Tag: network

Categories
broadband Engineer

Well Done, Rob Evans @rhe #Janet

janet_office_speedDay two in the big brother house new office (spoken with  Geordie accent) and I’ve just done a broadband speed test. For the moment my network connection is a WiFi hotspot on a 4 year old iMac which is in turn connected to an Ethernet socket in the wall. Tomorrow we will be bringing in a router.

With this setup I’ve just done a speed test and as you can see got 66Mbps down with an equally good 40Mbps up. Impressivo. Remember this is through the iMac.

speed_fast_smallThe iMac itself connected directly to the Ethernet port gets even better speeds. On this occasion 141Mbps down and a whopping (the Sun says) 208Mbps up.

This must be a GigE LAN. Will have to investigate. I’m told that in the wee small hours when most of the whole wide world is fast asleep it gets even faster. It’s likely constrained by the speed of the Ethernet card in the Mac. Clearly it’s must be locally shared bandwidth.

This is all because the network is run by the University of Lincoln who of course will be attached to Janet.

At this point I’d like to thank Rob Evans (@rhe), who runs the Janet network, for his efforts here. Rob doesn’t mess about down at 1Gbps speed I know. He is more into 100GigE but nevertheless thanks Rob 🙂

I had intended to do some trade study work into various broadband services as part of being able to recommend providers. In the case of the office this would be futile so I will at some point do it on my home connection. I currently use Timico and see no real reason to change seeing as I know the network.

However I sense that I will want to move to FTTP on demand and also as a consumer might want to avail myself of TV and or sport bundles which as a B2b pureplay Timico doesn’t offer so watch this space for news on that score.

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity Net

Trains to get faster internet connectivity #networkrail

British railways logo

Internet access on trains to be upgraded by 2014

My auntie told me today that the rail network is upgrading its wireless internet access or at least it will have done by 2019. I’ve mentioned the rubbish connectivity on trains more than once – here and here for example. I’m a bit of an expert because I spend so much time on the train between the office in Newark and London.

Apparently we are going to get 50Megs which is a big uplift on the pathetic 2 Meg we have to share out amongst the whole train today.

The BBC news item tells us that apparently “A new fibre optic network should be capable of handling up to 192,000 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) of data once the upgrade is complete in June 2014.” Pretty advanced stuff a 192Terabit per second network (no quibbling over definitions of what is a Terabit please).  I wonder which router they are going to use? Perhaps someone from Network Rail could get in touch and I’ll do a blog post on the subject.

Internet access on trains. Can’t wait. Ciao bebe.

Categories
Engineer internet

iOS7 release causes internet traffic to double

traffic growth on lonap network due to ios7 upgradeiOS7 caused a stir in more than one way last week. Twitter abounded with all sorts of comments regarding how slow the Apple servers were responding to download requests from excited fanbois eager to checkout the latest slightly iterative functionality of their new iOS. When the dust settled it seemed that the majority of people had been sorted.

Taking a look at the effect of iOS7 on networks comes up with some interesting results. The graph in the header pic above shows the traffic over the Lonap core before, during and after the flurry wave (ocean?) of downloading. Steady state is around 30Gbps or maybe slightly more. Once iOS started to hit the fan this doubled to around 60Gbps.

It’s good that networks such as Lonap can take the capacity hit.

The growth in traffic comes as no surprise when you consider the size of the download. This seems to have ranged from around 700MB to nearly a Gig depending on the device with 3GB of space needed on your phone for the install. I guess you wouldn’t want to be eating into your mobile data bundle with that.

Categories
Engineer internet online safety security

How would Huawei spy on your network?

Last week the talk was about a story about former head of the CIA and the NSA, Michael Hayden, who thinks Huawei are spying on networks that have installed their kit. Link here to the Register story though it appeared in a lot of places.

One has to think about how Huawei might do this without the network operator knowing?

paul sherrattI had a chat about this with one of our networking gurus Paul Sherratt (pic inset – good looking boy) and this is what he had to say:

“They would write traffic tap/backdoor code into pre-shipped FPGA firmware or on an ASIC, hidden from any local intelligence agency code review body.  If for spying/traffic tap function, there would be some safeguards against activating the code if the router believes it is under test/non-production conditions.  There may also be some kind of ‘Hello, I am here’ call-out, which for example may be done by modifying a large DNS request packet contents and padding to the same length to avoid detection by looking at packet headers.

Whether that is even possible will depend on the hardware design – so that should also go through a full review by an intelligence body to determine if pre-shipped chips are an intelligence risk.  If they are, the only way to 100% prevent it happening would be to fully review the ASIC design and manufacture outside of China, which would probably rule out Huawei as a supplier.

It would be easier to implement in software/FPGA firmware, but easier to tackle from a security standpoint.  All software and FPGA firmware would be compiled after intelligence review and installed on network equipment after shipment.  If I were China, I may find it easier to get software engineer spies working for a more ‘trusted’ vendor not imposed with the same level of hardware and software review.”

It’s a tangled web innit? It feels as if we should be looking over our shoulder all the time.

As a footnote I used to work in the chip business. The company I worked for produced military ASICs amongst other things. it was quite common for chip designers to leave little messages or their names etched into the metal layers in empty spaces a chip. I remember once one of the guys leaving the words  “live fast die young” in the corner of a chip. They had to redo the metal mask and re-manufacture the whole chip. It was destined for a high reliability application where the notion of dying young was not too popular! Good times…

Categories
Engineer online safety security

How to achieve a PCI Compliant network

Trefor DaviesA lot of effort goes into achieving PCI compliance for a network. Without going into huge detail I thought some of you would like to know the type of work we had to do to get the badge.

Implementation of secure LDAP cluster

This consists of a master server and three read-only slaves, the master server is locked down heavily and the read-only slaves are used for applications to authenticate against. All communication is authenticated and encrypted. All of our new systems have been moved over to authenticate against this LDAP cluster.

TACACS+ / RADIUS (2-Factor) authentication front ends

TACACS+ is an authentication protocol used by all our network equipment and passes authentication through to the LDAP cluster. This system was rebuilt to use encrypted communication, a well structured user/group system, and various security features.

RADIUS (2-Factor) was implemented to pass one factor of the authentication back to the LDAP cluster and the second factor back to a Yubi Key server so that Yubi Keys can be used.

Secure VPN, was implemented using

Continue reading “How to achieve a PCI Compliant network”
Categories
Engineer internet Net

PCI compliant networks

Trefor DaviesPleased to tell you that as of today, Timico, NewNet and PowerNet have been listed on Visa Europe’s website as having a PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant network.

Check it out here.

Our PCI compliance project began in mid-July and all paperwork and network scan was sent to Visa Europe on 14 November.  The team met pretty much every other week since July, sometimes for all day workshops, to tackle this project.  It’s a great credit to everyone that the project was completed in such a short space of time.  I’m sure they will all agree, it wasn’t easy.

The cross disciplinary team was lead by Leslie Young and comprised Nick Luckcuck, Ian Christian, Will Curtis, Faye Hemingway, Dean Bruce, Tom Grace, Jared Moore and Calum Malcolm.

Anyone out there needing a PCI compliant network should check us out. Press release with more spiel here.

I’ll do another post to cover the type of work we had to do to achieve compliance.

Categories
competitions Engineer

winner of the most home networked devices is @NeilMcrae

Neil came in clearly ahead of everyone in the competition for who has the most home networked devices. He gets the mug. There were some great entries and it was all a bit of fun so I’m going to give everyone a fabulous Timico pen for entering. What’s more if you really want a mug you can have one of those too:)

Can everyone wishing to take possession of their prize (s) please email me their address and I’ll try and sort it out on Wednesday when I am next in the office.

PS don’t forget to sign up for the Trefor.net xmas bash. It’s gonna be a goodun.

The competition is now closed…

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Home networked devices

I took a look at my router yesterday, as you do, and counted 14 devices connected over WiFi and 4 over Ethernet.

WiFi included 4PCs/laptops, printer, 4 android phones, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Ethernet included my laptop, a VoIP phone and a couple of homeplug devices that hook up the XBox.

That’s not SoHo. That’s a small business. We certainly have the overheads:)

Categories
datacentre Engineer Net ofcom social networking

Power to the portaloo – bog standard networking in a (ElectroMagnetic) Field @emfnoc @emfcamp

EMFCamp network planning diagLast year I dreamt of holding a tweetup over a weekend in a field. I booked a large scout camp but the project didn’t get anywhere because it needed connectivity to make it a success and I couldn’t for one reason and another make it happen.

A couple of weeks ago you may have noticed something called EMF Camp appearing in your Twitter stream. People I knew were going and blow me down if it doesn’t turn out to be the type of event I had been thinking of.  I couldn’t go myself but Nat Morris, who ran the networking for the event, has sent me some notes of the tech setup.

Nat’s notes are a great read and I have left them by and large unadulterated. I have to thank him for sending me a wonderful cornucopia of facts and links – every link is worth clicking on. You especially need to make sure you read the camp_network pdf – it has drawing in it showing how they planned the network even down to the distances between portaloos for the Ethernet cable runs. Some knowledge of data networking would help you understand some of the technical terms here but the first link to Zoe Kleinman’s BBC report gives a great overview.

Nat writes:

Here are some details about the internet setup for EMFCamp which took place last weekend at Pineham Park in Milton Keynes. The BBC turned up on Saturday afternoon and recorded a nice piece about the event, you can see my stomach about halfway through when they film in the NOC tent…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19441861

Some slides from Will and my presentation at the end of the event about the power and internet are here…. (50MB warning)… www.natmorris.co.uk/camp_network.pdf

We were lucky that the site is only 2.8 miles away from the Pulsant DataCentre in Milton Keynes –  what was formerly BlueSquare MK. Brian Ross and Nick Ryce got the wheels in motion inside Pulsant and arranged with Matt Lovell the CTO for them to sponsor us. I cheekily asked for a couple of U of rackspace in MK and some in their Telehouse East rack plus a 1Gb/s layer 2 circuit between the two, I was expecting them to say no, but they were fine with the idea!

So back in June we started our network building placing a Cisco 7200 with NPE G2 in Telehouse and another in MK, we borrowed a /19 of v4 + /48 of v6 and AS number from Chaos Computer Club in Germany, meaning we didn’t have to NAT any campers.

We had a BGP transit feed from Pulsant in MK, plus Goscomb in Telehouse, along with a temporary connection to the LONAP peering network for v4+v6 plus multicast. http://stats.emfcamp.org

The costs for providing internet access to campers came in at around 5.8k, apart from 10 boxes of cat5 all of this was for the last mile between the MK DC and the campsite, everything was provided free or in kind from sponsors. RapidWireless from Liverpool (Richard Porter) loaned us a pair of DragonWave Horizon Compact units – we got a temporary OFCOM license for the 18ghz link which ran at 385mbit/s full duplex. As a backup we bought a pair of Ubiquiti Nanobridge M5’s, these were installed but we never pushed any traffic over them, they were just there in case something happened to the primary link.

Onsite we borrow a tent / marquee from scout group, the tent was made in 1953, made a 25quid to borrow it! Some pics…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929611918/

Our onsite rack / data centre, housing dual core routers, wireless controllers, along with various servers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929611592/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902260210/

Around the site we deployed a resilient OSPF ring, switches were stored in portaloos, along with power distro units – we used the German term Datenklo for these, meaning ‘data toilet’:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ne0hack3r/7924490940/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/je4d/7924689482/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902347402/

Someone even colocated a Raspberry Pi along with a 3tb USB hard disc in one! http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy_d/7902345240/

Campers left their cables outside and then either tweeted or text us and a NOC monkey would come out and connect them up. Wifi AP’s were deployed all over the site http://t.co/rBsQUAn9

We limited tent connections to 100Mbit, so a single user couldn’t saturate our upstream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b3cft/7909251802/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loggedhours/7925212568/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/russss/7909193016/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottinghack/7929909834/

Had some nice feedback!

https://twitter.com/Ash_Force/status/242067006537474048
https://twitter.com/markphelan/status/241896897290309633
https://twitter.com/je4d/status/242386884276396032
https://twitter.com/markphelan/status/242133609908142080

Our infra team twitter account is @emfnoc, the general camp one is @emfcamp

End of Nat’s stuff

A huge thanks to Nat for sharing this with me. The whole event was clearly a massive joint effot by lots of people and looks to have been a great success  I look forward to attending the next one in person.

Categories
End User social networking

aargh another social network – WAYN

Campsite at Hillend, Rhossili, Gower August Bank Holiday 2011Had an email overnight from someone at WAYN.com – “the world’s largest travel and lifestyle social network” – sigh! The email source address was whereareyounow.net. I checked. WAYN now has 19,720,691 members.

Good luck to him. I wish WAYN and all who travel with him well but I have to say farewell, adios, auf wiedersehen, goodbye, waving tearfully from the jetty and turning my back slowly on the departing entourage as it moves off on its travels around the world wide web.

I’m sorry but I am not ready for another social network. WAYN has budget mind you.

Continue reading “aargh another social network – WAYN”
Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity

Growth in traffic over O2 3G data network between 2008 and 2011

growth in O2 3G traffic correlated with device intro milestonesThis chart is a few months old now but I haven’t had it all that long and is still interesting to take a look at (click either pic to enlarge).Growth in traffic over O2 3G network between 2008 and 2011

It shows the growth in O2 3G data traffic between 2008 and 2011. See the spike when the iPad was introduced combined with the football world cup traffic (dunno why anyone bothers!).

I don’t have an up to date one which would probably be even more interesting but I suspect that is too close for commercial comfort.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be covering two main themes. These are the Olympics Games and 4G. They are different though to some extent the technical aspects are very similar. Both subjects are going to be in our consciousness quite considerably from here on.

I’m not going to be blogging or tweeting over the Easter Holidays so see you all back on the 16th April, thoroughly refreshed and ready for the sensory onslaught that will be the run-in to London2012.

PS Thanks to O2 for the chart – keep the info coming guys – everyone is interested 🙂