Posts by wabbit02

Arista and Juniper hike prices as component lead times blow out to 80 weeks – that's May 2023

Re: 50 to 80 weeks ?

I think there are a few things to unravel:

1) the supply chain pre-pandemic was pretty optimized. No-one held stock of anything for very long, you knew roughly what your order book was for 6-12 months and planned to meet that

This wasn't just for the end manufactured good (a router in this case), but also components (the copper for a resistor, or the right grade steel sheeting for a case) which would lead into the finished product

2) Demand hasn't dropped, people are still buying in most sectors as if the pandemic didn't happen, we have not seen a contraction of the economies (in general terms)

3) everything from copper mines, to high-end silicon production and end-stage component assembly + all the shipping of bits between them was affected during the pandemic.

4) certain geographies (and therefore supply chains) are still really badly affected.

So: there is a huge pent-up demand which means more product is being required, there was little to no slack in the system, production and supply chains are way out of sync, which means less product is able to be produced and shipped

so longer lead times, and it's not "CPU" it can be any number of components that are an issue.

IBM Watson GPU cloud cluster Brexits from London to Frankfurt – because GDPR

Re: Pointless And Political

Nothing to do with if the UK adhears to the same rules as the EU - its the EU's perogative to grant adequacy or negociate as part of trade deal.

Isnt the whole point of Brexit to allow regulatory divergence

Get this: Mad King Leo wanted HP to slurp two other firms alongside ill-fated Autonomy buyout

Re: 'argue that this was why they lost so much money'

The fact that she makes no comments about Due diligence or the disputed Hardware sales (in this article) just the premium seems to say either she wasnt involved (as CFO I find that hard to belive) or that she is staying well away (Leo did it all).

UK pr0n viewers plan to circumvent smut-block measures – survey

publishers punished - not the user

Rember with this its the content provider that is liable, not the viewer (It doesn't criminalize watching porn, it criminalizes not having an age check).

So VPN's etc are all fine, but there is no exemption for the content provider built into the legislation to absolve them from people using this method if it can be accessed from the UK without an age check = liable (and yes fully aware of the issues with this - just pointing out that's how its written).

They can compel hosting companies, Advertisers etc to roll over on the site owner as well.

£10k offer to leave firm ASAP is not blackmail, Capita told by judge

Re: Not Blackmail?

Probably because those people get a decent offer that's worthwhile and they take it and run. Reading through the Judgment it amounted to 6 months NET pay which isn't bad.

It's more commonplace in American companies but I have definitely seen it happen a few times.

Again reading through the Judgement it seems that they ruled she was unfairly dismissed because of the method of dismissal and its procedures rather than the reason and this, therefore, decreased the payout.

So the claimant is appealing on that.

Juniper, Ericsson sign 5G product pact

cisco who?

So Ericsson have canned Cisco and gone (back) to Juniper?

Interesting that the 3G packet core from Ericsson was base do the Juniper MX and then they created their own "SSR 8k" platform to replace that (along with trying to penetrate other areas), but this looks like more a return to the previous arrangement.

This could be great for Ericsson, what Juniper has is a mature NFV/SDN/ orchestration environment, in the shape of contrail, and Ericsson's "virtual" offering has fallen behind, however, its probably a step too far for Ericsson to admit defeat in this area and they will probably end up losing ground.

Intel confirms it’ll release GPUs in 2020

i740 for sale

As someone who saved up from their after-school job for an i740 I can honestly say it rates as one of the worst purchases I have ever made. Up until recently I'm sure I still had it in the loft.

Cold day in hell before I'll ever forget that.

ISPs must ensure half of punters get advertised max speeds

ISPs to stop offering connections to "bad lines"

So will we see ISPs begin to select their customer base on the max speed of the line? An easy way of improving your "up to" speed would be to selectively filter lines say below 3Mbps.

I get that "up to" is a bad way to describe the line, but is ADSL ADSL2, Bonded, VDSL any better (for the average consumer)? In which case how can people compare across products, this new ruling means that more factors are taken into account, but does it really help/ simplify?

Openreach have done a great job in enabling the estimation of max speed of a line, that most ISPs display when signing up.

Free Wi-Fi for the NHS, promises health secretary Jeremy Hunt

somewhat bemused... Sky, Telefonica and BT will all offer "free" WiFi as part of the bundle to capture the corporate (main hospital) data transmission. The only reason I can see this money being used is roll-out of AP's which are then connected by one of these providers.

Personally I would rather the NHS negotiate a decent contract, suffer a few adds and registration and use the money to make sure I receive better care.

Radisys plants flag in NFV biz

Re: Which part of NFV don't they get?

Radisys are an OEM provider selling the base hardware to be re-badge'd by various 3rd parties. The pitch here is "we can allow SDN and NFV in one hardware platform" which seems to be a bit of a "whitebox" play and help with transition between current and SDN/ NFV architectures.

So its more "come play NFV and SDN on our shiny platform".

ISPs' post-net-neutrality world is built on 'bribes' says Tim Berners-Lee

Re: And what about...

@Rampant Spaniel

"The NN debate started when mobile phone companies started to talk about charging extra for skype etc on their networks"

Voda, KPN and AT&T have a lot to answer for ;)

Re: Seems you've already bought into the ISPs arguments...

@td97402

"NetFlix was paying third parties for transit from their servers right to the very front doors of the various ISPs. They, in fact, tried to provide robust delivery capacity at their own expense directly to the various ISPs."

Kind of, then the transit providers got smart and courted their business to extract more traffic (thus leverage their per MB deals with the ISP). All the current arraignments have done is lower cost for Netflix by peering directly (which is what other companies e.g. Google have been doing for ages). I'd also accept the argument that it reduces Netflix's flexibility.

"Comcast and the other ISPs have been shown to be intentionally slowing such traffic. That is until NetFlix pays the toll for access to my ISP's network."

Only bit torent. No other prioritization has ever been shown. Suspected and passed down as "Fact" but not shown. You could argue that allowing the peering capacity to get congested is also doing this but that's something Netflix could have resolved in 30 seconds (if they took a hit on their cost) by moving content to a different CDN. .

Re: And what about...

Playing devils advocate: Content providers often insert/ display adverts, so they are charging the subscriber and the advertising companies (/Brand) - is this too not double dipping? The same arguments about cost to produce should they not be allowed to do so are equally valid.

As for pay - Reid Hastings drives a Volvo I'm sure....

WRT to network neutrality and internet fast lanes. Many assume that Net neutrality basically means that all traffic should be allowed with no impact, in actual fact the basic premise is that all traffic over the same Pipe be treated the same. With Netflix as discussed - this was the case, just that the pipe was congested so the video content was adversely affected (this is 100% net neutral) as its time sensitive. Therefore most ISP engineering depts want to treat all video (and VoIP for example) differently as it gives a better Quality of experience to the end user. Poor legislation in this area will just hurt everyone.

Re: What the ISP's have been doing is NOT bribery! its flat out BLACKMAIL!

I usually don't comment on these threads because they drive me nuts, but I can assure you the "FACTS" are propaganda from both sides. Read both the comments from the content providers and the ISPs and somewhere in the middle you will find the truth. I usually find that the ISP "view" is discounted very quickly. The only reason that I can come to around this is its a "Brand" issue. People have had a lot longer to come to distrust them than they have the "new" companies, however I am sure in several years time we will be making the same comments and sweeping statements about them as well.

From my perspective: Netflix (as all good businesses) picked the lowest cost distribution, in doing so they (either continuously or not) did not take any responsibility for the End to End delivery of this service. Due to their popular model the share of traffic moved from "normal" to "huge", where their changes then cause large downstream effects. In doing this they placed an additional financial burden on the ISP. They then made public statements based on VERY skewed statistics.

The Google youtube analysis is much better and Netflix have slowly (and privately) changed their rating system to be less scew'ed. Neither are perfect.

I also think internet "fast lanes" are a bad idea, good regulation should protect all parties and allow innovation, the emotional response to this issue has forced highly polarized opinions which, unfortunately will not allow for good regulation.

Disclaimer - I work in this area and there would be an impact depending on the eventual Laws on my company. However my options are my own (and are hopefully slightly more informed than general).

Re: On paper OK, but

"Again, completely false. Time Warner etc certainly could have slowed down connections using routing rules \ QOS rules but they did not, they didn't need to. The company Netflix paid (Level 3 were the main one iirc) for its connection to the internet had links to the last mile networks"

I believe it was L3 and Limelight. From what I recall the Netflix switched ~100% of its traffic to limelight at 15:00 for a few hours a day.

"> Netflix in the end, is forced to approach the big, greedy ISP(s) and offer them money in exchange for what should have been equal treatment by the ISP in the first place since their mutual customer has paid both of them."

Not true - the ISPs approached Netflix to try and sort out the situation at the same time Netflix published its speed index and publicly blamed the ISP. At the end of the day both have a responsibility to provide customer service, Netflix knowingly pushed its responsibility to the ISP.

Re: What the ISP's have been doing is NOT bribery! its flat out BLACKMAIL!

I don't believe this happened.

Netflix pushed traffic over a congested route and the ISP refused to upgrade the peering on this route. Netflix then published that the ISP in question was not serving the "speed" that their customers had paid for (where it just the "speed" to netflix.

So you could easily argue that netflix is guilty of blackmail and deformation.

You have to remember that the "internet" was not designed as a video delivery network.

Netflix is the ONLY company that keeps being bought up - why?

1) its traffic accounts for ~34% of the peak downstream

2) it was choosing how to serve content based on the least cost hosting /routing for itself.

3) it partnered with delivery networks who charge the Telecom companies to serve the data (based on peering / transit)

4) It then public "shamed" ISPs for poor speeds (bearing in mind it was not measuring the "connection" just the route that its traffic took).

Also Netflix CDN and routing is far from static. At one point a network can be peering many GB of traffic through one route, then Netflix may take the decision to move all the traffic to a different CDN at say 3pm, and all that traffic takes a different route - meaning I have to buy a lot of capacity from my different peering and transit partners (who are all charging for this).

What most people are really scratching their heads over is "why is Netflix complaining about being forced to pay to peer". From all reports the deals with comcast/ ATT/ verizon all offer netflix cheaper connectivity (as these companies are only really charging a port access fee) rather than a price per GB. If you look at Google they already do this (in fact are very proactive at doing so).

Also worth considering that this makes netflix (and Google) non "net neutral" as it is - as they have preferential access to the subscriber.

Unmasked: Euro ISPs raided in downloads strangle probe

Re: all about Netflix, methinks

"It's not that Cogent wants to charge - quite the opposite"

They charge based on disproportionate traffic. CDN'ing a video service (like netflix) actually causes the receiver to pay more.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/level-3-issues-statement-concerning-internet-peering-and-cogent-communications-55014572.html

There has been a move to outflank the telcos by shifting the charging model from the Application provider to the network provider. A similar situation occurred in the UK when the BBC switched all its hosting to L3. There was a mass consolidation in the ISP world, killing many boutique ISPs leaving the major 5 that we have today = less customer choice.

all about Congent charging

So Congent makes money by charging the ISP to deliver data. The more data they deliver the more $ they make. At the moment Congent seem to have signed up a bunch of services in to their CDN and are busily trying to sue all the ISP's in to allowing them to charge the hell out of them.

http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/verizon-cogent-engage-peering-spat/144025

This has nothing to do with net neutrality (as all traffic regardless of application type is subject to link congestion) and much more to do with Congent trying to turn a quick buck and they are relying on consumer ignorance (and outcry to the ISP) in order to force the position.

Cisco sets ex-CIA spook to hunt down leaking staffer

cisco vs ALU

having been involved in a RFQ process with Cisco (the incumbent) about 2 years ago. To replace a 7200 based core they proposed a 3 tier solution which blew the power and space budget at you sites. ALU was invited in for a "chat" as we use them in other parts of the business. They could complete the config with one box, and the kicker was, the solution was 1/3 the cost.

I'm not surprised at this - Cisco don't have a joined up product strategy due too many purchases and competing business units - its easy for ALU to charge less money, they have to deploy less kit to achieve the same result, due to a more competent product.

Virgin launches TV Anywhere streaming

in a feild

waits of sky to raise ASA complaint over the use of the word "anywhere"......

O2 kicks out Ericsson server for breaking its network

"Huawei already has the O2 contract for next-generation kit"

Have O2 UK announced their LTE (I assume that is what is meant by "next gen") core or access vendor? I know they have done trials and O2 DE has gone Huawei. But the UK is a big Ericsson shop (an rightly so its good kit).

O2 quietly cans gratis Cloud Wi-Fi connectivity

16 Dec

O2 sent me a Text on 16 of December; "From 1 February 2012 The Cloud Wifi won't be par of your unlimited wifi anymore"

I also remember pop-ups when logging in to my online bill.

Hardly surprising since the cloud were bough out by Sky last year..

Dongling P2P downloaders 2nd-biggest mobe data users

dutch prices go up

http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/vodafone-t-mobile-react-dutch-net-neutrality-raising-mobile-data-tariffs/2011-08-03?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

your points are valid

If you want to see what the payload is, however if you don't care, then there are other methods that are not that taxing on CPU. All of the DPI vendors have released information about their ability to identify this traffic, see http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060829005552/en/Allot-Communications-NetEnforcer-Detect-Manage-Encrypted-BitTorrent

As for the arms race, of coarse your right, someone develops something, someone else reverse engineers it x time later. They adapt, it goes backwards and forwards etc. the main issue is, if your constantly destroying or creating uncertainty in a service, people migrate away from it.

Moving away from Bit torrent Services such as iplayer (or netflix) for instance would suffer the same cost increase of trying to obfuscate their traffic.

Wrong

so wrong and misguided its comical. whilst encrypting the payload does mean that certain techniques are ruled out - it does not mean that others are.

and its starting in the uk

Tesco's fair use policy - this will be the first of many, the restriction of ISP's to differentiate by service, means that on flat rate data may be charged.

personally - Id be quite happy for a e-mail to take 3-4 seconds longer to send than have my skype call chopped up and charged for the process.

http://home.phone-shop.tesco.com/tesco-broadband/broadband-fair-usage-and-traffic-management-policies.aspx

<snip>

We regularly monitor and review our customer’s collective and average monthly usage to set our fair usage limit (FUL) at a level that will not affect the majority (at least 95%) of our customers. Currently the FUL is set at 100GB per month. If a customer regularly downloads in excess of the FUL, we take the following steps:

1. When we first notice that a customer has exceeded the FUL, we contact the customer to bring the matter to their attention. We will ask the customer to modify their use and/or give them the opportunity to move onto a ‘Super-user tariff’ (see our Price List for details).

2. If the customer declines to move to the Super-user Tariff but continues to exceed the FUL for a further two consecutive months, we will suspend or terminate the customer’s service.

<snip>

not pennies

Gordan

The "pennies" you speak of only really take in to account the peering and installed infrastructure costs, not increases in capacity, support or installation. Also it is not unreasonable to expect a company to turn a profit . As for three - they are in customer acquisition mode and terms of their loans are (or where) based around subscriptions not profit (yes that is crazy).

Most ISP's didn't make money - that's why there are only a few left, which predominantly run it as a value add or retention tool to get the voice revenue - as this drops there is more pressure on the IP side to deliver profit.

If we are to move back in to a pay per usage world then I would expect the price most people pay for the internet to go up, not down (as is happening in Holland). Secondly most people don't understand "GB", but do understand services.

Council saves quarter mil' from mobile bill

contract issues

As with most things - some companies will take a loss on the initial profit to make it back at a later date though inflating the cost of other items that would have previously been free of charge, or at a reasonable fee.

As with most things - its not how much you pay for the service - its how much you pay the lawyers to get the contract right up front - something local (and to a greater extent central) government is well known for getting right*

*of course I jest!

Mobile co fails to stump up for pointless structure

who owns Airwave

Last time I looked Airwave was owned by some Aussies - not the Spanish!

Google polishes Chrome into netbook OS

xp - not that bad

Xp on my samsung NC 10 isnt that bad, well that right untill you add the AV, anti adware, java, windows updates, etc, etc.

its taking a full minute longer to get to the internet than when it was a clean install.

Thats MS' challange - fix all the "run at sartup" application issues.

Robbie Williams, Billy Bragg et al say downloads aren't illegal

bit rich

What I'm hearing is "don't upset my fans, I don't care if you the company that have funded my more than pleasant lifestyle lose money (on something I get comparability little from), just as long as they keep buying gig tickets and advertising where I make my money"

Seems about right.

Orange ditches Phorm

Unfortunatly - google is to blame

Carriers/ ISPs are being forced down the route of having to sell content - in this case advertising as the subscription model has been undercut by everyone and their dog. Google with its hugely philanthropic gesture (or overtures) of getting in to the carrier space and offering free access has traditional carriers scared.

In truth the main loser form add insertion at the carrier layer are company's like Google - why would someone pay to have an advert on a website with little contextual input when they could have it profiled and sent to the user. The main issue form the users perspective is that they don't want to profiled - but anyone who currently uses Google is being - its just that they are incrementing features and functionality rather than one big bang approach.

So your choices are;

get free or discounted ISP rental with advertising

or

get free Google access with advertising.

as providing a un-subsidised ISP/ access method is the niche NOT the other way around - 99% of the population will go for the free version - so no company can afford run a service for 1%. Most of the ISP's now (talk talk, orange, SKY, BT) are giving subsidised access to protect their voice revues - they make little or no money from providing the ISP service. As VoIP usage increases this subsidisation will have to drift away - or the dreaded packet engineering come in to play - but again with Google lobbing everyone and there dog for net neutrality (which is a bit of a joke anyway) they are losing this possible revenue stream as well.

Both will use roughly the same level of profiling its about who you trust to hold your data (and personally there's allot more legal constraints on an ISP that there is on an American cloud company).

MS confirms European Xbox 360 price cuts

no HD-DVD?

PS3 fans also should realise that they aren't going to have to buy an add-on next-gen media drive after they have bought their console.

Ofcom stands up to Information Commissioner

sorry but opperators do give the infomation

sorry - whats being argued here isn't that the operators don't give a FULL map of their network not that they don't give any information at all.

if you go to site finder or http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/?Search=Search for example you can type in a post code and get a very detailed coverage "estimate" for the area your interested in. If you want to see if a mast is by a school just type in the address FFS.

I'd argue why do you need to know about every single area of the country - and what are the uses for this level of information. It becomes a tool for the rival networks to start analysing one and others networks. In my mind this is bad as it doesn't promote good radio planning and will lead to less coverage in rural areas as operators fight for the more lucrative higher population area coverage.

If you start making the data mandatory then the operator's will start getting penalized for not having up to date (and the cost will be passed down in your phone bill). In regard to security - AIRWAVE essentially supplies the 999 services with a phone connection - should the location of every one of there masts also be published such that it could be disrupted?

Time Warner moots billing based on bandwidth usage

as I have said before

I expect that ISP's will start selling flat Internet access with additional charges for VoIP or P2P much like BT now sells caller display as a monthly add-on e.g. £2.99 per month for the Video add on.

Government piles filesharing pressure on UK ISPs

lol

Bit torrent - encrypted or not, running on standard ports or not can be identified and filtered/ shaped. Its expensive - which is why simpler systems are being placed in the network by Telcos in the mean time. There are also ways of assessing the legality of the torrent - but this again increases the cost.

That aside the legislation appears to be (as other people have stated) not aimed at enforcing such systems at the network level, but ensuring the easier identification, prosecution and punishment of the end sharer.

How will this run in practice is the interesting question - will it increase the burden on the tax payer through more criminal cases being bought by the BPI or will it be to create a civil crime where all the BPI has to do is pass reasonable information to the ISP for a disconnection to be carried out - which could be covered under both T&Cs and in legislation (meaning no suing them guys).

what makes me laugh the most is that the mobile telcos are introducing prepay all you can eat data bundles - these will continue to get cheaper over the next few years as this legislation is introduced as will mobile data speeds increase. Prepay = no contract = limited traceability. The EU will also continue to push down prices and increase competition in this sector.

I for one am glad that the governments ineptitude has continued to leave open cast mine holes in its thinking.

MoD sorts out 'turkey' helicopters for Xmas

and bonus's all round

Well all I can say is at least somethings been done - and 7 years isnt really that long - not when you consider they'll keep them in service until its not safe to do so anymore (like the nimrod), learn there lessons and replace them with something better and without the issues - like the sea king replacement with merlin's.

Truly I'm sure that the civil servants and Brass have been reprimanded for their mistakes and taken the criticism on the chin and been passed over for their next promotion.

it keeps happening

type 45 - twice the price of a US Aegis cruser and half the capability

eurofighter - the dogfighting aircraft with no cannon (ok ones been added) thats all most doubled in price (if you account for the fact that 40% are going to sit in a hanger moth balled)

Apaches - sitting in a hanger for 4-6 years due to the US not wanting (quite rightly) a private company qintetiq to have all the info on them

new carriers - god where to begin

Bowman - can anybody hear me!

personally I think the MOD procurement staff should have a balls up clause in their contract - straight to a front line unit - to see how the money should have been spent!

Ofcom urged to clamp down on broadband speed deceit

Transparancy - not SLA's

Broadband speed depends on so many different factors not just length of cable or distance from the exchange (or contention). BT's line checker tool actually does a pretty good job of estimating speeds - what should be mandated by ofcom is the use of this tool and report back to the end consumer at time of purchase the range that their line is capable of (as well as some other points below).

I have recently moved house - after broadband was installed, I ripped out the dodgy line extensions that the previous owner had installed, net result 500k increase in sync speed. Are BT/ the ISP responsible for this?

The issue from the ISPs perspective is that you have ADSL, SDSL, ADSL2+ and cable carriers (ok these are the main ones). Most people don't understand the difference so how do they sell it to the public? UPTO is a well understood and recognized format (brand if you like) - but again I believe the ISPs should be forced to be more transparent.

In regard to people stating about congestion/ contention - it has been stated on this thread already but, for a 2MB line from BT with an SLA, your looking at around £7000 pa + installation costs (depending on the local infrastructure) + ISP costs, so you wouldn't get much change for £20,000 in the first year. Thats what it COSTS. If thats what you want then THE PRODUCT IS ALREADY AVAILABLE - go sign up.

Most consumers are price orientated again IMHO there should be mandated transparency at time of purchace (and if there are any significant changes), to include expected line range and peak contention via the ISPs peering (e.g. how many people are competing for how much Internet connectivity). This would be a start, although POPs and regional variations would slightly skew this - but its a start. Then at least consumers would be able to compare apples to apples.

There was also a comment about 21 CN - I have posted about this before. It will do nothing to improve Internet access or last mile connectivity in its self. What it provides is cost savings and a more flexible platform (read more capability to bill you). It may in fact make "service" worse in the short term while they are "optimizing it"

21CN: It's not the data saviour

Am I missing something?

Sorry,

But when was 21CN (or any NGN for that matter) supposed to have an impact on data speeds? 21CN is effectively a change to the carrier on the network, and the replacement of legacy voice switches with softswitch's.

For the carrier its supposed to bring a cost saving, due to more capable softswitchs and the IP backbone, both of which improve capability and reduces operating cost as they are a dam site easier to manage then the legacy kit that they are replacing (cheaper to buy, smaller, cooler etc).

What 21CN does allow is abstraction from the physical layer of the last leg, so it doesn't matter whether your coming in on copper, or fiber, or Ethernet, you still have access to the same core services using the same kit (ok the MSAN may need a different card, but its better than a new switch and trans coder). This has two huge benefits (to the customer), 1) all those people that currently have fiber to the door, will be able to get a broadband service and 2) it means that if (/when) fiber to the door finally gets rolled out to the rest of the uk - there is little or no (comparatively) extra cost to the core of doing so.

So what will change...

IMHO, this article should have focused on the thing that really matters, Money! What NGN's really give carrier's is a much more flexible billing and enforcement system - QOS is a means to an end in this. For anyone who has sat through a vendor presentation from the likes of cisco, nortel, ericsson, nokia, etc there is one word that keeps coming up - PROFILE. This is the differentiation of services per subscriber when everyone is connecting over the same network.

Back to money, providing a data service (ISP) makes pretty much no money nowadays (hence why all the small isp's are going under /selling out to BT). The big change - as far a I can see this NGN's will be the selling of services on top - you want VoIP, that will be £1 extra a month, P2P thats an extra £3. 21CN gives the carrier the ability to be able to do this by managing an end user through profiling and its done right at the point where the customer comes in to the network - not as currently - at the point where the carrier peers with other networks, the transmission savings are huge!

I'd say it wont be long before capped /unlimited becomes bronze, silver, gold and then your broadband will be free, if you want to surf, with a fee payable per service that you want to run on top (e.g. VoIP, p2p, video) - just like if you want caller display or voice mail at the moment on your POTS connection.

Just my 2p