Archive for the ‘internet’ Category
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
There has recently been quite a bit of interest in the IPv4 exhaustion date. Understandable. It is coming up fast and sounds game changing. What perhaps isn’t obvious to the casual watcher of the Gadget Show or reader of newspaper technology sections is the underlying complexity that surrounds the approach to the end of this IPv4 world.
In reading this blog your ISP will have directed your http request across the internet from its own network to the Timico network and to the server hosting the website.
This server has a public facing IP address, part of a contiguous block that is advertised to the whole internet. The (more…)
Tags: cidr-report, IPv4 exhaustion. internet routing table
Posted in internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Mobile operator Orange has hit the headlines today with the launch of its HD voice service. Trials for this service, which uses the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec (AMR-WB – otherwise known as G722.2), began in June this year in the south of England.
The service is initially only for Orange HD handset to Orange HD handset. This is quite easy to do as “on-net” HD calls using the same codec don’t require transcoding and also do not therefore enter into the black art world of interoperability.
HD voice has been the subject of discussion amongst the VoIP community in the UK this year. A fair few vendors (more…)
Tags: AMR-WB, Broadsoft, Cisco, G722.2, HD voice, ITSPA, Orange, Polycom, SNOM, YeaLink
Posted in VoIP, internet, mobile | No Comments »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
Superfast all IP networks are not just around the corner they are here already, at least if you are a business. The big growth area in business networking is in Ethernet data circuits that are rapidly replacing ADSL as the business connectivity of choice.
In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.
At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.
(more…)
Tags: 21CN, ADSL2+, Ethernet, FTTC, FTTP, FTTX, MPLS, RT QoS
Posted in FTTC, broadband, internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Whilst I was on holiday the IPv4 Exhaustion counter ticked down another digit to 5% or 14 /8 blocks .
Nov 16 2009 10% – dropped through 400,000,000 mark
Jan 20th 9%
Feb 25th 8%
May 10th 7%
June 2nd 6%
August 5%
Currently we seem to be using a /8 block every three weeks. With 9 blocks left before we are down to the last 5 (at which point IANA will distribute these simultaneously to the 5 Regional Internet Registries) it looks like we have 27 weeks to go to IPv4 Exhaustion.
In my book this is February 2011 and not the June date reported by the Exhaustion Counter on this blog.
(more…)
Tags: Hurricane Electric, IANA, IPv4, IPv6, LINX
Posted in internet | 10 Comments »
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
Last week the Valuation Office Agency put out revised guidelines for assessing rateable values for fibre connections.
There is no change at the high end so the likes of Virgin and BT will remain unaffected. However at the smaller network end of the scale there has been a massive price hike.
In 2005 if you were running a pair of fibres over 1km you would be stung with a rateable value of £280. In 2010 this has now shot up to £2000. This will not of course affect BT because they have a negotiated total rateable value for their network.
The upshot of this is that at a time when industry has been crying out for a level “rates” playing field the VOA has made it an even more unequal commercial battle in favour of the large incumbent operators.
(more…)
Tags: Big Society, digitalinclusion, Ed Vaizey, fibre rates, VOA
Posted in internet, regulatory | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
We are currently seeing an explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007. It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.
As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years (thanks iPhone), and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.
(more…)
Tags: BBC, BT Wholesale, Gartner, iplayer, Sally Davis, YouTube
Posted in bandwidth bandit, internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Big headliner from Ofcom this morning is that average broadband speeds in the UK have increased by over 25% in the past year. Research, conducted in partnership with broadband monitoring specialists SamKnows, has found that speeds have increased from 4.1Mbit/s to 5.2Mbit/s.
This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.
The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours. (more…)
Tags: broadband speeds, Code of Practice, Ofcom
Posted in broadband, internet | 5 Comments »
Friday, July 16th, 2010
The Child Exploitation and Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook announced an initiative that gives Facebook users direct access to CEOP’s advice and reporting centre from their Facebook homepage.
The initiative is not based on a standard panic button solution but on a CEOP Facebook App and a CEOP Facebook page. This means that only users who install the app will have direct access to CEOP.
I have met CEOP CEO Jim Gamble during the course of meetings between CEOP and the ISPA and understand the hugely difficult nature of their job. CEOP volunteer staff have to spend much of their time looking at horrendous photographic evidence of child abuse. It isn’t something that a person can do for too long due to the mental stresses involved.
The success of the whole Facebook initiative depends on whether or not the CEOP app becomes viral. To facilitate the distribution of the app, Facebook has agreed to support the initiative via an advertising campaign.
CEOP deserves your support.
Tags: CEOP, Facebook, ISPA
Posted in Security, internet | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
I read in Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Broadband Delivery UK industry day today that due to the lack of funds the government has moved the target date for implementation of its 2Meg Universal Service Commitment out to the “end of this parliament” or in other words 2015 (see my post in March on the feasibility of doing it by 2012).
It is about time everyone realised this is a waste of effort. Lets forget about 2Meg and go straight for Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). FTTP for the Final third by 2015 is a sensible objective.
Tags: 2Meg USC, BDUK, Jeremy Hunt
Posted in broadband, internet | 7 Comments »
