidly replacing ADSL as the business connectivity of choice.

In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.

At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.

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Engineer internet

Is black market for IPv4 blocks imminent?

Whilst I was on holiday the IPv4 Exhaustion counter ticked down another digit to 5% or 14 /8 blocks .

Nov 16 2009 10% – dropped through 400,000,000 mark
Jan 20th 9%
Feb 25th 8%
May 10th 7%
June 2nd 6%
August 5%

Currently we seem to be using a /8 block every three weeks. With 9 blocks left before we are down to the last 5 (at which point IANA will distribute these simultaneously to the 5 Regional Internet Registries) it looks like we have 27 weeks to go to IPv4 Exhaustion.

In my book this is February 2011 and not the June date reported by the Exhaustion Counter on this blog.

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Business internet Regs

Ed Vaizey wants help re VOA fibre rates – please comment here

Last week the Valuation Office Agency put out revised guidelines for assessing rateable values for fibre connections.

There is no change at the high end so the likes of Virgin and BT will remain unaffected. However at the smaller network end of the scale there has been a massive price hike.

In 2005 if you were running a pair of fibres over 1km you would be stung with a rateable value of £280. In 2010 this has now shot up to £2000. This will not of course affect BT because they have a negotiated total rateable value for their network.

The upshot of this is that at a time when industry has been crying out for a level “rates” playing field the VOA has made it an even more unequal commercial battle in favour of the large incumbent operators.

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Engineer engineering

Today Friday 30th July is System Administrator Appreciation Day

Sys Admins all around the world will this morning come in to their office to be greeted with a standing ovation by the rest of the business – all of whom will have got in early especially to make some nice fresh coffee, bake some croissants and place their tokens of appreciation in a heap on the desk of the said Sys Admin.

You can picture the scene of joy. The broad grin on the face. The feeling of deepest satisfaction knowing that despite

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datacentre End User internet social networking

@tref on Twitter…Two Years, Ten Weeks, Two Days and Counting

I joined twitter 802 days ago on 17th May 2008. Since then as @tref on Twitter I have sent 2,623 tweets, an average of just over three a day. Not too bad for anyone who thinks I spend too long on the site.

In June, according to twitter COO Dick Costolo twitter had 190 million users, growing by 300 thousand a day. These users were generating 65million tweets a day – that’s enough for twitter to be building its own brand new datacentre to handle all the traffic.

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Engineer internet

Bandwidth explosions

We are currently seeing an explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007. It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years (thanks iPhone), and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

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broadband Business internet ofcom

Ofcom – Increased Broadband Speeds and ISP Voluntary Code of Practice

Big headliner from Ofcom this morning is that average broadband speeds in the UK have increased by over 25% in the past year. Research, conducted in partnership with broadband monitoring specialists SamKnows, has found that speeds have increased from 4.1Mbit/s to 5.2Mbit/s.

This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.

The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours.

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Business internet security

Facebook and CEOP collaborate on child protection

The Child Exploitation and Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook announced an initiative that gives Facebook users direct access to CEOP’s advice and reporting centre from their Facebook homepage.

The initiative is not based on a standard panic button solution but on a CEOP Facebook App and a CEOP Facebook page. This means that only users who install the app will have direct access to CEOP.

I have met CEOP CEO Jim Gamble during the course of meetings between CEOP and the ISPA and understand the hugely difficult nature of their job. CEOP volunteer staff have to spend much of their time looking at horrendous photographic evidence of child abuse. It isn’t something that a person can do for too long due to the mental stresses involved.

The success of the whole Facebook initiative depends on whether or not the CEOP app becomes viral. To facilitate the distribution of the app, Facebook has agreed to support the initiative via an advertising campaign.

CEOP deserves your support.

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broadband Business internet

Government Pushes Back 2Meg USC to 2015 – Let’s forget 2Meg and Go Straight to FTTP

I read in Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Broadband Delivery UK industry day today that due to the lack of funds the government has moved the target date for implementation of its 2Meg Universal Service Commitment out to the “end of this parliament” or in other words 2015 (see my post in March on the feasibility of doing it by 2012).

It is about time everyone realised this is a waste of effort.  Lets forget about 2Meg and go straight for Fibre To The Premises (FTTP).  FTTP for the Final third by 2015 is a sensible objective.

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broadband Business internet Regs

Broadband Delivery UK Industry Day #BDUK

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is today holding an “industry day aimed at companies and organisations that have skills, capabilities and assets that they believe could be used to help deliver the government’s Universal Service Commitment and superfast broadband market testing projects”.

The agenda for the day, which is being held within the BIS offices at 1 Victoria Street, London is as follows:

09:30 – 10:00   Registration & Coffee
10:00 – 10:10   Introduction and Welcome – Ed Vaizey
10:10 – 11:00   Setting the context – Jeremy Hunt

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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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End User media mobile connectivity

#Glastonbury – people at the back were watching online on mobiles #glasto

I’m told that some people at Glastonbury found it easier to watch the event streaming video to their mobile phones even though they were at the gig itself.

If you were stood at the back apparently the picture on your mobile phone was bigger than the live view of the stage. I remember once going to a Bruce Springsteen gig in Roundhay Park in Leeds (some time ago now I should add). If I held up my little finger horizontally at arms length Bruce was about half the height of the fingernail.

I’d be surprised if there was much bandwidth available to stream to a mobile at Glastonbury though I suppose with the

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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