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Bad Stuff Business ofcom scams security voip

VoIP Fraud — Technological Conventionality Achieved

VoIP has reached the mainstream. We know because the fraudsters are coming after us.

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Colin Duffy, CEO of Voipfone and ITSPA Council member.

VoIP merges two of the largest industries in the world: Telecommunications ($5.0 trillion) and the Internet ($4.2 trillion). It is big business.

Estimates of VoIP market size vary, though they are universally large. For instance, Infotenetics Research estimates the global residential and business VoIP market to be worth $64bn in 2014, growing to $88bn in 2018. Visiongain, on another hand, puts the 2018 value at $76bn. WhichVoIP (Bragg) has it as $82.7bn by 2017, and also claims that VoIP calls account for 34% of global voice traffic – 172bn call minutes. And then there is the United States Federal Communications Commission, which estimates that “In December 2011, there were 107 million end-user switched access lines in service [..in the USA and..] 37 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions.

And with opportunity comes the thief:

ICT Recent Scenarios: VoIP Week: Colin Duffy
(Corporate ICT)

 

(You have to love that New Scotland Yard hack…..)

But it’s not confined to big organisations; perhaps a little closer to home:

“A family-run business says it has ‘nowhere left to turn’ after hackers rigged its telephone system to call premium rate phone numbers — racking up a bill of nearly £6,000. ‘We reported it to the police, but we were told there was very little likelihood of them catching anyone so they wouldn’t be able to investigate’, she added.”                               

— Lancashire Telegraph

The Communications Fraud Control Association publishes a global fraud loss survey, and in 2013 they estimated that the global telecommunication industry loss to fraud was an enormous $46.3bn, which included:

  • VoIP hacking ($3.6bn),
  • PBX hacking ($4.4bn),
  • Premium Rate Services Fraud ($4.7bn),
  • Subscription Fraud ($5.2bn)
  • International Revenue Share Fraud ($1.8).

Over 90% of the telephone companies included in the CFCA’s survey reported that fraud within their company had increased or stayed the same since the last report.

Globally, the top emerging fraud type was identified as Internet Revenue Sharing Fraud, with Premium Rate Service Fraud (both international and domestic) also in the top five. Of the top five emerging fraud methods, PBX Hacking was the most important with VoIP Hacking at number three.

Who’s doing all this is a big and interesting topic, but here’s a starter:

Top Ten Countries where fraud
TERMINATES

Top Ten Countries where fraud
ORIGINATES

*Latvia
Gambia
*Somalia
Guinea
Cuba
East Timor
Lithuania
Taiwan
*UK
USA
India
*UK
Brazil
Philippines
*Latvia
Pakistan
*Somalia
Spain
Bulgaria

CFCA, Global Fraud Loss Survey, 2013

What can be done?

Earlier this year a customer of Voiceflex was hacked to the tune of £35,000 when over 10,000 calls were sent to a Polish Premium Service number over a period of 36 hours. The customer refused to pay, which resulted in a court case that the telco lost. Now the industry is looking to its terms and conditions for protection, but it’s clear that this isn’t enough – the cause needs addressing.

The best approach would be to cut off the money supply – if Telcos could withhold payments for known fraudulent calls, the activity would end. But this solution requires changes to inter-operator agreements and cross-jurisdiction interventions.

“We are currently in discussions with our fellow EU regulators about steps that may be taken to address cross-border [Dial Through] fraud and misuse. It is important that companies using VoIP systems take steps to ensure both the physical and technical security of their equipment in order to avoid becoming an ‘easy target’ for this type of criminal activity […..] We are approaching the NICC and relevant trade associations to ensure their advice is updated to help businesses better protect themselves against newer types of dial-through fraud that have emerged as technology has developed.”

— Ofcom 2013

For once I agree with Ofcom. The industry needs to work harder at target-hardening. We need to be making this industry safer for our customers.

There’s a lot to be done but a good start is to read and apply the guidance issued by ITSPA – the UK trade organisation for Internet Telcos.

I’m taking a close personal interest in VoIP fraud and security, and I invite anyone who has more information or who wishes to discuss this in more detail to contact me at colin@voipfone.co.uk email

A naive user asked me, ‘why can’t you just make safe telephones?’ Well, why can’t we?

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Engineer peering

Cooperation Makes Internet Exchanges Future-proof #peeringweek

Internet exchanges have come a long way since the early nineties, when most of these platforms were formed. In the previous twenty years the niche industry of IP interconnection through public peering has seen a number of evolutions. How can Internet exchanges remain successful in the years to come? Especially those with an international focus?

Let me first start with the factors that are key for keeping Internet exchanges healthy and their business sustainable:

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.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

Disturbing news re internet traffic growth forecast – prefix exhaustion

I’m doing some prep for a talk next week and just discovered a disturbing fact. I’m sure all of you will have read Cisco’s annual network traffic forecast. I covered it here.

What you need to know about is that Cisco reckons that by 2017, global IP traffic will reach an annual run rate of 1.4 zettabytes, up from 523 exabytes in 2012.

Somebody asked me what a zettabyte was and it made me wonder what comes after it in the big number naming or prefix stakes. I looked it up on Wikipedia and the answer is (of course !!) yottabyte.

The real problem comes when internet traffic outgrows yottabytes, which, dear reader, I assure you it will. I couldn’t find the name for the next one up. Wikipedia stops at yotta (1024 )! The world is facing prefix-exhaustion.

This is a problem akin to IPv4 exhaustion although the fix is far simpler. We have enough warning. We simply have to run a naming competition on this blog. It just won’t be acceptable to have more and more yottabytes. I could have a special mug produced as a prize.

I’m not going to bother with it yet (unless you really want to) but as we get nearer name exhaustion date we will have to give it some thought. It will also be a good excuse for another party like the end of the IPv4 bash I held a couple of years ago.

I would think it will happen sometime in the next decade – ie the 2020’s.

You heard it first on trefor.net…

PS I’d have put an image of the Cisco traffic forecast up but their flash code didn’t work and neither did the link to generate a jpg! We won’t get to yottabytes if we have errors like that now will we Cisco, eh? Probably just a glitch.

Categories
Engineer internet ipv6

A few observations on the Cisco Annual VNI Report 2012 – 2017

Trefor Davies thumbnail pictureI live in my own little world. It’s a connected world but relatively contained. I have a modest 2,461 followers on Twitter, 455 friends on Facebook and over 5001 connections of LinkedIn.

All this comes in to perspective when you read Cisco’s annual Visual Networking Index, a body of research that charts the growth of the internet and forecasts traffic patterns over the next five years. The latest issue is just out and comes with a ton of data. I’ve distilled a few points that jumped out of the router at me and shared them below.

Connected people and IPv6

According to the forecast by 2017 3.6 billion people will be connected to the Internet, up from 2.3 billion in 2012. Also by 2017 there will be 19 billion networked devices, up from 12 billion last year.

That’s a lot of people and a lot of devices. The fact that there are around 5 times more devices than people is a reflection of the growth of machine to machine connectivity. Nobody is going to be carrying around five networked devices, although having said that I carry four but don’t use me as an example of Mr Average.

It’s interesting to note that the number of IPv6 connected devices is forecast to grow from 1.6 billion in 2012 to 8 billion in 2017. On the face of it this suggests that most of the growth in connected devices is going to come from IPv6 which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Metro versus long haul

Cisco reckons that metro traffic will surpass long haul traffic in 2014 and will account for 58% of total IP traffic by 2017 and will grow nearly twice as fast as long-haul traffic from 2012 to 2017. This is not something that your average man in the street will have to think about but it does help us to understand the trend towards regional peering exchanges.

Historically most ISPs connect to the internet at a few major hubs. London is one such hub. However as more and more traffic is local traffic it makes more sense to connect this traffic near to where it originates. For example the traffic between two servers “taking to each other” in Leeds would historically have been tromboned to London and back. It obviously doesn’t make sense to pay to cart data hundreds of miles and back if it can be done more directly. Now ISPs with a reasonable density of customers in Leeds can connect via the IX Leeds Peering exchange. The same applies for Manchester. In time as traffic levels grow the business case for smaller metropolitan areas will work we will see other locations appear on the connected map.

WiFI/mobile

Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices will generate 68% of Internet traffic by 2017. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this number upsided. The only fixed internet connections in our house are the Xbox and my home office VoIP phone and the XBox is likely to go wireless when the new one comes out later this year. I would guess that most wired internet connectivity is going to be business based.

There’s more info on the Cisco blog here together with links to tools that allow you to play with the numbers. It’s well worth a browse.

Returning to my opening lines and the number of people I connect with, all these statistics do highlight the changing nature of our world. We are going to have to continue to adapt as more and more of our daily lives become electronic and connected.

I think these are exciting times from both a personal and business perspective. Exciting because of the wave of change sweeping across our personal lives that will hopefully enrich and enhance the quality of our lives. Exciting from a business perspective because there is money to be made out of all this growth.

That’s all folks…

1 no idea actually how many because it only tells me 500+ and I couldn’t figure out how many and I wasn’t prepared to spend any time finding out how to do it.

Categories
Business online safety social networking

Parliament and Internet Conference – Privacy

portcullisThe Parliament and Internet conference wound its annual way to Westminster yesterday. The conference usually comes up with a nugget or two and made the BBC news site with a comment from Andy Smith, PSTSA1 Security Manager at the Cabinet Office that he wouldn’t recommend using your real name when registering with sites like Facebook.

Lord Merlin Errol also noted that he used to give his date of birth as April 1st 1900 but that drop down boxed rarely went that far back these days. I guess there are still one or two 112 year old people around though whether they would be interested in social networking is another  issue.  Privacy  on the Internet, or lack of it, is something I’m still trying to get my brain around.

This came to the front of mind again this morning as a Facebook message appeared in my timeline asking me to confirm my mobile phone number. I did so, particularly as a mobile number is one way of recovering a lost password. Didn’t feel particularly comfortable doing it though. I don’t trust Facebook though

Categories
End User fun stuff

letter from 1975

looking out to sea from Peel breakwater in the Isle of ManJust visiting my folks on the Isle of Man for the weekend and mam showed me a letter I’d written to dad dated 2nd March 1975. We were in the process of moving to the island from Caernarfon. Dad had gone on ahead whilst we finished the school term.

The letter was written in formal schoolboy Welsh and I note that my handwriting is still as bad as it was then!

I guess my observation is that I had to write dad a letter in those days. He was living in rented accommodation with no telephone. It was before the days of mobile telephony and tinterweb. That’s unimaginable for a kid these days.

I recall that at the end of that spring term in Ysgol Segontium, Caernarfon we had exams. When I arrived at Ballakermeen High School in Douglas they were about to have exams! A serious bummer for a 13 year old kid. I sat the exams and fwiw came 3rd in class without having done the syllabus (breathes on fingernails and polishes them on lapel). It all went downhill from there:).

The photo is a panoramic view gazing out to sea from the breakwater in Peel, Isle of Man. Paradise on earth and one of my favourite places.

Categories
Engineer olympics

Olympic bandwidth usage growth

chart showing  http (web browsing) traffic before and during the OlympicsThought this would interest you. It’s a chart showing the http traffic on our broadband network in the run up to and during the London 2012 Olympics.

The change is quite amazing. This growth isn’t representative of all the internet traffic during that time – that showed an overall increase of 30% or so.

As a business ISP our peak traffic time is during the day with a smaller local maximum (ok mini peak) in the evening when homeworkers and road warriors get back and use their work-provided broadband.

We still saw the evening  mini peaks but they are dwarfed by the daytime ones.

That’s all folks…

Categories
broadband Business

B4RN is a hero at ISPAs 2012

B4RN Broadband is award winner

B4RN broadband has just been announced as winner of the Internet Hero at the Internet Service Providers Association annual Awards bash. They were pretty clear winners in the vote that involved all of the ISPA council (moi included).

I’m not going to dwell on the other candidates or on the Internet villain. It is quite fair that the attention is all focussed on B4RN. B4RN has featured on the blog before. It is literally a ground breaking project.

B4RN is aiming to light up 1,500 or so properties across the 8 parish areas in the Lancashire/Cumbria borders at a cost £1.86M. That’s roughly over £1,200 per home/business. They are doing it with a combination of hard cash raised from investors and potential customers and “effort”. The “effort” is payment in kind – much of the total cost of the project is down to civil engineering works – digging the trenches in which the fibre is laid.

The 1,500 properties will need over 256km of fibre – that’s roughly £1,200 per property connected and just over £7 per metre. A very significant chunk of the cost of the project is going to be paid for in kind so the overall cost per property/per metre will come down from this. B4RN has enough cash to initially light up the core of the network – that’s 40,000 km through 8 parishes.

If you take a look at the Openreach website you can see their regulated tariff. For laying fibre the costs range between £25 a metre and £140 a metre.  Believe me this is not a “have a go at BT” post. BT has to gear for scale and is not used to having to gear for low cost.

These numbers suggest there is a clear need for competition in the local loop/Openreach space. The Openreach position will be that the market isn’t big enough for two players.

The people that got B4RN going are real heroes. The biggest problem that the UK has is that there aren’t enough of these heroes to go around. It’s not just guts you need it’s know how and it’s not just know how locally on the ground. It’s know how right the way up through the ranks of the civil service and up to government ministerial level.

BT will be whispering in the minister’s ear “do you really want to take the risk with critical national infrastructure by letting just anyone get involved”. That’s what’s happened with the BDUK rollout of funding for rural NGA broadband – we are left with BT and possibly Fujitsu though only in a few regions (that’s my understanding anyway).

I don’t have the right answers here. Hopefully B4RN’s winning of the ISPA Internet Hero award will give someone food for thought.
imagePhoto – Barry Forde and Chris Conder of B4RN proudly show off their award.

Categories
Business internet

The Cost of Sending Stuff by Post & Boston Consulting Group Report on UK Internet Economy

web front end for plumbersI sent my mum a mother’s day card. Posted it Thursday and she got it today. Actually I didn’t really send it, my wife did so I don’t know if a second class stamp is to blame for it not getting there for the weekend.

Last night I bought a book from Amazon.co.uk. I had the choice of delivery by 1pm on Tuesday for a fiver or 5 day delivery included in the price of the book. The book itself was only £9 so I went for the free option. It will be here by the end of the week I imagine. If I wanted to fork out a one year subscription for Amazon Prime (£49) I could get all my purchases delivered free of charge next day.

I also ordered a new part for my car on Friday. They have promised it will be here on Wednesday. The part was

Categories
Business gaming internet Net ofcom social networking UC voip

The Demographics of Communications

TV watching in decline amongst younger demographicIt’s a bit of a dank dismal day here in the shires and I have the office aircon on “heat”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind this weather – it reminds me of my childhood and in particular of wet Sunday afternoons spent watching the black and white cowboy film on BBC2, maybe playing a game of Monopoly and then the excitement of Songs of Praise with Harry Secombe after tea. The highlight of the day was the comedy on Radio 4 at 6.30 or 7pm.

I’m not sure why I’ve “gone nostalgic” all of a sudden especially when those Sunday afternoons were really boring and often used to lead to rows amongst us kids.

These days our kids still argue despite having an incredible range of things to do on a Sunday. After the F1 there’s the XBox and, well more Xbox. Then there’s the Xbox!

Reality is that other than the Simpsons the kids only watch TV when one of their parents decides

Categories
Business internet

ONS report on internet usage shows huge growth in mobile use

I assume everyone has already read The Office for National Statistics published data on internet access in the UK issued last week :). The survey found that there have been significant changes in the way people connect to and use the Internet in recent years. No surprise there then.

There are a few “no surprises” such as the fact that the younger you are the more likely you are to use social networking and that LinkedIn is used more by men than women (with the associated equality in business issues I’m sure, like it or not).

Also over half of us (66 per cent of all adults) purchased goods or services over the Internet. Even my aged parents buy stuff online. Interestingly 31 per cent of us 2010 sold goods or services online (up from 21 per cent in a year).

The biggest wow factor was the number of people using their mobile phone to connect to the Internet. This rose by 6 million between 2010 and 2011  (fastest among those aged 16 to 24) and now amounts to 45 per cent of total Internet users. The time will come when there are more mobile internet users than fixed – my input.

What is slightly disappointing is the fact that the most recent data for business internet use is based on 2009 data in a report published on 26th November 2010 (actually entitled E-commerce and ICT activity 2009).

Perhaps the business community does work a little more slowly than consumers these days but this is such a fast moving world that data that is almost 2 years old seems positively stone aged.

On a side note my son is about to enter his second year at University and his first year in private accommodation. The communications needs of the five lads in his house are 1) fast broadband with unlimited data package and 2) an iPhone. No fixed line telephony thank you very much.

Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Internet Heroes (hooray) and Internet Villains (boo hiss) #deappg

In an unprecedented move the Internet Services Providers’ Association has opened the nomination process for Internet Hero and Villain to you, the general public.

The Hero and Villain are fun categories in the forthcoming ISPA Awards (London, 7th July) and last year were won by Tom Watson MP and Lord Mandelson for their respective roles during the passing of the Digital Economy Act. Last years’ was a pretty straightforward vote.

This year I think it is going to be different. I’m not so sure that there are potential candidates with the same outstanding qualities.  I could be wrong and would be glad to hear from blog readers who they think might put up as heroes and villains.

I can think of a judge or two that would fit into either camp and at least one MP. ACSLaw, who were an unsuccessful candidate last year could also easily fit in as a villain this year (though they are so last year!).  I’m looking for ideas. You can provide suggestions directly to ISPA via Twitter to @ISPAUK #ISPAs or email them at [email protected] or you can leave a comment on the blog.

The ISPA council will be voting on a shortlist of candidates for both awards before the night.

Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

A Teenager’s Homepage

Before we set off on our camping holiday (destination unknown) I sat down at my daughter’s pc to print out some campsite options in Yorkshire.

I was somewhat bemused to find that her homepage was set to BBC iplayer.

Look out ISPs everywhere. Your bandwidth forecasts are inadequate.

My trusty E71 got me to the first campsite on the list and that is where we stayed. I also used it to write this post.

Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

A Teenager’s Homepage

Before we set off on our camping holiday (destination unknown) I sat down at my daughter’s pc to print out some campsite options in Yorkshire.

I was somewhat bemused to find that her homepage was set to BBC iplayer.

Look out ISPs everywhere. Your bandwidth forecasts are inadequate.

My trusty E71 got me to the first campsite on the list and that is where we stayed. I also used it to write this post.