Categories
Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

@edvaizey answers to @tom_watson questions – take note @Marthalanefox #DEAct #deappg

portcullisYou have to be particularly interested in a topic to read Hansard, the report of parliamentary proceedings. Twitter has made it a lot easier, albeit hit and miss – you typically have to catch the tweet in the stream as it happens.

This week Ed Vaizey gave some answers to questions put by ISPA Internet Hero Tom Watson MP. Specifically Mr Vaizey said that the impact assessment on the DEAct suggested that the additional costs that would have to be applied to consumers broadband lines would have a relatively small but permanent effect of reducing demand for broadband connection by between 10,000-40,000. All assuming that the ISPs would pass on the full costs to their customers.

There are a few observations to make here.

Firstly the obvious one is that this goes against another government policy of trying to promote digital inclusion. Might the government now want to subsidise 10,000 – 40,000 broadband connections to offset the fact that they will not now be able to afford broadband. I wonder whether Martha Lane Fox, the government’s own Digital Inclusion Champion has any comments to make here?

The second point concerns the numbers used in the Impact Assessment itself. There is very little confidence within the ISP industry that the government got this right.

The Impact Assessment assumes that the total annual cost to all ISPs is between £30m and £50m. TalkTalk and BT have been suggesting that the annualized costs to their companies along are considerably higher than the total assumed for the whole industry.

The Impact Assessment clearly needs reviewing. Broadband expansion has been largely down to big cost reductions by ISPs in a very competitive market place. There is a clear relationship between broadband penetration and cost of the service. It has long since got to the point where consumer ISPs especially have had to expand their value proposition away from pure internet access because in itself this service had become unprofitable.

It would not surprise me to see a new Impact Assessment based on real costs showing a massively higher number of people that would be excluded from the broadband market.
I guess we will have to wait until after the Judicial Review to see what happens. In the meantime, c’mon Martha get your boxing gloves on. There is a fight going on here.

Link to Hansard – includes some other DEAct related questions from Tom Watson.

Categories
Engineer events internet ipv6

Moveover IPv4 Bring on #IPv6 Party

click to register

We are marking the end of the internet as we know it with a celebratory event on the evening of 22nd March at the Highly Prestigious London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.

This gig isn’t just to bury IPv4 though. It is also a serious look at where the world is at with the roll out of IPv6.

If you are a techie in the internet community, a tech journalist or just as importantly an IT manager/CTO/CIO who might want to understand the relevance of IPv4 exhaustion to your business then you need to be here.

We have a nice little retrospective look at the history of the Internet in the UK by early Pioneer and colleague of Vint Cerf, Prof Peter Kirstein.

Also on stage will be speakers discussing the actual state of IPv6 rollout, the practicalities of implementation and the problems yet to be overcome.

Then we will be peering into a crystal ball and taking a look at the future of the internet and the www!

Finally there will be a ceremonial bit of fun whereby IANA will do a re-run of the handover of the last block of IPv4 addresses to RIPE.

Bring your camera. You will want to remember this one

What: Move Over IPv4 (Bring on IPv6)
Where: The London Transport Museum, Covent Garden
When: 18.30 – 21.30 Tuesday March 22nd (ceremonials commence 19.00hrs)
Agenda:
  • A brief history of the internet and the www by internet pioneer Prof Peter Kirstein.
  • What next? Is the world ready for IPv6? What are the problems?
  • The future of the internet!
  • Ceremonial repeat of formal handing over of the last IPv4 blocks by IANA representative to RIPE representative.
  • Party Time!
Cost: This is a free event but entry is by invitation only.

Registration (click here to go to the event site) for “bringonipv6” requires a password as attendance at the event is invitation only. The password is freely available from industry sources or will have already been mailed to you. If we have missed you out you can contact Trefor Davies at [email protected] with your details.

Many thanks need to go to the sponsors that have made this event possible. These are Nominet, LINX, Timico, ThinkBroadband, NewNet, AAISP, Brocade and 6UK.

Categories
Business charitable

Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research @radiotomdavies fundraising tour

My son Tom, who is now at Warwick University, has a schoolfriend Leo who has been diagnosed with Leukaemia. The interview below was put together by Tom who visited Leo at home over the weekend.

Tom is interested in a career in Radio and fits in a couple of days a week at Mercia Sound in Coventry as well as having a show on RaW, the university radio station.

This week the guys at RaW are having a fund raising drive for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. I say drive and mean that literaly – they are driving around 59 student radio stations in England with Tom spending 5 minutes on air at each location to appeal for donations.

Details can be found here. Justgiving page is here and tom’s website is here. Please donate whatever you can. You can also follow him on twitter at @radiotomdavies.

I realise that this post is slightly off topic for trefor.net but hey…

Categories
Business online safety

mother knows best? – mumsnet withdraws support for Claire Perry porn blocking initiative #deappg

At the tender age of 49 I still call my mum for a chat and ask her advice on things. Usually regarding how to cook Welsh Cakes etc. Well I note today  that mumsnet, the “by parents for parents” family site seems to have withdrawn its support for the “Claire Perry porn blocking” campaign.

I can’t add much to the Malcolm Hutty post over at LINX on this subject. He also supplies some useful links.

Whilst I am not denigrating Mrs Perry’s desire to protect children mumsnet has displayed some realistic common sense and now understands the issues associated with web blocking.

The original campaign page at mumsnet is no longer available but it was still visible in the Google cache. Click on the header to see more.

Categories
End User net neutrality phones piracy

BBC iPlayer on iPad and Android – high quality – blessing or bandwidthbuster & what about the TV license? :)

iPlayer running on iPad and Adnroid HTC Desire HD

The twitterstream was full of references to the new iPlayer App for iPad and Android this morning so I naturally dived in and downloaded. I have to say the experience is top quality on both. The colours are great and the TV is very watchable on both size screens.

What really came into my mind though was not the fact that I now had a new app on my devices but the fact that this was yet another driver for bandwidth use and also the question of the TV license.

Cisco internet growth forecast

The chart on the right is Cisco’s growth forecast for internet bandwidth use – a 4x growth between 2009 and 2014. Much of this as you can see is driven by video. The Y axis legend is in ExaBytes/Month!

A one of the World’s best content provider the BBC really is one of the drivers of this (Ok YouTube et al are also contributors) and making iPlayer easier to access on more and more devices adds to the proliferation. Of course this also adds to the pressures on ISP networks and fuels the NetNeutrality debate butthat is not for this post. Grown up ISPs will manage their way through.

The debate about the TV License fee is however another issue. The BBC has said that it is not going after non license payers watching using iPlayer online:

“Well, the number of homes that currently have no television licence, but that do have broadband subscription is currently estimated to be infinitesimally small. The chances are if you want to watch BBC TV programmes via catch-up over the web, you are also watching some BBC programmes at other times, live or time-shifted, via a TV set, and will already have a TV licence. ”

This situation will possibly change quite quickly over the next few years.

You only need a license if you are watching live TV which the BBC is now promoting using the iPlayer App. My question is whether the BBC is able to identify online users? The chances are they will only have an IP address to go at which is going to raise the same issues as we currently see with the Digital Economy Act and the RightsHolder industries (of which the BBC is a member). Unless that is the BBC has some spyware embedded in its iPlayer App that somehow records data on who is using it – via  iTunes username perhaps?!

The other notweworthy point is that apps like this are also fuelling the demand for newer faster smart phones. The iPlayer App for Android needs a fast processor to run Flash. It will inevitably evolve towards more and more HD content which will use more and more bandwdth and need faster and faster processors etc etc etc.

We do live in interesting times. BBC statement on iPlayer here.  BBC position on TV License for online streaming here. Header photo (click to see more) is of iPlayer App running on both iPad and HTC Desire HD (Android).

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

Categories
Business ofcom piracy surveillance & privacy

#ACSLaw court judgement #MediaCAT #DEAct #DEAPPG

ACSLaw

ACS Law hit notoriety for bullying broadband users into paying a fine in lieu of being taken to court for alleged “online copyright infringement”. Victims had no idea what their rights were and apparently frequently paid up rather than going through the expensive courts process.

It was reported yesterday that ACS Law had ceased trading – in order to avoid the potenial fines likely to arise out of the court action. Today they were apparently represented in court by a new barrister.

Reports from the court via twitter stream state:

  • ACS Law has not been allowed to discontinue 27 cases it tried to drop last month.
  • The judge today said letters to alleged filesharers “materially overstates the untested merits” of proving MediaCAT copyright infringement.
  • Also Judge: “Media CAT and #ACSLaw have very real interest in avoiding public scrutiny ” because of revenue from from “wholesale letter writing”
  • Continue reading “#ACSLaw court judgement #MediaCAT #DEAct #DEAPPG”
Categories
Business Cloud gaming online safety Regs

Today is Safer Internet Day #MMORPG #UKCCIS

Safer Internet Day

Today is Safer Internet Day. This year’s topic is ”It’s more than a game, it’s your life” and the aim of the initiative is to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children. The website reports some interesting statistics:

  • Gamers spend on average 8 hours weekly playing online.
  • Young people sleep 2 to 3 hours less per night than 10 years ago.
  • In January 2010, 18 million accounts were registered on Second Life.
  • Facebook reports more than 500 million active users.
  • Users spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook each month.
  • 13 million players of World of Warcraft (WoW), the world’s largest MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).
  • MMORPGs generated $1.5 billion in subscription revenues worldwide in 2008, forecast to reach $2.5 billion by 2012.
  • Up to 250,000 players are simultaneously online on WoW.
  • Transactions and sales of virtual goods in virtual worlds were estimated at $18 billion in 2009.

Its is amazing but I can identify with many of these bullet points. My kids spend far more than 8 hours online playing MMORPGs (it is a truly great acronym). All my kids are on Facebook even though two of them are below the recommended age limit. I vet their friends lists and have the logon details of the youngest who is not allowed to post photos. All his spare cash goes on online games – and we are talking £40 a pop here which is truly irritating as a parent (thats about fifteen pints of beer in real money! 🙂 ).

Parents need to jointly develop a survival strategy here. It only takes one to let the side down and let their kids have free rein to spoil it for the lot of us.

Note in connection with Safer Internet Day, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, published the results of two complementary surveys that indicate that only 21% of UK individuals who live in a household with dependent children use parental control filtering software. This is higher than the EU average of 14% but considerable lower than the results of the EU Kids Online survey that was published a couple of weeks ago and reported that 54% of UK parents (28% across the EU) use parental controls or other means of blocking or filtering some types of websites.

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has published a “Good practice guidance for the moderation of interactive services for children” which you might want to take a look at.

Publicising Safer Internet Use is very important and I suggest more needs to be done to educate parents on what they might be able to do to help themselves. This is particularly important in the light of the fact that politicians are constantly trying to take control of the internet “for our own good“.

PS one fact that coaught my attention in the EU report was that in the EU2 in 2010, almost one third of individuals (31%) who used the internet in the 12 months prior to the survey reported that they caught a virus or other computer infection resulting in loss of information or time during this period.

PPS thanks to ISPA for drawing my attention to these data.

And finally – I have to say were are entering a truly great era for acronyms – MMORPG!!!!!

Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Timico to spend £7m on datacentre, NOC and virtualisation

I am quite excited to be able to announce that we have begun the building of a new 18,000 sq ft, three storey facility at our Newark Corporate HQ. This will house a datacentre with up to 150 4KW racks on the ground floor. 

The first floor is designed as a Network Operations Centre and will provide us with a great 24×7 monitoring facility, screens galore and mirrored glass – the works. The initial build is costing £5m but we are planning a further £2m spend over the next three years, mainly on increasing the capacity of our virtualisation platform and Storage Area Network.

The Newark site already has diverse fibre connections but we will be adding a further link to Manchester to increase our route options out of the UK.

This facility will allow us to offer customers we host in London Docklands an alternative DR option in the midlands. The bigger play though will be virtualisation and the private cloud. We have been offering bespoke virtualisation services for three years or so but this will represent a big step up. Look out for announcements on this later in the year.

The header photo (click to see all of it) is of me and Construction Manager Gary Davies of Lindum Construction doing the ceremonials for the “groundbreaking”. The pic below is me actually doing some digging – I went out and bought a new spade especially 🙂

Categories
Cloud Engineer security

Cyber Security: A Never-ending Unwinnable War

USAF General William Lord in cyber security briefing
header photo Gen William T. Lord courtesy of USAF

The words Hague cyber warfare Treaty appeared fleetingly in my twitter stream this morning.

This really intrigued me. It brought visions of uniformed generals sat around a table at the United Nations signing fancy bits of paper. Over their shoulders were clouds filled with botnet armies – millions of compromised computers waiting for the command to strike, glaring ferociously at their opposite numbers.

There is a wonderful wealth of information out there on cyber warfare and security. For example according to Lt. Gen. William T. Lord, the US Air Force chief information officer, cyberattackers have shifted their tactics from trying to breach firewalls to penetrating applications and said the service has serious application vulnerabilities. “We have over 19,000 (information technology) applications in the Air Force,” he said, noting that Electronic Systems Center’s IT Center of Excellence at Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex, Ala., examined about 200 of them. “All of them had over 50 vulnerabilities.”

The incredible pace of introduction of new technologies is a serious problem to the military which likes to take years to develop and test anything it buys. It used to be that the army would be first to get advanced technologies that would one day filter down to peaceful applications. These days it is the other way round. The army must presumably end up using applications that have had little or no security testing but are considered worth the risk (I’m not speaking from personal knowledge or experience here).

The United Nations has in fact been giving this some due consideration – it would be negligent of them not to, fair play. Last week the UN published a document updating its position re disarmament and cyber warfare was covered in pages 12 – 20 (out of 42).

In the document the UN discusses possible solutions:

  1. The security of confidential as well as less significant information and networks
    A. Security updates should be applied to all systems
    B. A comprehensive disaster recovery planning should take place, which includes provisions
    for extended outages.
  2. The creation of an international treaty which includes:
    A. A concrete definition of cyber warfare which is ratified by all signatories
    B. A limitation on the usage of cyber weapons
  3. The establishment of an annual international platform, in which experts in the computer and
    cyber field from different countries may foster dialog with one another regarding the issue of
    providing measures to regulate cyber warfare
  4. Increased effort in raising awareness about the cyber warfare and the threats it poses for the
    world in its entirety

Most of this, treaty apart, is obvious stuff and to be honest suggests that the UN doesn’t really know what to do about it. Does anyone?  I would be hugely surprised if many government really signed up to it.  After all why would a government (naming no names) want to deny itself the ability to attack Iran’s nuclear programme using bloodless electronic means?

In any case nobody would trust anyone else not to develop cyber warfare tools – it would be nigh on impossible to police. This is unfortunately in my view a battle war that is being fought but that nobody can win. I bet the proposed annual international conference would be a very interesting one to attend though maybe not as interesting as the meetings that they don’t tell us about.

We’re all doooomed!

Categories
Apps End User Regs security surveillance & privacy

how to get round your school’s web filter #deappg #DEAct

Somewhat a contentious title for a post? Provocative? It is topical though with all the discussion in the media regarding the government’s review on whether web blocking really works or is cost effective (re Digital Economy Act), and also MP Claire Perry calling on ISPs to implement filtering to stop kids reaching online porn.

I just did a Goole search on “bypassing school proxy”. It came up with 847,000 results including a link to “answers.yahoo.com”. I followed one of the links and found a ton of advice on how to get around a school’s filter system. These ad-funded sites are very youth orientated. One of the posts had 198 discussion comments!

My(oft repeated)  point is that blocking ain’t going to work and anyone that naively thinks that most kids will not know how to go about circumventing a block on websites, whatever their flavour, needs to spend some time in a playground.

PS the answers.yahoo.com discussion had been deleted but most of these sites do not have the integrity or the corporate image to uphold. All most of the 847,000 sites (pages) are interested in is your money.

DEAct

Categories
Business security

Peter Robbins to leave the IWF

Peter Robbins, OBE today resigned his position as Chief Executive of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). He is staying on until July to give the IWF time to find a successor.

He is quoted as saying:

“It has been an absolute honour and privilege to lead the IWF since 2002 through a period of unprecedented change. I have been exceptionally fortunate to have worked with dedicated staff and very talented Board Members over the years. I must place on record my gratitude for the exceptional support afforded me by extremely professional individuals, organisations and institutions in the UK and abroad as together we have built enduring partnerships from across the public and private sectors to enable the IWF to thrive.”

I don’t know him personally but many people have a great deal of respect for him and his work.  Running the IWF is not an easy job.

A lot has been written on this blog re the IWF – you can just do a search. This post gives an overview of the job that it does. At this time I don’t know whether Peter is just retiring, has somewhere else to go to or just feels his time has run its course at the organisation.

Categories
Apps End User obsolescence

lost vehicle registration certificate #digitalbritain

I lost my vehicle registration certificate! I know I know it is my fault. I should look after these things a bit more. Fortunately it is quite easy to replace, as long as you can remember you vehicle registration number (obviously) and you haven’t changed your name or address.

A quick look online told me all I needed to know about how to replace it and I called the DVLA.  This isn’t a complaining post really because I now have a new certificate winging its way to my home address. However the number of levlels I had to go through in the DVLA autoattendant made me wonder if it was a world record.

Having called the number I pushed numbers 1, 4, 5, 1, 1, 1. It took me 2 minutes 33 seconds to get to that last number 1 at which point I got music on hold. At 3 minutes 26 seconds (OK I realise it might have been anal to write all this stuff down but I do have a blog and it does need constant feeding 😉 ) a person came on and by 4 minutes 55 seconds I had a new registration certificate on its way and I was £25 lighter.

I wasn’t unhappy with the experience and the chap at the other end of the line couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful.  I do however wonder when they are going to push all of this onto a self help web portal and let him find something more interesting to do with his life other than replacing car registration documents.

PS I am happy to open up the competition to find the longest auto-attendant tree in the world. It should be in the Guinness Book Of Records.

Categories
Archived Business

New Job Post – Timico Marketing Director

I missed a trick here. We are looking for a Marketing Director. This is a new post. If you are interested check it out here.

This might not be of particular interest to the normal readership of this blog (though I don’t really know their actual demographics – other than by the fact that people occasionally come up to me and tell me they particularly like my posts about cake competitions! –  it is nice to meet readers:) ). It is exciting for me personally because I am sat in a business that I helped to create and am now watching that business grow up. Other appointments we have made in the last 12 months are also indicative of the maturing nature of Timico – Group Operations Director and Information Services direction to quote just two.

Anyway back to the Marketing Director it isn’t me personally doing the recruiting but if you want to know more about the company you know where to find me.  You will find there is never a dull moment at Timico:)

Categories
End User online safety scams security

Phishing by”Microsoft” engineers

I’m getting reports of increased levels of phishing attempts on broadband customers. People get a call from someone purporting to either work for Microsoft or on their behalf. The flavour of the calls go something like this:

  • “We are working on a password security breach”
  • “We are working with Microsoft and your ISP to increase your broadband speeds
  • “We have identified a problem with one of your servers and can fix it for £250”

By and large they want you to click on a link and then of course “you’ve been had”. Unfortunately as in many aspects of life on the internet the only real way to avoid being had is by being internet savvy. There is no quick fix.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Significant IPv4 announcement to be made in Miami tomorrow #IPv6

Those of you who have been following the countdown to exhaustion of the IPv4 address space will want to tune in to a webcast coming out of Miami tomorrow at 9.30 EST (GMT+5hrs). It is an open secret that this will be the IANA handover of the last 5   /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses.

We in the UK will be marking this important milestone in the history of the internet at a date in March. Look out for an announcement very soon. In the meantime you will be able to watch the ICANN ceremonials and press conference here.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Last 2 IPv4 blocks allocated – STOP PRESS

The last two available /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses have been allocated by IANA to APNIC.  This takes the remaining total down to 5 which means the IPv4 address pool is effectively exhausted. The last 5 are spoken for. There are no more. That’s it :).

I’m holding off crying “history, history” until the remaining 5 are allocated.  This was, I’m told, originally planned for a ceremonial handover at the ICANN meeting in San Fransisco in March but will now happen much sooner than that. Keep reading this blog for updates.

I’ve written plenty about this so if you need to understand more do a search for IPv6. It is worth noting that this isn’t the total exhaustion of all IPv4 addresses. That will happen in dribs and drabs as people use up those held by Regional Internet Registries (RIRs – expected to be streched out in ever decreasing block sizes) and then use up their own.

You need an IPv6 strategy. For a quick overview on how it might affect you read this.

Categories
End User social networking

Nokia 97 twitter bot retweets negative Nokia PR

twitter screenshot from @tref showing careless retweet

Amusingly the post I wrote this morning, which basically said that people I knew were by and large moving away from Nokia to Android or Apple, was retweeted by a bot from an account called @luv_nokia_n97. I don’t know if this is an official Nokia twitter account but it certainly shows that there is a lot to consider when treading the social networking path.

Clearly the post was not checked out and brands need to either be careful how they implement such “tools” or how they police others’ use of their name on the internet.

PS I’ve left the Nokia N97 name in the post title again – I’m not averse to some free retweeting 🙂

Categories
End User phones

The HTC Desire HD – Android review two months in a step up from my old Nokia N97

phonebox in snow in Lincoln Bailgate

I get asked what I think of my Android phone – I seem to have a wave of friends whose contracts are now up and are looking to move (predominantly from a Nokia!)

My first observation is that the moves are typically away from a Nokia and the question is Apple or Android? A second observation is that none of the phones being considered are cheap and people are signing up to spending £850 or so over two years, including the bundle, on a handset that they are almost certain to want to churn at the end of their contract. Such is the pace of development. That’s the equivalent of buying a new 42″ plasma/LCD TV every year!

My two month old HTC Desire HD is the best phone I have ever had. Before that I had a Nokia N97 which was also at the time the best phone I had ever had but the HTC is streets ahead of it.

The biggest leap forward is in usability. Everything is intuitive and easy. Next is the huge range of apps you can download for the device. This is not unique to Android but it is collectively for the industry a big step up from where we were before. There may well have been apps available for older generation handsets but today it is more natural for people to use them. If anything the difficulty is trying to decide which app to use – there are just so many of them.

The apps are also better designed for their environment. For example on the N97 I had a Facebook App that used to give me problems when leaving the house. The device didn’t easily switch from WiFi to 3G and the Facebook app kept complaining about “not having a connection to the network” – a nuisance when I had just set off in the car and didn’t want to fiddle about with the phone. It was easier for me to use the 3G connection most of the time rather than keep switching back and fore from WiFi.

On the HTC Desire HD this is never a problem. It isn’t a problem on the iPad either so I imagine this is a “generational” improvement in software. Using 3G does pose battery life problems though so I do take real steps to prevent this, normally by keeping the phone disconnected from any data network unless I particularly need to use it. With careful management the battery lasts me a whole day and if I know I am going to be “hammering” the phone I take advantage of any opportunity to recharge it.

The Apps I use are TweetDeck, Voice Recorder, Mail, Camera, Messages, Search, Gallery, Internet, Four Square and AudioBoo. I also have Skype on there but more from the notion that I feel I ought to have it than because I really use it. In fact I very regularly use all but Skype and AudioBoo and I’m planning on doing more audio posts.

It isn’t a phone anymore. It is clearly a personal communicator – it’s just that the PC acronym has already been taken.

If I had to make a criticism it is that the sound quality of the HTC Desire HD doesn’t match up to the quality of the rest of the device. The speakers don’t anyway. When I use the headset it is great. Also because it is a touch screen phone I sometimes find that my cheek has “ended” a conversation.

The only other gripe is not phone specific and that is the spelling auto-correction sometimes leads me to including words that I didn’t mean so send in a tweet or text. The benefits of the function outweigh the problems and I am happy to live with the added overhead of having to check what I have a written before sending.

From a parental perspective I fear that a new bar has been set in terms of a child’s expectation of a mobile phone. It’s all about money these days. Whilst I realise that I make a living out of technology, part of me yearns back to the days of my youth where nobody had a mobile, the internet hadn’t been invented and I used to put two pence in the phone box outside school to call my mum to come and pick me up from cricket/rugby etc. In fact I didn’t even need to spend the money because as soon as the pips went mum knew I was at that phone box.

Of course I could always become a monk! Click on the header photo and you will see a boy waiting outside a phonebox in the snow for his mum to pick him up. I suppose there are benefits to technology :). He should have used his Android! (he does have a HTC running Windows mobile 6.5 and an iPod Touch!!)

Categories
Business online safety piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Swedish ISP Bahnhof provides anonymity to customers by default – #deappg #deact #Wikileaks

Swedish ISP, Banhof, is offering a service that provides its customers with total anonymity on the internet.

We have the privilege to be able to offer a solution for those who want to remain anonymous on the net. When you go online with our partner, all traffic to and from the Internet to go through their servers through an encrypted “tunnel”, which means that nobody can see what you are doing.

Bahnhof, which apparently now hosts the Wikileaks website, does not keep logs of customer activites and would not be able to provide this information to anyone requesting it for the purposes of litigation (*eg Rights Holders in pursuit of copyright infringers – a hot topic at the moment with regard to the Digital Economy Act).

This raises quite an interesting point.

Continue reading “Swedish ISP Bahnhof provides anonymity to customers by default – #deappg #deact #Wikileaks”
Categories
broadband Business

BT Openreach Broadband Provisioning Lead Times Stretch Out

Broadband provisioning lead times with BT Openreach are currently far outside what we have come to expect over recent years. Typically we have quoted analogue and ISDN2 new installs at 7-10 working days and ISDN30 new installs at 20 working days but in many cases we are now seeing this double and people looking to install new circuits need to be aware of this.

Below is an extract from the weekly service update Provided by BT Openreach which explains the current position.  Note this is working days so 30 days is effectively 6 weeks:

Provision Lead Times

Provision lead times across the country remain high with significant regional variance.

Continue reading “BT Openreach Broadband Provisioning Lead Times Stretch Out”

Categories
broadband Business

Akamai Reports UK 17th for Average Internet Connection Speed Despite Being 6th Highest User #deappg

Akamai is the world’s largest Content Delivery Network employing 73,000 servers around the globe to deliver its customers’ content. Timico hosts an Akamai box in London.

The trends in traffic patterns flowing through the Akamai network are therefore very much representative of what is happening elsewhere on the internet. It was Akamai that showed us that 23% of the world’s internet usage was coming from the UK during England’s afternoon match in last year’s football world cup.

The Akamai State of The Internet Report states that in Q3 2010 over 533 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai network, a 20% growth over the same quarter a year ago. Of these 21.6 million were in the UK. For reference Germany has 31.5 and France just under 23m. Looking at the UK’s global competitors the USA led the pack with 141m, China 63m and Japan 37.5m. By this token the UK creeps in as sixth largest user of the internet.

Looking at the average connection speed the story is different. South Korea leads with 14Mbps, followed by Hong Kong (9.2) and then Japan (8.5). In fact there are 16 countries whose average broadband speed, according to Akamai are faster than the UK including 11 of them in Europe.

The message here is obvious. Whilst the UK seems to occupy a significant place in the rankings for internet usage (which is good) its lowly position in respect of average connection speed is somewhat of an embarrassment.

PC link to the report is included above – you need to register but it is a good 31 page read if you are into this sort of thing.

Categories
ipv6

IPv4 exhaustion likely to happen this week

Word on the street is that APNIC will ask IANA for two /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses this week.  The IPv4 exhaustion counter (embedded here) suggests that there are 8 days to go – we are pretty much at the end.

This will effectively bring the IPv4 saga to a close – once these two blocks are taken then that’s it. All that will remain to do is the release to the 5 Regional Internet Registries of the last 5 blocks – likely to happen during the ICANN meeting in San Francisco in March. There are no other blocks available.

We in the UK are planning our own event in March, post ICANN, to celebrate what really is a historic milestone in the history of the internet. I’ll post more as details firm up.

Categories
End User social networking

Quorsum Quora? – first experiences

The trendy ubergeeks amongst you will have heard of Quora. Most will not.

The Google meta description suggests that “Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”

According to Wikipedia “Quora is an online knowledge market, founded in June 2009, launched in private beta in December 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Quora aggregates questions and answers to many topics and allows users to collaborate on them. Quora was co-founded by Adam D’Angelo (Facebook’s former CTO) and Charlie Cheever. In March, 2010 Quora received funding from Benchmark Capital, valuing the start-up at a rumored $86 million.”

The site is used by a number of high profile techies and there was a flurry of activity on my twitter stream a week or two ago that drew it to my attention.

The nature of these things is that you have to get in early to bag a good username – tref, for example, so I did. You can look me up.

I also tried asking a question. It took me several attempts to get the question in a format that Quora would accept.

My question was “How doth the friendly crocodile improve his shining tail?” The 19th Century grammar was unacceptable to Quora so after a number of attempts to understand the issue I negotiated replacing doth” with “does”. Not as good in its dumbed down form I’m sure you will agree but at least it doesn’t lose the basic tenor of the question.

It wasn’t long before someone came up with the right answer to the question – which is part of a Lewis Carrol poem.

Yesterday I got an email from Quora admin:

“This question is possibly more appropriate for a dedicated poetry website. It currently does not fit within the Quora policy and guidelines. Please modify. See Quora Question Policies & Guidelines: What are the guidelines for questions on Quora?”

Rather than compromise the fundamental philosophical nature of the question (at least in my mysterious mind) I decided to delete it. Turns out I couldn’t or at least I couldn’t within the amount of time I was prepared to spend finding out how to do it

I left Quora a note telling them this and suggesting that I was happy for them to do it on my behalf. They have now changed the question to

What did Lewis Carrol mean by “How doth the friendly crocodile improve it’s shining tail?”

I doubt that Lewis Carrol meant anything by it.

I guess my point is that I have probably wasted about an hour of my time with Quora. Quora hasn’t been the best of experiences though I imagine it has enough high profile supporters to keep hyping it for a while and I wish them luck.

This reinforces my belief that there are so many new things happening all the time that it is virtually impossible to keep on top of them all. It is better to wait and see which ones get established.

Hmm – that way I might miss out on the good username though…

PS one wonders how scalable Quora is? I realise that my question didn’t necessarily fit within the spirit of what the platform is trying to achieve but if it gets scale it won’t be practical for a Quora admin to police each question for appropriateness. There is a flag that allows users to question questions but whether this will be good enough only time will tell.

Categories
Business ofcom Regs

Ofcom hits BT Wholesale in the rurals #DEAPPG #FinalThirdFirst

Ofcom yesterday proposed significant reductions in the prices that BT Wholesale can charge internet service providers (ISPs) in parts of the country where it is the sole provider of wholesale broadband services – mainly in rural areas.

The proposed price reductions are between 10.75% and 14.75% below inflation.

As an ISP and BT Wholesale customer I say good oh! I’m not quite sure that it will achieve the effect Ofcom think it will achieve though. Yes we might find retail ISPs lowering their prices marginally for customers in these areas. Consumer ISPs already charge rock bottom prices so a cut of 15% off a low number won’t make much difference.

Also ISPs buy bulk backhaul bandwidth from BTW. This is not specific to particular exchanges or locales. For example Timico’s bandwidth comes into two docklands locations from all our customers all over the country. We would not be able to say “this customer gets more bandwidth because he is one of the lucky ones living in an area with reduced costs.

A big chunk of the cost is in the bandwidth used so whilst a reduction in line rental is good a reduction in bandwidth costs would be better. We may find that competition does drive down the cost to the end user a little in these cost reduced areas but there is also a fair chance that ISPs will just pocket the additional margin thanks very much and maintain homogenous pricing policy across the whole country. More packages means more complexity and ultimately more cost.

This many not necessarily be a company line here but it’s what I think will be the overall outcome. I might be completely wrong.

Categories
broadband Business

FTTC Broadband Cabinets in Cornwall – First to Go Live

BT has not yet started marketing FTTC broadband to consumers in the Cornwall area, though that doesn’t mean that “mere” consumers can’t have the service.

BT has advised me that the first FTTC broadband cabinets in Cornwall went live on Monday 17th January. From that date, BT Wholesale are accepting orders for provision of lines on those cabinets in the Threewaters exchange area.

BT has also started marketing to businesses in the area, but not yet to consumers (though that doesn’t mean that if you are a “mere” consumer you can’t have the service).

I would expect it to be a straightforward sale to a business. If one day you can’t have broadband and the next you are offered 40Megs, you would have to be daft to say no (this might be a slight dramatisation of the situation on the ground).

Cornwall is an interesting situation, having been the subject of large grants to “broadband enable” the county, and is regarded by some (not everyone) as a prototype for other areas with broadly rural populations.

I have some specific FTTC broadband cabinet/postcode details if you want to drop me a line.

Categories
Business piracy Regs

Scarlet, SABAM and the proportionality or otherwise of website blocking #DEAPPG

Some of you will have been following the progress of the Scarlet/Sabam case that is currently being dealt with by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Scarlet, a Belgian ISP (now owned by Belgacom but a small independent at the time the case was started in 2007) was ordered by a national court to implement technical measures to block all P2P traffic that infringes rights held by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM).

The court’s decision was subsequently referred to the ECJ who has to clarify whether the requirement to implement traffic-filtering mechanisms is consistent with EU legislation and whether a proportionality test has to be applied if this is the case.

Following upon the submission of written evidence to the court, the ECJ held a hearing on Thursday 13 January that included representations from the European Commission and Member States. The judge will deliver his opinion on 14th April

The outcome of this case will potentially have great bearing on a number of regulatory themes currently trending in the UK – not least being the Digital Economy Act and the recent discussions on porn blocking.

We do need to note that the report was produced by EuroISPA and should therefore be careful in reading into it any assessment as to the likely outcome of the hearing. It looks ok to me 🙂 .

In a nutshell ISPs and a number of EU states considered the technical blocking order to be disproportionate. The report also suggests that in the light of strong arguments to the contrary the judge did not appear to be convinced in respect of filtering measures believed by SABAM to be technically possible.

The report:

Continue reading “Scarlet, SABAM and the proportionality or otherwise of website blocking #DEAPPG”
Categories
End User phones

What went wrong with the Samsung Galaxy tab?

Richar Wright of Timico discusses Samsung Galaxy tab with Apple CEO Steve Jobs

STOP PRESS – Richard Wright reverts to iPad from Samsung Galaxy tab

Back in the dim and distant days before Christmas 2010 I wrote a post describing how Timico sales manager Richard Wright had switched from the iPad to the Samsung Galaxy tab. Well gadget freak Richard has switched back!

With echoes of the Consumer Electronics Show still swirling around the ether with tales of 26 new tablets on view I thought I would find out why the sudden reversion. Richard’s feedback is provided below:

  • Android Marketplace did not have as much choice
  • A few apps he used on iPad either weren’t available or not written as well. This was especially true when it came to “sharing” eg Stumbleupon – the iPad app shares very easily but with Android he had to download a 3rd party app called Facebook share – also Stumbleupon just puts the url in.
  • Continue reading “What went wrong with the Samsung Galaxy tab?”
Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Flashback to 211210 – Trefor Davies Discusses Porn Blocking with BBC Lincolnshire’s William Wright

Flashback to the week before Christmas where Trefor Davies discusses the issues surrounding blocking porn sites on the internet with BBC Lincolnshire’s William Wright.

Categories
Business Cloud media

Flashback to Christmas Eve 2010, Skype outage and Talk Talk traffic surge forecast on Xmas Day

BBC Radio 5 Live interview on Christmas Eve 2010 talking about the expected surge of internet usage on Christmas Day when people started using their new gadgets.  Also discussed the Skype outage.

Categories
internet

OMG the internet is about to run out of addresses what should I do?

IT manager worried about IPv4 to IPv6 migration

Media interest in IPv6 last week prompted a few questions, notably on twitter, regarding whether people should worry about the IPv4 address pool exhaustion. It would be easy to make noise and attract attention by saying “OMG yes – you should worry”. After all it is a fairly momentous event –> “The End of The Internet As We Know It”. ARMAGEDDON!!!

This blog does not indulge in such tabloid-like scaremongering 🙂  So what is the deal?

Well firstly it is very true that the IANA IPv4 address pool is about to run out. There are only seven /8 address block remaining and Asian  Regional Internet Registries (RIRs ) APNIC is about to ask for two of these. The growth of internet usage in Asia has been outpacing the rest of the world.

Word has it that APNIC has been holding back on this request to a) stretch the exhaustion date and b) give IANA a chance to organise the PR surrounding the release of the final blocks. Once APNIC has received its two blocks (each /8 contains approx 16 million IPv4 addresses) we will be down to the last five. This is expected to happen in January – or mid February at the latest.

The rule is that this is the point at which IPv4 exhaustion is declared and the remaining five blocks are distributed to the five RIRs. The last five should be released in March. (all dates subject to change in this rapidly changing world)

Of course whilst this means that IANA will no longer have any addresses each RIR will. It should, however, be remembered that /8 blocks are being used up at the rate of one every 6 weeks or so. It won’t be long before RIRs will run out of stock. It will then be down to individual ISPs to nurture their own stocks so that they last as long as possible. I have already heard (anecdotal) stories of companies being bought for their IPv4 addresses, at least in part.

ISPs can make their stocks last longer by getting better at recycling IPv4 addresses from customers who have left for pastures new. These ISPs will need to move to IPv6 or, in the medium term, depart the market because they will not be able to service new customers– enter tabloid press – ISPS HIT WALL AND GO OUT OF BUSINESS PANIC/STAMPEDE/WILL MINE BE ONE OF THEM? !!!

The industry has known this has been coming for a long time – more than 10 years so what’s the state of play?

The global network penetration of IPv6 is still quite low – only a few % – it does vary from country to country. This means that relatively few networks can talk to each other using IPv6. This rate of adoption is increasing as D-Day gets closer (Depletion Day?).

The migration strategy for IPv6 implementation is to run dual stack networks ie to run both IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel. Existing ISP customers will be able to continue to use their existing “IPv4 only” routers. IPv4 is not going away in a hurry. However you should know that once IPv4 has been “used up” new websites and services will start to appear that only use IPv6. If your ISP cannot provide IPv6 then it is quite probable that you will not be able to access services that only use IPv6. With time this will be a growing problem.

Consumers
As long as your ISP does support IPv6 then your routers don’t need to – the ISP can do a Network Address Translation on your behalf. After all end users don’t typically see their IP address. End users use the friendlier DNS system for sending emails and web browsing eg trefor.net sits at IP address 62.121.11.173 but you don’t need to know the underlying number – the system takes care of it for you.

Their problem will be if their ISP does not support IPv6 then they will not be able to help when trefor.net (or any other DNS based service) moves to IPv6.

Now consumers don’t need to rush out and buy a new router. For one if their ISP does not yet support IPv6 it would be a waste of money, but they do need to be sure in the medium term that the ISP has an IPv6 story. The other point to note is that routers don’t last for ever and do periodically get replaced as technology develops. For example in moving from 8Mbps to 24Mbps broadband many people will have had to have a new router.

One of the things holding back the release of IPv6 to consumers is the lack of support for the protocol amongst consumer broadband router vendors. The market leader for IPv6 equipment support is Cisco, whose kit is typically used in business environments. Cisco routers are too expensive for home users who expect to get the equipment bundled with their broadband connection for free or at least a very low price.

There are very few alternatives with fully working solutions – these vendors are only now just sampling their first devices to their ISP channel.

There is no real reason for this, other than a perceived lack of market demand, because ADSL routers typically all use the same open source (ie free) Linux kernel. Linux is the pet project of a global engineering community and provides good IPv6 support. We should therefore expect to see many IPv6 enabled broadband routers appearing in the market during the course of 2011 which will likely trigger more ISP IPv6 announcements.

Business
A business should give more thought to a plan to migrate its network from IPv4 to IPv6, or to provide support for a dual stack. This is because it might be a bit of a nuisance for consumers to have only partial access to the internet but this could be mission critical for a business, especially if it is that business’ own website and services, or those of its trading partners that become inaccessible.

Up until now this is something that has been completely ignored by the IT manager community but it is something that they should be aware of in 2011.

Support from Cisco and Linux is good news generally as many businesses are heavy users of both Note a business may not know it uses Linux but for example Timico installs IPv6-ready Fortigate firewalls – it is the firewall’s underlying Linux stack that facilitates this.

There is a lot of uncertainty here and I will be arranging some educational workshops to cover this in the near future – watch this space. In the meantime if you want to know more by all means drop me a line at tref at trefor.net.

If you want to learn more about what an ISP does to prepare for IPv6 read about our work at Timico in this previous post. Note since writing that post in December 2010 the number of IPv6 routes supported by Timico has grown from 3,500 to 4,500 which shows how quickly the space is moving.

Geoff Huston also has a good discussion on this subject here.

PS I will update the percentage penetration of IPv6 numbers as I come across them.