Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity

UKNOF 28 wifi at DeVere Wokefield Park

uknof28 wifi devere wokefield park

At the DeVere Hotel, Wokefield Park, Reading for UKNOF28 (Google it). The hotel is huge. This does cause a problem. My room is in the Mansion House which is a good half hour walk1 from the Executive Centre where the meeting is being held.

There has been a slight kerfuffle before the meeting starts as the UKNOF WiFi kit wasn’t exactly late arriving but certainly making the organisers a little nervous. Meetings such as UKNOF, LINX et al need to bring their own kit because that provided but hotels and conference centres is only designed to be used by “normal” people. ie not internet geeks and techies (it would be worth aggregating the home broadband bandwidth use of this community to see how it compares with the average).

You will be pleased to know the kit is now here and an announcement has been made alerting us to a short break in service whilst wires are switched over.

The object of this post however is to praise the WiFi service offered by the DeVere. It has worked brilliantly everywhere in the hotel. I used my mobile VoIP client last night because there is absolutely no mobile signal here. The bandwidth  wasn’t perfect for VoIP but I imagine 7pm is pretty much peak time for hotel internet usage as folk get to their rooms, check email etc.

The lack of mobile coverage is an interesting situation for a venue that is filled with suits at corporate offsite meetings. Every open door you pass has a meeting table with overhead projector and people sat around doing stuff. Yesterday the Mansion House bar was filled with besuited-open-necked-shirted-enthusiastic salesmen clutching bottles of champagne awarded to this month’s top performers (etc). Filled me with dread.

As I walked to check out the conference venue yesterday afternoon there was even a bloke sat on his own around some “team building” equipment laid out on the lawn. He was waiting for the punters to turn up. Some time later it was absolutely chucking it down and I saw him packing up the stuff. Presumably his clients had abandoned that part of their offsite meeting and adjourned to the bar. Rain needn’t stop play – just changes the game 🙂

So well done DeVere on your WiFi. The screenshot in the header is the speed I’m getting inside the conference room. Presumably everyone else is now using the UKNOF kit.

More from UKNOF28 as it happens. Read it first on trefor.net 🙂

1 Ok I’ll admit to a slight exaggeration here but it is a long way.

Categories
End User fun stuff internet

Reality is a concrete slab off eBay

concrete slabs bought off eBayI ordered some concrete slabs off the internet. Bought them on eBay actually. 21 off 600 x 600mm for £57. Had I bought them from a shed they would have been something like £120. They are going to form the base for the playhouse that I’m converting into a shed. We are using the patio where the playhouse currently stands as the new basketball court. As it happens the slabs came from under a deck so it would seem that they are eminently suitable for their new purpose.

I collected them from somewhere in Lincoln. Before setting off I looked up the address on Google Maps and even saw the house on Streetview. V useful. When I got there I had to reverse down a very narrow drive and in the end was only able to shift half of them. They are so heavy I didn’t want to risk knackering the Jeep’s suspension. Going to have to go back and get the others another time.

It seems strange in a world where we live a “virtual” life on the internet that there are actually solid items such as these concrete slabs that intrude on our everyday existence. It’s called reality. I looked it up on Wikipedia: “the state of things as they actually exist rather than as they appear or are imagined”.

Concrete slabs apart we shouldn’t forget that reality is generally much better than the virtual world. It’s a perfect spring day out there – get out and enjoy it:)

Categories
End User gadgets H/W internet media Mobile mobile apps phones

Gaining Focus

As readers of last week’s Conscious Uncoupling already know, I am making moves to unhitch myself from my iPhone 4 of the past 3 years and start anew at some point in the near future with an Android KitKat device. And as I am always looking to put the latest tech into my hands when the time comes to upgrade (or as my Apple-inebriated friends would likely put it in this case, “mistakenly change”), I have been looking quite fervently at both the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S5, both of which have just recenlty seen release and both of which are racking up impressively high numbers with regard to NRP (Number of Reviews Published…my statistic, my acronym, and no amount of search engine pounding will turn it up).

Two weeks ago (week of 31-March) HTC brought their blitz of HTC One M8 promotion to a crescendo that rolled over and straight through the technologically inclined and/or curious, and which resulted in a quantity of review inches more than adequate enough to ensure informed options would set in time to counter the Samsung Galaxy S5 wave that followed last week (week of 7-April). Now, of course, I cannot and will not make such an important relationship decision without first establishing a level playing field upon which I can hinge it, so I have resolved to wait a few weeks…a couple of weeks…at least a week to let all of the new information foster (fester?) within.*

So all of those reviews. Essentially, they boil down pretty straight across party lines (yes, that is a telephony joke…a groaner of a telephony joke but a telephony joke nonetheless).


HTC One M8
Pros: Gorgeous build and design (actually it is more accurate to go All-Caps on GORGEOUS, as this is the overwhelming first-notice feature cited in every one of the product reviews I have read or skimmed or found myself subjected to). The expected high level of display, speed, and functionality. GREAT speakers! “Motion Launch”, which allows the user to perform specific commands with the display off via tap, swipe, or gesture. Better than expected battery life (and a power-saving mode that can be configured to set energy amount parameters).
Cons: Lousy camera. Just awful. Won’t anyone say something nice about the camera? Or, at least, not be so enthusiastic in dinging it?

Samsung Galaxy S5
Pros: Waterproof! Yup, the Galaxy S5 is waterproof, up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter. Terrific screen, camera kudos all around, noticeably great battery life (and the battery can be swapped out as needed, too), storage expandability up to 128GB, health features (a heart rate monitor as part of the on-board hardware won’t keep me from drinking a single Cola-Cola or eating a single chip) significant reduction in the amount of Samsung TouchWiz bloatware from its S4 predecessor, speed and functionality to beat the band, and light.
Cons: Perhaps TOO light, as every reviewer critisizes the S5’s “cheap” feel (at least in comparison to the heavy and shiny smartphones in the arena, all of which suffer phone reception for their metal-enwrapped goodness), the fingerprint scanner is not as smooth as Apple’s Rolls-Royce-aspiring iPhone 5S, and though the TouchWiz bloatware is less than it was on the S4 it is still a proverbial fish-in-a-barrel target for criticism.


So pushing cost/plan out of the equation, I find I am leaning hard towards the Samsung Galaxy S5. I cannot say that I have spent much time wishing I could use my phone in the sea, pool, or shower (and I haven’t found my phone doing a toilet tumble since the days of the Nokia 3310), but what I can say is that I cannot imagine spending ANY time with a smartphone that is camera-lacking. The (at the time) industry-leading camera is what put me in my iPhone 4 back in 2011 to begin with, and as criteria go that function is even more of a decision-maker for me in 2014.

Get the picture?


*
Yes, there are tens of other KitKat-able phones that warrant consideration along with thes two new goliaths now stomping around, however I did lead with my propensity for grabbing up the latest tech and it doesn’t come any “latest” than the new flagship products from HTC and Samsung. Of course, the fact is that “With Great Popularity Comes Not Only Great Punditry But Great Amounts of Shared Opinion and Technical Insight.” (humblest apologies to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both of whom are thankfully still with us as of this writing), so there is that, too.

Categories
broadband Business internet

FTTP – Fibre To The Polar Bear

Superfast broadband FTTP is said to be uneconomic for rural areas but Telenor thinks otherwise

We hear all the time that rural FTTH (Fibre to the home, or FTTP – Fibre to the premises) is unviable. The reality, though, is that it is only unviable when we view it purely from the deploying Telco point of view AND we understand that infrastructure providers are no longer the holders of patient money (many thanks to Ben Verwaayen for this term). And while this argument has slowed Britain down for a decade (blame the Analysys Mason report that looked at the costs and ROI only from a Telco POV and not from the standpoint of every Brit, council, business, industry, sector, and ROI in social capital, etc., etc.), the lack of such thinking continues to allow other nations to leapfrog the UK in digital development.

A case in point is last week’s news regarding the small, remote, and isolated near-North Pole community of Bjørndalen, where Telenor has helped to bring fibre to 43 early adopters  (even I know Bjorn means ‘bear’, a good indicator of the usual passing traffic). The treatment of this tiny peninsula in the Svalbard Archipelago by Telenor as a miniature version of mainland Norway indicates that they consider it an ideal testbed, giving the Telco an opportunity to “scrap older technologies like copper, coaxial cable and older generation mobile networks”.

Other such testbeds could be rolled out in similar places in other countries, and in particular the UK, though Britain seems to be getting lost in defending the obsolete tech (otherwise known as “sweating the asset”) rather than focusing on resolving the key problem of setting up rural areas for the future. For instance, who could have known that champagne tourism would become a factor in Svalbard, and that even in a global economic crisis access to decent connectivity could have a positive effect on that new and thriving industry?

Categories
internet mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom Regs

Net Neutrality update

Regular readers will remember my piece for Trefor.Net last September, where I defined what the average VoIP telco wants from an open internet. I know this article had a readership of at least one, because I saw someone brandishing a print out in Ofcom. Yay me!

Anyway, things have moved on. We had Ed Richards, Ofcom’s CEO, saying they weren’t “waiting for Europe” when Philip Davies MP pressed him on the issue at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last year (for which Philip earned a nomination as ITSPA’s Members’ Pick at the 2014 Awards) – but Europe aren’t waiting for them earlier.

Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of the so-called “telecoms package” which includes, amongst proposals regarding a Single Market I have previously slated here and the abolition of roaming fees (which I shall slate below), proposals on Net Neutrality. Before we get too excited, this was only the first reading. The College of Commissioners is about to be disolved, along with the European Parliament for elections and who knows what political landscape will be returned to Brussels in May. It’s not likely to receive much more Parliamentary time until the end of the year now at the earliest, which makes their December 2015 implementation date seem optimistic.

The European Union’s proposals mirror, largely, what ITSPA and the VoIP community would accept (in my view) as a legislative intervention. ISPs cans till offer specialised services to protect business critical applications, or prioritise video on demand, but would not be able to do so to “the detriment of the availability or quality of internet access services” offered to other companies or service suppliers, except for traffic management measures which are “transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate” and “not maintained longer than needed” to protect the integrity of a network.

This is a good step, but I for one, along with ITSPA colleagues and others aren’t waiting for Europe like Ofcom – watch this space for a progress report soon!

Abolition of Roaming Charges

The European logic is rather federalist; it says you should be able to use your phone for the same rates anywhere in Europe for the same price as at home. Aside from the age old rule (which also applies in next generation telecoms – distance is still a factor in signal regeneration, rateable value of fibre etc) that the further a call is conveyed the more it costs, it is wholly illogical to be able to call next door with your mobile for the same rate as calling it from Lithuania, you cannot ignore the basket effect. 26% of socioeconomic group D and E households are mobile only. The reduction of roaming profits to mobile operators leads, in part or in whole, to a waterbedding…. (I almost wrote waterboarding, as that’s what it feels like to deal with a mobile operator’s customer services sometimes)… other products and services will increase in price to compensate for the foregone margin.

So, in short, one consequence of the EU’s proposal is that those that cannot afford to go on holiday in Europe, or those businesses that don’t trade in person in Europe, shall subsidise those that do. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

Google+

Categories
broadband End User internet net neutrality

My Bandwidth is Precious (GET OFF IT!) — or — Autoplay Angst

Bandwidth usage of streaming video from in page ads uses up data bundle for those people with low data caps on their service – such as satellite based broadband

Oh joy. I keep falling over sites that autoplay videos, and some — I’m looking at you, Facebook — do not appear to have a simple option to switch off this, er..uh, ‘option’. Ignoring some of the real basics are the spurious claims that our bandwidth is being protected with such tricks as  video ceasing to play when the screen is scrolled down, or “it only works when you are connected to wifi”.

First, the video by playing has already consumed some of my precious bandwidth. You can’t just mine these bits at home, you know; data bits are a commodity that have to be bought and paid for. I will press the Play button if I want a video to play, otherwise autoplay is actually forcing me to (a) view something I probably don’t want to view, and (b) causing me to pay for the privilege of viewing that something I don’t want to view, which is on the whole, utter dross. And it is usually advertising dross at that, funded by “someone” to reach an unwilling and hence unresponsive audience. You, oh advertiser, may have money to chuck down the proverbial drain, but many of us out here who are paying to receive your video message do not!

Click Here, Lindsey

Second, what on earth has a wifi connection got to do with it all? Apart from moving the video dross onto a marginally cheaper option than mobile (i.e., by using my fibre, cable or landline-based broadband tariff instead), someone still needs to pay for the bits received. And for those on satellite dishes it makes no difference how video is configured to play, the consumer is going to be extremely cross to find their monthly data allowance munched through regardless of the pain this can cause to the unwillingly disconnected.

Categories
End User food and drink internet

Ace internet access at Alexanders

alexanders free wifiSat in Alexanders coffeeshop/bar/restaurant whilst kid2 has a hairdo. Alexanders has wifi, fair play. The wifi is giving me 34Megs down and nearly 9Megs up, very fair play.

This shouldn’t be news in this day and age but getting those kinds of speeds is still a delight. It’s made even better by the fact that everyone else in the gaff are of the ladies with idle moments out shopping variety. They are chatting using the old analogue mouth and ears method rather than the in vogue “talk to the person sat next to you via IM”. The upshot is that I have all the bandwidth to myself. Salright innit:)

The last time I sat in a caff with wifi1 was at the Harbour Lights in Peel in the Isle of Man. We follow each other on twitter (@harbour_lights). I tweeted how good it was and to my surprise the waitress came over and told me the tea and crumpets were on the house. Read that blog here.

Alexanders also has a twitter account @Alexanderscafe but they haven’t used it for yonks so I doubt the same ploy would work again. It wasn’t deliberately planned the first time anyway 🙂 Doesn’t matter. I’m happy to pay for my cuppa. The atmosphere is nice and it’s a good place to hang out whilst a hairdo is being done.

Other wonderful wifi stories:

No mobile networks but wifi saves the day

Funky Cisco stadium wifi tech

The view from my table at Alexanders. Uploading and editing pics is a dream with this wifi.

alexanders lincoln

1 not really but it sounded good for the purpose of this storyline

PS the speedtest shot is the only bit of the speedtest.net screen that isn’t plastered in adverts. I’m not letting those freeloading broadband companies have a free advertising ride on trefor.net nosiree:)

Categories
Engineer internet Net peering

Peering policies #peeringweek

trefor_250You’ve read so far in Peering Week about the many hundreds of thousands of connections that join together the 30,000 or so networks on the Internet. Some of these connections are negotiated in minutes by specialist engineers who work for these networks at one of the many peering events that happen throughout the year. The result is a “settlement free” connection between the networks, and traffic between the customers on each network starts to willingly flow.

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

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

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

Categories
broadband datacentre Engineer engineering internet peering

IXManchester – It’s Quiet Up North #peeringweek

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

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

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

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

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

exchange

Other peering week posts you might like to read include:

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

Categories
broadband datacentre Engineer engineering internet Net peering

Why Does Scotland Need a Broadband Internet Exchange? #peeringweek

Almost a year ago exactly, an ambition I’ve had for a very long time came true.  It’s not a personal ambition (not exactly on my bucket list), but it’s an ambition I wanted the local Scottish Internet and broadband community to achieve.

After years of failed attempts, talking amongst ourselves in the community and generally making very little progress, on the 27th of March 2013, LINX held a meeting in Edinburgh to discuss the possibility of having an Internet Exchange in Scotland.  It was at that meeting that the community agreed to ask LINX to build what would become IXScotland.

One might wonder why Scotland needs an Internet Exchange of its own? 

Categories
broadband dns Engineer engineering internet ipv6 media Net peering

Experiences of Launching a Broadband IXP in North America #peeringweek @LINX_Network

LINX Head of Marketing and Business Development Ben Hedges shares his experiences launching a broadband IXP in a Peering Week guest post.

The opportunity to co-host the 24th Euro-IX forum in the UK has come along at what is a very exciting time for LINX. It’s our 20th year and this event comes shortly after us opening two brand new IXPs; IXScotland in Edinburgh and LINX NoVA in North Virginia, USA.

With LINX NoVA being our first overseas exchange there has been a lot of attention worldwide for what we’ve been building in the States. In this blog I will look to explain the background as to why we’re doing what we’re doing and why we believe this is an important development for LINX and its members plus the peering industry as a whole.

Categories
Engineer internet peering

@jodam talks 400GbE at 24th Euro-IX Forum in Leeds via Skype from China #peeringweek

John D'Ambrosia Chief Ethernet Evangelist  DellInteresting talk on 400GbE  at 24th Euro-IX Forum in Leeds by Dell’s Chief Ethernet Evangelist John D’Ambrosia – 400GbE is currently up for discussion at IEEE meeting in China.

John was actually speaking from China using Skype. It was remarkable quality video – no synch problems and showed up perfectly clearly on a large screen.

這是所有鄉親

Other Skype related posts:
Microsoft to pay a lot of money for Skype? – back to dot com bubble days?

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

Skype Sold

Net neutrality, Skype and Commissioner Reding

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Lightning fast IPv6

Sometimes the world presents you with random facts that you just can’t quite get your head around. Then you talk to more people about the same thing and they say they see the same thing too but thought it was just them. The final stage is a NANOG conference panel about that topic because it seems to be happening to every one… (actually stage three might be different depending on what the topic is).

The fact is that it appears as if IPv6 gives you a boost in terms of performance compared to IPv4, not just in the lab but in the wild. A number of ISPs and researchers have been tracking the performance over the last couple of years, not as an explicit test to see if its faster/better but rather to make sure that their deployments aren’t broken or to measure to see how widespread deployment is.

Their key findings…

  • 2% of end users are using IPv6 globally
  • IPv4 with a single NAT performs 20% worse than native IPv6
  • IPv6 connections fail 10x more than IPv4 connections (0.2% as compared to 2%)
  • Between 2012 and 2013 there has been an increase in the difference in performance
  • Both latency and throughput are better on IPv6
  • IPv6 tunnels are bad

So everyone should get out there and make sure their ISP is going to support IPv6 so we can all benefit. As with most of the NANOG presentations you can watch it online  (and its really very interesting if you have 4omins free at some point today)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftoy2tp4kDM?rel=0]

More on IPv6
IPv6 hits 2% of traffic on Google
UK IPv6 usage lagging behind global competitors

Categories
Engineer internet

IETF London Wednesday Agenda

Popped in to the IETF meeting at the Hilton Metropole on Edgeware Road yesterday. I was meeting Alan Johnston in advance of heading over to the trefor.net UC Exec dinner. If you weren’t there you missed a great night. Some of the attendees already knew Alan by reputation and it was good to be able to hook them up.

The great thing about the IETF meetings is the opportunity to chat with people in the game. Yesterday I bumped into no end of people I knew.

Categories
Engineer internet

Miniscule WiFi data bandwidth allowance

Staying at the Strand Palace Hotel tonight. Handy for town and free WiFi to boot (I paid to stay here obv).

I’m not using the hotel WiFi. Rarely do as 4G is usually faster. On this occasion I’m getting 8Mbps down over EE4G (MiFi) but whilst the hotel allows unlimited bandwidth it is only giving me 7mbps. Worse than dial up. What’s more the data transfer allowance per session is only half a bit. How does that work? Quicker to walk.

Perhaps there is a mistake. You can check it out for yourselves in the pic of the instructions they gave me.

See other high profile mistakes of this nature here.

strandpalace

Categories
datacentre Engineer internet olympics peering

Regional Peering in the UK

When I was asked to write a piece about regional peering I thought it would be a quick update on the current state of affairs in the UK. Alas with all these things I realised that I need to add a little back story. Feel free to skip over the content to the end if you know all the bits…

The Internet (and what its not)

Most people know the Internet is not a single entity but rather a collective of networks that use common standards to create a single network made up of independently run and managed networks that allow their customers and end users exchange traffic and therefore create the Internet and its public face – the World Wide Web.

Peering/Transit/BGP

At the edge of each network there are a bunch of routers that communicate with other adjacent routers belonging to other networks using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). At a basic level each network tells the other network what it knows about its network and (depending on commercial concerns) other networks it knows about using the BGP protocol. This information is shared in the form of “routes” which define a certain block of address space and how to get to it.

This leads naturally to a quick

Categories
Engineer internet

Internet routing pedestrian style – OSPPF

I walk to work. Takes me half an hour, give or take. Doesn’t seem to matter which route, in the great scheme of things. Depends whether I dawdle in shop windows or not.

I like to vary my way in. This morning I had decided to take the shortest route. It is mostly busy main road, down Lindum Hill if you know Lincoln, and is certainly the noisiest route but it is probably the easiest and certainly the most direct, Google recommended way to go.

This morning I got to the traffic lights at the Peacock Pub – you know, the junction of Greetwell Gate and the A15. Up until then it was all plain sailing.  I managed to cross the road before getting to the lights whilst the traffic was queuing on red. This saved me time because the lights will have changed by the time I got to  them and I’d have had to wait.

When I got to the lights  they were

Categories
Engineer internet

Manbag for a network engineer

Ever wanted a manbag? Something cool you can sling over your arm when you’re on your way to the data centre? Something that will attract the attention of your fellow engineers?

adrian_gpo_smallLook no further. Here for your delight and delectation is an original GPO engineer’s kitbag.

Original real leather with handy compartments for tools and spare relays/connectors the GPO manbag of 2014 is suitable for carrying a laptop together with your jimjams for that overnight stay in the Docklands Travelodge.

This superb retro man accessory is modelled by BT’s biggest fan, Adrian Kennard of AAISP. Click on the image to see the lad looking super cool.

Want one? Ask Adrian. They are probably like rocking horse poo but I’m sure Adrian will let you have a go at holding his. He’s just that kind of guy.

Categories
datacentre dns Engineer internet servers

Diagnosing very slow website loading problem

downtime_graph_smallBeen having intermittent problems with trefor.net since moving the site to a new virtual platform at Christmas. It’s all sorted now. Thanks to the lads at the Timico Datacentre.

I asked Ian Christian to describe the issue and how it was resolved:

Well… explaining it is a little hard…. The key to figuring it out was this:

At the bottom of every page it shows when the page was generated, and how long it took. I suspect in wordpress somewhere it might have told you this too – but I’m not sure.

What we were seeing was

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity social networking Weekend

No mobile network coverage but WiFi saves the day again

No mobile connectivity no longer a problem.

Went to a Burns Night dinner last night organised by the “Friends of William Farr School”. A good time was had by all and I got to wear my new Irish tartan kilt (photos withheld due to health and safety reasons).

The bash was at Hemswell Court, a former RAF Officers Mess – there will be quite a few such buildings in Lincolnshire which was known as bomber county during the second world war. It’s a v pleasant venue with memories of men in sheepskin flying jackets and the roar of Lancaster bomber engines echoing around the place.

Being in a rural spot, as most RAF bomber command airfields were, there is sod all mobile coverage at Hemswell Court. Ordinarily in town I’d feel somewhat naked without mobile coverage. In Hemswell I didn’t give it a second thought.

This is a) because

Categories
broadband Engineer internet Net

BT achieves world record for fibre transmission rates – fair play @neilmcrae

BT world record broadband speed

Had an excited Neil Mcrae come up to me this morning  asking if I’d read the press release 🙂 Neil is Chief Technical Architect of BT Group. The conversation began over beer and a curry last night where Neil alluded to an important announcement the next day but declined to elaborate. Normally beer will loosen a person’s tongue but Neil doesn’t drink enough beer for this approach to work.

Next morning I had naturally forgotten all about it until prompted by the lad.

The press release, which you can read in full here, tells us that BT, in conjunction with vendor Alcatel Lucent, achieved “trial speeds of up to 1.4Tb/s with a record spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz)on an existing core fiber connection. This is believed to be the fastest speed ever achieved in commercial grade hardware in a real-world environment and is equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second.

This press release has been picked up by online media all over the world. After all 1.4Tbps is a pretty advanced performance for a fibre connection. In fact the connection made use of multiple fibre strands running off BT’s Alcatel Lucent 400Gbps capable kit. Multiple ports were used to get the speeds.

Not many companies have this kind of kit to play with but the development of advanced performance fibre transmission networks is key for large ISPs and content providers to be able to cope with the growth in consumer demand for internet services.

This particular trial majors on the efficiencies of the technology. It uses existing “old” fibre connecting BT’s Adastral Park R&D centre with BT Tower in London. This is important because it will allow bandwidth to grow using existing fibre in the ground.

BT are quoted as saying that a 1.4Tbps is the equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second. Now I happen to know that Neil Mcrae is a big fan of the latest and greatest TVs – he is the only person I know to own a 4K TV (in fact he has a Sony 4K Ultra HD job). It’s all becoming clear.

There must be a 3rd node on the BT network with the Alcatel Lucent kit in Neil Mcrae’s back bedroom. He is going to have a Sony 4K TV in every room.  Seems obvious. 1.4Tbps is still a little overkill even with all these TVs but there is such a thing as future proofing you know. As 8K becomes available Neil will be able to upgrade his TVs without having to go to the hassle of changing his home router.

Respect:)

Meanwhile I think we can be proud that this kind of pioneering work is happening in the UK and I think Neil is right to have a smile on his face this morning. Onwards and upwards.

Categories
Business internet online safety piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

An evening with Julian Huppert MP – Internet Hero #fundraiser

julian_huppert_mpI’m not in the least bit political. If I get involved on the periphery of Parliamentary discussions and debate it is because I occasionally see MPs trying to implement legislation that doesn’t make sense in our modern internet based world. This is often because MPs have so much information thrown t them that they have to resort to keeping ideas simple so that they can get their brain around them.

Unfortunately when it comes to legislation that touches the internet, and by default touches those of us whose livelihood depends in one way or another (an increasingly large cohort of people) on the internet, the simplistic view often taken by MPs is often at odds with the practical workings of internet technologies.

We end up spending a lot of time and money fending off such legislation, more often than not pretty successfully but usually after great effort and pain. This is because it takes an age for people (MPs) who because of the practicalities of their job have to look at complex issues very simplistically.

I’m all for keeping things simple (stupid) but we also need people in our Parliament who can get their brain around the complexities associated with the internet. What to the layman is a simple network that “just works” is in reality a hugely complex ecosystem. In fact the complex issues faced by MPs often extend to non-technical considerations such as the privacy of the individual In reality it is difficult to separate the technical issues from the non technical as they feed off each other.

One of the few Members of Parliament who does understand these issues is Dr Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge. His background is research science at Cambridge University. Julian has taken a very active participation in internet and technology related debates in the House of Commons and was one of the leading opponents of the Digital Economy Act that was (outrageously in many people’s view) rushed through in the dying days of the last Labour government.

Because of his work supporting the internet industry, last summer Julian was awarded the Internet Hero Award at the annual ISP Association Awards dinner. Since then he served on the Parliamentary Select Committee looking at the Draft Data Communications Bill (Snooper’s Charter) and was highly influential in the decision making that lead to the Bill being killed it off for this Parliament.

We need to keep MPs like Julian in the House of Commons. He is good for the internet. He understands the issues. MPs need to raise a lot of cash to pay for their election campaign. I assume the next election will be in 2015 but much will go on between now and then.

I have agreed to help Julian by organising a fundraising dinner on his behalf. He is a Liberal Democrat but this is not a party political issue. In fact this is a technology blog not a political blog.

Whatever your political beliefs, if you work in a business, or maybe it is your business, that makes its living from the internet it is in your interest to support Julian.

So this is an invitation to you to a Fundraising Dinner entitled “An  Evening with Julian Huppert – Internet Hero”. This dinner, on Tuesday 25th February,  is a sit down job at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall – a totally high class environment if you’ve never been.

At £300 a head this isn’t a cheap do but we have to remember that the idea is to help raise funds to get Julian re-elected. We won’t be stinting on the quality of the food and drink in any case.

You will be in the company of 49 other influential people from the internet industry so it will also be a great night for networking. We shouldn’t forget that it will also be an opportunity to share your thoughts with Julian.

Click here to find out more or drop me a line if you want to talk about it.

That’s all for now. Please help if you can.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Nest Labs – tax benefits and the internet of things? #IPv6

Google has bought Nest Labs for $3.2Bn. Nest Labs is into smart home devices and the internet of things. This we all know because it’s splattered all over the tech pages this morning.

I’d never heard of Nest Labs. I suspect it’s a by product of living in sleepy old Lincoln, somewhere in the deepest sticks of Engerlund and not in Silicon Valley. I live with it every day and I love it.

Ok it is interesting news and it focusses the mind on the growth of the internet, the further pervasion of technology into our every day lives and yes, IPv6 even. Google knows its stuff when it comes to IPv6.

A few things particularly spring to my mind re this acquisition. One is that Nest Labs was founded with over $80m of VC money. If you want to sell your business for $3.2Bn you have to think big and place big bets. Nest Labs will have spent its cash on an expensive team of people able to deliver.

I saw somewhere recently that startup had offered a Google employee $500k to move jobs. Unfortunately that Google developer was already earning $3m! I wonder whether there is the environment in the UK for this kind of activity. It needs both investors and entrepreneurs to be fully embedded in emerging technology cultures.

Secondly if this market is going to be as big as the size of the bet suggests then it has to be the demesne of huge businesses. Global businesses. This is somewhat dispiriting. There must still be room for small entrepreneurial organisation who can make things happen quickly.

Finally one presumes that Google has a huge cash pile. You hear about it occasionally, usually when MPs whinge about the ways large multi-national corporations are able to avoid paying tax in particular countries. All perfectly legal.

A quick “Google” shows that US Corporation Tax is 40% whilst Capital Gains Tax is anything between zero and 15% or 20%. One of the investors in Nest Labs is Google Ventures, fair play. Now I’m not an accountant but might there be huge tax benefits for Google in only paying Capital Gains tax rather than Corporation Tax on the $3.2Bn? Don’t get me wrong. Nothing improper going on I’m sure. Perhaps it all comes out in the wash so to speak.

It would be interesting though if someone out there was able to drill into the taxation specifics of such a transaction. I’m sure it wouldn’t affect the Google business case for the Nest Labs acquisition but an interesting by product nevertheless?

Answers on a postcard or via the comments section.

See ya, buddy…

PS Internet of things. IPv6. Very exciting.

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Business Rates

In the Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne gave small businesses an early Christmas present with some relief on business rates. Welcome news, I am sure, for all of our high streets and favourite independent hostelries.

However, when you start to look into the rates regime in telecommunications, things starts to get a little more confusing. Yes, they are due on our data centres and our offices and whatnot, just as we would expect them to be if we were a bank, a pub or a newsagents. But they are also due on fibre and ductwork. Worse still, one council or unitary authority (specifically one in England & Wales and one in Scotland) is often the beneficiary of the whole liability regardless of its potentially national coverage, which defies logic, but that’s a story for another time.

I have a problem with how fibre and duct can be rateable in the first place. Keeping the receipts and expenditure method of valuation (otherwise known as the “profits basis” out of it for a minute), to my simple mind, a factory has a rates liability – i.e. the bricks and mortar, but the machines inside don’t attract it. After all, tax is levied on their product (value-added tax, for example, or other duties in the case of alcohol) and the company producing them is also levied taxes on their profits (corporation tax, or income tax for a sole trader). It would seem somewhat akin to “two bites of the cherry” to tax the machines…… of course that argument could apply to the building itself as well, though I would suggest that as business rates are meant to pay for local services, a building is a fairer demarcation than counting widget machines for example; one could say fairer than some duct in a field.

Anyway, that can all be debated ad nauseum. What I want to get across here today is that when we talk about incentives to develop telecommunications, say 3G coverage to address those so-called “not spots”, or dealing with the issue of slow speeds in rural broadband, one of the critical factors facing a telco in deciding whether or not to build masts, unbundle exchanges (those taking BT Openreach Access Locate space have to pay a room licence fee, which is code for “their share of the rates bill”) or dig up fields to lay fibre out to a rural community with dial-up speeds on their ADSL is how much that activity will increase their rates liability. Seeing as fibre in rated on a sliding scale per pair per kilometer (contiguous in your network) basis, and given the distances that can be involved, it can soon add up.

We have high profile government initiatives such as BDUK, to deliver rural broadband, but I wonder…… instead of spending to “stimulate commercial investment” for telecos to expand into these areas, how much could be achieved through some simple manipulation of basic levers such as business rates? After all, if it were profitable for a telco to expand into such an area (be it a 3G mast or high speed broadband), an economically rational profit maximising entity would’ve done so already. One can only assume the investment appraisal delivered a negative net present value…. perhaps, just perhaps, it may have swung the other way if the rates regime in telecommunications was different.

As ever, very interested in all of your views.

Google+

Categories
Business internet Net

GNS3 crowdfunding reaches 460% with 12 days to go

GNS3 crowdsourceMany of you will be familiar with GNS3 – the open source network simulator. GNS3 is used by a number of network engineers I know who swear by it.

Well the folks at GNS3 want to take it to the next generation and have used crowd funding to finance the development. It makes you feel good to know that so far, in their quest to raise a mere $35k, they have hit $160,937 or 460% of their target. And that’s with 12 days to go!

It says a lot about what the global network engineering community feel about GNS3 that they have received such support. Funders get advanced copies of the software which won’t go on general release for a year.

Well done to GNS3 and good luck with the new dev.

atb

Categories
Engineer internet peering

#LINX83 – traffic growth and regional expansion

I’m at LINX83. The eighty third quarterly meeting of the London Internet Exchange. The statistics associated with LINX continue to astound.

LINX has 492 members, 1191 connected ports 683 of which are 10GigE and 1 100GigE port with 2 orders in process. The LINX network carries 1.791 Tbps of peak traffic with 7.324 Tbs capacity (plenty of headroom there) to 60 member countries.

This is an enormous amount of traffic and capacity upon which I’m not going to dwell much more (unless as I’m sure it will, something interesting comes up during the LINX83 sessions).

I do however want to talk about regional peering efforts.

Categories
Engineer internet peering

Sensible freebies for network engineers at #LINX83 #IPPerformance

usb bottle openerWhen engineers get together at conferences and trade shows a flock of vendors naturally flutters down and starts pecking around looking to impress (totally random collective noun btw). This is indeed the case at LINX83. One of the tools of the trade in the conference impress the engineer game is to hand out freebies. LINX83 is no different. There are pens to be had and there are USB memory sticks.

USB memory sticks are a standard freebie but one that vendors need to take great care over. The bar is set by LONAP who handed out 32GB USB sticks at their AGM at the beginning of this year. Every USB freebie is measured against this mark.

AT LINX83 USB sticks are available but not at 32GB. They are only 4GB! Ordinarily this would engender contempt but not on this occasion for as you can see from the inset photo, these USB sticks are also beer bottle openers. IP Performance, the fine organisation handing out these freebies has struck at the very heart of what makes an engineer tick. Beer.

Someone, I think it was me, suggested that a 32GB or even a 64GB version could be produced attached to a Screwpull corkscrew. This kicked off a debate about the sense of having electronic circuits near to a source of liquids. This would apply to beer as well as wine..

I say that an engineer wouldn’t spill his or her beer or wine regardless of how difficult the bottle cap or cork was to extract. I realise also that many fine wines come in screw top bottles but the very best, as consumed in great quantities by LINX members, will be cork and the Screwpull corkscrew is a suitable tool for extracting such stoppers.

I already have a Screwpull at home but if anyone has a stock that needs giving away please let me know – with or without 64GB memory stick.

You heard it first on trefor.net…

Categories
Business internet Regs

ISPA Conference – unbelievably great offer (etc)

Have I got a deal for you. The highlight of the annual conference season that is the ISPA Conference is fast approaching. I am chairing a session. Last year I chaired a session (can’t remember what on – I don’t dwell in the past) and caught the 07.20 from Lincoln to Kings X which was slightly delayed and arrived at 09.35. No probs I thought. Still got plenty of time as the conference didn’t start until 10am.

In the taxi on the way to K&L Gates in the City (Bill’s dad apparently) it occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely sure what time my slot started so I called someone at ITSPA to check. Apparently I was first on! It was almost like a scene from a movie where someone is dashing to get to an appointment or the opening scene of a play that they were in (you get the drift) and just make it in time.

I appeared at the back of the lecture theatre and strode down to the stage discarding coat and laptop bag on the way. At 10am exactly I introduced the panelists:)  I also had to chair the next panel as somebody else had had to cancel their trip.

Anyway I digress. The good folk at ISPA have asked me to promote this year’s conference. My bit is all about The Future ISP:

“What will an ‘ISP’ look like in 10 years’ time? A look at ISPA membership demonstrates how diverse the Internet industry is.  Whether it is small business, corporate or consumer connectivity, hosting or the delivery of TV, search, social networks or other services over the top, the expectation of what services an ISP provides is changing . This session will analyse what the internet industry will look like in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time.”

Key themes are (apparently):

  • What are the key challenges that ISPs will have to face?
  • What the key opportunities that ISPs will be able to exploit?
  • What are the key trends that shape the business environment for ISPs?
  • Is there a future in offering connectivity alone?

The other speakers are:

  • Dana Pressman Tobak, Managing Director, Hyperoptic
  • David Barker, Founder & Technical Director, 4D Data Centres
  • Matthew Hare, Chief Executive, Gigaclear

More details are available here. ISPA are offering some sweeteners for those who want to come. The first two people to put their hands up get a free ticket (you put your hands up by leaving a comment on this blog post saying that you are putting your hand up and want to come). Everyone who is disappointed at not getting in their hads up quickly enough can get a huge 50% discount by using the promo code TREF50 at the Eventbrite page here.

On a serious note this is a very useful conference and also brings with it good networking opportunities. You will also get to find out what the internet industry will look like in 15 years – which is why I’m going. Bring your crystal balls and we can have a seergazing session – ommmmm.

PS I dunno if seergazing is a word but it is now.

Categories
Engineer internet

20th Anniversary of FICIX at Euro-IX 23 Helsinki

euroixI’m at Euro-IX 23, the 23rd six monthly get together of the people that run Europe’s internet peering exchanges. Without these mutual not for profit exchanges your internet connection would cost a fair bit more.

Euro-IX 23 is in Helsinki because 2013 is the 20th anniversary of the founding of FICIX, the Finnish internet exchange.

It’s very much worth looking at the connectivity provided by FICIX over the last 20 years.

1993 10Meg Ethernet hub soon upgraded to a switch
1996 155Mbps ATM
1999 622Mbps ATM
2002 1GigE
2004 10GigE
2013 100GigE ready with first ports expected to be provisioned in 2014

This roadmap is interesting because it is an illustration of how the internet has grown over the last 20 years. It also shows the flow of technology during that time including the demise of ATM.

Time was all your home broadband surfing would have been made over an ATM backhaul connection (the link between the telephone exchange and the internet. Now it is almost certainly done over 10GigE.

Unless you are in the business the chances are you won’t understand any of these terms in which case just note the flow – 10>155>622>1,000>10,000>100,000 millions of bits per second. Remembering that the average broadband speed of something like 14Mbps is faster than the total aggregated connectivity of the whole of Finland in 1993.

Cop this Euro-IX video to understand how the internet works and what peering is all about – you don’t need to be a techie to watch.

Video and header image/logo courtesy of Euro-IX.

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity Net

Trains to get faster internet connectivity #networkrail

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.