Category: Engineer

Engineer

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Cloud datacentre Engineer

A peek inside the boardroom

connect - signage at the new Timico data centre in Newark

the new boardroom at Timico in NewarkEver wondered what goes oncoffee machine dispensing a latte at the new Timico data centre in Newark inside a board room? Important decisions? Tea or coffee? Cappucino, Americano, latte?  One sugar or two?

All of the above 🙂  Obviously a lot more gets discussed as well and I am pleased to be able to show you our new accommodation. I haven’t yet decided where to sit  – another of those decisions that will work itself out as we settle in.

Timico NOC being populated with furniture prior to "go live"The photo on the left is of the development engineering area at the new Timico data centre in NewarkNetwork Operations Centre being populated with furniture. You can see it starting to take shape in front of the video wall.

The pic on the right is part of the development engineering office. This is where all the serious service platform development will happen. Visible is Group Ops Director Calum Malcolm’s office with meeting room. To the right of that is a breakout area which will have sofas etc conducive to creative thinking (and having a nap 🙂 ! )

Read it first on trefor.net !

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Engineer Net video

Latest Hollywood blockbuster – assembly of video wall at new Timico NOC

Here it is, the one you have all been waiting for. After a lengthier than usual  shoot and an intensive post-shoot production period (correct me if I have my movie industry technical jargon slightly wrong) at last at online movie theatres near your desk/settee/mobile device I am pleased to announce the global launch of The Timico Videowall – The Movie”.

None of this “launch in the USA followed by a phased release in other markets” this movie is instantly available to everyone on the planet. Bring your own ice creams, beer and popcorn 1. Link here for those who don’t do flash.

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1 Small print. The makers of this movie cannot accept responsibility for accidents happening whilst watching. In particular, for North American readers, any perceived inducement to indulge in high fat, high salt foodstuffs or beverages containing alcohol is purely for artistic effect.  Readers are encouraged to consult a qualified medical practitioner before blindly following the advice. Readers under the legal age for any of these activities according to the laws of their country of residence should refrain from participating. As far as we are aware this movie contains no foul language, violence or scenes of nudity that may cause offence to those of a more sensitive disposition. No advertisements are carried on this blog but it’s author cannot be held responsible for any attempt to sell you anything whilst watching the video on YouTube. Having said that if anyone wants to send money out of appreciation of the high quality production values associated with this oeuvre please contact me – details here. This movie was made without a grant from anyone and was funded entirely by private investment. Enjoy!

Categories
Cloud Engineer servers

Cisco UCS B200 blade server with 96Gigs of RAM #itsoktogetexcited

Cisco UCS B200 blade serverIf you have ever stood in PC World and wondered whether to Cisco UCS B200 blade server
go for the the 4Gigs of RAM with 1Terabyte hard drive or the 6 Gigs which is a little bit more expensive then cop this baby.

Personally I opted for the 96Gig of RAM with dual 10 Terabyte hard drive (expandable) and dual 6 core Xeon processors.  You get my drift?

We have ten of these in two chasses of 5 just to get going. Note the Cisco UCS B200 blade server does come with two onboard hard drives but the discerning host will of course ignore these if he is at all interested in MTBF. Everything else on the board is solid state.
Cisco UCS B200 server blade in a chassis at the Timico Newark data centre

The next picture is of the chassis front and back.

Front view just has the one blade in it at the time the picture was taken.

You can see the four power supplies (N+2) in a line below the blade (circled on the larger photo – click to see). The last two photos are the rear of the chassis fully populated with fans – cool I thought ( 🙂 ) and the schematic that is printed on top of each blade – it will interest someone.

I think these fans in the back of the Cisco UCS B200 blade server chassis at the Timico Newark data centre look really cool :)schematic diag of Cisco UCS B200 blade server t the Timico Newark Data centre

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Cloud datacentre Engineer virtualisation

We are in! – new Timico datacentre

Cisco blades are being used at the new Timico data centre in NewarkAt 10am this morning, 28th November 2011 we officially took delivery
Timico development engineers review progress so far at the new Data centre of a datacentre. Not quite the same impact as the ceremony that ended the first world war (10th hour of the 28th day doesn’t sound quite the same as 11th hour of the 11th day) but hey…

I’m not even sure there was a physical ceremony. If there was I wasn’t there but the new build is certainly buzzing with engineers doing their stuff.
EMC storage now in situ at new Timico data centre

Progress is going to be rapid now with the official launch/opening ceremony due on Wednesday 18th January. The box on the right is one of the EMC SANs I showed being delivered on Friday.

The initial environment will have Juniper in the core network with VMware running over Cisco Nexus and EMC. I’ll post more detail on this as we get nearer launch though if you urgently want to know more drop me a line at [email protected].

Timico is using Juniper in the core network of its new data centre in Newark

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Cloud datacentre Engineer

Psst wanna buy a Storage Area Network? #SAN #EMC

EMC SAN arrives at Timico offices in Newark for installation into new datacentre

When a man in a white van turns up at your place offering you a good deal on a Storage Area Network what do you do? In our case we were expecting him to turn up though I suspect he had no idea what was in the boxes.

I wouldn’t normally bother writing about this but the delivery caused a flurry of excitement amongst the engineers in the office that I felt compelled to do so.

Also quite a few people at the LINX75 meeting mentioned they were following the progress of the data centre build so now that it is getting to the technically interesting bit it seems reasonable to post stuff as it happens.

I’ll put up some more photos when the kit is unboxed. Oh and also it won’t be long before I’ll be saying “Psst wanna buy some storage/virtualisation/hosting/colo etc etc”.

If you are interested in knowing more or want to use some of these services drop me a line at [email protected].

All the best.

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datacentre Engineer

That first cup of tea is always the best #Timico #Datacentre #10GigE

Ian P Christian clenches his fist in a victory salute having installed the first server in the new Timico Data Centre in Newark, Notts

Tref pretends to greet visitors at reception of new Datacentre in Newark

First cup of tea in new Timico Datacentre in Newark

Two cups of tea in the kitchen of the new Timico Datacentre in Newark

First cups of tea in kitchen of new Timico data centre in NewarkSome more photographic action from the new data centre – we get the keys next week and today we have been in doing some preparation.

Firstly we installed a small server with some basic utilities to get us up and running when the meaty kit arrives on Monday.

 

Then we made a cup of tea – the first in the new kitchen – yay.Will Curtis installs a switch at the new Timico Datacentre

OK question for you.  How many engineers does it take to install a switch? Click on the photo of Will to find out.

Last but not least ever wondered what a 10Gig fibre connection looks like? Well prepare to be disappointed – see below.

10Gig fibre

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competitions Engineer

Is Your Aging Terminal Emulator Putting Your Applications at Risk? #catchymailshotheadlines #anotherwinatimicomugcompetition

There isn’t much to this post other than I like the title. It came from one of the many junk emails I get daily – 12 today in that category. I must stop leaving my business cards at trade shows – I never win the iPad anyway.

This particular title isn’t very catchy which is why it stood out. Usually it’s all about “deploying this”, “helping staff with that” and sometimes it has to do with “the other” though the spam filter usually catches that kind of email. In fact they are very rarely catchy titles.

I am gradually unsubscribing from these mailing lists though it’s probably a battle I will never win.

Anyway I figured it would be a good idea to run a competition for the least catchy junk email competition – real or imaginary. Sometimes I get a huge response to these competitions and sometimes nothing. Doesn’t stop me coming back for m0re though 🙂

As usual please leave your entries as comments. Kudos but no mug to anyone guessing the name of the sender of the email in the post title.

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broadband Engineer Net olympics

Olympics Broadband Numbers BT Style – #Olympics #LOCOG

Usain Bolt - billions of fans want to see him win at the London 2012 OlympicsThree years or so ago someone placed an order with BT. Uhuh!  But this was no ordinary order. The order read something like this:

  • 80,000 connections across 94 locations
  • 4,500 miles of internal cabling
  • 60Gb per second available bandwidth
  • 1,800 wireless access points
  • 16,500 telephone lines
  • 14,000 SIM cards
  • 14,000 cable TV outlets

Juicy eh?  If you were a BT salesman taking that Olympics broadband order you would be planning your retirement. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple.  This is what BT is providing for the 2012 London Olympic Games and the order was probably taken by CEO Ian Livingston himself1 .

There are other interesting numbers to dwell on.

Continue reading “Olympics Broadband Numbers BT Style – #Olympics #LOCOG”
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Cloud datacentre Engineer

Where there is technology there is art

sign above entrance of new Timico data centre in NewarkI am often asked for updates on the progess of the new Timico data centre in tidy cabling at the new Timico data centre in NewarkNewark. This is most easily done in pictorial fashion.

It’s nearly done. We are moving kit in. No desks yet but there is now a steady stream of engineers popping over, doing stuff.

the desk in reception at the Timico data centre in Newark We have a reception desk. More like Tardis console without the bit in the middle going up and down. Obviously the reception area is still work in progress but first impressions are important and it aint looking bad.

Some of these photos have been chosen exclusively for their artistic qualities. The patch panel below for example is worthy of the Tate Modern though quality of the photography probably leaves a little to be desired – I’m not a trained photographer you know.patch panel or work of art? - the Tate Modern beckons The photo of the cold aisle is a development on the last one I did which didn’t have the enclosures and attracted comments about inefficiency. This one shows the door at one end and you can just about make out the fact that the aisle has a roof on it.cold aisle - a cool place to be at the Timico Newark Data centre

Two more pics to go. This first one is a bit of the coffee machine in the coffee machine, vacuum cleaner or missile component?first floor kitchen. It reminds me of the Graham Green novel “Our Man in Havana” who was supposed to be sending back photos of secret Cuban missile parts (or simlar) but which in reality were components of a vacuum cleaner. If you look at it from the right angle it could be a missile part (or a vacuum cleaner) 🙂 .

I will say the NOC engineers are going to have to look out for caffeine overdoses because this dispenses the real mcoy in volumes and free of charge. There is also a tap for boiling water – no more frustrating queues Tref holding some cables at the Timico Newark data centre in the kitchen waiting for the kettle.

And finally a picture of me holding a bunch of cables. I’m not going to give you any clues about the cables because are goingto be plugged into something uber impressive and you will have to wait for that.

Oh and there is one more I forgot – no data centre is complete without it’s Dyson blade dryers and here they are in high speed action 🙂
Dyson blade driers in action at the new Timico data centre

There you go – a data centre update 🙂

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Apps Engineer media olympics

2012 – Summer of Sports on Steroids – BBC estimates more than 2x Football World Cup traffic levels

growth in BBC iPlayer coverage of Olympics2012 or as the BBC puts it “Summer of Sports on Steroids” 1 is going to be another milestone year for the ISP industry with the UK playing host to the Olympic games and another record anticipated for internet traffic levels. On Wednesday at the ISPA conference we had Jane Weedon, Controller of Business Development at the BBC talking about their preparations for the games.

The coverage in 2012 is going to be comprehensive with pretty much 100% of the sport available to watch as it happens – up to 27 simultaneous channels at the peak towards the end of the second week. This will have grown from perhaps 15-20% of coverage at the Sydney games 35% in Athens and 65% in Beijing (click on the header photo for graphic illustration).

The peak traffic during the South Africa Football World Cup hit 450Gbps with everyone going online to watch the EnglandiPlayer traffic levels during Football World Cup v Slovenia match. For perspective this year so far iPlayer traffic has peaked atiplayer traffic levels in 2011 220Gbps.

So look out ISPs.

The forecasting of traffic levels for these games is in reality going to be very difficult. On the higher demand side the games are on home territory and will appeal to a wider demographic than the Football World Cup. To counter this device proliferation may lead to the streaming being distributed over a wider range of media – 3G mobiles and tablets, public WiFi zones, offices providing big TV screens and the fact that many folk may well take the two weeks of the games off on holiday.

Medals success for Team GB is also going to be an influencing factor.

The Beeb has gone into significant detail in estimating demand on a session by session basis and has come up with a forecast of  10 x the traffic levels for London as they saw in Beijing. That’s 1Terabits a second 2  at the peak in streams averaging 1Mbps.

That’s enough Olympic bits for the moment but there is so much interest in this subject looking ahead I’m going  to be looking out for more Olympic stories to share.

1 Steroids is perhaps an unfortunate word to use in this context

2  Nobody is going to hold them to this forecast but it certainly gives us all an indication of what to expect

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broken gear Engineer internet

Broken internet

“The internet is broken”. Uh? This is a common complaint a) from my wife who isn’t particularly technology savvy and b) from people whose broadband connection has gone down for whatever reason.

Yesterday this complaint, slightly tongue in cheek, came from our development engineering team. US network operator Level3 had a problem with a bug in it’s Juniper routers. This affected access to quite a few websites worldwide and is certainly likely to have hit more than a few ISPs. Word is that this was BGP related and leads to the need to reboot the Juniper kit. In fact a number of ISPs issued emergency maintenance window alerts last night so that they could upgrade to newer versions of their Junos operating system.

Most of the time you can live with a bug – design around it perhaps.I’m sure the problem will get sorted. My observations here though relate to the

Continue reading “Broken internet”
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broadband Engineer

Superfast Broadband: Pat on the Back for BT #FTTC

It’s fast moving this new web based world of ours. Some of it is faster moving than others.  This morning I woke up to the news (in the twitter stream – thanks to @ruskin147) that BT was looking to pull forward the rollout plans for “superfast” broadband. To do this the company is taking on an additional 520 engineers and bringing forward £300m of spend.

Competition is great. Clearly Virgin, with its 100Mbps service, is forcing the pace here. BT is saying that by 2014 it will be serving two thirds of the population with download speeds of 70 – 100Mbps.

I realise that I have occasionally been known to be a critic of those responsible for our national broadband infrastructure. On this occasion I’m going to hold back and say to BT:  Well done. This is a good decision. Keep it coming.

Continue reading “Superfast Broadband: Pat on the Back for BT #FTTC”

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Cloud datacentre Engineer

Data centre finishing touches featuring Tim and Neil

Timico Marketing Director Neil Armstrong savours a duck kebab in food tasting - prep for Timico Data Centre opening partyracks in the new Timico data centreIt won’t be long inside an empty rack in the Timico data centre now before we actually move in to the new data centre and start kitting it out. The racks are going in as I write and the header photo shows Marketing Director Neil Armstrong working his way through a full sample buffet in preparation for the big opening night in January. His attention to detail means that he has to taste every dish.  Hollow legs that man and not an inch of excess weight on him!

Pictured below is Timico chairman Tim Radford trying to find his way out of the maze of racks.

Tim Radford inspects a row of racks in the Timico data centre

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Engineer internet

GigaOm roadmap conference looks great

It has always been the case that all the action in the tech industry has been in the USA. Today in the screaming plasma1 suspended between Silicon Valley and San Fransisco this is more than ever the case.

Next month GigaOm has organised a conference in San Francisco that illustrates my point.  Take a look at the schedule. The breadth of the content squeezed into one day is mind blowing. Am I alone in wondering how the brain can keep up with it all?  There is a live stream which in my mind will be well worth tuning in to if you can though nothing can replace actually being there.

It dismays me somewhat that you can’t get this quality of event in the UK. Even if we tried we wouldn’t get the same speakers.

I’ve pasted the schedule below. Not particularly original of me but lets you have a quick glance at what’s going on.

1 white heat doesn’t adequately describe it.

Continue reading “GigaOm roadmap conference looks great”
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broadband Engineer

Busman’s Holiday Touring FTTC Broadband Cabinets and FTTP Update

A little rugby, a FTTC broadband cabinet or two, all in a Sunday’s walk.

leaning against an FTTC cabinet in Leamington SpaOn Sunday morning I was walking with a couple of my kids from our hotel in Leamington Spa to my oldest son’s flat, where we went to watch the Rugby World Cup final. To my utter delight, I came across a  FTTC broadband cabinet and insisted we stop for a photo opportunity.

My kids are used to this kind of thing, and weren’t overly embarrassed when people passed by wondering what the attraction was with a metal green cabinet when there was a beautiful park and greenhouse in Jephson Gardens a mere stones throw away across the river Leam. My daughter, though, did once move to the back of the crowd when I stopped in front of everyone to take a photo of a Grandstream SIP phone during a guided tour of Southampton University student accommodation.fttc cab dslam label

There was no doubt that it was a FTTC broadband cabinet – there was a small yellow label on it containing the words DSLAM. Anyway we continued on our way to the flat to watch the rugby which finished with, from a Welshman’s perspective, a highly satisfactory narrow victory for the All Blacks. This was despite the fact that France probably had the best of much of the game, and the ref ignoring what seemed to be a number of high tackles, where in my view France should have been awarded penalties.

The other satisfactory result would have been a storming 70 point victory for New Zealand. No sour grapes at all here 🙂

Just to finish off with some BT FTTP tidbits, I note that as of last week there are now 35,020 premises that can gain access to FTTP. There has been a steep increase in the numbers being provisioned over the last few weeks, helped by the use of overhead cables rather than underground ducts to access the cabs.

This won’t mean much to the the general public as BT’s marketing seeks not to distinguish between FTTP and FTTP, with a harmonised product set due to be announced at some point. More on this schedule as I get the info.

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Engineer media

The thirst for information – Colonel Gadaffi and semantic metadata

illustration of semantic metadata in use by BBC with articles regarding Colonel GadaffiSomeone told me in the office that “they had killed Gadaffi”. Unusual to not hear it first on Twitter but I wasn’t looking, I’m too busy.

Back at my desk I looked at the Telegraph website. Then I went to the Guardian, Sky News and as if I hadn’t seen enough of the same stuff, the BBC news website. We thirst for information these days.

The BBC website, like all of them, had the item as its main news.  Colonel Gadaffi “killed”: Latest updates. Below this were links to “Gadaffi’s Quixotic and brutal rule, The Muammar Gadaffi story and His Life in pictures.

It was only then that I realised I was looking at “semantic metadata” in action.

Continue reading “The thirst for information – Colonel Gadaffi and semantic metadata”
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Engineer internet online safety security

Vint Cerf, Internet 2, Project Phoenix, Twitter, BYOD & #ITDF

Jonathan Radford our CFO is one of the least techy guys you could hope to meet.  He is often also the source of ideas for this “technical” blog because technology now reaches absolutely everyone on this planet one way or another.

Today he came up for a chat about Internet 2 and Project Phoenix and left me with a newspaper clipping from the FT (I said he wasn’t a techy – anyone else would have sent me a link). The point is though that the technology related article interested him because he could understand its implications for him personally.

The article concerned internet pioneer Vint Cerf’s comments re the need to start again with internet security. The internet is an open network currently running on the basis of trust. Starting again Cerf says he “would have put a much stronger focus on authenticity or authentication” and quoted Ori Eisen’s Project Phoenix as an example of the way forward (see original FT article for more on this).

You only have to note the recent spate of

Continue reading “Vint Cerf, Internet 2, Project Phoenix, Twitter, BYOD & #ITDF”
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4g Engineer mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

complexities under the mobile data bonnet and Ofcom delay to #LTE auction #4G #digitalbritain

Everyone Everywhere (pun intended) will have heard of Ofcom’s decision to re-enter consultation over the LTE or 4G mobile spectrum allocation. Issued late on Friday afternoon the statement regarding the delay caused by reopening the consultation has already attracted comments re “hiding bad news over the weekend”.

There were 64 responses that included the  A to W of stakeholders in the UK (nothing from  X, Y or Z). The  Association of Train Operating Companies was mainly concerned to ensure that good coverage at high, sustained download speeds is ensured along the whole of the GB mainline rail network. At the other end of the alphabet both the Welsh government and Wiltshire Council wanted better coverage in rural areas with the latter quoting a target figure of 99% of the population.

Straightforward right?

Continue reading “complexities under the mobile data bonnet and Ofcom delay to #LTE auction #4G #digitalbritain”
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Cloud Engineer servers

This networking kit is good enough for Jehovah

Timico,data center,Juniper,MX80,SRX 3400The word Juniper always makes me think back to the Monty Python and The Life of Brian movie where a hermit has been living on juniper berries for years and Brian’s followers trample all over his bush.

Juniper has a totally different connotation these days, at least when we talk networking. Clicking on the header photo will reveal some equipment we are currently playing with in the lab before it goes live in the new data center core network.

Timico’s core network actually encompasses multiple vendor equipment but there are a few neat things

Continue reading “This networking kit is good enough for Jehovah”
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dns Engineer online safety security servers

Telegraph Register and UPS DNS servers hacked

The Register DNS hackedIf you have been trying to access the telegraph online or TheRegister tonight you might come in for a bit of a surprise as the sites look as if they have been hacked.  More specifically it looks like some  Domain Name Servers have been hacked, diverting traffic to other pages.  Many people will not notice.

Click on the header to see more of what the Register site currently looks like. At this point in time the hack is less than 30 minutes old so I don’t have any more info but if I get a chance I’ll update the post as news comes in. Or just Google it. I saw it first on Twitter.

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Cloud Engineer virtualisation

It’s All About Storage – datadomain #VMware

datadomain storage

Nice bit of lab kit we have just installed downstairs. This is a datadomain DD630 backup storage device.  You can see that it has 12 x 1TeraByte hard drives – that’s quite a chunk of storage compared to your laptop or desktop PC.  The box above it is running test servers using VMware (click on the header photo to see it all).

This is all lab work being done in preparation for the new data centre when it opens in January. The twelve 1TB drives result in around 9TB of useful space once RAID, hot spare and storage of the OS are taken into consideration.

The beauty of this though is that we are likely to be able to store far more than 9TB of real data once it has been “deduped”  – for example identical copies of operating systems removed. In our trials we are backing up some VMs and are seeing 2TB of data being compressed and deduplicated down to only 140GB on the datadomain. We won’t necessarily get the same savings when the system scales up but it is easy to see that it is an attractive piece of kit.

One of the nice features is that if you lose your primary VM server then the system allows you to boot from this backup whilst it rebuilds the original server in the background.  This can save a couple of hours of work – very valuable in  a problem situation.

As we start building out the virtualisation platform I’ll do some more update posts. The inset photo is the same kit with the front cover on.

Categories
Engineer gadgets

It pays to shop around – Dell Inspiron M501R

Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop

My youngest is getting kitted up for “big school” – the Lincoln equivalent of Harry Potter going to Hogwarts.

He will have to learn a whole new set of skills – the mind can only boggle at what. For example one of the kids told me the other week that everyone knows how to get around the school web content filter. Of course it is highly illegal to do so but…

I don’t really want to know what else they will learn, other than what I will hear at parents evening when I get to meet the teachers.

I have had a policy of equipping the kids appropriately for secondary education. They have all (4 of them) had mobile phones and PCs as an essential part of their kitbag, along with pencil case and PE kit.

When my oldest, now 19, went “up” we bought him a PC for £800. I don’t remember the spec although my wife still uses it, not without complaint. The heir is now onto his third computer – the last two having been laptops.

The next two got PCs as well, ie not laptops. However this time round I’ve been amazed at how cheap these things have become.  I bought a Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop (4GB RAM, 500GB HD, 15.6″ screen) for £319 from Tesco including a £50 discount voucher and 6 months interest free credit (and 758 clubcard points – I bought a bag too!).

There were suggestions on Twitter that I should just get him a tablet but tabs ain’t good enough for homework yet, for that is the purpose of the purchase.

It was also suggested that at the age of 11 he isn’t going to be particularly gentle with his machine but you know what? It isn’t going to be expensive to replace when the time comes and at least we can make him do his homework in view of a (partly) responsible parent.

PS Sorry if your thoughts are still on summer holidays and not school – you are right that this post is a bit early but if I’d left it until nearer the time I’d probably have forgotten all about it and the moment would have been lost.

PPS please no comments telling me I could have got twice the spec for half the price elsewhere. This would not be productive and I did shop around 🙂

Categories
Apps Cloud Engineer virtualisation

PCoIP over VMWare View (for Keeping Up with the #Cricket Wherever You Are)

PCoIP thin client technology in use
I’ve been trying out thin client software at the office, specifically PCoIP running over VMware View.

It’s going very well. The station I sat at had just a keyboard, mouse and screen with a small connector box hooking me up with the network. I was running a virtual instance of Windows with the actual application running on a virtual machine in our data centre.

You wouldn’t know that there was no PC in a box underneath the desk.  The beauty of this technology is the fact that I can install a virtual client on my PC at home (or anywhere else) that will allow me to log in and replicate my work environment. It consumes much less power and also makes management of the whole estate much easier.  New users can be provisioned in seconds – the process of building a PC can take a day.

EVGA PD02The experience is great – in fact I didn’t know I wasn’t sat at a PC when I started using it. The header photo shows the workstation set up (a bit untidy – click to see more) and the inset photo (right)  is of the EVEA connector box. You can have up to 4 monitors using a DVI splitter plug – something our geeks really like.

The box is an EVGA PD02. They retail at around £216 plus VAT. When you add the costs of the licenses the individual per unit cost is roughly the same as a fully loaded new PC so the cost saving is in the management – IT staff headcount I guess if you were looking at a large estate.

Note England are doing well in the cricket against India which is why I sat at the workstation in the first place – I wanted an update of the score 🙂 . Invitations to the Oval test gratefully accepted.

 

Categories
broadband Engineer

FTTC Broadband Cabinet Update – New Photos

The photos I have been using for FTTC broadband cabinets were just not the right ones.  Thanks to reader Andrew Benham I have been able to rectify this and include below some new ones for your pleasure and entertainment.  I particularly like the one with the smaller older cabinet which is not FTTC, buried in the undergrowth. Don’t ask me why, it’s a personal thing.

You can see there is a significant size difference between the two types of cab. Click on each photo, including the one in the post header for bigger versions.  FTTC is the most popular subject for searches on this blog.

 

photos:  Andrew Benham who has kindly offered then on a copyright free basis

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6 ofcom

#WorldIPv6day marked with industry summit in UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Engineer internet

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity security

Android security flaw

If nobody else reads this blog then at least I have the staff at Timico who are always throwing up suggestions for posts. This morning it was about an Android security flaw where, according to the University of ULM, older versions of the OS are vulnerable to hacks that can steal your data.

Sky News reports that only the latest phones with system version 2.3.4 have had the leak plugged, meaning that 99.7% of handsets could be targeted. I parked the idea until I had finished my slides for next week’s AGM then lo and behold my own Android phone offered me a firmware upgrade. I am now safely running version 2.3.4 thanks to HTC and Android. Good timing I thought:)

It is worth thinking about though as the consumerisation of the workplace gathers pace. How many Android phones are used by staff in your office that might have this vulnerability? It would seem that the case for managing personal smart phones in the offices grows daily. This isn’t something you will necessarily want to leave to chance.

Categories
Cloud datacentre Engineer

Public Clouds, Private Clouds, and Rainy Day “The Cloud” Solutions

the day I learned an acronym at Monte Carlo

12 years or so ago the company I was working for decided to “get into VoIP” and I was sent to a Pulver.com executive retreat in Cannes in the South of France. Very nice it was. We spent 3 days at ETSI talking about VoIP related issues. I say “talking”. I spent all my time writing down new acronyms for looking up when I got back to the office.

If you don’t understand the lingo it all seems like a black art. Once the learning curve had been climbed the door opened to the wonderfully rich world that is the communications business.

It strikes me that we are going through another phase where people will need to swot up on their acronyms. The Cloud is trendy but what is it? You can’t touch it – or can you? Whatever “it” is every man and his dog seems to feel the need to jump on the bandwagon.

At its most basic the cloud is just a computer accessed remotely via an IP connection. At its most complex it is something that is in a constant state of evolution. The process of understanding this cloud is very much one of pioneering – creating the acronyms rather than learning existing ones.

I am lucky enough to have a platform with this blog that allows experimentation and will be using this opportunity to facilitate a conversation that will take us on a journey through the cloud. The buzzword isn’t going to last for ever. Let’s try and understand it before we have all moved on 🙂

Next week I’ll be looking at the basics. Public cloud versus private cloud and cloud solutions for a rainy day (might not actually talk about the latter – it just sounded good).

PS in case you were worried that we spent all our time working at the Cannes meeting I am happy to confirm that not much sleep was had. The casinos of the Cote d’Azur stay open very late.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

APNIC starts to ration IPv4 addresses #ipv6

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

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

Categories
Engineer ofcom Regs voip

Ofcom study into location determining of VoIP callers to emergency Services

Consultants Analysys Mason are conducting a study on behals of Ofcom into determining the location of Voice over IP callers making calls to emergency services. It is is easy to determine the location of a caller is in the old fixed line world because a phone number is recorded based on the location of a piece of copper “plugged” into the local telephone exchange.

This is not the case with VoIP.  A VoIP number could be anywhere on the planet. Anywhere there is a connection to the IP network/internet that is.  Ofcom recognises this and wants to understand whether there is a practical solution.

UK technical standards organisation NICC has published (Jan 2010) a potential solution to the problem though this is complex and also limited to VoIP users using UK ADSL connectivity.

This solution stems really from network architectures familiar to large telcos and my first reaction is that it is very expensive. One might ask what price a life? This is a reasonable question. We all have grannies and nobody wants ours to

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