Category: Weekend

something for the weekend – interesting non work related posts

Categories
Business events

Announcing the 2012 trefor.net xmas bash – SOLD OUT

Bar at London's Phoenix Artist Club

welcome to the Phoenix Artist club

I’m really really excited about this year’s trefor.net Xmas bash. Last year’s was a raging success at the Booking Office Bar. This year we are moving to the Phoenix Artist Club. Where do I hear you say?

The  Phoenix Artist Club is a super cool members only joint (yes I am a member) slap bang in the middle of SoHo. It’s got bags of character and a piano which is going to be put to good use by international jazz pianist (and my kids’ piano teacher)piano at Phoenix Artist Club Colin Dudman.

We are talking 5.30pm until 2am on Thursday 13th December for this year’s most anticipated party. Dress code is party gear, or whatever you like really – fancy dress even, though you might be the only one…

This year’s bash has been made possible by some very generous sponsors to who I would like to extend my sincerest thanks: Timico, NewNet, Redwood Telecom, PowerNet, Genband, RTP Solutions, O2 Wholesale, Fluidata,  Siphon,  ProvuThe bar area at the Phoenix Artist Club Communications and IPCortex.

Tickets are free and can be obtained here. members lounge at Phoenix Artist Clubsmile all you like at this crocodile at the Phoenix Artist Clubbar at Phoenix Artist Club

Categories
End User fun stuff

Amazing story from Hampton Court

panoramic view of Hampton Court Maze taken from the back of the Kings Arms Hotel

Story for you. Years ago I worked on a bid to develop an analogue chip for a company in London. It was a very big contract and we had tried to get the Purchasing Director out for a beer or eight during the process (just to better get to know him-he was a nice guy). He would have none of it but when we were eventually awarded the deal he set up a kick off dinner somewhere in Kingstson.

Our sales guy, Tony Myers, and I stayed at a pub at the entrance to Bushy Park and opposite the gates to Hampton Court. We had a bit of time to kill so we wandered around the wonderful grounds of the Palace and eventually we paid to go into the maze.

That was where we went wrong. After some time we made it into the middle but then found ourselves with only five minutes to go before the taxi was due to pick us up to take us to the restaurant. Uhoh!

Tony, however, had the solution. If you turn left at every opportunity you eventually get out. It took a lot of left turns and we practically had to run through the maze but we made it.

Of course these days I’d just get my trusty Samsung Galaxy S3 out and use Google Maps to get out – amazing detail of the maze here.

I was down for an Exec dinner on the 3rd October and then to visit Convergence Summit South at Sandown Park Racecourse. Photo of the racetrack below.

Sandown Park panorama taken with Samsung Galaxy S3

 

Categories
End User fun stuff

A big thank you to Sam

Took the family to Zizzi in Lincoln last night to celebrate daughter’s last night at home before heading to University for the first time. Food was good though they seemed to be a little understaffed.

Anyway in the multi-storey car park next to the restaurant, on the Brayford in Lincoln for those who know the place, I dug out some coins for the pay and display machine. I needed £2.50 and blow me down if I didn’t only have £2.30.

As I was stood there, staring at coins in outstretched hand, (I’m painting a picture here) considering my options along came a chap with his girlfriend off on a night out.

Without my having said anything he asked how much we were short and promptly came up with the twenty pence. “I’ve been in the same situation myself” he said. His name was Sam.

Sam, thanks very much for being a great bloke. If I can ever do anything to help you I hope I can do it before you have to ask.

Categories
Engineer fun stuff

communications protocols for swimming pools

I was having a swim before work this morning, as you do – healthy body, healthy mind etc. I had a whole lane to myself which those of you who indulge in a bit of a splash before work will know is a real luxury.

There are two types of communications scenarios used in the swimming pool, one for serious lane swimming and one for the general melee and out and out chaos when you take the kids.

For the latter you employ more CSMA/CD1  style protocols of the old Ethernet hub world. Lane swimming is different. Lane swimming employs multilevel quality of service. The faster the swimmer the further towards the far side of the pool he or she goes. Slow ones like me go to the lanes nearest the changing rooms.

This basic protocol typically keeps everyone happy though even within lanes there are different “packet speeds”. Although I am a slow swimmer if I encounter an even slower swimmer I either overtake in a bit of “open water” or turn around when I catch the person up and swim back in the other direction. If I am the slower I usually pause at one end to let the faster person overtake.

It all works well. Everyone knows the protocol, the etiquette. We are a happy bunch, us early morning swimmers.

This morning was slightly different. I was ploughing away on my own, “in the zone” when a shadowy figure appeared at the shallow end of the pool. I say shadowy figure because without my specs life is a bit of a blur. I thought to myself, “hope that person isn’t coming in my private lane”. It turned out she was.

Now normally the protocol for newbies to the water is that they wait for the person swimming to go past then get in. I was just coming to the wall when this shadowy figure jumped in and set off directly in front of me momentarily throwing me off my stride/stroke. Huh I thought to myself, just a teeny bit disgruntled.

She was a slightly faster swimmer than me so she soon moved away. Then a couple of laps later she caught up with me just as I was getting to the shallow end and blow me down if she didn’t shove in front and disrupt me again.

Being extremely short sighted (-5) I will never know who she was and she will never know that she breached the unwritten law, the etiquette of the lane swimmer. There was no point in complaining. I finished my 30 minutes (ish) and got out of the water.

Protocols – why we need them and the consequences of a breakdown in order…

1 look it up – this blog is not here to teach the basics. It’s here for my own gratification 🙂

Categories
agricultural End User

Next time you eat a kebab…

I just had a meeting with a local farmer. He told me, and I have no idea how a conversation on Unified Communications got on to this,  that a single ram is expected to serve a hundred ewes. Worra life. It’s a short window of enjoyment because farmers want all the lambs to arrive around the same time so the ram spends the rests of the year away from the ewes, eating grass with the lads.

The downside is that when the ram’s useful life is over it gets shot and sold to the kebab manufacturing industry. Next time you eat a kebab…

Categories
End User fun stuff

School governors and giving something back to society

We are extremely fortunate with the school our kids go to. It has served the first two well and the next two are having a great time the youngest having just been elected as vice representative of his class. Starting a bit young I thought but hey…

The school is a user of modern technology. There is a portal that can be used to check on kids progress and letters to parents come via email.

I received one such letter yesterday informing me of the opportunity to become a Governor at the school. I have to admit that this is the one public function for which I shall never put myself forward. This stems from the time when the kids were at primary school and my wife asked if I’d help the school out by being a Governor. This was to me a matter of personal pleasure. Of course I’d be happy to help.

Then one day I found that I had come third and last in the election behind two mums.  Total humiliation. I didn’t even know there was a competition. Whilst I was happy to be a Governor it wasn’t something I “wanted” badly enough to compete for against women in the playground.

So there you go. I won’t be putting my name forward on this occasion. I am too busy:)

Categories
Business charitable social networking

Award winning Burton Road chippy in Lincoln @burtonrdchippy – eat their chips

Burton Road Chippy in Lincoln

charity begins at a chip shopI don’t follow many chip shops on twitter. In fact I think I only follow the one, @burtonrdchippy.

I like the @burtonrdchippy tweets. I like to know that they have offers on although seeing as I am trying to lose a few pounds I don’t typically frequent fish and chip shops.

When I see something good I retweet it and so hopefully in a modest way @burtonrdchippy gets more exposure and more custom. Many of the people I follow and who follow me are local to me so there is a chance they will go and eat there.

@burtonrdchippy has a personality I can engage with. Imagine my delight therefore when driving to drop off a trumpeter at a band practice I heard on BBC Radio Lincolnshire that @burtonrdchippy is now an award winning emporium – one of the best in the East of England in fact.

It wasn’t far to go so I popped round to congratulate them. Tweetmeister (for want of a better word) Lesley wasn’t there though and when I went back later this evening they were busy so I let them be.

So I’m just going to write this short blog post as a small token of my appreciation of the fact that this chippy has embraced the new world, mixed it with the old and is making a success of it.

Eat their chips, sit in their fine restaurant section and enjoy a bottle of wine with your fish. The fish will be freshly prepared and have come from a sustainable source. Check out their website here and follow them on twitter. I sense a tweetup at a chip shop in the offing.

Well done  @burtonrdchippy. Frying tonight:)

Categories
competitions End User

grand TNMOC caption competition – win fantastic 6 month membership of luxury spa worth £300

valves, valves and more valves at TNMOC

Phil Hayes stands in front of Colossus at TMNOCThis week we have a fantastic membership of the Spirit Health Club in Aylesbury to be won. The Spirit Health Club is one of the top fitness destinations in the South East and whether you live in the area or just pass through occasionally on your way to a data centre in Docklands this is the prize for you.

All you need to do is provide a caption for the photo on the right. The picture is of  Phil Hayes (Colossus Rebuild Engineer) stood in front of the Colossus computer at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

commodore calculator on display at TNMOC The photo was taken at the IPCortex 10th birthday fundraiser for TNMOC last week which brought in a couple of grand for the museum.

The prize has been donated by the Spirit Health Club Aylesbury1. Club facilities include fitness suite, swimming pool, a wide variety of studio classes, sauna, steam room, and spa pool. Lifestyle consultants provide a personal touch by giving one to one guidance to help members achieve their fitness goals. Services available on site (but at additional charge) include beauty treatments, personal training, physiotherapy, massages and reflexology.

All sounds great doesn’t it. Good luck with the caption competition – just leave your entry as a comment. You can have until the end of this week to enter.

The second photo is of the Commodore Calculator on display at TNMOC. It was the first and only calculator I ever owned and I used it extensively around the time I was studying for my O’Levels. I still have it in the attic somewhere though it long ago stopped working 🙁

1Please note that the membership is valid for the Aylesbury branch only – Weston Turville, HP22 5QT.

Categories
Business charitable

Newark Castle Rotary Club and Rainbows Children’s Hospice

Newark Castle Rotary club dinnerEarlier this month I was invited to a presentation evening1 by Newark Castle Rotary Club. Timico had made a contribution to a sponsored walk held in aid of the Rainbows Children’s Hospice.

It’s totally humbling when you look at the effort put in by some to help others. In this case there are two groups to mention. Firstly the enthusiasm with which the folk at the Rotary Club put their hands up to volunteer. We would all do well to imitate it.

Secondly is  the work done by the people at Rainbows. The mental strength and sheer goodness needed to work in such an environment is massive. It’s only when you have (four) healthy kids of your own that you begin to appreciate how lucky you are.

Rainbows helps families get through really difficult times and deserve your support. I’ll repeat the link here in case you want to take a look at what they do and maybe even make a small donation.

1I thought it was going to be a finger buffet and knowing how easy it is to eat too much at these gigs and being on a health kick I had dinner before I went. Turns out the buffet was an enormous meal with a traditional British treacle sponge pudding and custard for afters. Of course it would have been rude to sit there not eating.  The things I have to do in the name of charity/work/call it what you like.

Categories
Business events

IPCortex 10th birthday bash TNMOC Bletchley Park

I’m off to Milton Keynes this morning. Speaking at IPCortex’s 10th anniversary birthday bash. This evening I’m also being the Auctioneer at their charity fundraiser in aid of The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

I have lots of experience with charity auctions, though usually from the perspective of someone sticking their hand in the air to buy something. My wife makes me sit on my hands these days.

The first auction I ever went to was at Thos Mawer & Sons in Lincoln. I had been sent to buy a green settee for the TV room. “Twenty quid should do it” I was told. It came to the bidding and zoom – I lost it to someone else – for twenty quid! I didn’t even get a look in it all happened  so quickly.

Feeling that I shouldn’t go home totally empty handed I bought four wooden chairs for a pound (plus 15 pence buyer’s premium). When I got them home they were clearly rubbish and not suitable for our kitchen so I threw them on the woodpile at the bottom of the garden and they got used for kindling. Turns out this is the cheapest way to buy kindling 🙂

I’ve got loads of other auction stories but you will have to come to Bletchley Park to hear them.

Ciao…

Categories
End User olympics

Three cheers for us – Olympics Paralympics

I’ve been in the car on the way to Slough (I must have been a naughty boy when i was a kid) and listening to the Olympic/Paralympic parade. I had to force back the tears. Even the hardest of cynics must surely have been bowled over with the last month’s sport.

This summer has been totally emotionally exhausting.  I didn’t think it could get more inspiring than the Olympics but the Paralympics have taken that inspiration to a new high. If we can aspire to a fraction of the achievement levels of every single competitor we will be doing well.

In the meantime we as a nation deserve to bask in our own success. Drop that traditional British reserve and congratulate ourselves.  Hip Hip Hooray :))

Categories
Business events

save the date – trefor.net xmas bash 2012

For those of you who come to my Christmas bash I’ve booked the venue for the 2012 trefor.net gig. The date is Thursday 13th December. I’ll be announcing more details at the beginning of October but I can tell you it’s going to be a humdinger.

Categories
Engineer olympics

Olympic bandwidth usage growth

chart showing http (web browsing) traffic before and during the OlympicsThought this would interest you. It’s a chart showing the http traffic on our broadband network in the run up to and during the London 2012 Olympics.

The change is quite amazing. This growth isn’t representative of all the internet traffic during that time – that showed an overall increase of 30% or so.

As a business ISP our peak traffic time is during the day with a smaller local maximum (ok mini peak) in the evening when homeworkers and road warriors get back and use their work-provided broadband.

We still saw the evening  mini peaks but they are dwarfed by the daytime ones.

That’s all folks…

Categories
End User fun stuff

How to make steak tartare

Redwood Telecoms Director of pre-sales engineering Terry Bowers is very fond of steak tartare though he doesn’t like gherkins. This educational video shows you how to make it (without the gherkins of course).

Categories
agricultural End User social networking

@JRainy – bread the numbers

You get roughly 3000kgs (3Tonnes) of wheat per acre. An 800g loaf of bread has around 600g of wheat giving us 5,000 loaves-worth an acre.

I learned via @JRainy on Twitter that it takes a combine harvester 3 hours to harvest 8 acres of wheat which in my book makes it 0.044 acres or 222 loaves of bread a minute.

This year’s wheat crop is only 10million or so acres of which 15% is milling wheat suitable for breadmaking. We obviously eat a lot of bread – work it out!

Interesting eh?

Check out the Lincolnshire wheat harvest in action here – thanks to John Rainsforth 🙂

You heard it first on trefor.net…

Categories
End User travel

You played it for her you can play it for me @thekinema in the woods

newsreel of the coronation of QE2

compton organYou probably don’t know but when I was 16 I worked as a projectionist at the cinema in Summerland in Douglas Isle of Man. It was a great summer job – I saw the James Bond movie Spy Who Loved Me  50 times in the space of a fortnight 🙂

In Lincolnshire last weekend was the 90th anniversary of another28 volts supply for the Compton organ cinema, The Kinema in the Woods in Woodhall Spa. I went along for the open day and got to see places where the public weren’t normally allowed – in particular the organ room and the projection room.

We used to play vinyl records during the interval – you know cowboy theme tunes and other tracks suitable for cinema listening. The Kinema has a restored Compton organ, a magnificent beast with a huge array of pipes backstage and which runs on a 28volt supply. Nothing wasthe organ at the Kinema in the Woods in Woodhall Spa standard in those days.

Things have moved on since I was in the trade, even at the Kinema which prides itself on its olde worlde quaintness.

The old Peerless projector has been replaced with a new digital job that cost £50k including server. Instead of shipping 6 reels of movie film the studios now just send a hard drive with the digital movie on it. The latest Batman movie – Dark Knight was 304GB I noted. This is aPeerless projector still in situ at the Kinema but now replaced by digital job massive cost saving for the studios as each film cost knocking on a couple of thousand pounds to print.

I got to use a film splicer which took me back – same one I used in Summerland. I’ve still got a few frames of The Spy Who Loved Me somewhere at mams and dads after I had to do some emergency repair work mid movie.

Some big names had turned out to support the open day. It was thefilm splicer at the Kinema in the Woods - click to see me in action least they could do after all the Kinema had done for them. I’m pictured here with Humphrey Bogart who you will remember from Casablanca and the African Queen. Classics both. He’s wearing well.

All in all we spent a very pleasant couple of hours there being entertained by the organist and watching old shorts such as Laurel and Hardy and the Road Runner and Wylie E Coyote.

Finally the embedded video is of the organ in action including the bit at the end where it sinks back into the stage. Enjoy…I was pleased to meet one of my film heroes Humphrey Bogart who I greatly admire

PS Summerland got demolished a few years back. The remnants of my childhood gradually being erased.

Categories
End User travel

Why go abroad for your holiday when you can go camping in the UK?

sunny Bank Holiday in the UK - calm before the stormRegular readers will know that this is a very glamorous job. Hard work though so when I have a free day as was the case last August Bank Holiday weekend I like to pack the family off somewhere exotic where we can all relax and enjoy each other’s company without being distracted by work and the internet.

This video was taken at Jubilee Park campsite in Woodhall Spa at the height of the British summer. Why go abroad eh? There was calm after the storm as the header photo shows – click to see more.

Categories
Engineer media olympics

Technological Olympic conversations and what’s so special about Finsbury Park?

We all had a great time watching the Olympics, be it physically going to the games, on the telly or online (or all three). I’m sure we all agree that the BBC did a great job. There were comments regarding the quality of the NBC coverage in the USA but a) I live in the UK so don’t care and b) NBC apparently had 9.9 million users visiting their website so they just may have been getting their dose of Olympics from that source.

In the long run up to the games I wrote a great deal about the technology and capacity being put in place for the Olympics. The BBC in particular had geared its iPlayer servers up to expect 1Terabit per second of streaming. In the end the service peaked at around 700Gbps. The BBCs answer to hitting its capacity ceiling would have been to reduce the bandwidth available per stream rather than stop new users accessing the service or suffering service degradation so this worked out well.

Interestingly the Beeb says that it’s Olympic peak number of viewers expressed as the number of streams was during the Tennis singles finals at 820,000 requests.  Bradley Wiggins’ time trial  was similar to that of the Jubilee weekend at 729,000 streams. The peak daily volume was 2.8PetaBytes! 33% of all streams were to mobile devices.

Virgin Media, who had provisioned a huge 240Gbps of additional internet access bandwidth only ended up using a third of it. Good news from the customer experience perspective and the additional bandwidth now in place will soon be used up so it wasn’t wasted effort. Virgin’s peak was during Usain Bolt’s 100m final win.

Virgin also had a great story to tell with its WiFi on the London Underground. With hotspots in 62 stations Virgin had started the Olympics fortnight with 277,000 users registering 275,000 email addresses so some people must use multiple devices (presumably unless I’ve got it wrong). By the end of the games the number of users had grown 166,000 to 443,000. The number of sessions peaked at 20.7M on August 13th, the day after the closing ceremony with Finsbury Park being the busiest station!! What’s so special about Finsbury Park? Virgin’s Underground WiFi traffic grew by 34% over the Olympics period.

Evidence suggests that network traffic generally peaked the day after the closing ceremony which we can only ascribe to people catching up on all the Eastenders episodes they missed whilst watching the Olympics (losers!).

BT reported similar peaks at similar times to Virgin though its most popular times were for different events which just might reflect a different customer demographic. Also on the BT network the Andy Murray doubles finals game had more traffic than his singles which is different to what the Beeb was saying. Both could be true as BTs customers weren’t necessarily watching the live stream online. They might have been watching the games on TV and using the internet to fill in with other content.

BT also said that the saw a specific increase during Mr Bean’s stint at the Opening ceremony – folks sharing their excitement online or watching the video a second time – it was fantastic, fair play.

The London Internet Exchange traffic peaked at just over 1.2Tbps. Compared with its pre-games level of 1.1Tbps this might not sound like a big rise but we should remember that traffic normally drops in August because I go on holiday1 and taking this into account the actual growth is probably more like 170Gbps. Note LINX traffic in August 2011 was 800Gbps. This is not a like for like comparison as LINX now has more members using its network.

Btw if anyone can explain why Finsbury Park I’m sure all readers of this blog would be grateful.

1 only joking but you know what I mean – I tend not to use the internet when on holiday but I hammered it this time.

Categories
Business olympics

Wireless connectivity during the “connected” Olympics

Olympic long jump great Bob Beamon who is taller than Trefor Davies helped with the WiFi testing if he but knew itIn February I wrote about the O2 4G trials in London. The trials involved travelling around the city with a laptop and a 4G dongle looking for fast mobile internet access. Six months later I was back on holiday in London for the Olympics, billed as the “connected games”. As I was due to spend 8 days out of the Olympic fortnight in and around Olympic venues I thought I’d follow up the earlier 4G exercise with some mobile speed testing.

Highlights include the Apple Store, Virgin Wifi on platforms on the London Underground, the Cisco House at the Olympic Park and BTOpenzone at the Waldorf Hotel.

To test the 3G and WiFi networks after 4G seems the wrong way round but is still valid. The rise of the WiFi hotspot combined with the continuous increase in mobile data capacity are elements of the new mobile battleground for network operators. You don’t need to be a mobile operator to play. WiFi is strategic for both fixed and mobile players. It’s a competitive play amongst broadband providers and an offload mechanism for mobile players wanting to reduce the load on their cellular data networks

For the tests I used my Samsung Galaxy S3 and a couple of different apps from speedtest.net and thinkbroadband.com. The two apps produced slightly different results but in the great scheme of things were broadly the same – when the connectivity was good they both said it was good.

Rarely can a set of technical tests have been conducted in such interesting and historical surroundings. I started at home in Historic Lincoln on 31st July and did a quick test whilst still in bed at 5.52am getting around 8Mbps down and 400k up using my home broadband (boy am I looking forward to FTTC).

We stayed that night with friends in Historic Windsor. Their WiFi was up and down and the cellular data connection was near to non-existent at 11k down and 85k up.

In the morning of 1st August we were heading for the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff to watch TeamGB beat Uruguay. I jumped on the 15 minutes of The Cloud’s free WiFi at Historic Slough railway station and got a reasonable  5.9Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up. Upload speed is becoming just as important for me as download as I back up all my photos and videos to Google+ and like to post to YouTube.

Interesting that the WiFi at our friends house in Cardiff was a poor 1.6Mbps down but 3Mbps up. O2 mobile data speeds at the Millenium Stadium in CardiffI couldn’t get on the WifI at the Millenium stadium because I needed a BT Logon and being tight I didn’t want to pay for it. However the O2 mobile data connection was absolutely terrific at 7.7Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. At half time as the 70,000 in the stadium switched their attention to their phones  the speed dropped to 3.7Mbps down and 0.8Mbps up. Still very usable.

I was very very impressed with the mobile data service in the Millenium Stadium. My first true Olympic experience. I experimented with uploading blog posts using WordPress for Android. Without photos this was no problem. It struggled with big attachments though and I found later that this was very much a function of the upload bandwidth available for that application – faster the better obviously.

At the Millenium Stadium I was also seeing how well the battery would last on the Galaxy S3. I went in fully charged at around 5pm and hammered the phone by taking lots of photos (bursts of 20 at 3 frames per second) and videos and with using the 3G data connection. After 3 ½ hours I still had 24% batteryGalaxy S3 battery and wireless data usage left. I took 273MB worth of photos and videos whilst in the stadium. On the 1st of August I used 180MB of mobile data in total, 74MB of which was accessing the phone’s photo Gallery which downloads images from Google+!  Speed testing used 27MB of data on that day.

The next day I took the kids to Lee Valley to watch Team GB win Gold and Silver in the men’s doubles kayaking slalom (yay). This was an outdoor venue as opposed the near indoor nature of the Millenium Stadium but I was happy with 3.4Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up.

The free Virgin Media WiFi in underground stations was a revelation.Virgin Media WiFi speeds on the London Underground station platform at Covent Garden In Covent Garden Underground I got 26Mbps down ad 44Mbps up! Wow. My biggest problem was that you didn’t have enough time to reconnect for the brief time the train spent in stations once you were onboard. Once on the train you realistically had to abandon any expectation of using WiFi for the remainder of your underground journey .

Also in Covent Garden the Apple Store gave 11.7Mbps down and speed test at Apple Store in Covent Garden - a great place if you need easy and free access to good WiFi25Mbps up. You may have noticed a theme here. The uplink often seemed to be faster than the download but I guess that’s to be expected as most other users on the hotspot will have been downloading and sharing that bandwidth. This was the same at Lancaster House on the Friday (25Mbps down 31Mbps up) where I actually had to do some work at a Foreign Office Business Embassy meeting and the following week at the Cisco House WiFi speeds at the Cisco House - click to see the view from the balcony(21Mbps down 48Mbps up – they 50Mbps of internet access and 2x10Gbps backup if they needed it!) where I was entertained to Corporate Hospitality along with Dr Henry Kissinger and legendary US long jumper Bob Beamon.

Henry Kissinger is shorter than Trefor Davies

I had been looking forward to trying out the WiFi in the Olympic Park itself having got myself a 5 day Openzone logon. On Thursday 9th August at the Aquatics Centre for the Womens 10m High Diving finals – my first day of using it – I couldn’t get on to the network. It transpired that the BT WiFi landing page didn’t like the Chrome browser running on my Galaxy S3, the official phone of the Olympics!  Back the next day for the mens handball semi finals between Hungary and Sweden I found that the native browser on the S3 worked ok and I did get  WiFi connectivity.

The speed testers initially didn’t show much speed so I tried uploading a video of the handball to YouTube. It took a 69MB HD video file 18 minutes to upload which in my mind works out as roughly 0.5Mbps upload speed. I did eventually register 2.87Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up at the Handball.

The cellular speeds at the Aquatics centre ranged between 1.7Mbps andAquatics Centre O2 Cellular data speeds 5.4Mbps down with uploads between 32Kbps and 1.6Mbps.

After the Handball I did test the Wifi at various spots in the Olympic Park. It waxed and waned a little but I did see 8.3Mbps down and 3.2Mbps up at one point.handball cellular speeds were generally better than the WiFi
handball wifi speeds - I uploaded 69MB video in 18 minutes

 

 

BT say they had over 50,000 unique users register on their WiFi network in the Olympic Park. This must be lower than they had been expecting considering the total number of visitors to the site in the fortnight.  I guess that unless you were getting it free as a BT broadband people would have been put off paying.

The Olympic Park WiFi did prove to be reliable with 100% uptime for the whole period of the games which is good considering the shaky nature of the technology. In fact the whole Olympic experience from the network operator perspective was great. All the hard work put in to ensure there was enough internet capacity for everyone paid off.

I did have a few more comparisons. The Travelodge in Covent Garden was giving me just over 4Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up but the Waldorf HoteBTOpenzone WiFi at the Waldorf Hotel was terrificl where I stayed for the Hyde Park Blur gig on the Sunday night showed a whopping 20Mbps down and 26Mbps up. You get what you pay for. The Travelodge was a cellular connection as I didn’t want to pay extra for the WiFi and at the Waldorf I used the BT Openzone login that still had a couple of days left on it so that was free. Interesting contrast of hotels I hear you say? I paid less for the Waldorf than I did for the Travelodge the week before – crazy mixed up Olympics hotel pricing.

At the Hyde Park gig itself you could kiss goodbye to data connectivity unless you had access to BT’s own office WiFi, which I did and which gave me a variable result around the 3 – 4Mbps down.

I did try to pick up Wifi wherever I was in London. At various times I could see Virgin, The Cloud, O2 and BT hotspots. They were rarely satisfactory if you were walking around but I guess they are intended for use whilst inside a venue. Cellular was fine the whole time.

In conclusion I did find some great connectivity in London and at Olympic venues. 3G was more reliable but where WiFi was good it was great. I sometimes found that whilst there was WiFi I had to pay for it which I didn’t like so I went without.

The UK is going to be an interesting mobile battleground over the next couple of years. I think 4G is going to prevail outdoors. Owners of indoor venues will I believe have to offer free WiFi or somehow accommodate multiple providers of WiFi that offer free access to their own subscribers.

Looking at my phone data usage for August (up until am 22nd) I used 2.02GB of 3G data and 14.83GB of WiFi. This is largely because I took 7.63GB of photos and videos in the same time frame which were all backed up to Google+ over WiFi. If we assume that my own usage pattern is how the rest of the consumer world will operate at some point then a mix of WiFi and 3G or 4G is always going to be needed unless mobile data costs come down to match those of broadband which seems unlikely in the near term.

Have a play with the map below to see screenshots of individual speedtests at different venues. You might need to refresh your browser screen to see it. Zoom out to see all the test locations or click on the “view larger map” link below to see all the pins.

View Wireless Network Testing During Olympics in a larger map

Thanks to David Nelson for the photos of Bob Beamon and Henry Kissinger.

PS Would have been nice to get all the pins in view straight awayon the embedded map but it wasn’t worth putting any more time in the post to perfect it.

Categories
Engineer olympics peering

If you see a network engineer pat him on the back and buy him a beer – Olympics good job #LINX78

I’m at LINX78 the latest quarterly meeting of the London Internet Exchange. This meeting is particularly interesting because it comes immediately after the Olympics and its attendees represent the vast majority of UK internet access networks. In other words the people responsible for making your web browsing experience a good one during the Olympics were all here.

This community of engineers should stand up and take a bow as part of the team that made the event a total success. Whilst there will be the odd exception and glitch the network of UK plc performed incredibly well. From a personal perspective although I was on holiday I kept in touch with the office from time to time.  The level of support calls in to the Timico NOC was as we would normally expect and we got the additional network capacity planning just right which is hugely satisfying.

CEO John Souter described the “Olympic  effect” seen at LINX in the run up to the games. Since LINX77 in May the exchange has seen a 20% increase in traffic capacity growing from around 5Tbps to 6Tbps. In a single month over 60 10GigE ports were installed as part of a capacity growth that month of 800Gig (including the first 100Gig port connected by BT).

The rush was prompted by a June 19th cut-off date for new capacity needed before the 14th July Olympic change freeze at LINX.

If you need some perspective consider that the average UK broadband speed is less than 10Mbps. The 6Tbps capacity is the equivalent of over 600,000 broadband connections running flat out. It’s not really a good way of looking at it as there are many other factors that need to be considered – networks have alternative routes to the internet , broadband connections not running at capacity to name but two. However it is a testament to the efforts made by the UK network operator community to ensure that their contribution to the Olympics was a success.

Note I’m told that the Dept of Business Innovation and Skills (Vince’s lot) asked for a daily report on how the LINX network was performing – such is the critical nature of this infrastructure. LINX is going from strength to strength. The exchange currently has 431 members with 64 having joined this year (that’s up on the 49 new members for the whole of last year).

If you see a network engineer pat him on the back and buy him a beer (several beers knowing the engineers I know).

Categories
Business olympics

How VIPs got around during the Olympics – security hard undebelly

We were walking through London to Hyde Park for the Blur gig and saw several of these convoys driving along Picadilly. I guess they were ferrying VIPs from their 5 star hotels on Park Lane to the Closing Ceremony at the Olympic Park. The cops took no prisoners and were pretty aggressive with pedestrians and other cars that didn’t get the message to shift out of the way in a timely manner. The hard underbelly of diplomatic security 🙂

Categories
Business olympics

London 2012 – the epilogue

Usain Bolt - he didn't let us down :)I’m pretty much exhausted after the Olympics. I guess it doesn’t help having spent 8 days out of the fortnight one way or another down in London. It’s not coming here again in my lifetime…

The press is of course full of comment – they are going to continue milking it for all its worth as long as they can.

I doubt that there is anyone out there who doesn’t believe the games were a complete triumph. I am lucky enough to have gone to many events, partly because I have paid the money and partly because I received invitations from sponsors due to my seniority in the business. The Olympics have been great for me.

Whilst they have been billed as “the people’s games” I will volunteer that this is the one element that I had doubts over in the run up to the starting gun.

These games cost so much money to put on that many tickets were out of the price range of many people, assuming they could even get their hands on them. I realise we couldn’t fit everyone that wanted to go into each venue so supply and demand was part of this. Also the pressure to maintain the exclusivity of the big spending corporate sponsors meant that the Locog police went over the top in enforcing their branding rules. Stories abound of butchers not being allowed to display circles made out of sausages, or of local cafes having to change their long standing names because they included the word “Olympic”. This does not smack of people’s games.

The games’ huge success has to a large extent been because we have spent the money to “do it right”. Whilst it is now right for us to sit back and enjoy this success I do feel a certain regret that the Olympics have come to the position of needing to be huge and costly events.

Although the International Olympic Committee runs the games I don’t think anyone should feel that the IOC owns the games. They can only be there as guardians.

The games must be owned by everyone and it didn’t feel that the London games belonged totally to the people. They belonged in significant part to the IOC and Locog and the big companies that had shelled out lots of money for the rights to advertise their affiliation. I suspect that there is nothing we can ever do to change this for future games.

During the build up to these games I was free with my use of “proscribed” words and phrases such as London 2012 and Olympics. In part I hid behind the non-commercial aspect of trefor.net even though I am patently affiliated with Timico, a provider of (high quality) communication services.  In a sense I was doing it because had I been hauled up before the Locog kangaroo court it would have been great publicity but I was also standing up for what I believed was right and that is the Olympics is ours not Locog’s or the IOC.

Anyway enough of the rant. I, like most of you I’m sure, do feel a huge sense of pride in our country’s success in London 2012. Although I am at this stage unlikely to ever be an Olympic champion (it has  made me feel old looking at the ages of many of the competitors) the success of our sportsmen and women has spurred me to wanting to achieve more in my own life.

If anyone fancies a game of conkers this autumn the season is not far off… 🙂

Categories
Business olympics

Gawd blimey guvnor lawks a daisy frog and toad me old sparrer

welcome sign at the Actor's Church in Covent GardenI should apologise immediately for confusing American readers with this blog title the meaning of which will be immediately obvious to UK natives especially those born within sound of Bow bells. I should explain.

plaque indicating that John Milton was born in Bread Street - interestingOn Friday I had breakfast at Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen with business partner Terence Long who is a good lad and a pal. I then strolled towards Bank tube station to catch the underground to Stratford. It was a pleasant morning and I had a bit of time so I stopped at a pavement cafe outside a churcha lahtay for a lahtay.

Blow me down if the church didn’t turn out to be St Mary Le Bow – a Wren designed masterpiece and the original and one and only repository of the  Bow bells. For overseas readers (you know who I’m talking about) Bow bells are famous because true cockneys are born within earshot of them.

This is interesting because you probably don’t know that I was born at the maternity annexe of the Royal Free Hospital on the Liverpool road in Islington.  My parents had been desperately trying to get back to Wales but I came along before they could make it.St Mary Le Bow - a fine Wren church

Google maps tells me that Liverpool Road is a 2.3 mile walk which taken at an easy pace can be done in 46 minutes. I’d say that without the traffic noise, which of course would not have been there when the original definition of a cockney was fixed, that puts me in with a chance of being a pearly king, guvnor. Lumme. Lend us a monkey will ya?

PS Breakfast is top notch at the Bread Street Kitchen. Probably the best poached eggs I have had. If you get a chance you should try it.

PPS this last video is a countdown from the tenth floor of the salubrious Covent Garden Travelodge. I thought it was very much in keeping with the countdowns created by the BBC for the Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Enjoy…

Categories
Engineer olympics

A stroll around the Olympic Park

Park Live - where you could go and watch proceedings on a big screen at the Olympic ParkJust a couple of general interest Olympic posts to go. I’m saving some work related ones for when I get back from holiday next week. The first video shows the view of the crowds streaming out of the Park after one of the sessions was over. You only got a relatively short stint at a sport for your money although you could stay in the Park to take in the atmosphere. There wasn’t much seating so I don’t think they particularly encouraged you to hang around.

The view was from the Cisco House balcony.BBC studio at Olympic Park Next up are the BBC studios – looked flash on TV but actually built up on a load of containers so not so flash when viewed from the outside. when lit up at night the actual studios looked great though.

It was quite nice to be able to see where most of the interviewing action had happened on TV. It was also possible to determine which presenter was on at any given time.

There were games makers a plenty to help volunteer gamesmaker at the Olympicsout if you needed it – usually just asking the way somewhere.

The last pic is of the BP House – a very reflective wall. The basketball arena is to the left and the athletes village to the right.

The video at the bottom is of some handball action with Hungary scoring. BP house at the Olympic Park

Categories
End User olympics

what a difference a day makes

an empty Covent Garden piazza at around 11am on FridayI’ve been in London a fair bit over the Olympic fortnight. It has by and large seemed fairly quiet but finished with a bang with the Marathon in the centre of town and the Blur gig in Hyde Park, of which more later.

The two pics on the right show Covent Garden piazza a couple of days apart. The first is a photo taken at 11am of where the buskers usually do their stuff. Pretty empty.

The second is at lunchtime on the next day. Huge difference. Maybe it’s the couple of hours that made the difference or that everyone was at the games on Friday and theyCovent Garden piazza full of people then came into London to watch the Marathon on Saturday.

We shall probably never find out and actually I doubt anyone cares.

I gave the busker we watched the previous week a fiver. Seemed reasonable. He gave us  a long show and we enjoyed it.

Categories
End User olympics

nice fly on the wall scene at men’s handball semi-finals

Thanks to KCom I was sat on the front row at the Hungary v Sweden mens handball semi finals – very interesting considering I’d not even heard of the game before – or at least never seen a match.

We were just above some disabled positions. A lady in a wheelchair asked one of the Games Makers to take a photo of her using her iPad. I whipped out my phone and took this photo. I wanted to catch him in the act of taking the pic but wasn’t quite fast enough. This is a good one though – they are both reviewing the photo and she seems very happy with the outcome 🙂

woman reviews photo taken for her by Games Maker at the mens handball semi finals

Categories
End User olympics

Olympic troops

off duty soldiers at the Olympic Games

Nice surprise to bump in to Powernet CEO Tony Tugulu at the KCOM bash at the Olympics. We did the touristy bits en route to the handball and had our photo taken with a couple of the boys in uniform. Being regular readers of the blog they were just as pleased to be photographed with us as we were with them 🙂

Categories
End User olympics

is this an Olympic or world record for most beers consumed?

beer barrels at the Heineken beer garden just outside the Olympic Park

Don’t know about you but I don’t think I”ve ever seen so many beer barrels. Maybe its because I’m a small town boy with a lot to learn about the ways of the world.

view of the Heineken beer garden from the Cisco House balconyThey were at the back of the Heineken beer garden which was just outside the Cisco House. The next pic is a wider view of the garden taken from the top floor balcony of the Cisco House. Didn’t go there myself as were were well catered for with teas and coffees etc provided by Cisco.

Categories
End User olympics

Big Mac anyone? Handball?

There was a lot of publicity over the fact that the McDonalds in the Olympic Park was the world’s biggest. In actual fact there were two McDonalds inside the Park, one of which is the subject of the photo below. I don’t know whether they were both the same size or not – didn’t venture in having had a lovely lunch with my excellent Friday hosts KCOM. Just assume you are looking at the biggest one.

get yer Big Macs 'ere - worlds biggest McDonalds restaurant at the Olympic ParkThe second photo is a panoramic view taken inside the basketball arena – kitted out for the mens handball semi final.  Iwas supporting Hungary (ria, ria Hungaria, ria ria Hungaria as the chant goes) out of allegiance to my mate Erv the Hungarian concert pianist – more on him when he is back from his summer break in Budapest. Unfortunaltey we lost but there you go…

If you click on the photo of the arena to get a bigger size pic you will notice that the press area covers the whole of one side of the court – a reflection presumably of the level of interest in basketball.

panoramic view of inside the basketball arena set up for handball - note size of the press box

Categories
End User olympics

mangled train wreckage or huge helter skelter?

helter skelter or iconic olympic scultpure?Having only just mentioned the Beatles here is another photo depicting one of their songs. At least I assume that’s what it is.

It’s either a helter skelter or the mangled wreckage of a train crash dumped in the middle of a waste ground without realising it was the spot they had chosen for the Olympic Park! Doh!

I didn’t get to find out – no time plus I bet it takes ages to walk up to the top and you’re bound to get dizzy coming down.

If I were them I’d stop using it as a slide on medical/health and safety grounds and turn it into an iconic metal sculpture which would be a far better use.