Categories
Business Cloud datacentre piracy Regs

Protest against #SOPA #TimicoDC

The Stop Online Piracy Act SOPA bill is being considered by legislators in the USA as a means of combating online copyright infringement.  “The bill is so over broad and badly written that it is going to impact all kinds of things that don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy” –  Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia.

In the UK we are constantly under threat by Governments that latch on to the idea that they can solve specific problems by “controlling” the internet. Witness the Digital Economy Act plus a number of subsequent calls for the blocking of access to websites by a range of different stakeholders.

This is not to say that this blog supports the use of the internet for unlawful activities. It is however important to recognise that the phenomenal growth of the internet and, by definition, of the world wide web, has only been possible because of its openness. SOPA seeks to control this openness and will kill it.

Follow the discussion on Twitter using #SOPA

I had intended to switch off the blog tomorrow,  Wednesday 18th January 2012 in support of the Wikipedia protest1.

Unfortunately this clashes with the Grand Opening of the new Timico Datacentre in Newark. Timico has invested around 15% of its turnover in this project. For us it is a serious bet too important an event to have any distractions on the day.

I will be posting photos of the day on the blog as soon as the speeches are over and the champagne has stopped flowing. I’m the shy guy hovering in the background guy looking uncomfortable in a suit.

You will also be able to follow the day on Twitter using #TimicoDC – the stream appears in the sidebar of the blog if you prefer to stay here 🙂  Oh and by the way, as of tomorrow the datacentre is officially open – you know where to come if you need colo, dedicated servers or VMs. Drop me a line at [email protected] if you want to know more.

I am also offering personal guided tours to readers of the blog (fwiw 🙂 ) – drop me a line if you want to come and see the facility including our brand new state of the art Network Operations Centre.

Finally comments on this blog are Twitter enabled – sign in with Twitter and a tweet will be sent with a link to your comment and quoting the #TimicoDC hashtag. If you want to help spread the news please comment using this facility.

1 Wikipedia is being switched off for the day to illustrate what it would be like if it was blocked.

Categories
dns internet

Domain disputes and cybersquatting

An invitation arrived yesterday to attend a Nominet briefing on dispute resolution for domain name registrars. It’s a breakfast job in London so I probably won’t go. With the invite came an interesting stat – one in every 3,000 .uk domains is subject to a dispute of some sort!

Considering that Nominet manages knocking on 10 million domains that’s a lorra (my wife’s from Liverpool) disputes. I imagine quite a number of these disputes relate to cybersquatters1 . I recently had occasion to look at some domains names to buy. There are a lot of domains out there that are owned but not used or simply point to sites that make money out of click through advertising.

These days the problem of finding a suitable domain is exacerbated by the fact that you also need to secure the corresponding Twitter name. I think it’s about time we started from scratch and changed the whole system. Bags I trefor.net 🙂

1 if you don’t know look it up.

Categories
charitable End User social networking

world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

世界記録のコメントWe had a good go at it guys. When I first discussed the world record attempt for “most comments on an online news post” with the Guinness World Records® people there was no record in place. We came in at 5,455 comments in 24 hours.

Unfortunately in the meantime a Japanese pop star – don’t ask me his name, I was too distraught to register it1  – has come in with 56,800 on his fan website. Apparently a quarter of all his registered fans left a comment. That’s life folks.

However we should not be dismayed. We should rejoice. First of all we raised just over £6k for the RNLI. The RNLI needs £150million a year to keep going. That’s a lot of two pences rolling down that lifeboat donation box and every little helps.

Secondly I contacted Charles Arthur, Tech Editor of the Guardian who after digging around a bit discovered that the most comments ever on a Guardian news post was 4,789.  The Guardian is reputed to have a monthly unique readership of 50 million people globally so the fact that we beat their number for most comments is huge news. NOTW phone hacking not unsurprisingly seems to be the subject that generally attracts most people to comment at the Guardian.

Perhaps I’ll change the subject next time to something more inflammatory. I think we will have another go – next year maybe. There was huge enthusiasm amongst everyone who participated. The main feedback from GWR, apart from the fact that they enjoyed following the attempt was that it appears that this sort of record is generally best suited to celebs with huge  followings. A bit obvious but perhaps we can prove that wrong someday:)

Still to do: tech post & look at the “most inspiring comments”. As regard the latter if anyone has any they would like to highlight let me know – leave a comment on this post linking to their favourite comment.

That’s all folks.

PS world record attempt blog post here

1 tbh it’s ‘cause I couldn’t understand it & didn’t want to look stupid asking for the name again 🙂

Categories
Business gadgets

CES Las Vegas – the non report #CES

I’ve been keeping an eye on proceedings at the Consumer Electronics Show in ‘Vegas1 . So far it’s a bit disappointing really. I guess we are all used to a rapid pace of change and when it doesn’t keep accelerating we think something is amiss.

This year I suspect the change is going to come when the next generation of mobile handset technology comes out sometime later this year. Mobile is where it is at.

I want integration of the mobile with the house. Currently we have DECT phones scattered around the place – the kitchen, lounge and TV room all have chargers. Apart from my wife everyone has a smartphone in our house (granted the 11 yr old wants an upgrade from his Nokia N97 which, at some point soon I will see as not an unreasonable request). I see no reason why these handsets shouldn’t replace the DECT ones. Everyone already has their own number. The kids only use the house phone to avoid paying mobile charges. This should all be blended. It’s just about the physical transport medium. It is doable once the mobile networks play ball.

I also see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to

Continue reading “CES Las Vegas – the non report #CES”
Categories
charitable Cloud datacentre End User social networking surveillance & privacy

The social media summary of the world record attempt

UK trending for @tref & #comment24 on twitter The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday.

Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter but the story was also posted on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The effort also caught the imagination of a good number of friendly journalists as the list of names in the table of top referrers for 5th Jan illustrates.

referring site

# visits

pages/visit

time on site

1

t.co (Twitter)

2,012

2.73

00:04:08

2

 facebook.com

903

4.44

00:04:56

3

 gizmodo.co.uk

310

2.38

00:02:19

4

 thinkbroadband.com

291

4.38

00:04:36

5

 forums.moneysavingexpert.com

265

3.24

00:02:58

6

 m.facebook.com

240

2.2

00:01:53

7

 guardian.co.uk

233

3.07

00:03:50

8

 thenextweb.com

221

2.83

00:02:47

9

 telegraph.co.uk

207

3.6

00:04:47

10

 hootsuite.com

67

2.88

00:04:10

11

 community.plus.net

63

2.84

00:02:43

12

 plus.url.google.com

59

4.05

00:05:45

13

 linkedin.com

57

4.84

00:07:03

14

 thelincolnite.co.uk

51

2.25

00:02:07

15

 celticquicknews.co.uk

50

1.36

00:00:23

 

In all according to Google Analytics there were 162 referring sites over the 5th and 6th January. A Google search for

Continue reading “The social media summary of the world record attempt”
Categories
Cloud End User media social networking

The evolution of TV – Sky and Zeebox

I note that Sky has taken a 10% stake in Zeebox, a service that integrates TV watching with social media presence. This is the future. In fact this, to my wife’s annoyance is also the here and now.

How often do you see the twitter stream fill up with comments about a TV programme that is on at the time? It is usually stuff like Xfactor or The Apprentice, neither of which I can stomach. Yesterday it was the Manchester City v Manchester United FA Cup tie.

This is a pretty astute investment by Sky who scrapped their monthly Sky Magazine in print format last autumn despite it being profitable and one of the highest circulation monthly mags in the UK. Zeebox will add to Sky’s already powerful interactive online presence with Sky+,  an interactive planner on iPhone/iPad app and  SkyGO their app to watch TV on the move.

My wife may not like it but it is also the way forward in every aspect of life. She already shops online. It won’t be long before she is coordinating shopping trips using Twitter, Facebook or some other as yet unheard of facility. We have to embrace the new technology and the new way of living.

The size of the Sky investment has not been disclosed but my bet is it will be great for both parties and shows that there is still plenty of opportunity for the canny entrepreneur to make things happen even in this economic climate.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

Categories
charitable End User

The morning after the week before #comment24

The world record attempt finished at 6am this morning. Phew. We didn’t get the 100,000 comments we were after. According to the screenshot I took at 6am  it was 5,455 though there are potentially a few “non-qualifying” comments in there that I will have to check.

final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am
final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am

At this point in time I don’t know whether we will be accorded a world record for this one. There is no existing record to break and the 100k was an arbitrary target set by the Guinness World Records® organisation as one considered appropriate based on a different record category concerning Facebook comments. I will report back on this one over the next few days as the info comes in.

More importantly the current tally of funds raised is £5,809.50. This comprises 110 donations made online via just giving (includes a very generous £1k from zeninternet – thanks boys)  and also includes £2,360 worth of pledges made to me offline that I know we are good for (£2k is from Timico & £250 from ipcortex – both great contributions) .

The total funds raised is yet to be firmed up as money is still coming in and

Continue reading “The morning after the week before #comment24”
Categories
charitable End User

World record attempt for most comments on an online news item in 24 hours has started. #comment24 #RNLI

At 6am Greenwich Mean Time (that’s in the the UK) an attempt at the world record for the most comments on an online news item in 24 hours began (ie this blog post). According to Guinness World Records® we need around 100k unique comments. That’s just over 1 comment a second! With your help we think we can whoop that.

This is also charity fund raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) the UK. The level of funds raised is not associated with the number of comments and it doesn’t cost to leave a comment but if you want you can make donation by clicking on the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar – the bigger the donation the better.

When you leave a comment you have the option to tweet it – please do so if you can as this will help to spread the word using the #comment24 hashtag.

To comply with the rules the comments must be at least 10 characters, a minimum of two words and not comprise solely of punctuation marks. Basically comments have to make sense. Happy commenting & let’s see if we can raise  some cash for the RNLI.

Postscript – conclusion here

Categories
charitable Engineer

The tech detail of the platform being used to host the world record attempt #comment24

trefor.net is powered by WordPress, CIsco, EMC and TimicoThe attempt at the Guinness World Records® Record for most comments on an online news post in 24 hours is set to start at 6am on Thursday 5th January. This is going to be an interesting experiment which will hopefully raise a lot of cash for the RNLI.

In order to make a success of the record attempt we have moved the blog off its old shared platform onto a new state of the art job hosted at Timico’s new data centre in Newark. This is before the data centre is officially up and running so we have all its resources to ourselves. I am heavily indebted to Timico for this.

We have been quite busy getting the new infrastructure up and running so I am also very indebted to neighbour Steve Nice and his company Forlinux for their help with the platform software.

The basic architecture looks like the diag on the right (click to enlarge).Cisco UCS server architecture used to host trefor.net for world record attempt A load balancer fronts a number of wordpress servers that in turn feed off a two database (one replicates to the other as a backup).

Each server is a Cisco UCS B200 blade and connects with 2 x 10TByte EMC Storage Area Network (SAN). The blades are dual 6 core (hyper-threaded) Xeon processors with 96Gigs of RAM each and with the Hard Drives disabled for mtbf optimisation purposes. The components are all connected using a 10GigE backplane.

The data centre initially has 2 x 10Gig connections coming into it so there is plenty of bandwidth available. The site supports IPv6.

We are using WordPress 3.3 on top of CentOS 6/Apache 2.2/PHP5.3 and mysql 5.1 – version numbers are hidden from people querying the web server (Apache).

The blog itself, already relatively light on plug-ins, is based on the Thesis theme and has been pared down to the minimum to maximise performance.

Some plug-ins are worth a mention. Caching is employed using WP Total Cache for performance optimisation. Simple Twitter Connect is used particularly for comment tweets and AddToAny is used in the post for sharing.

We were kindly offered CDN capacity by Limelight Networks but we as we have already been working overtime to get the data centre ready there wasn’t time to incorporate this. The CDN is probably just a “nice little extra” on this occasion anyway as the content isn’t particularly heavy on bandwidth.

If you want to help with this world record please tell your friends – the post is going live at 6am on Thursday at http://www.trefor.net. If you regularly use a forum or have your own blog please leave a post with a link to this site.  If you want to donate please use the JustGiving page or click on the big green “DONATE NOW” button in the sidebar.

Categories
charitable Cloud End User

promo interview with BBC for Thursday 5th Jan world record attempt #comment24

More world record stuff. Keep the sponsorship coming in by the way. It’s starting to build momentum.

Categories
charitable End User

calling all sponsors – help a good cause and be associated with a fun event #comment24

Many of you will already have heard of the world record we are going for on Thursday 5th Jan. This is for the most comments on an online news story in 24 hours.

Timico is sponsoring the first 2,000 comments. Yesterday Rob Pickering of ipcortex (great company) came up with £1 for each of the next 250 comments – totally unprompted and keen to support the cause (RNLI). Thanks Rob.

Now we are looking for more donors. Donating is easy – you can use the JustGiving page or hit the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar. Leave your twitter username if you can – here or on the JustGiving site.

Note that the number of comments made is not actually associated with the amount of cash raised. In other words we don’t have to have the same number of comments as pounds and vice versa.

If you are a corporate sponsor and would prefer to send a cheque or do a bank transfer you can email me  or call me – number is here.

This event is going to get some serious media coverage and sponsors will get very positive global PR out of it.  As the world record is going to be formally submitted to Guinness World Records ® there is also the possibility of being associated with a long lasting record online. The value to sponsors could continue long after the event is over.

I will publish a list of major donors but in the meantime the Twitter list of sponsors here. (needs updating)

Categories
End User fun stuff

wistful retrospectives and bold predictions?

I suspect that at this stage of the holidays I normally write a review of progress over the last 12 months (with appropriately satisfied noises) and put my mind to the next year.

Well this year all I have to say about  2011 is that it was another great one – they all are. No doubt there were ups and downs but hey, you have to get on with it.

So what sagatious pearls might I have to impart in making predictions for 2012? I am not a wise man. I can only say this:

“There will be a lot of change in 2012 and how you feel at the end of the year will depend on how you managed that change.”

Whether this is in business or in your personal life it is no different. New things will come your way. Try them out. Throw them away if they don’t suit but don’t sit on the fence muttering that things ain’t what they used to be. That fence is groaning under the weight and one of these days it is going to collapse. If you’re sat on it you can wave goodbye as you go down.

For various reasons we live in exciting times. This is probably the most exciting period of technology change I have known in a short life that has (and I am constantly amazed by this) seen the invention of the mobile phone, the personal computer, the internet, oh and penicillin1 . The excitement may stem from the pace of change but believe you me that pace is accelerating.

So in 2012 embrace the change and make it work in your favour. Work hard, play hard but most of all don’t sit on that fence.

See ya next year.

PS sorry if the title was somewhat misleading -I’ve obviously been reading the tabloids to much recently

1 only joking – not that old 🙂

Categories
charitable Cloud End User social networking

The story behind the world record attempt #comment24

This attempt at a Guinness World Records® Record all started back in November when I took a customer out to dinner to celebrate a bit of business. The customer mentioned that he read trefor.net and, to cut a long story short, I said that Timico would donate £1 to his favourite charity for every comment left by one of the staff from his company. I capped this at £100 – it was just a bit of fun. His favourite charity is the RNLI.

A glass or three of wine followed and we decided, as you do, that we would go for a world record. Considering this I upped the ante to 1,000 comments from his employees (£1 each) and said Timico would double up if we got a world record out of it. The record, whatever it was, seemed eminently doable. This customer has thousands of employees globally with many of them being industry analysts and commentators with large twitter followings.

I was sure that we could have a good time with this important customer and raise some funds for charity at the same time.

I woke up the next day thinking hmm what have I committed to

Continue reading “The story behind the world record attempt #comment24”
Categories
Cloud End User fun stuff

2 days til Santa comes yay

Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Concert Band play for the good folks in Waitrose in Lincoln

big wheel outside the Liverpool Echo Arena before last night of Paul McCartney tourThis is undoubtedly one of my favourite times of the year. When you are a believer like me the run up to Christmas Eve is very exciting. I start going to bed early and being a good boy so that there can be no question in Santa’s mind that he should be making that important stop in Lincoln.

Paul McCartney at the Liverpool Echo Arena for the last night of his tour - stunning concert as usualThe mince pie, carrot and brandy get put out before I go to bed and it always amazes me how Santa can get down what must still be a red hot chimney after that fire has been going all evening. The next day he and the reindeer have always scoffed the lot. Every year, without fail.

Timico management team at black tie dinner in private room at Stapleford Park hotelThe run up to the big days is always busy and this year has been no exception. This week has been a particularly good one with a trip to see Paul McCartney at the last night of his tour in the Liverpool Echo Arena.
Eleanor Turner - internationally renowned harpist entertains at the Timico management dinner

Stapleford Park in Leicestershire - qualityWe also had the annual Timico management bash, this time at Stapleford Park.

Stapleford, if you have never been, is a stunningly luxurious country house hotel in Leicestershire – former seat of some duke or other and surrounded by Capability Brown landscapes.I chat with Eleanor Turner who is listening politely to my drivel

You know what it’s like, champagne, cocktails, port, brandy, that kind of stuff. We’d do it more often if it was up to me.

We were lucky enough to be entertained by top international harpist Eleanor Turner who lives locally. Brilliant stuff though the team needs to stick to managing a business because carol singing accompanied by a harp is not their strong point.

The pic on the right is of me wowing Eleanor with my witty and erudite after dinner conversation.

It’s been another great year in business and on the blog. In fact it’s been a great year all round. To all friends out there have a wonderful Christmas break and I look forward to engaging with you anew in a slightly toned down January – life can’t keep going at the same pace when you get to my age you know!

I will be working between Christmas and New year – data centres to launch, world records to smash etc – so keep your eye open for news. Your help is required. 🙂

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity security social networking

McAfee quarterly threats report Q3 – a worthwhile read

Tinterweb is a wonderful place full of  great things that can change our lives. Of course we all know it is also full of pitfalls, dangers, threats, hazards, risks, problems, exposure, troubles and perils 1.

I have just discovered the McAfee quarterly “Threats Report” . If you haven’t read it you need to rectify the situation. It is an amazing compendium of the threats to which we are exposed when we reach out into the land of the hypertext transfer protocol.

For the convenience of the busy reader I have selected some extracts for your delight.

  • In Q2 the Android mobile operating system became the most “popular” platform for new malware.
  • By Q3 Android has become the exclusive platform for all new mobile malware.

Look out that your phone doesn’t start texting premium rate numbers or broadcasting your personal data or even, as is the case with Android/NickiSpy.A and Android/GoldenEagle.A, start recording your telephone conversations. Don’t give any banking information over the phone will you. The malware stays on your phone for an extended period of time to make sure it catches the right phone conversation!

I’m not a worrier but I have started to think more about protecting myself and my family when communicating. There are some security solutions on the market and I will give them a go over the next few weeks and report back.

The McAfee report has tons of interesting stuff in it – Botnet growth by region, Social Media threats, new “bad reputation” URLs per day (hits 40,000 some days!!!). There are currently over a quarter of a million Active Malicious URLs. The report even tells you the going rate for Crimeware tools – $1,500 for Linux exploit tool LinuQ (with private exploit) – if you are unfamiliar with this don’t ask – it’s a need to know job and I don’t know.

I encourage you to read the report to which I link again here.

1 My thanks to Roget’s Thesaurus for this contribution

Categories
End User fun stuff

Rook’s off

I recall a Two Ronnies Rook Restaurant sketch Simon Brown is served by Denise at the Beacon Centre in Newarkon TV from when I was a lad. The only thing on the menu was rook and even that was off.

Today we popped over to the caff at the Beacon Centre in Newark for a quick bite. The lady serving there, Denise, is a lovely person – always has a smile on her face. Today felt a little like the Two Ronnies sketch as they were running down stocks for the Christmas shutdown.

I started off ordering a cheese end onion sandwich (my needs are simple). No cheese left sorry. “The soup was good” shouted someone. Sorry soup’s finished. I then went through a list of possibilities until I ended up with a ham sandwich. Whilst it was being prepared I said “with butter please”. Sorry no butter left. Ok mayo then. No mayo either:) I settled for pickle.

It’s a good caff and they bake their own bread which is of outstanding quality. Happy Christmas to Denise, Sharon and all the staff. They deserve the break.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Liverpool Echo Arena mobile capacity #paulmccartney and the French

Went to the last gig of Paul McCartney’s world tour at the Liverpool Echo Arena last night. Ten thousand fifty somethings with the occasional grandchild thrown in for the experience. Old Macca is going strong though at around 70 years old doesn’t quite hit all the high notes with the same strength as he might once have done.

Not complaining. It happens to us all and the die hard fans in the audience didn’t really care. On a boringly technical note what surprised me was the high quality mobile data reception inside the Arena. My mails and tweets were coming in as normal. The signal varied between HSPDA and 3G according to my Samsung Galaxy S2.

I recently met with one of O2’s tech team to discuss stadium communications technology.  This followed on from

Continue reading “Liverpool Echo Arena mobile capacity #paulmccartney and the French”
Categories
charitable Cloud End User social networking

World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

To get 2012 off to a racing start we will be having a bit of fun on trefor.net and aiming for a world record for “Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours”

This is a genuine Guinness World Records category in which the current record stands at 100,000. That’s just over one comment a second. Should be easy huh? 🙂

The attempt begins at 6am GMT on Thursday 5th January 2012 and ends 24 hours later. It would be nice to think that we could smash the existing record by a country mile. Someone mentioned 1million comments – why not?

Between now and then the blog is moving to a high availability, high performance platform, details of which will be made available in a blog post on Tuesday 3rd January.

In the meantime there is much spreading of the word to do to make this a great success.  You will be kept up to speed with any relevant news regarding the world record either on the blog, Twitter (#comment24), Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn (actually all of the above).

We will also be letting you know in advance the type of content that will be in the post for the record attempt so that you can get your thinking hats on in advance for your own comment.

It would be great if you could spread the word on this by “liking”,” Linking”, “sharing” “tweeting” or just telling your friends by good old fashioned “word of mouth”.

Trefor.net also has a page on Facebook where you can find out more and a Facebook event here.

Hope you can help  🙂

Tref

Categories
Business piracy

Who will sue who next?

Good old BT has stepped into the litigation fray and is suing Google for patent infringement. Yay. It doesn’t seem like yesterday that BT was in court trying to extract cash from US ISP Prodigy over its use of HTTP links.

What a world this is becoming. I recognise that Intellectual Property needs protection but it does seem at times that the feeding frenzy is doing nobody any good other than a global community of lawyers .

You can almost picture the scene, the birds of prey (legal eagles),  hovering at a safe distance, kept aloft by the thermal currents rising from the technology battlefield below.  If anyone wants to draw me a cartoon depicting this I will stick it in this post 🙂

It would be interesting to see how much the average price of a smart phone is driven up by the overhead incurred in legal fees spent defending patent litigation.

Categories
Archived Business Cloud

The 2011 Timico Network Operations Awards – what a great team

The Netops team assembles for pizza, champagne and the Annual Timico Network Operations Awards

Penny Wilkinson accepts overall champion award/holiday certificate for David Sears who is on holidayXabi Merino leader of the Timico data centre projectTimico Group Ops Director Calum Malcolm holds the sorting hat whilst CEO Chris Tombs draws the name for the overall winner of the Group Ops Employee of the YearMichael Goodinson - builder of the best NOC display in the businessKarl Dawson - runs a very tight project management shipIan Christian has built a top quality VM platformDi Davies -her attention to detail made sure the whole Timico data centre project ran to scheduleGareth Bryan - a giant amongst engineers bends down to receive his award from CEO Chris TombsLaura Compton receives an award for great work doneHow do you thank a great team that has bust a gut for you all year to make your operation a success?

You have pizza and champagne for lunch at the Annual Timico Network Operations Awards.

This has been a special year because the team has had the new data centre project to contend with on top of having to deliver another record year of sales.

The data centre has been delivered on time and everyone is busing a gut to get the last few customer networks provisioned before the Christmas break, and as it happens our financial year end.

Hover your mouse over each photo to find out more about the person in it.  The prizes are being handed out by Timico CEO Chris Tombs.

Group Ops Director Calum Malcolm stays discretely in the background but this is his team and a special thanks must go to him from the business for making it all happen.

The overall winner of Engineer of the Year is David Sears whose prize was accepted on his behalf by Penny Wilkinson. David, or Biscuit as he is known internally, happens to be on holiday. His prize is, wait for it, a holiday – choice as I recall of Paris, Brussels, Rome or Scunthorpe (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). Well done guys – it’s great to work with you 🙂

Categories
broadband Cloud End User

What Will the Broadband Speed Needs of 2023 Be?

latest list of BT FTTC exchanges announcedSome time ago I wrote that the laptop of today is the SuperComputer of 12 years ago.  The SuperComputing community is constantly pushing forth the boundaries. Of course these computers need to talk to each other – that data has to go somewhere.

Because of this that research community is also having to push the envelope on data connectivity speeds and a team from Caltech and the University of Victoria has just demonstrated 186Gbps data transfer over a 100Gig connection (the sum of data speeds – both directions obviously).

OK this is all good stuff but so what you say?  Well just like the SuperComputer of today is the laptop of 12 years hence there will come a time when 100Gigs is going to be mainstream for home and business connectivity. There is no point in hitting me with arguments suggesting otherwise. You are wrong 🙂

I don’t know what these data rates are going to be used for but used they will be. I am going to bookmark this day in 2023 to write a blog post reviewing progress towards this goal. By that time my laptop will be able to do 10.51 petaFLOPS (the current fasted SuperComputer is The K computer – it consists of 88,000 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, and spans 864 server racks).

This is why I occasionally mention that really the only sensible long term investment for broadband speed infrastructure is fibre because in 12 years time I will need something that can handle the output of all those petaFLOPS. Who can argue with that?

Categories
Business competitions

Santa visits the office to judge mince pie competition and I missed him

Santa seen on Timico premises

entries for the Timico mince pie competitionToday we had four entries for the Tref being massage by Karen Mayfield - as you doTimico mince pie making competition.

You will note from the picture on the left that one of the entrants looks as if he only brought in one mince pie. That was Big Rich Wright.Great care is taken over the judging of the Timico mince pie competition with Santa looking on

He ate all the others The judges line up for a cuddle with Santa and to tell him what they would like for Christmas(claims it was his workmates). I had intended to be one of the judges but whilst I was having my regular massage, Santa came in, rounded up a teamFiona Spear - winner of the Timico mince pie competition is congratulated by Santa himself of judges and cracked on with the competition.I totally missed him! I am pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Timico mince

hmm, whats this, a tin containing mince pies, a Santa outfit and a Cisco router on someone's desk!pie competition is Fiona Spear – seen here being congratulated by Santa. I have to say I thought they were all winners and would like to thank Faye Hemingway, Victoria Webster and Rich Wright for also entering.

The judges were Daryl, Danielle and Sophie – beautician students from Grantham College. I wish them well.

Categories
Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Sky blocks Newsbin2 too @edvaizey #deact #Chumbawumba, #MichaelJackson #JarvisCocker #Adele

I note that further to the court order presented to BT to block file sharing promoter Newsbin2 Sky is now also doing so. I have covered this a fair bit of late here here and here .

It is anticipated that all major consumer ISPs will get the same court order. It would be useful to measure the effectiveness of this activity. It will also be interesting to see whether Newsbin2 clones/mirrors will surface as  was the case with Wikileaks and Pirate Bay although to my knowledge Newsbin2 is only being blocked in the UK (happy to be corrected here). Furthermore it will be useful to see how much growth there is in encrypted traffic out of the UK following these court orders.

Newsbin2 is itself a phoenixed version of Newsbin.

Coincidentally in the House of Commons

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Categories
Business ofcom Regs

Ofcom International Communications Market Report 2011 – the unscientific analysis

It’s always exciting when Ofcom brings out a new report. No, no I really mean that:) There is so much going on in the communications world and fair play to it Ofcom has the resources to produce some really interesting stats.

This time it’s the International Communications Market Report 2011. I’ve only just noticed that its out so haven’t had time to distill its 363 tightly packed pages into five paragraphs as is my usual wont. Don’t worry – that’ll be something to do another day.

In the interest of taking a break from work before going home I do, however, herewith provide you with a few choice morsels to keep you going until those five paragraphs are crafted.

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Categories
Business net neutrality Regs

EU official position on Net Neutrality

You will of course all have been following the progress of the EU Telecommunications Council on the subject of Net Neutrality. In case you missed  it the EUTC 1 published its conclusions yesterday.

In the interest of ensuring you have enough spare time this afternoon to go about your day job (it’s a full time occupation for a team of people to follow this stuff) I have summarised a few of the key messages here.

  • The Council notes that some stakeholders are worried about transparency, discriminatory forms of traffic management and network congestion. It likes the idea of net neutrality but it also highlights the need to safeguard ISPs’ business models and to allow innovative business models to serve the needs of the market.
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Categories
Cloud datacentre Engineer virtualisation

View from inside a Network Operations Centre #digitalbritain

the new Timico Network Operations Centre in Newark has gone liveI’m excited to say that the new NOC is now up and running as the header photo shows. The screen content is evolving at the moment but is intended to serve as a useful visual monitor of what is going on in the Timico network.

Timico NOC being populated with furniture prior to "go live"

The photo on the left shows the view of the Timico NOC from inside "manage" meeting roomroom being built. The photo on the right is the view from the “manage” meeting room which has a glass wall showcasing the facility.

The security levels applied to the NOC itself means access is restricted to NOC staff. No sales people, no customers but there is a great view from the meeting room.

The shift system currently means that some desks are unoccupied at times. However as the business grows the staff will operate a hot desk system with personal possessions kept in a movable tray.

The also use a PCoIP zero client desktop hosted on our VMware platform. When a shift worker logs off and a new person logs on from the same seat the PC instance is completely rebuilt using the new logon credentials.

The official opening of the Timico Newark datacentre and NOC is on Wednesday 18th January.

Categories
broadband Business

Latest FTTC Broadband Exchange Announcements – Poetry to Some People’s Ears #BT #infinity

Appreciating the poetic beauty of the latest FTTC broadband exchange list…

latest list of BT FTTC exchanges announcedFTTC broadband was in the news again yesterday. Sometimes when these big announcements are made there is so much media coverage that it is better to sit back and reflect before putting hand to keyboard. Let everything sink in. Come up with some juicy facts and pearls of wisdom that the mass online media and blogosphere will have missed in their rush to cover the news and get Google rankings.

The first thing to note is the poetry of the list of exchanges; Aintree, Alloa, Arbroath1, Ardwick, Arkwright, Arnold. Bilston Bishopworth and Blyth (Northumberland). This is a beautiful list. It makes me all emotional thinking of the history there is in some of these names.

Some of the exchanges are a bit on the bland side – Eastville for example. I’m sorry if you are an Eastville dweller but it does sound like some made up place on Facebook. Maybe BT slipped it in to see if anyone noticed?

For some reason Boldon has been slotted in at the end after Woodhouse, Wrexham and Yeovil – almost as an

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Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Education, education, education – the training facility at the new datacentre and NOC

training room at the new Timico data centre and NOC in NewarkEducation, education, education as the old Tony Blair1 mantra had it makes it easier to sell a house  2 ISP services.  The header photo, beautifully artistic I’m sure you will agree, is of the training room on the top floor of the new Timico data centre and NOC in Newark.

This is a highly technical business and there is a huge thirst amongst staff for knowledge and training. They like to be goods at their jobs! 🙂 Last month we held a Cisco CCNA bootcamp. This week we are training the new starters in the telesales teams that are going to be hitting the phones  in the new year taking orders for colo and Virtual Machines in the new data centre.

Looks a little to much like an examination room for me but hey… Note the flexible seating that can fold back into a desk – see encircled example. Cool.

I would say this but the more  I see of the new building the more impressed I am with it. The engineering staff are certainly enjoying their new working environment. If you are looking for a hosting partner that can safely look after your valuable computing resources drop me a line at [email protected] and I will be happy to give you a personal tour.

1 Some of you may not remember Tony Blair – he was the British Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007

2 for the many Estate Agents that read this blog I realise that it’s location, location, location that sells houses – just my little joke  🙂 Actually in many ways selling colocation and hosting is selling real estate so there is some synergy there.

 

Categories
broadband Business

FTTC Broadband: 2 Out of 4 Exchanges in Lincoln Now Have It

FTTC creeps ever closer to the Davies household in LincolnIt’s getting exciting. Last time I looked at this map only one of the exchanges in Lincoln had FTTC broadband enabled. Now there are two. Mine is the one in the centre of town saying “coming soon”.

It probably won’t be in by Christmas which is a shame. Also sorry if I’m going on a bit here but us kids get excited about these things. Plus I’m going to put myself on the 80Meg trial. Double bubble.

I’m not trying to rub things in – especially knowing how many times an exchange has been enabled only to find your cab is not.

Click on the header photo for a bigger picture.

That’s all folks

PS AO means Accepting Orders, CS means Coming Soon

Categories
Cloud Engineer Regs social networking

The impact of digital technologies on the mind – House of Lords style

Over my toast this morning I was flicking through last week’s Hansard, as you do. Yaaawn I hear you say. Come now say I. Buried deep in this mountain of sleep inducing text can be found valuable nuggets of information worthy of dissemination to the wider audience. I am here to serve.

On 5th December the House of Lords held a short debate, introduced by Baroness Greenfield, on the impact of digital technologies on the mind. Beginning with the factoid that a recent survey in the USA found that over half of teenagers aged 13 to 17 spend more than 30 hours a week, outside school, using computers and other web-connected devices the Baroness asked three questions:

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