Category: Net

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

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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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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.

Continue reading “Digital Vacuum Sucks in Digby? Fibrestream NextGenUs #FTTP #finalthirdfirst #digitalbritain”
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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.”

Continue reading “@tom_watson @andrewpercy Questions to @edvaizey on Broadband Miscellany #finalthirdfirst #digitalbritain #FTTP”
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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 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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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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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

Continue reading “#englandfootball #WorldCup #HDvideo demand poses big questions for ISPs #DEAct #finalthirdfirst”
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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.

Continue reading “EU goes bananas – food safety tech to be used to catch paedophiles and sex offenders?”
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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.

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broadband Business

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 3 – Drivers

Part 3 of an interview recorded for BT for their FTTC launch

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

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

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

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

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

Continue reading “Mandelson’s Uncertainty Principle – evil genius at work or just plain incompetent? #DEAct”
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broadband Business

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 2 – Directions

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

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broadband Engineer internet

Broadband Fault – The Davies Household Grinds to a Halt

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

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

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

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broadband Engineer internet

I'm sorry there is a fault – the Davies household grinds to a halt

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

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

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

Continue reading “I'm sorry there is a fault – the Davies household grinds to a halt”
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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

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

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

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

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

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

The BT Broadband Interviews – Part 1 – Markets

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

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Business internet

BT getting into content delivery with Content Connect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Business internet

BT Ethernet enabled exchanges

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

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

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

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

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

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

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

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

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Business internet Regs surveillance & privacy

A brief ISP take on the final coalition agreement #DEAct

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

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

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

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

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Business internet ofcom piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

ofcom #deact market benchmarking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Business internet surveillance & privacy

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

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

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Business internet

Timico Group is six times finalist for ISPA Awards – wahey

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

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

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

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Business internet Regs

Boris Johnson promises WiFi for London

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