Category: Net

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

Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

Post author By Kory Kessel
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
3 Comments on Vastly Objectionable Ignominious Phrase

What the lone acronym in “VoIP Week” does NOT represent.

As a longtime fan of Marvel’s super hero comic books — 40 years and happily counting — I find myself quite satisfied with the persisting Hollywood trend of putting these Fantastic! Incredible! Amazing! Uncanny! Mighty! characters on the Silver Surfer…er, silver screen. And almost as much fun as seeing these wonders brought to life is the narrative means used to tie them all together, that being the oh-so-shadowy government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which as acronyms go is one heckuva Marvel-ous mouthful (originally “Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division”, then changed in 1991 to “Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate”…both way-cool).

S.H.I.E.L.D.

So what does all of this have to do with VoIP? Well, as great acronyms go absolutely nothing, as S.H.I.E.L.D. is way-cool while V-o-I-P is decidedly not. In fact, though the meaning behind V-o-I-P — Voice over Internet Protocol — is a cause célèbre, worthy of consideration, contemplation, conjecture, and cockeyed optimism, the “word” verbalized evokes images of a thick liquid dripping onto a badly-tuned piece of tin poised alongside a carnival microphone.

Say it with me. Or better yet, don’t.

As awful an acronym as V-o-I-P is, one has to wonder how it came to stick as the most common reference term for the technology it represents. Could it be that as bad as it is, V-o-I-P is actually the best of a really bad bunch? Let’s see…

		IPT (IP Telephony)? Difficult double-consonant at the end, and perhaps too easy to rhyme with “gypped”…
		IT (Internet Telephony)? Taken.
		VoBB (Voice over Broadband? Again, like IPT, too easy to set a negative rhyme to.
		BT (Broadband Telephony)? Taken.
		BPS (Broadband Phone Service)? Proves that an ugly-sounding acronym is better than one with absolutely nothing going for it.

OK, so maybe I am no longer wondering how V-o-I-P took hold in the tech-y lexicon. After all, nature abhors a vacuum and all that (Horror vacui!). Also, sadly, nothing better was in the ether (evidenced above), and it isn’t as if the average man-on-the-street is going to say “Voice over Internet Protocol” every time they need to refer to the concept (of course, there is no way said average man-on-the-street is ever going to comfortably use the acronymic word “VoIP” either, but let’s not get bogged down in reality’s messy details). Still, it sure would be nice to be able to lay blame for V-o-I-P at someone’s keyboard, but unlike the massive majority of Internet-based whatever-and-whatsis there is absolutely nobody out there laying claim to originating — starting? envisioning? founding? — the term. Even if we could force somebody to take responsibility for this *four-letter-word* of a four-letter acronym, though, a proper punishment could never be levied as any attempt to do so would likely raise the ire of the Kids from C.A.P.E.R.^*

At this point the Marvel-literate among you might be gasping (Gasp!) for me to return to espousing on and praising the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those of you not in-the-know who have hung on this far). It is “VoIP Week” at trefor.net, however, and other than their diametrically opposed acronym quality no other useful correlation can be made between S.H.I.E.L.D. and V-o-I-P (other than the fact, that is, that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents likely make extensive and heretofore unknown — and way-cool — use of VoIP technology). Still, you can’t beat a good opening.

^*The Civilian Authority for the Protection of Everybody, Regardless

VoIP Week Posts:

internet ofcom voip

VoIP and Emergency Services – Location, Location, Location…

Post author By Ray Bellis
Post date Wednesday, 7 May, 2014
No Comments on VoIP and Emergency Services – Location, Location, Location…

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Ray Bellis, Senior Researcher at Nominet UK and Director at NICC Standards Ltd.

UK Proposed Architecture

I’ve blogged previously on the UK Specification being produced by the EmLoc Task Group of NICC Standards regarding the thorny problem of Emergency Services determining the location of a VoIP caller who may be unable to disclose their location, for whatever reason (e.g., the caller is under duress and is unable to talk, or they simply doesn’t know their location, etc.). This work was driven by General Condition 4 (GC4) of the “General Conditions of Entitlement“, which apply to all Communications Providers:

The Communications Provider shall, to the extent technically feasible, make accurate and reliable Caller Location Information available for all calls to the emergency call numbers “112” and “999”, at no charge to the Emergency Organisations handling those calls, at the time the call is answered by those organisations.

At the time of publication these were draft specifications — they’ve since been made publicly available as NICC Document ND1638. For more details of the architecture please see the aforementioned blog posting and the NICC Document.

A key component of the proposed architecture is that it would require every Internet Service Provider and Access Network Provider (ANP) to operate a service known as a “Location Information Server” (or “LIS”). The protocol provided by the LIS is described in RFC 5985 and is known as “HELD”, short for “HTTP-Enabled Location Delivery”.

Whilst Ofcom has not (yet) carried out any enforcement activity on ISPs or ANPs relating to GC4, they have commissioned a report on the NICC Document that concluded that the architecture described therein is “technically feasible”. It is therefore to be expected that at some point Ofcom will start enforcing this requirement.

Work to update ND1638 to reflect recent changes to IETF standards is ongoing, and also to allow device-provided location (e.g., GPS readings) to be sent to the Emergency Services during call setup. However, even if device-provided readings were available, ultimately the Emergency Handling Authorities (EHAs) would trust the network-provided location as the primary source of location, with device-provided location acting only as a means to enhance the former and be used when consistent with it.

ETSI M/493 Architecture

The European Commission published Standardisation Mandate M/493 in May 2011, requiring European Standards Organisations to develop standards in support of a “Location Enhanced Emergency Call Service”. This work is being carried out under the “End-to-End Network Architectures” (E2NA) ETSI Project.

The draft architecture being devised by the ETSI working group builds upon previous work by the National Emergency Number Association, the European Emergency Number Association, the Internet Engineering Task Force and others, and many of the functional components are very similar to those used in the UK architecture.

The draft ETSI architecture has one very significant difference from the UK architecture that reflects the more complicated emergency call routing required in some countries. In the UK all emergency service calls are now handled by BT, so the VoIP operator therefore has no need to make any call routing decisions other than recognising that the called number is an emergency number and passing the call to BT via the appropriate interconnect. In some European countries, however, that initial call routing also depends on the caller’s location, and therefore the architecture requires that the IP Access Network must provide the caller’s location to the VoIP operator before the call can be passed to the emergency services! This makes the LIS an essential component of the architecture, and therefore safety-critical, with all that this entails.

With EC and ETSI backing for this architecture it seems more likely than ever that ISPs and Access Network Providers will have to implement additional services within their networks to support emergency service calls, even though they are just “mere conduits” for those calls.

VoIP Week Posts:

Business internet phones voip voip hardware

The Conception and Birth of a New IP Handset

Post author By John Bennett
Post date Tuesday, 6 May, 2014
3 Comments on The Conception and Birth of a New IP Handset

Trefor.net welcomes John Bennett, Managing Director snom UK Ltd

There are five mainstream manufacturers of IP handsets active in the world today, and for the business client, service provider or reseller seeking to select a handset supplier it can be difficult to evaluate the differences amongst them. Price is an obvious criteria but that reveals little about the expected handset life, quality of voice and the durability or usability of the handset, all of which contributes to the user satisfaction and the lifetime cost of the handset. Two reliable options for evaluation are (1) references from existing users, and (2) a good look at the manufacturing process.

A reliable quality manufacturer will operate an in-house research and development team. Interoperability and the ability to work with a very broad range of PBX and hosted service providers on the market are absolutely key in the specification of IP handsets.

The design, development and manufacturing guidelines for IP handsets are quality, security, interoperability, a practical and aesthetically pleasing design, and inclusion of features that meet the needs of modern communications. Products must be stable, functional, efficient, durable, and must provide a quality in which customers can have confidence.

Defining the Designer Baby

The starting point for any new handset development is with the customer, customer feedback is key to understanding what is working, what is not, and what is needed, what is liked or disliked. It is particularly important to understand the end user experience both for handset use and from a deployment and manageability point of view. A good way to develop such understanding is to process and analyse any returns or repairs working in close collaboration with development and production teams. This has an immediate benefit for the customer as minor modifications can be quickly integrated into production. It is perhaps even more important in that a constant and systematic analysis of complaints and faults allows companies to produce reports and identify trends and issues, thus allowing for continuous product quality improvement and the development of new devices that meet customers’ requirements and deliver high levels of reliably in the long-term.

It is also important to track the changing technology trends to ensure that handsets meet tomorrow’s needs as well as today’s, and to take into account the need to easily adopt new technologies into the business. In today’s business world, key capabilities are remote provisioning, support for virtual private networks (VPN), CTI solutions and integration with Microsoft Lync.

Once the specification is agreed to the next stage is the prototype build followed by market testing. Manufacturers should maintain a close relationship with key end customers that allows for market testing of new handsets, to establish they are not only fit for purpose but that they provide customers with a solution that will excite and motivate them to continue to buy their product.

The standards of the tests to which a manufacturer will submit their products are another key indicator of handset quality. Manufacturers should have very strict criteria, and before approving a handset to move to full production the phone must successfully pass various drop tests and tests on the electrical interface. One characteristic that is of particularly importance is maintaining highest standards of audio quality, not just at first production but on-going as the handset will likely be exposed to heavy use for five years or more. Products should be regularly subjected to audio tests and careful measurements taken to determine and resolve audio deterioration.

Product Birth is only the Beginning

Once the prototype has been approved the manufacturing process goes ahead full steam. Material selection and build quality has an effect on both the audio quality and the durability of a telephone handset. Developers should continuously monitor the production process, and handsets should be spot tested to ensure that quality standards are met. During the production not only should the operational performance of the handset be monitored and tested, but also the entire response frequency of each phone. The smallest difference in build quality can adversely affect the phone quality, and this can involve anything from build impacting on the audio quality to introduction of a specialist coating that prevents the discoloration of handset keys and ensures the handset durability.

Regular analysis and systematic review of problems or complaints can ensure that product quality is maintained and improved to effectively meet user needs.

So what should you look for when evaluating IP hone handsets? I recommend you consider the need for in-house testing and fault evaluation and feedback, a process of continual improvement rather than a throw-and-replace approach, and a controlled and monitored manufacturing process, all of which will ensure a high quality and durable solution.

VoIP Week Posts:

End User events fun stuff gadgets google H/W internet mobile connectivity UC wearable

Band Camp Coincidences

Google Glass. Telephony. Synchronicity

At my age, you would think that I would be long past adolescent self-consciousness; that I wouldn’t feel awkward with the geeky way of thinking. A girl that I had a crush on back in the 2nd Grade said to me, “You talk funny. You talk like a scientist.”, referring to my vocabulary. At that age this wasn’t a compliment, nor was it really a criticism. It did not, though, bode well for any potential romantic entanglements.

On the way to the conference I find myself sitting next to two attractive, well dressed middle-age women, three abreast in the aisle seat. We start the long first leg of the flight with a little small talk. We are flying together from Dallas to Albuquerque, where they will leave the plane prior to its flying on to Seattle (my destination).

“What’s in Seattle?” they both ask.

I feel like I’m on my way to band camp. What do I say to them? I tell the truth.

“I’m going to speak at a conference on Content Management – a technology conference.”, I say.

“Oh. Technology stuff.”, from which they return to conversing among themselves for the remainder of the flight. It’s fine. I wanted time to think, anyway, to be quiet on the plane so that I could figure out what I am going to talk about at the conference. I booked the conference before deciding to leave my last corporate job. I opted to keep my commitment, though, and now I need to put my presentation in my own voice.

The plane is landing in Albuquerque. The small talk starts again, and it turns out that the two women also live in Austin. I hear them say something about two local radio hosts known as JB and Sandy. I ask a question regarding Sandy. They fill me in. It’s friendly, partly because we’re parting way in five minutes.

Nobody sits next to me on the Seattle leg of my flight, and I have time and space to think, to figure out a theme for my talk. I’m basically speaking on the lessons learned over the last year as a software team trying to buy the next generation of the solution instead of building the next generation of solution.

“Choosing a system is like a plane trip…”

“Choosing a system is like traveling through Mexico…”

Ugh.

Bad Stuff End User fun stuff media obsolescence travel

Two Hours and 55 Minutes

I have 39 versions of the song “April in Paris” in my digital music library. The earliest recording is an Artie Shaw track from 1940 and the most recent is by Wynton Marsalis from his 1987 “Standards, Volume One” release, with many seminal versions threading in-between, delivered by a staggering array of artists that range from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Nirvana (OK, that isn’t true…just checking wakefulness out there)…er, Blossom Dearie. Of course, considering “April in Paris”‘s status as a 20th Century classic and the size of my jazz collection, I shouldn’t be surprised that I have 39 versions of the song, and yet seeing them all before me on my monitor (the result of an iTunes search) is really just a couple of steps shy of astonishing.

If 14+ years ago someone had asked me when I first moved to Paris in 1999 (August — not April) “How many versions of “April in Paris” do you have in your music collection?”, I could not have answered the question with any kind of accuracy or authority. Not without taking hours to thumb through my 2000+ CDs with a notepad and pen at hand, anyway.

		I never knew the charm of spring I never met it face to face I never new my heart could sing I never missed a warm embrace

competitions Engineer engineering

Winner of most number of names for trousers competition

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 28 April, 2014
No Comments on Winner of most number of names for trousers competition

You will all remember the kecks are ready mega trousers competition where entrants had to find the most names for that article of clothing. Well we have a winner. Liz Fletcher reminded me of this at #UKNOF28 last week and I duly delivered her of her prize – a large glass of sauvignon blanc. Would have been cheaper had she been a beer drinker but hey, let’s not nit pick eh?

Congrats Liz. Look out for other terrific trefor.net prize competitions as they happen:)

Other trefor.net terrific prize comps:

Spot the IP Phone
Royal baby name competition winners
The trefor.net TGIF megamug prize with pens and tshirt competition

PS Notice the hearing aid coming out of Liz’ head – she should invest in something a little more discrete

Engineer engineering fun stuff

Hot Air Balloon lands on lawn at DeVere Wokingham Park #uknof28

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 26 April, 2014
No Comments on Hot Air Balloon lands on lawn at DeVere Wokingham Park #uknof28

Those of you who shot off straight after the UKNOF28 meeting missed a sight. It was a hot air balloon landing on the lawn of the hotel. V graceful. I dashed up to the 10th tee to take the vid so that you could share the experience. Good eh? 🙂

The Google Blinkers are Coming Off…

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Friday, 25 April, 2014
No Comments on The Google Blinkers are Coming Off…

Despite my overwhelming obsession with broadband campaigning (which has now consumed nearly two decades of my life) I do actually have a real job, one which was the actual cause of me getting involved in broadband in the first place. As one of the first Internet marketers in the world, back in 1995 I was having major problems delivering the services my clients wanted. Not only was I on dial up costing per call (roll on FRIACO), but I also regularly had computers blown up by power surges because of my rural location. and today, little has changed — my productivity is still minimal compared to my capabilities, purely due to the poor quality of my connectivity. I worry less about my connection, though, as the electricity problem has been reduced with surge protectors, UPS, etc., though, and I also no longer want to work every day and night!

Back in ’97, I think, I finally decided to move my site off GeoCities and all the other freebie sites I had created a presence on, and instead get a domain and a single point of presence. One of the discussions in the industry at the time was the importance of having keywords in your domain name. Having had a quite a few clients by that point, though, I already realised that relying on search engines to generate traffic was not the be-all-and-end-all of Internet marketing, and I hated with a vengeance the term “Search engine optimist” and all variants thereof. In fact, just that TLA on its own could set me off. SEO? Pah, don’t you know about webrings, or fora, or bulletin boards, or IRC, or who you can find on ICQ, or how good some of the niche directories are, or.. or…or…

Google, when I began, wasn’t even a gleam in a garage, and there were multiple engines with different ranking algorithms and rules you had to try to satisfy to get decent listings across the many engines to get traffic. I registered WebPR, as I felt that it was all about being open with the public and building relationships. I’m still very happy with my domain, though I no longer use it to get work. (In fact, it is deliberately set up at present to avoid that pain!)

Tags google, internet marketing, seo

broadband Engineer engineering piracy

Broadband traffic management – a thing of the past? #UKNOF28

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 25 April, 2014
5 Comments on Broadband traffic management – a thing of the past? #UKNOF28

Broadband traffic management, once an essential tool in an ISPs toolkit is beinsed less and less as the cost of bandwidth decreases.

Broadband traffic management seems to have been ditched some time ago by the big ISPs. I may be behind the times here. Had a conversation with a couple of senior tech guys at major UK ISPs who told me they had dropped traffic management up to two years ago.

Traffic management at an ISP is basically where the network employs Deep Packet Inspection kit to examine the type of traffic. Bandwidth hogging protocols such as P2P would be throttled at peak times. They did this to save on costs and to improve the experience for other users. A peer to peer protocol will use all the available bandwidth on a broadband line. It only takes a few users to clog up the backhaul of an ISP.

When DPI was originally deployed P2P traffic represented up to 65% of network traffic. DPI equipment was expensive, didn’t scale well and at the higher end of ISP size never provided a return on investment.

Now with the DPI kit switched off the “problem” P2P traffic remains at the same level in real terms but now represents only 4% of total traffic, the majority being video services such as Netflix and YouTube (I assume). One ISP told me that when they switched off traffic management they saw a little blip in traffic volume but it was negligible in the great scheme of things.

This is quite interesting when considered in relation to the “piracy” debate. Although copyright infringing downloads may well be at the same level of a few years ago is it valid to say that people are increasingly resorting to the use of legal/paid for services instead? If so it makes the whole Digital Economy Act farce even more farcial.

Loads of DEAct related posts here if you want to take a look.

H/W internet

Internet Connectivity at DeVere Wokingham Park #UKNOF28 ISDN2

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 24 April, 2014
1 Comment on Internet Connectivity at DeVere Wokingham Park #UKNOF28 ISDN2

I know I posted earlier in praise of the WiFI connectivity at the DeVere Wokingham Park. Thought I’d show you the kit they threw out before we got here¹. Presumably worried about what we might say. 384kbps wouldn’t have cut the mustard really would it?

¹ I’m not saying how long before we got here 🙂

Engineer engineering google

Ever wondered what the translation for Huawei is? #UKNOF28

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 24 April, 2014
2 Comments on Ever wondered what the translation for Huawei is? #UKNOF28

Huawei is the main sponsor for UKNOF28 in Reading. These are great meetings and couldn’t happen without the support of equipment suppliers to the community.

So at the lunch break we were discussing the Huawei presentation and I wondered what the word Huawei actually meant. Did it have a literal translation?

In a flash I whipped out my trusty droid and clicked on my Google Translate app.

The photos on the right show the process. I typed in “Huawei” and asked Google to translate it from Chinese into English.

Google, being the perceptive creature that it is asked me if I meant 华为 instead?

I suppose I must have meant 华为 so I clicked on it and hey presto Google gave me the answer.

I can definitively (ish) tell you that the translation for Huawei (华为) is, Huawei.

There you go. All part of the trefor.net service.

You heard it first on trefor.net (etc)

Nominet precautions for Nuclear attack on .uk #uknof28

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 24 April, 2014
No Comments on Nominet precautions for Nuclear attack on .uk #uknof28

Just heard a nice talk by Brett Carr on Nominet’s transformation of its infrastructure. For the lay people amongst you Nominet is the organisation that runs the .uk suffix. All domains ending in .uk. eg trefor.co.uk were I to be the owner, which I’m not because Trefor happens to be a small town in Wales and all place names went very early on in the domain name land grab.

.uk is considered to be a strategic resource for the United Kingdom. The wellbeing of our country depends on it – commerce etc. Nominet therefore has to be run very professionally. Whilst being a not for profit organisation Nominet is well known in the industry for being cash rich and in all fairness donates a lot of its surplus to charity through the Nominet Foundation.

The availability of cash also allows Nominet to use enterprise grade systems in its internal infrastructure. This is different to most of the internet which is run on open source software which by definition is free apart from the cost of support which tends to be managed using internal resources. Nominet’s use of Enterprise grade software is consistent with the strategic nature of its remit.

What is interesting is the extent to which Nominet goes to maintain uptime of its infrastructure. It has two data centres in the UK linked by resilient and diverse 10Gbps connections. Most servers are virtualized using VMware. A problem with one and the system fails over to the other. Problematic resources can be rebuilt very quickly. This is all standard stuff.

The interesting bit is the third data centre in Geneva. In the event of a catastrophic event happening to the UK, and not just to one of the UK data centres, the Geneva DC will continue to work supporting at least some of the .uk functions. We are talking nuclear strike type scenarios here. Data on the infrastructure design and how to rebuild the service is kept in a locked safe “somewhere in the UK” for later recovery.

This did raise a number of questions. If the UK has been hit by nuclear attack who will be left to rebuild the infrastructure? Will anyone care at that point? Where do you buy a nuclear bomb proof safe? The answer to the latter is apparently that there are four nuclear proof locations in the UK. Presumably the safe would be kept there. I dunno.

This post is beginning to drift here but as a kid we lived in the Isle of Man. My dad was the Director of Education there and as such he was guaranteed a place in the IoM government nuclear shelter. The cold war was still going strong during the seventies. Dad told them where they could shove their nuclear shelter. Why would he want to be “safe” inside with his family dying on the outside.

That hopefully is a threat of the past¹. Nuclear bunkers seem to be used as secure data centres nowadays. It is at least good to know that in the event of a nuclear attack your .uk domain name will still work. You now just need to make sure your website is dual homed so that you have something for your domain to point at when the balloon goes up. I recommend Geneva.

UKNOF 28 wifi at DeVere Wokefield Park

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 24 April, 2014
No Comments on UKNOF 28 wifi at DeVere Wokefield Park

At the DeVere Hotel, Wokefield Park, Reading for UKNOF28 (Google it). The hotel is huge. This does cause a problem. My room is in the Mansion House which is a good half hour walk¹ from the Executive Centre where the meeting is being held.

There has been a slight kerfuffle before the meeting starts as the UKNOF WiFi kit wasn’t exactly late arriving but certainly making the organisers a little nervous. Meetings such as UKNOF, LINX et al need to bring their own kit because that provided but hotels and conference centres is only designed to be used by “normal” people. ie not internet geeks and techies (it would be worth aggregating the home broadband bandwidth use of this community to see how it compares with the average).

You will be pleased to know the kit is now here and an announcement has been made alerting us to a short break in service whilst wires are switched over.

The object of this post however is to praise the WiFi service offered by the DeVere. It has worked brilliantly everywhere in the hotel. I used my mobile VoIP client last night because there is absolutely no mobile signal here. The bandwidth wasn’t perfect for VoIP but I imagine 7pm is pretty much peak time for hotel internet usage as folk get to their rooms, check email etc.

The lack of mobile coverage is an interesting situation for a venue that is filled with suits at corporate offsite meetings. Every open door you pass has a meeting table with overhead projector and people sat around doing stuff. Yesterday the Mansion House bar was filled with besuited-open-necked-shirted-enthusiastic salesmen clutching bottles of champagne awarded to this month’s top performers (etc). Filled me with dread.

As I walked to check out the conference venue yesterday afternoon there was even a bloke sat on his own around some “team building” equipment laid out on the lawn. He was waiting for the punters to turn up. Some time later it was absolutely chucking it down and I saw him packing up the stuff. Presumably his clients had abandoned that part of their offsite meeting and adjourned to the bar. Rain needn’t stop play – just changes the game 🙂

So well done DeVere on your WiFi. The screenshot in the header is the speed I’m getting inside the conference room. Presumably everyone else is now using the UKNOF kit.

More from UKNOF28 as it happens. Read it first on trefor.net 🙂

¹ Ok I’ll admit to a slight exaggeration here but it is a long way.

broadband Business

Broadband funding

B4RN broadband BT rural broadband reinvestment B4RN business model broadband vision

Broadband funding for rural broadband projects is not working that well says Lindsey Annison.

Recently, I was part of a very interesting discussion on TechQT about funding broadband, particularly for areas where there has been (or where it is perceived that there will be) a level of failure in the superfast roll-out.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGptEl6_D0]

Whilst many will argue that both the commercial deployment and that associated with the BDUK funding are still ‘in progress’ (and, hence, this discussion could be deemed to be premature), it is already becoming clear that there will be a shortfall not only in coverage percentages and the tech being used (FTTC or worse, instead of full-blown, full-fat FTTH or FTTP), but also in availability even where the area has been deemed covered.

What will people do in areas where the superfast solution is not being deployed? Or in areas where FTTC simply will not technically work? Or in areas which appear to have been forgotten or ignored?

Tags funding

End User fun stuff internet

Reality is a concrete slab off eBay

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 21 April, 2014
No Comments on Reality is a concrete slab off eBay

I ordered some concrete slabs off the internet. Bought them on eBay actually. 21 off 600 x 600mm for £57. Had I bought them from a shed they would have been something like £120. They are going to form the base for the playhouse that I’m converting into a shed. We are using the patio where the playhouse currently stands as the new basketball court. As it happens the slabs came from under a deck so it would seem that they are eminently suitable for their new purpose.

I collected them from somewhere in Lincoln. Before setting off I looked up the address on Google Maps and even saw the house on Streetview. V useful. When I got there I had to reverse down a very narrow drive and in the end was only able to shift half of them. They are so heavy I didn’t want to risk knackering the Jeep’s suspension. Going to have to go back and get the others another time.

It seems strange in a world where we live a “virtual” life on the internet that there are actually solid items such as these concrete slabs that intrude on our everyday existence. It’s called reality. I looked it up on Wikipedia: “the state of things as they actually exist rather than as they appear or are imagined”.

Concrete slabs apart we shouldn’t forget that reality is generally much better than the virtual world. It’s a perfect spring day out there – get out and enjoy it:)

End User media travel

Parking Mad

In a moment of bonding with Kid4 we decided to watch some TV together. Unfortunately there was absolutely nowt on the box. We settled on a programme called Parking Mad.

This has to be extreme desperation in TV programming. We wouldn’t have had the problem when there was only BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. In those days we settled for just having to watch repeats rather than total non-programmes. In fact I still like watching the same repeats these days – Dad’s Army for example.

There is an element of local interest in Parking Mad – some of it is filmed in Lincoln. There’s a bit where the mayor is seen cutting a ribbon around a ticket machine in a new car park. Rent a mayor. A mayor will turn up anywhere there is a bit of ribbon, scissors and a camera. It forms part of their balanced scorecard. KPIs. How many ribbons have been cut in any given month.

The role of mayor is very competitive. Each mayor is measured against his predecessors. How many schools visited, care homes etc. They put a premium on car parks – it’s not often you get a new one opening. Some years you don’t have a single new car park and I can tell you the mayor that year feels really hard done by.

I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong message about Lincoln. It is quite a good place to live really. There’s more to it than car parks though we do of course have our fair share. When we bought our first house it was on Greetwell Gate next to a free car park. As soon as we moved in it changed to a Pay and Display! Swines.

We used to park on the road in front of the house anyway. These was usually never a problem with this because after we had driven off to work other cars belonging to people working in town would arrive and take our spots. The same thing happened in reverse every evening so we always got the same spot right outside the house.

The one time of year we had a problem was during the Lincoln Christmas Market. All weekend visitors would cruise around looking for a free spot trying to avoid paying. Tight gits. We got to the point of arriving home from work on a Friday and just leaving the cars parked for the whole weekend. Christmas Market weekend is quite boozy anyway so a car is of no use.

We began to have guests coming to stay for the weekend to see the market. On these occasions on the Friday night we would park our own cars really inefficiently so that there wasn’t quite enough space between them to park another. It was fun watching motorists pull up along side the gap and curse the fact that we had parked badly thus depriving them of their spot. When our guests turned up I’d nip out and reverse my car just enough to make room for them to slot in. Saw ted.

Come to Lincoln. We have some nice parks and some good pubs and a mayor who likes to cut ribbons. There’s a lovely cathedral too. You should visit.

Future Broadband Planning Requirements

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Thursday, 17 April, 2014
12 Comments on Future Broadband Planning Requirements

It seems to be one of those weeks where UK broadband stories are coming thick and fast. Not only that, but more and more people are pitching in with considered opinions on stories and, in fact, the comments are beginning to make for far more valuable reading than the original articles! And perhaps that could be the case here too. 😉

I want to follow up today on two stories that have broken this week on new build and broadband.

The first story was on ThinkBroadband, regarding a new build housing estate in West Yorkshire and broadband availability for the new homeowners in Calderdale. ThinkBroadband believes that this new estate will have a reasonably good chance of achieving that oh-so-elusive “superfast” connectivity from cab 106 — approx 93% chance of greater than 30Mbps. (Bear in mind that this is only in reference to download, so anyone looking for a reasonable upload should hold their horses before buying!)

The ThinkBroadband article makes the point that though this is not a rural cab it has been funded by BDUK, which if you recall was for the Final Third and rural properties, so questions probably ought to be asked as to why taxpayer money is being used to fund what should have fallen into BT’s commercial rollout in Halifax.

Oh look, in the comments! Questions *are* being asked!

John Popham notes:

This is all good news for the people who live in this area, but….. this is a relatively new housing development built well beyond the point when most of society realised that broadband was an essential component of life. And now, the taxpayer is having to subsidise their connections. This does not make any sense at all.

Can it be that difficult to put planning conditions into new developments that they must make provision for fibre-to-the-premises connections? From the developers’ viewpoint it would help the properties to sell.

Popham makes an extremely valid point that should be raised over and over again. Why have planning agencies, housing developers, and the government not yet cottoned on to the importance of building homes that are broadband enabled? Isn’t that like building houses that from the moment the architect gets involved are not legislated to be environmentally friendly, cheaper to heat, with a reduced carbon footprint and so on? Ah….no, we have not yet mastered that either.

So whereby countries other than the UK can 3D print a whole house out of recycled materials for less than £1500 in a couple of hours, we have not yet quite gotten around to enforcing environmental standards on new build, let alone tech requirements?

Tags broadband, Butchers Arms, community pub, Crosby Ravensworth, Cumbria, FTTH, housing, new build, planning authorities, village pump, West Yorkshire

broadband Business

Memorable Gigabit Broadband Day

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Wednesday, 16 April, 2014
6 Comments on Memorable Gigabit Broadband Day

Gigabit broadband makes for memorable day

What with all the kerfuffle over poor broadband in the UK (read: BDUK, BT’s superfarce rollout…and possibly superfalse advertising, too?), it was quite nice to wake up yesterday to good news from the fibre broadband world. There have been far too few of these days over the years, as in actuality the believed-to-be good news is normally followed by reneging, backward shuffling, failure to deliver, etc. I am more than just cautiously hopeful this time, though.

Interestingly, towards the end of a week of TechQT shows on the broadband subject last week (which culminated on Friday eve with Prof Peter Cochrane), after the Thursday show (the one with our international colleagues) I raised a question on Twitter regarding investment:

Despite the missing hyphen, I am sure you get the drift. Not that I am by nature an impatient person (I am!), but after 18 years of battling for decent, affordable, ubiquitous (preferably full-fat fibre and FiWi) broadband for all across Britain, sometimes I find it all very frustrating. Investors as a whole seem to believe the hype that Broadband Britain actually exists, or at least that it will one day soon(ish), hence job done. Clearly, though, the job is not done and — much to Britain’s detriment — nothing close to what is required on a national basis yet exists.

Obviously, communities have been trying to resolve the gigabit broadband issue for quite some time, and there are start-ups that are rolling their sleeves up too (e.g., Gigaclear, Hyperoptic). It seems, though, that large corporations have also become bored of waiting for gigabit Britain to occur. Go York. (The last time I spoke to CityFibre it was with regard to using their York Core to reach outside York to offer community project backhaul in the rural areas, so perhaps someone who lives in North Yorkshire should now pick that discussion back up?) Also, there are rumours that Virgin is on the verge of announcing a rural expansion of its network as well. All of this should, of course, please the bods in Westminster and Whitehall no end, as they are always ranting on about how vital competition in Telecoms is, although in reality their support for such an end has been difficult to clarify.

Engineer ipv6

The barcode tattoo

First day in the office for over a week and on the way in had to wait at the railway level crossing because the barriers were down. A bloke stood in front of me had what appeared to be a barcode tattooed on the back of his neck, just below the hairline.

I wanted to take a photo or maybe have a go at scanning the barcode but I didn’t think this was a sensible thing to do with someone who was capable of having his neck tattooed in this way. Especially with 60 or so people stood around waiting.

Still, it leaves me wondering what the barcode format used was and what it said. I guess he probably thought it might come in handy in the event of him being rendered unconscious through of overconsumption of snakebite or special brew. A passer by need only scan his neck and tell the taxi driver where to take him. We shall probably never know:)

PS In future it would make more sense for everyone to have their own ipv6 address/subnet and have that tattooed somewhere discretely. Far more useful.

End User gadgets H/W internet media Mobile mobile apps phones

Gaining Focus

As readers of last week’s Conscious Uncoupling already know, I am making moves to unhitch myself from my iPhone 4 of the past 3 years and start anew at some point in the near future with an Android KitKat device. And as I am always looking to put the latest tech into my hands when the time comes to upgrade (or as my Apple-inebriated friends would likely put it in this case, “mistakenly change”), I have been looking quite fervently at both the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S5, both of which have just recenlty seen release and both of which are racking up impressively high numbers with regard to NRP (Number of Reviews Published…my statistic, my acronym, and no amount of search engine pounding will turn it up).

Two weeks ago (week of 31-March) HTC brought their blitz of HTC One M8 promotion to a crescendo that rolled over and straight through the technologically inclined and/or curious, and which resulted in a quantity of review inches more than adequate enough to ensure informed options would set in time to counter the Samsung Galaxy S5 wave that followed last week (week of 7-April). Now, of course, I cannot and will not make such an important relationship decision without first establishing a level playing field upon which I can hinge it, so I have resolved to wait a few weeks…a couple of weeks…at least a week to let all of the new information foster (fester?) within.^*

So all of those reviews. Essentially, they boil down pretty straight across party lines (yes, that is a telephony joke…a groaner of a telephony joke but a telephony joke nonetheless).

HTC One M8
	Pros:	Gorgeous build and design (actually it is more accurate to go All-Caps on GORGEOUS, as this is the overwhelming first-notice feature cited in every one of the product reviews I have read or skimmed or found myself subjected to). The expected high level of display, speed, and functionality. GREAT speakers! “Motion Launch”, which allows the user to perform specific commands with the display off via tap, swipe, or gesture. Better than expected battery life (and a power-saving mode that can be configured to set energy amount parameters).
	Cons:	Lousy camera. Just awful. Won’t anyone say something nice about the camera? Or, at least, not be so enthusiastic in dinging it?

Samsung Galaxy S5
	Pros:	Waterproof! Yup, the Galaxy S5 is waterproof, up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter. Terrific screen, camera kudos all around, noticeably great battery life (and the battery can be swapped out as needed, too), storage expandability up to 128GB, health features (a heart rate monitor as part of the on-board hardware won’t keep me from drinking a single Cola-Cola or eating a single chip) significant reduction in the amount of Samsung TouchWiz bloatware from its S4 predecessor, speed and functionality to beat the band, and light.
	Cons:	Perhaps TOO light, as every reviewer critisizes the S5’s “cheap” feel (at least in comparison to the heavy and shiny smartphones in the arena, all of which suffer phone reception for their metal-enwrapped goodness), the fingerprint scanner is not as smooth as Apple’s Rolls-Royce-aspiring iPhone 5S, and though the TouchWiz bloatware is less than it was on the S4 it is still a proverbial fish-in-a-barrel target for criticism.

So pushing cost/plan out of the equation, I find I am leaning hard towards the Samsung Galaxy S5. I cannot say that I have spent much time wishing I could use my phone in the sea, pool, or shower (and I haven’t found my phone doing a toilet tumble since the days of the Nokia 3310), but what I can say is that I cannot imagine spending ANY time with a smartphone that is camera-lacking. The (at the time) industry-leading camera is what put me in my iPhone 4 back in 2011 to begin with, and as criteria go that function is even more of a decision-maker for me in 2014.

Get the picture?

^*Yes, there are tens of other KitKat-able phones that warrant consideration along with thes two new goliaths now stomping around, however I did lead with my propensity for grabbing up the latest tech and it doesn’t come any “latest” than the new flagship products from HTC and Samsung. Of course, the fact is that “With Great Popularity Comes Not Only Great Punditry But Great Amounts of Shared Opinion and Technical Insight.” (humblest apologies to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both of whom are thankfully still with us as of this writing), so there is that, too.

broadband Business

Easter is a coming

Broadband data usage revenues for ISPs affected by Bank Holidays

Easter is a coming and the goose is getting fat. Don’t know why I said that. I’m not aware that goose is a fowl traditionally served¹ at Easter. Very rarely served at all in our house anyway because you don’t get much meat on one and there are six of us when the full team is assembled. Also it’s a bit of a faff cooking a goose although the goose fat by product is very useful for doing roast potatoes on subsequent Sundays (we rarely have roast potatoes on any other day).

In the service provision game holidays such as Easter are a real nuisance, especially if you are in B2B. Monthly revenues are directly related to the number of days in a month so a month where two days are wiped out by bank holidays and the high likelihood that people use annual leave to take the rest of the week off, revenues are normally down a little.

This is more relevant to services that are billed on a usage basis – fixed and mobile calls. Broadband tends to be a flat rate bundle although towards the end of a month when users are hitting their limits they can “break out” of their bundle and thus incur juicy excess data charges. Same is true for mobile bandwidth and minutes.

I’m particularly paranoid about mobile data as excess charges can be quite steep. It would be interesting to see how much data was used on my mam and dad’s broadband last week with 6 additional heavy users compared with the light surfing the line is normally exposed to. At least they are on an unlimited package (for £30). I’d guess that ordinarily Manx Telecom come out ahead on that one.

Had a go at fixing dad’s router whilst I was there. WiFi connectivity is a bit dodgy. Did a firmware upgrade and tried a couple or three different channels. Concluded the wifi card was on its way out so called Manx Telecom and dad is going to go into their shop in the week to get a new one. Will have to sign up for another 18 months but he ain’t going anywhere and doesn’t need the upgrade to FTTC for an extra six quid.

So the Communications Service Provider goose does not get fat at Easter although funnily enough not as not so fat as at Christmas which is when it is traditionally served.

PS I didn’t have a pic of a goose to hand so I’ve used a rib of beef instead 🙂

¹ Don’t forget that whilst revenge is a dish best served cold this is not the case for goose which should be hot with some nice stuffing and gravy.

Tags bundle, charges, excess

broadband End User ofcom

Fit Broadband Policy

Is broadband fit for purpose, writes Lindsey Annison

Some years ago a few of us touted the notion that broadband could become an election issue on the next hustings. And it sort of did, although not to the extent that many of us at grassroots without a connection would have liked. It triggered some hastily written speeches for Party Conferences, though, and some grandiose promises which of course have never been implemented.

As we run up to the next election (<groan> Have the last lot even achieved anything yet?!), perhaps it is time to bite the bullet and consider some of the aspects of broadband that seriously need to be taken on board by those campaigning on the hustings, and also by those who have desks in Whitehall and Westminster, etc. (Could it be they all work from home these days? Doubtful, but it’d be nice to think that at least a few know the difficulties of teleworking in modern day Britain.)

Philip Virgo’s rather canny A Confucian view of UK broadband, spectrum and cybersecurity can be found on his Computer Weekly blog this week, and as we can but hope that the powers-that-be can actually find a free moment to read I would like to expound a little on the piece’s first section, to start educating our potential candidates for those doorstep meetings they shall soon be starting. Last week at TechQT the three considerations Virgo mentions were covered — transmission, capacity and protection — and Martin Geddes finally nailed it (in his inimitable style) to being a simple question that any person can ask and answer: Is my broadband fit for purpose?

Even the most non-techie person can assess whether or not the connection that they are paying for (or are using for free in a hotspot) is FIT FOR PURPOSE. It either works to do what you are endeavoring to, or it doesn’t. Simples.

Waiving wayleaves may seem like a simple solution to one problem, and the arguments given by Philip Virgo’s Confucius contributor covers some of the reasons why this is so. However, it goes beyond wayleaves to my old bugbear, fibre tax. We have made it nearly impossible for new entrants to enter a level playing field should they wish to play the fibre game. Aidan Pauls’ slide show on the UK VOA fibre tax illustrates just how problematic the issue is, and though it may be from 2010, sadly nothing notable has changed since 2000.

As a regulator, Ofcom is over-populated with ex-Telco employees and is toothless. Well, not so much toothless, but it is as if they are putting their dentures back in after a night’s sleep whenever circumstances require they react to current events of the day/week/month or year in a timely fashion. And that needs to change, and fast, if Britain is to catch up with other nations. Plenty of information is out there regarding developments, lessons learnt, what has been tried and tested, etc., so maybe the Ofcom guys and gals just need to get out more?!

Listen to the voters! Too often our candidates fail to do enough of this simple and essential task, and thus many of those who will be walking the pavements with their pretty rosettes are not sufficiently well-informed. And because they are not well-informed they assume that the constituents are in a similar boat, which is simply not the case. At the very least, the average householder can answer the Is my broadband fit for purpose? question. Enough “No.” responses, offered hand-in-hand with the odd constituent who pipes up to tell a prospective parliamentary candidate exactly how and why this is causing problems with life/work/play, and the message just might make its way back to the Houses in #thatlondon.

Can but hope. Toodlepip till next time.

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Tags broadband, policy

broadband Business internet

FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Thursday, 10 April, 2014
1 Comment on FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

Superfast broadband FTTP is said to be uneconomic for rural areas but Telenor thinks otherwise

We hear all the time that rural FTTH (Fibre to the home, or FTTP – Fibre to the premises) is unviable. The reality, though, is that it is only unviable when we view it purely from the deploying Telco point of view AND we understand that infrastructure providers are no longer the holders of patient money (many thanks to Ben Verwaayen for this term). And while this argument has slowed Britain down for a decade (blame the Analysys Mason report that looked at the costs and ROI only from a Telco POV and not from the standpoint of every Brit, council, business, industry, sector, and ROI in social capital, etc., etc.), the lack of such thinking continues to allow other nations to leapfrog the UK in digital development.

A case in point is last week’s news regarding the small, remote, and isolated near-North Pole community of Bjørndalen, where Telenor has helped to bring fibre to 43 early adopters (even I know Bjorn means ‘bear’, a good indicator of the usual passing traffic). The treatment of this tiny peninsula in the Svalbard Archipelago by Telenor as a miniature version of mainland Norway indicates that they consider it an ideal testbed, giving the Telco an opportunity to “scrap older technologies like copper, coaxial cable and older generation mobile networks”.

Other such testbeds could be rolled out in similar places in other countries, and in particular the UK, though Britain seems to be getting lost in defending the obsolete tech (otherwise known as “sweating the asset”) rather than focusing on resolving the key problem of setting up rural areas for the future. For instance, who could have known that champagne tourism would become a factor in Svalbard, and that even in a global economic crisis access to decent connectivity could have a positive effect on that new and thriving industry?

broadband End User

ADSL upload speeds – ugh

ADSL upload speeds at parents house make me appreciate how good my own superfast broadband is.

At home I get about 7Mbps upload and on a reasonable day 35Mbps down. In the office on the ja.net we can on occasion get 100Mbps symmetrical. Yeeeeooooowwwwnnnggggg. That is good.

At my parents in the Isle of Man the much slower ADSL upload speed is really noticeable. Improved upload speeds are the one game changer that FTTC or superfast broadband has brought. In our media dominated world where ad hoc videos and pictures of interesting sights that we think “oo I’ll take a photo of that” and never look at it again though it is taking up storage space at more than one location, having good upload bandwidth is v important.

I feel somewhat awkward complaining about an ADSL connection where many people don’t even have that. In a world where broadband has become another utility ADSL seems almost like having a gas or electricity supply that only comes on at certain times of the day. Or it’s like having to always cook using a slow cooker. It’s something you have to plan around.

Added 06/07/2014: Now that I have kids living away from home the upload speeds they have for their own broadband connections are very noticeable. Kid3 at Uni in Durham always shows up quite pixelated whereas I’m sure that my own upload stream will result in a good clear image of me

BBC website down – Error 500 – Internal Error

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 7 April, 2014
1 Comment on BBC website down – Error 500 – Internal Error

BBC website down

It ain’t often you can’t reach the BBC. They have 700Gbps of connectivity¹ to their servers. As one of the world’s foremost media organisations their website will rank as the most robust going.

It comes as a mild surprise therefore to see the error message on the screen in front of me -“Error 500 – Internal Error”. Is the BBC website down? The little clown icon is quite cool and totally in keeping with the creative nature of the BBC. You can almost hear the clown laugh as if this is some macabre late night feature. The audience is spellbound, silently gripping their seats.

The hiccup was over in a moment. It’s one of those glimpses of an event in life that you think back on and wonder if it really happened except that here I have the screenshot.

It isn’t as big deal but my curiosity is aroused and I think to myself it would be quite nice nice to understand what actually happened. What architecture does the BBC use for its website and what caused the error message? It’s one of those things that in real life is not worth wasting time drilling down to a root cause. Still if anyone can chip in it would be nice:)

Note added 20th July. I’m guessing this happened again yesterday as there was a huge spike of visitors to this site with people reading this post around 11am.

Net Neutrality update

Regular readers will remember my piece for Trefor.Net last September, where I defined what the average VoIP telco wants from an open internet. I know this article had a readership of at least one, because I saw someone brandishing a print out in Ofcom. Yay me!

Anyway, things have moved on. We had Ed Richards, Ofcom’s CEO, saying they weren’t “waiting for Europe” when Philip Davies MP pressed him on the issue at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last year (for which Philip earned a nomination as ITSPA’s Members’ Pick at the 2014 Awards) – but Europe aren’t waiting for them earlier.

Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of the so-called “telecoms package” which includes, amongst proposals regarding a Single Market I have previously slated here and the abolition of roaming fees (which I shall slate below), proposals on Net Neutrality. Before we get too excited, this was only the first reading. The College of Commissioners is about to be disolved, along with the European Parliament for elections and who knows what political landscape will be returned to Brussels in May. It’s not likely to receive much more Parliamentary time until the end of the year now at the earliest, which makes their December 2015 implementation date seem optimistic.

The European Union’s proposals mirror, largely, what ITSPA and the VoIP community would accept (in my view) as a legislative intervention. ISPs cans till offer specialised services to protect business critical applications, or prioritise video on demand, but would not be able to do so to “the detriment of the availability or quality of internet access services” offered to other companies or service suppliers, except for traffic management measures which are “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate” and “not maintained longer than needed” to protect the integrity of a network.

This is a good step, but I for one, along with ITSPA colleagues and others aren’t waiting for Europe like Ofcom – watch this space for a progress report soon!

Abolition of Roaming Charges

The European logic is rather federalist; it says you should be able to use your phone for the same rates anywhere in Europe for the same price as at home. Aside from the age old rule (which also applies in next generation telecoms – distance is still a factor in signal regeneration, rateable value of fibre etc) that the further a call is conveyed the more it costs, it is wholly illogical to be able to call next door with your mobile for the same rate as calling it from Lithuania, you cannot ignore the basket effect. 26% of socioeconomic group D and E households are mobile only. The reduction of roaming profits to mobile operators leads, in part or in whole, to a waterbedding…. (I almost wrote waterboarding, as that’s what it feels like to deal with a mobile operator’s customer services sometimes)… other products and services will increase in price to compensate for the foregone margin.

So, in short, one consequence of the EU’s proposal is that those that cannot afford to go on holiday in Europe, or those businesses that don’t trade in person in Europe, shall subsidise those that do. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

Google+ Peter Farmer

Tags EU, net neutrality, open internet

broadband End User internet net neutrality

My Bandwidth is Precious (GET OFF IT!) — or — Autoplay Angst

Post author By Lindsey Annison
Post date Thursday, 3 April, 2014
11 Comments on My Bandwidth is Precious (GET OFF IT!) — or — Autoplay Angst

Bandwidth usage of streaming video from in page ads uses up data bundle for those people with low data caps on their service – such as satellite based broadband

Oh joy. I keep falling over sites that autoplay videos, and some — I’m looking at you, Facebook — do not appear to have a simple option to switch off this, er..uh, ‘option’. Ignoring some of the real basics are the spurious claims that our bandwidth is being protected with such tricks as video ceasing to play when the screen is scrolled down, or “it only works when you are connected to wifi”.

First, the video by playing has already consumed some of my precious bandwidth. You can’t just mine these bits at home, you know; data bits are a commodity that have to be bought and paid for. I will press the Play button if I want a video to play, otherwise autoplay is actually forcing me to (a) view something I probably don’t want to view, and (b) causing me to pay for the privilege of viewing that something I don’t want to view, which is on the whole, utter dross. And it is usually advertising dross at that, funded by “someone” to reach an unwilling and hence unresponsive audience. You, oh advertiser, may have money to chuck down the proverbial drain, but many of us out here who are paying to receive your video message do not!

Second, what on earth has a wifi connection got to do with it all? Apart from moving the video dross onto a marginally cheaper option than mobile (i.e., by using my fibre, cable or landline-based broadband tariff instead), someone still needs to pay for the bits received. And for those on satellite dishes it makes no difference how video is configured to play, the consumer is going to be extremely cross to find their monthly data allowance munched through regardless of the pain this can cause to the unwillingly disconnected.

Tags autoplay, bandwidth, theft, video

End User food and drink internet

Ace internet access at Alexanders

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 2 April, 2014
1 Comment on Ace internet access at Alexanders

Sat in Alexanders coffeeshop/bar/restaurant whilst kid2 has a hairdo. Alexanders has wifi, fair play. The wifi is giving me 34Megs down and nearly 9Megs up, very fair play.

This shouldn’t be news in this day and age but getting those kinds of speeds is still a delight. It’s made even better by the fact that everyone else in the gaff are of the ladies with idle moments out shopping variety. They are chatting using the old analogue mouth and ears method rather than the in vogue “talk to the person sat next to you via IM”. The upshot is that I have all the bandwidth to myself. Salright innit:)

The last time I sat in a caff with wifi¹ was at the Harbour Lights in Peel in the Isle of Man. We follow each other on twitter (@harbour_lights). I tweeted how good it was and to my surprise the waitress came over and told me the tea and crumpets were on the house. Read that blog here.

Alexanders also has a twitter account @Alexanderscafe but they haven’t used it for yonks so I doubt the same ploy would work again. It wasn’t deliberately planned the first time anyway 🙂 Doesn’t matter. I’m happy to pay for my cuppa. The atmosphere is nice and it’s a good place to hang out whilst a hairdo is being done.

BBC drop-in

In at Radio1 the other day, as you do. It’s where all the kids hang out. Not a sign of a suit or tie. It’s on the top floor of Broadcasting House. There’s a helluva view down the middle of the building.

That’s the newsroom at the bottom there. You see those desks through the glass windows behind newsreaders. The newsroom has to be at the bottom because the news is always so heavy. They should have a separate edition where only good news was read out. Life is short…

At Radio1 they have a bit of a display highlighting their good bits. I went round it the wrong way so it didn’t quite flow as perhaps it should have. Ah well.

Whilst I was there I had lunch at the BBC canteen. Gammon, chips and veg with gravy. The mustard dispenser had nearly run out so I had to shake it upside down quite a bit to get the last bit. I didn’t bother letting them know although I should have. Someone else will have done it after me. You can’t have gammon without mustard can you? Also had a bottle of sparkling water. Fwiw.

The reception area wasn’t how I imagined it to be. In my mind it was a small space with a settee and an uniformed porter looking me up and down asking who I was there to see.

Instead it was a large reception area with many settees and lots of people milling round. Lots of programming hours to fill need lots of people. Innit? Can’t keep using the same ones in different shows can you even if they do use wigs and lots of make up? It’s a problem of their own creation. Had they kept the test card they would have had fewer hours to fill and there are enough repeats is it is. As far as I know.

The people in reception looked normal enough. Nobody in fancy dress. Maybe they didn’t get changed into their outfits until they got to their dressing rooms. Obvious really.

I don’t listen to Radio1 meself btw. It’s gone downhill since my day. They’ve moved all the good stuff onto Radio2 for some reason:).

Didn’t spot any celebs. Expect they were all in the green room guzzling back the gin and champagne. It’s also a problem that I probably wouldn’t recognise many celebs anyway. Not my problem. Love.

Had I seen a celeb I wouldn’t have a picture to show you. That wouldn’t have been cool. I leave that sort of thing to the Japanese and American tourists who not being from round ‘ere may not have recognised them either but wouldn’t have let that get between them and a good photo opportunity. “Dear Hank/Yoshi¹ Here’s me with an A-Z² lister. Love Mildred/Sushi³”

That’s it. Got a few more pics especially a long one like the one on the right but of the outside showing the famous BBC sign. However I don’t think I can sustain enough of a dialogue to run the length of a second long photo so I’ll hold that back for another idle moment when I’ve woken up early and popped downstairs to do stuff.

Ciao amigos. Pinch and a punch…

PS Why was I there? Keep watching:)
PPS That’s my new Osprey bag on my shoulder

^1,^2,³As usual delete as you see fit.

Engineer Net peering

An invitation to Berlin – BCIX May 8th

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 March, 2014
No Comments on An invitation to Berlin – BCIX May 8th

This post, by Wilhelm Boeddinghaus of BCIX is a short and sweet summary of Internet Peering in Berlin together with an invitation to their next shindig on May 8th.

Berlin is the Capital of Germany and has about 3.400.000 inhabitants, many datacenters and many interesting startups. The Berlin Commercial Internet Exchange (BCIX) runs switches in the six most important datacenters. Our members can connect from any datacenter to peers in any other datacenter in Berlin. All DCs are carrier neutral and have several fiber providers to choose from.

The BCIX today has 59 members and offers ports from 100Mbit to multiple 10 GBit. Smaller and larger ISPs connect and peer in Berlin. The traffic is as high as 55 GBit/s in the daily peek.

Three to four times a year the BCIX invites the Berlin peering community to our community meetings. We always try to find new interesting places to gather. Nearly 100 mostly technical people show up and enjoy technical presentations and beer and food. Join us on May 8th!

Check out the BCIX website here.

Auf wiedersehen,