trefor.net - Page 27 of 92 - Insider comments from the world of internet communications

Fire, fire – woodstore, the sequel

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 30 March, 2014
No Comments on Fire, fire – woodstore, the sequel

Last week we reported the building of a terrific new woodstore as an amenity for the Davies household in Lincoln. Check out the amazing video here.

Well not all the wood is going to be allowed into the wood store. The smaller branches and rotting bits of old furniture ain’t gonna make it. Nosiree Bob¹. Having bought a shiny new gas bbq last summer we no longer use our fire pit to cook food. In fact we haven’t used the gas job since last summer either but that is somewhat of a digression. What better use for a fire pit than to light fires? Eh?

This morning I rubbed two sticks together and got a blaze on the go. Been piling the condemned bits of wood on to the the point that the firepit is now full of ash and I’ll need to wait until another day to finish off the job. Will get some good potash for the plants out of it.

Just in case you ar wondering, and I know that statistically some of you will be ~~woosses~~ of a nervous disposition, it is all perfectly safe. I am on the committee of the local boys scout group and have watched how they light fires. At no point in time was the fire brigade likely to have been called for. After all it is Mother’s Day and firemen have mothers too you know. The last think they need is to be called out to a fire started by some idiot when they were supposed to be doing the roast potatoes.

That’s all for now. Got to take a shower to rid me of woodsmoke. Ciao amigos.

Other fire based posts:
Plough pub fires chef just before Christmas
Fireworks on bonfire night
Chromebooks, backups and crackling open fires

¹Wossgoin on? Yesterday it was Franglais and today it’s Americun!

End User fun stuff Weekend

le weekend est arrivé

Yes folks it’s here. Le weekend. Don’t ask me why it is in French. I’m not aware of any particular French theme to this weekend. Not the 14th of July or anything like that and I don’t think this is one of the weekends the baggage handlers go on strike.

Nevertheless, French it is. Not the whole post. Some of you would have to refer to Google Translate to understand it (si ce n’est pas vous ignorez cette dernière phrase). Also my French is frozen in time in 1978 with a B at O’Level so I doubt I’d do the subject of le weekend any justice were it written in that language. Think of the problems Google Translate would have understanding it.

In fact the whole opening section of this post is misleading. Yes the post has been written

End User fun stuff Weekend

Lincoln 10K – Legacy

As I’ve written previously, I only ended up entering the Lincoln 10K as the route goes through one of the grids from The Lincoln A to Z map, which is due to the overly convoluted radio program I present. Each episode is constructed from what we find in a randomly selected grid square. The route of the Lincoln 10K goes through this grid three times, so I’ll be running through the grid describing the scenes and my feelings and Jonny, the programs producer, has elected that he will describe events from the spectators point of view.

So far we have completed 30 of the 52 grids, which the esteemed Trefor Davies also contributes his glorious verbal dexterity to. The program has given me a different way of viewing the city. As I ride on the cycle path, past the ‘only just out of town’ retail park, I remember the miserable, drizzly morning we spent trying not to moan too much about our consumer driven concrete surroundings.

Lincoln being the place I have spent most of my life has personal memories scattered all over its landscape. One grid stands out though, the grid where, with my family, we watched the Olympic flame being passed from one of the torch bearers to another. I’ll never forget the look on that mans face as he received the flame, its was a ‘lottery win plus your team beating your nearest rivals 5 – 0 multiplied by the birth of your children’ kind of look, one that illustrated joy, excitement and emotion. I’m please I wasn’t one of the many experiencing this moment by looking through a smartphone, its burnt onto my memory banks and from that moment on, the Olympics transformed from being the usual British pavement looking attitude to seeing just how high we could soar.

When we revisited that grid for the program, Jonny and I asked the question “Has the legacy of that incredible few weeks lived on?”

If the Olympics was like a euphoric time when you and your friends went on a bender and beat the night, the word ‘legacy’ had just about sounded out of the closing ceremony when the inevitable hangover over of the sports funding cuts hit. The highfalutin sports – sailing and equestrian faded back out of the grasps of the underclass and you could almost hear the water being drained out of swimming pools when British swimmers didn’t reap success at the following world championships. Just lately, The Royal Mail had a PR disaster when they didn’t reward our successful Winter Olympians and Paralympians with a gold post box. The legacy it seems isn’t worth the price of a pot of gold paint.

The good news is that 2 days before the Lincoln 10K we get to see the inspirational Winter Paralympic athlete Jade Etherington take part in an open top bus parade. The tour will also take in schools the day before the pupils take part in road races too. Huge congratulations to Jade and lets hope we can relive a little of that magic time and inspire the Lincoln 10k runners.

Paul Tyler presents Lincoln A to Z on Siren FM

@lincolnatoz

Tags Lincoln, lincoln 10k, running

Business chromebook google H/W

Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – using different devices for personal and business

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 27 March, 2014
2 Comments on Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – using different devices for personal and business

I bought the Acer C720 Chromebook for use at home and the Samsung XE303, which up until now was my only laptop is to be designated as my business machine. It is somewhat misleading to suggest that their respective uses are solely for personal and business. Reality is that in the modern always on world it is difficult to separate work and play but at least I would get a feel for the user issues in respect of each environment.

Switching between work and personal accounts is a fairly straightforward matter. You click on your image in the top right hand corner of the screen and can choose the relevant account you want to access. This seems to be true across all Google Applications, at least as far as I’ve been able to see. So for example I can easily switch between Drive, Gmail and Calendar for each of my Google accounts.

There is added complexity here because I actually have multiple Google Apps accounts for different businesses but to keep it simple I’m just going to talk about trefor.net.

One of the purposes of having a separate business identity is to

End User travel Weekend

Cutting it fine – a story without words

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 27 March, 2014
5 Comments on Cutting it fine – a story without words

5km left in tank

End User H/W wearable

I bought an Osprey

Bought an Osprey laptop bag last night. From a new GO Outdoors camping superstore in Lincoln. Officially opening next weekend but I was passing…

My old laptop bag is over ten years old. It has airbags – bought during my globe trotting days when laptops had hard drives. Good laptop bags had airbags inside them to protect the contents from the buffeting in overhead lockers and other places where bags are tossed carelessly during the scramble to find your seat and the comfort of that first glass of champagne.

Nowadays breakable hard drives feature less and less in our lives. Certainly neither my new Acer C720 and not so old Samsung XE303 Chromebooks have one. Hard drives are rapidly heading for that huge pile of junk waiting to be recycled though not before you’ve smashed it with a hammer.

The old laptop bag is not only over ten years old but bits are breaking and it is desperate for a clean. The other problem with it was that the airbags took up a lot of space and didn’t leave all that much room for clothes in the event of an overnighter.

The new Osprey Quasar has 30 litres of space. I did have my eye on a Vango 60+20 but the sales guy who was very knowledgeable told me that was for expeditions and was the one one he used to do his Duke of Edinburgh Award. I may yet buy the Vango but in the meantime I walked away with the Osprey and will be using it in anger tomorrow when I head to London for the ITSPA Council meeting.

I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂

That’s all folks. You know it makes sense…

Are we losing touch with reality?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 26 March, 2014
2 Comments on Are we losing touch with reality?

When I was a kid I used to read 3 books a week. The deal was when I finished one my dad would buy me another.

I read a lot. Now I read that Facebook have gone shopping again and are buying a virtual reality company called Oculus VR.

In one sense this dismays me. A signal that we are going to be sucked even more into a cyber life that bears little relation to the real world. Some might say that this is a good thing. We only ever hear bad things in the news for example. At least it feels that way. Whats wrong with a bit of escapism?

Escapism is after all what I ~~was~~ am up to when deep into my books. I don’t hear or see anything going on around me (much to the annoyance of my wife). So just a different form of virtual reality really.

Sometimes I think we are losing touch with real life. We need to hold on to reality. Reality might have lots of bad things associated with it: lost planes, mudslides, war and the threat of war. Reality however has lots of great things. Great things the sum of which easily compensate for the bad.

It’s spring in the northern hemisphere. Best time of year. Feel the sun on your face, hear the birds, smell the grass. Get that barbecue out. Get reality.

Apps End User mobile apps

Can’t uninstall Flipboard

Bit odd. I never use Flipboard but appear to have it installed on my droid and it occasionally attracts my attention somehow. I decided to uninstall the app but it doesn’t seem to want to let me. It offers me the opportunity to stop updating or disable it but not uninstall. Doesn’t seem right. Is it a core android feature or have Flipboard done z deal with Samsung?

Screenshot below:

Tags Flipboard

Business chromebook H/W

Comparison of Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – physical differences

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 March, 2014
2 Comments on Comparison of Acer C720 and Samsung XE303 Chromebooks – physical differences

I have a shiny new Acer C720 Chromebook (in Granite Gray¹) at home. I also have a shiny not so old Samsung XE303C12 Chromebook that I have been using as my main office laptop since last Autumn.

I decided I needed two devices because I want to separate my business and personal life and having both sets of credentials on my one and only laptop means that the line between the two is somewhat blurred.

Due diligence was cursory in nature. There aren’t many useful reviews out there and no useful comparison of the differences between the two. Unless I’m not doing a good job of looking this seems to be the case whichever Chromebooks you might want to compare. In general hardware reviews often boil down to a comparison of specifications. Intel vs Arm hardware, screen size, battery life etc etc. This seems to be true regardless of the type of hardware – mobiles, tablets, laptops, TVs etc etc etc.

In the absence of what I considered to be useful guidance I decided that battery life was the most important feature and all other things considered I might as well go for the cheapest. I got a result here in that I ended up paying £20 less than the advertised price of £199.99. Check out how here.

The Acer C720 I went home with turned out to be just as good as the Samsung I paid £230 for (it’s now £199.99) and in some respects even better. The screen sizes are the same but the battery life is notionally better in the Acer than the Samsung.

Being at work I just unplugged the Samsung from its power supply and am told there are 4hrs 43 minutes of battery left. It varies depending on how much power the Chromebook is taking from its battery at any given time.

The screenshot on the right shows the Acer, unplugged after fully charged for the first time, with a whopping battery life of 11. hours 41 minutes. Once the Chromebook properly realised what was going on this settled down very quickly to 7 hours 40 mins (pic here) – still more than respectable. Clearly also better than the Samsung although lets remember that the Samsung is a few months old now. A quick Google suggests the Samsung battery life spec is around 6.5 hours cf 8.5 hours for the Acer.

My test was far from scientific but the Acer does certainly seem to have a longer lasting battery. I’ve had the Acer now for 4 days and only charged it up twice.

Weight is also a concern. The longer battery life needs to be accompanied by something that is not so heavy to cart around. The Samsung Chromebook is great for this at 1.1Kg. I don’t really notice it is there, certainly compared with the Dell Microsoft Dinosaurusbook I used to use. Also the Samsung is only 17.5mm thick.

~~The Acer is much heavier than the Samsung~~. Only kidding. It’s 1.25Kg and 19mm. Nothing in it really. The two photos below show one on top of the other. With the Acer on top it looks quite a bit thicker than the Samsung. However when you stick the Samsung on top there doesn’t seem anything in it.

acer samsung chromebook size comparison stacked

The other views also show very little difference. Front on or side by side they are pretty much the same.

Acer Samsung chromebook comparison side on

The Samsung has slightly more sophisticated looks but on balance I prefer the Acer. The touchpad on the Samsung has occasionally locked up on me and with the Acer I don’t sense this is going to happen. It is somehow more clickable.

The final point for this first Acer C720 comparison with the Samsung X303 Chromebook is about power supply connections.

It is such a shame that the two use different connectors. This is presumably down to different Voltage specs – I’ve not bothered looking. Life would make so much more sense if everyone used the same one. Then I’d have a backup if one ever broke on me. As it is if that happens it will be a faff buying another. Hasn’t happened yet but I don’t think I’ve had a laptop where the power supply hasn’t died on me at some stage. Maybe the better battery life signals less strain on the power supply and longer component mtbf.

Remaining reviews this week are going to focus on the practical experience of using two different Chromebooks for personal and business use. The software is the same for both. I have already made my mind up on a favourite and that is the Acer. The feel of it, the better battery life and the fact that the touchpad seems better has clinched it. I also managed to get the Acer at a lower price than advertised though both Chromebooks are notionally the same price. Not sure I’d bother going for any more expensive alternative.

Until tomorrow…

An invitation to Berlin – BCIX May 8th

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the BCIX website here.

Auf wiedersehen,

Business chromebook

Chromebook week on trefor.net

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 24 March, 2014
No Comments on Chromebook week on trefor.net

Look out for a series of posts on the Chromebook this week. You may recall I bought an Acer Chromebook last week to complement my Samsung. The idea was that I’d have one in the office where the main sign-on is the trefor.net Google Apps for business account and one at home where I used my personal account to log in.

I’d then not need to carry a bag into town when I walk to work. Freeeedom. Friday was the first day in which this was put into operation. This was a specially useful day for the freedom to kick in as I met some mates for beers after work and then headed to the Lincoln Drill hall where Kid3’s band was headlining the bill in the special Drill Hall tenth anniversary concert. The last thing I needed was to have to cart a bag around.

Today I find that the bagless society has not completely arrived as I have to carry the carrier bag with the packup so lovingly prepared for me by Mrs Davies. I’ve also found that due to circumstances totally within my control I’ve ended up with the logons arse about tit¹. The Acer machine, which is at home has the business logon and the Samsung at work has the personal one. Will sort that out later.

It has been an interesting experience getting to grip with the fact that the machine logged on to the business accounts has had services denied to it that are easily accessible by the personal machine. This is a good demo of the strength of the Google Apps service where a business is concerned.

More on all this later after I’ve climbed on Shanks’ Pony and hit the road to the office.

Hasta la vista amigos.

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Samsung Chromebook crash fix and print drivers – who needs em?
Footnote to Samsung Chromebook Free Galaxy Phone offer
Samsung Chromebook offer not very customer friendly
or search chromebook for lots of useful articles

PS It’s a beautiful sunny day. Yu need to be walking to work on a day like this.

¹ That’s trefor.net now blocked by all the consumer ISP porn fiters.

End User fun stuff Weekend

Wood store finished – live coverage of the woodpile at the bottom of the garden

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 23 March, 2014
2 Comments on Wood store finished – live coverage of the woodpile at the bottom of the garden

Le wood store est fini, as they say in Cannes. It’s the sort of thing they drop into dinner table conversation at A List get-togethers on the Riviera. It’s a while since I’ve been. What with not owning a villa in the South of France and all.

In Cannes they would be talking about the fact that Jean Claude¹ has finished the job. He is a treasure. You didn’t think they did it themselves do you? Plays havoc with your hands. Anyway it’s about having the time to do it, and the inclination.

Here in Lincoln it’s a different game. We build wood stores ourselves in Lincoln. It’s a matter of pride. Mind you no point in rushing it. It’s a job that has been needing doing for years. These things need careful consideration. Planning is all important. My mate Terry has been doing his bathroom for the last 25 years. Rush a job and do it twice, as the old saying goes.

The wood store is now finished, though the wood has not all been moved into the protection of its confines. That could be

End User fun stuff Weekend

Do not count – rebellious moment in Currys audio dept caught on video

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 23 March, 2014
1 Comment on Do not count – rebellious moment in Currys audio dept caught on video

Spotted these speakers in Currys audio department yesterday. They had “do not count” written on a label on top of each one. I therefore counted them. Don’t think anyone spotted me. The moment was captured on video and is now on YouTube for all to see. I’m a rebel, me.

Weekend gardening tips – get up at the crack of dawn to work your allotment

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 23 March, 2014
No Comments on Weekend gardening tips – get up at the crack of dawn to work your allotment

I was sat one Friday night in the packed snug of the Victoria pub¹ on Union Road and the conversation somehow came to the subject of allotments. Turned out pretty much everyone in the room had an allotment! It may be that real ale pubs attract a certain type. I doubt the same would have been true for Walkabout or any of the other trendy pubs in town.

We gave up our allotment a few years ago. It was handily placed just over our back fence but it at 60m x 10m it was too big and with four kids could never find the time to work it. The plot has now been spit in two and is properly tended to as it rightfully deserves.

This morning I was up early to set kid4 off on his travels to Sutton Bridge for a hockey tournament (90mins drive away) followed by a football match this pm in Burgh Le Marsh (also a long distance). At 7.30 am the scene outside the landing window was almost autumnal. There had been a lot of rain overnight but with the deciduous trees overhanging the garden not yet in leaf one sensed an absence of spring freshness that makes this the best of seasons.

Over in the allotments a couple of people were already up and at it. Wow. That is commitment. They will reap the benefit later in the year. All credit to them². I took a photo. You can just about make out one of the men – clicking on the pic brings up the full size version.

This morning I’m finishing the building of my woodstore. A rudimentary construction but hopefully one that will do the job. Fotos will be phurnished.

Public safety information – pedestrian crossing signs

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 23 March, 2014
No Comments on Public safety information – pedestrian crossing signs

This sign, on the pedestrian crossing near my house, is on red. Red means do not cross. It could be unsafe as there might be traffic coming that could hurt you. Badly.
When the sign turns green it is safe to proceed as any cars should have stopped to let you cross. Usually there is a beeping noise when the sign is green which makes you want to hurry across.
Sometimes if they think there are no cars coming people are tempted to cross when the sign is on red. This is a personal decision. No responsibility is accepted here if you are run over.
Occasionally people press the button and cross before the sign has changed to green. This tends to annoy drivers who may find themselves sat there waiting when there do not appear to be any pedestrians wanting to cross. Most of us will be guilty of this. Ah well.

Tags crossing, pedestrian, sign

End User travel Weekend

Post Box in Lincoln Carlton Centre – nuff said

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 22 March, 2014
No Comments on Post Box in Lincoln Carlton Centre – nuff said

agricultural Business Weekend

Green shoots

Green shoots, hope, optimism, anticipation, certainty, confidence, elation, enthusiasm, expectation, happiness, idealism, trust, assurance, brightness, buoyancy, calmness, cheer, cheerfulness, easiness, encouragement, exhilaration, positivism, sureness, good cheer, looking on bright side
More good reads:

Lunberjack weekend special & trailer maintenance tips
Should badgers get the vote and other jolly wheezes

End User fun stuff Weekend

#plaques passed on the way to work – Roman god Mercury

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Saturday, 22 March, 2014
No Comments on #plaques passed on the way to work – Roman god Mercury

Latest photo in the series #plaques passed on the way to work. This one is to be found at the bottom of Steep Hill in Lincoln.

End User fun stuff

Toilet humour

Photographed in train loo between Manchester Piccadilly and Sheffield en route home from 4G panel at Convergence Summit North. Not in perfect focus as train wouldn’t stop shaking:)

More bog tales:

A load of crapper

End User fun stuff

Lincoln 10K – The Bad Run

Thursday Morning

The radio program I present, Lincoln A to Z, is formulated by 52 randomly selected grids from the Lincoln A to Z map. We have a basic structure, but the tone and timbre of each program is guided by the contents of the grid. Out of the 30 programs we’ve made so far, its fair to say that a couple have left my producer and I scratching our heads and wondering what went wrong. By no means are these programs terrible, they just didn’t flow or turn out how we planned.

OK, one was particularly terrible, but once the program was over we retired to the office (pub) to discuss how to improve and avoid making the same mistakes again.

During a period of training, at least one run will be atrocious. It can be the simplest thing that knocks you, a stitch, traffic lights or tripping over a dog. Its frustrating at the time, feelings of failure kick in, heightened by the fact that you are out of breath. But I know that like the occasional below par radio programs (you try making an hour and a half radio program about a bungalow heavy street in suburbia), I know that its not the end of the world and that rather than it be a failure, it is in fact these hiccups that make you better in the long run.

The internet, bless it, is full of annoyingly positive statements like this:

Tags 10k, Lincoln, lincoln 10k, running

Engineer Net peering

#peeringweek wrap up

Peering Week has been a great week for content on trefor.net. The subject is deeply technical with its fair share of acronyms and buzzwords which might leave the layman baffled.

Although posts on this blog are often written to make the technology that powers the internet easier for the casual passer by to understand sometimes trying to explain something would involve the publishing of whole text books online. We therefore try and mix up the content with technical posts that assume the reader already has a reasonable knowledge of the subject combined with some lighter content.

During Peering Week we have had 18 excellent contributions from some of the people who run the internet in Europe. This might sound dramatic especially considering that the internet is made up of sixty or seventy thousand Autonomous Networks. The contributors this week run Internet Exchanges where a greats many of these networks connect to each other.

Internet traffic is growing rapidly and everyone in the business is tremendously busy. I am therefore hugely grateful to everyone who has taken the time and effort to put together a great set of blog posts that really do include something for everyone.

In reading #peeringweek posts you will get an understanding of what is going on “under the bonnet (hood)” of the internet including technology, commercial and political issues. There have been contributions from the biggest and smallest Internet Exchanges, from the oldest and the newest kids on the block.

I can say that we will definitely be having another #peeringweek. We will also be having weeks that focus on other areas of interest. Broadband, mobile, VoIP and cloud immediately spring to mind.

Thanks again to both readers and contributors and have a great weekend 🙂

Engineer internet Net peering

Peering policies #peeringweek

Post author By Andy Davidson
Post date Friday, 21 March, 2014
1 Comment on Peering policies #peeringweek

You’ve read so far in Peering Week about the many hundreds of thousands of connections that join together the 30,000 or so networks on the Internet. Some of these connections are negotiated in minutes by specialist engineers who work for these networks at one of the many peering events that happen throughout the year. The result is a “settlement free” connection between the networks, and traffic between the customers on each network starts to willingly flow.

However, some networks require potential peers to meet and continue to meet various specific technical or commercial criteria before agreeing to peer.

Most of the time such criteria, known in the trade as ‘Peering Policies’ make a huge amount of sense. For example, a peer will often state that they will not make a free peering with someone who is also buying IP Transit from them. Or will not peer with a network that is a “customer of a customer”, so as not to deny revenue from their own customers.

Although many peering policies are beneficial, sometimes peers have policies which have a detrimental effect on their business and the internet as a whole. I’ve picked some of my particularly favourite policies which have the worst unintended side-effects for us all to mock.

broadband datacentre Engineer engineering internet peering

IXManchester – It’s Quiet Up North #peeringweek

Post author By James Blessing
Post date Friday, 21 March, 2014
1 Comment on IXManchester – It’s Quiet Up North #peeringweek

So IXManchester has been up and running for nearly two years (must make sure someone organises another birthday party for June) and things continue to grow at a slightly slower pace than the first hectic few months.

January saw a IX Manchester meeting take over part of ~~GMEX~~ Manchester Convention Centre the afternoon before UKNOF 27 and the steering committee were hoping that there would be an announcement on the completion of the fibre ring that would add M247 Icecolo in Trafford and Telecity Joule House is Salford Quays to the core – alas the supplier seems to have run into “issues” and we’re still waiting.

The good news was that the original Brocade’s (re-tasked from the LINX Brocade LAN in London and in service for a number of years before its upgrade to Juniper in 2012) were replace with shiny new Extreme X670’s. Once the software upgrades have occurred then these will allow ConneXions services providing networks access to the IXManchester LAN from remote locations.

There are now (as of writing this) 44 connected broadband networks with 46 ports in use, 7 of these are 10G so there’s just over 100G of capacity in operation with the new sites and partner connections we’re hoping to crash through 200G this year. Thats a long way behind LINX London with its 500+ members and nearly 8Tb of capacity but its pretty good for a second city in an European country as you can see from the EuroIX list.

In remembrance of the EIX WG I shall now leave you with a traffic graph…

Other peering week posts you might like to read include:

UK internet history – The Early Days of LONAP by Raza Rizvi
INEX’s IXP Manager – Tools to help manage an Internet Exchange by Barry O’Donovan
Regional Peering in the UK by James Blessing
Co-operation makes internet exchanges future proof by Pauline Hartsuiker
Experience of launching an IXP in North America by Ben Hedges
The evolution of an IXP network engineer by Rob Lister
Why does Scotland need an Internet Exchange? by Charlie Boisseau

End User media

Radio – Sitting In

“Lily Allen sounds crap and uninterested”, said my wife as she listened to BBC Radio 2.

A few weeks previously I’d heard Dermot O’leary saying that Lily Allen would be sitting in for him while he went on a filming trip, “or she will be,” he said, “if she ever answers the phone to my producer!” Maybe an early sign that this whole thing might have been a hindrance for her, rather than a privilege to be broadcasting on the most popular radio station in the UK.

I’ve listened back to that program on the mainly brilliant, yet occasionally frustrating BBC iplayer Radio Android App, and I don’t think it was as bad as my wife made out. Sure,

Tags BBC Radio, radio, smooth radio

chromebook End User H/W

Just picked up my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Granite Gray

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 21 March, 2014
3 Comments on Just picked up my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Granite Gray

Picked up my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook. Granite Gray not Ash as foretold in this previous post but hey. Might never know what colour ash was 🙂 Also it’s a shame that international language seems to have dumbed down to the lowest common denominator of Americun English. Ah well.

Back at the office I thought I’d bang out some words of wisdom for you before user testing the product. I bought the Chromebook from PC World Business. One does this ostensibly when one requires a VAT receipt from PC World, dont ya know.

Whilst hanging around waiting for the PC World Business system to boot up I got into conversation and casually asked whether there were any discount codes available. The “sales advisor” (I imagine that’s how it’s speld) tapped his keyboard and hey presto a £20 discount appeared.

So my Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Granite Gray was not £199.99. It was £149.99 plus VAT which I’m sure your quick thinking minds will have totted up to £179.99 give or take a bit of rounding. Result eh? 🙂

I took a look at other Chromebooks on sale whilst hanging around. They were pretty much identical to the Acer. Small differences in build quality perhaps but these are all commodity items. It’s like buying bags of cement, or tins of baked beans.

Now what is interesting is I happen to know the discounts are not available from PC World’s Retail arm. This is because PC World Retail buys its stuff from Dixons Retail who in turn get it from a UK Distributor who buys his from the European Disti who gets it from the manufacturer. I also happen to know (it’s spring – a little bird told me) the manufacturer’s price is £90 so there is plenty of margin in there if you can buy direct from the manufacturer but sod all if you have to slice it 4 ways.

Apparently most of the Samsung products bring good margins – it’s only Apple who are greedy. What do I care? I got an Acer C720 Chromebook for £179.99.

Just bought an Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Ash – review to follow

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 20 March, 2014
No Comments on Just bought an Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Ash – review to follow

Just bought an Acer C720 WiFi Chromebook Ash. I assume that ash is the colour:) I have to go and collect it from PC World on Tritton Road in Lincoln in an hour. It’s OK – it’s only a short walk from the office in case you’re wondering.

I already have a Samsung Series 3 Chromebook – pictured here lying on top of my old Dell laptop (bless). I’ve decided to buy a second so that I don’t need to bother taking a bag to the office. I’ll just leave one in the office and one at home. All the content is in the cloud so no messing about transferring stuff.

The other reason for buying a second Chromebook is because I want to force a separation between my business gmail account – trefor.net and my personal one. I will still be able to access both from either machine but I want to build up the business profile on Google and other social media platforms and it can get confusing having two live accounts on the same machine.

Before buying I went online to look at reviews. Tbh they are all rubbish. You get side by side lists of specification features plus a bland analysis concluding in why you should by one nearly identical mass produced consumer commodity product over and above another.

I cogitated over thickness, battery life, screen size and price and ended up buying one of the cheapest which also seems to be amongst the best on battery life and thickness. Battery life is increasingly important – if you can get a day out of your machine when out and about then that is a result. I’m sure the Acer 720 WiFi Chromebook Ash will do the job. You can be sure I’ll also let you know if the colour doesn’t turn out to be ash, which will get us all thinking:)

I did think about just buying another Samsung Chromebook but figured it would be just as well to do a comparison between the two. Also there don’t appear to be many reviews out there that offer real user experience of the machines.

To finish off it is worth noting that when I last tried to buy a Chromebook from PC World they didn’t have any in stock. Shows how the Chromebook stock has risen innit?

Ciao amigo.

PS I did ponder buying a chromebox but it only seems worth doing if you need more horsepower.

Business business applications mobile apps xaas

Using FreeAgent for personal expenses & discount referral code

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 20 March, 2014
No Comments on Using FreeAgent for personal expenses & discount referral code

Following on from my post on FreeAgent yesterday I got home to find the details of the online banking for trefor.net. Time to get the accounts sorted out.

All of the set up costs for the business have come out of my personal account. This includes a chunky legal bill as well as ad hoc events such as ~~champagne celebrations in the Savoy~~ a few pints of half and half in the British Legion. Now that the bank account is accessible and money is starting to come in it is time to square things up.

At lunchtime today I fired up FreeAgent.

Engineer peering

ECIX – RemotePeering to help the small ones #peeringweek

Post author By Kay Rechthien
Post date Thursday, 20 March, 2014
No Comments on ECIX – RemotePeering to help the small ones #peeringweek

ECIX started as a classical Internet Exchange in Berlin, Germany. We tried to sell peering ports to ISPs, carriers and hosters on our platform, hoping to give them some advantage over buying ip transit. Mostly smaller companies made use of it. Shortly after Berlin, we opened an IX in Düsseldorf, which is the biggest internet hotspot on the biggest urban agglomeration in Germany.

Obviously having local peers from carriers with end customers and datacenter operators with content is the best mix. There were people offering content and people eager to consume it.

How does peering work? You run a service called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) on your edge routers installed at the demarcation points of your AS. BGP manages the connections between the AS edge routers and is responsible to build a table of IP prefixes. This is the Routing Information Base (RIB), summing up as much as possible IP addresses under one entry by aggregation. BGP also is responsible to make a selection of the best path between two AS networks based on rules und communities. After the best bath has been chosen, you will forward this information to the forwarding daatabase used by the router to move IP packets.

An ISP is normally connected to more than one AS. In the beginning you will buy one link from a bigger AS and connect the second port to an IX. You are doing so, because you will not have all worldwide available prefixes on an IX. Therefore you will need a default path for all the AS you can not yet connect to via the IX. The IX traffic should normally be much cheaper than the IP traffic you are buying from a bigger AS. This is because you are paying only for the physical link to the IX port and the management fee at the IX.

One day one of our bigger partners offered us connectivity between Berlin and Düsseldorf. This was the starting point of our remote peering product. Starting small with just a Gigabit-Ethernet port and a few hundred Mbps of traffic, customers started to use that service. Especially smaller ISP were happy to take part and by that way they extended their service reach to Berlin or Düsseldorf respectively.
Over the last four years we expanded this service to new locations like Hamburg and Frankfurt. We upgraded our transport backbone from pure Ethernet-transport between the cities carrying only VLAN to MPLS/VPLS transport over rented wavelength.

To be clear about it, the ECIX POPs are working standalone with their own peering mesh and peering IP address space. The remote peering product connects the customer using a virtual ethernet link to that local peering mesh.

With enough experience and knowledge in remote-peering, we searched for new opportunities in Europe and found LU-CIX to be interested in connecting Luxemburg to Düsseldorf and the rest of the ECIX POPs. Later that year we joined AMSI-X remote peering, with competitive pricing and a large number of customers using this service right from the start.

What we did wrong: definitely using a layer 2 Ethernet Backbone link to connect the peering lans. This was a hard time, filtering broadcast traffic, counting local traffic, etc.
What we did right: switching to MPLS/VPLS and using virtual point-to-point Ethernet links between the remote customer and the local peering LAN.

Any issues? Yes there are some unsolved things to be fixed. First of all, the unbalanced selling of ports. Normally the customer of a smaller IX buys remote peering, not the other way around. Second the BGP routing must be very consequent on the customer edge routers. Not sending traffic over long distance links, if the peer is also present on a IX nearby. We try to help with our route-servers and sophisticated BGP communities.

Would we do it again? Yes! Remote Peering is one of our main features and we are continuing to find new interesting remote IX to the benefit of our customers.

Other peering week posts you might like to read include: