Posts by IanCa

Amid polar vortex... Honeywell gets frosty reception after remote smart thermostat tech freezes up for a week

much ado about nothing

this story is IOT misinformation.

I have a honeywell evohome system. one of the reasons I chose it is that it carries on working perfectly without an working internet connection. the other, is that it was (at least at the time I fitted it) the only system to do true per-room programmable zoning properly. The internet part is optional, unlike some of the other competitors. I use the internet temp change feature only rarely when a signficant change to time of occupancy occurs and I don't want to reprogramme. most of the time it just runs.

actually, I just checked, the total connect comfort feature IS working. for a UK user. and it was working on sunday 3rd as well.

I'll get my coat when I go outside.

right now, sitting in my home office, only heating the 1 room, the system is doing precisely the job I bought it for.

FBI boss: We went to the Moon, so why can't we have crypto backdoors? – and more this week

just use a black ship for the sun-dive

hotblack desiato / disaster area have the technology

icon is for douglas adams

Official: The shape of the smartphone is changing forever

Re: Wouldn't it be nice .. EXACTLY

still keeping mine and the wife's samsung S5 and S4 minis alive because there hasn't been anything since that's the same form factor and high spec (someone seems to have decided that small phones now should be the crappy spec ones). A phone, for people like me, needs to be small enough to carry in all kinds of convenient places - like the napoleon pocket of a hike coat, a bike bar-bag, a sailing dry pouch, or simply the humble trouser pocket (without the danger of ripping when sitting and/or dodgy bulging).

I SIMPLY DONT WANT to carry around a screen big enough to watch movies on, update instafacetweet or any of that tosh. I have several devices that can do that (laptop, 9" tablet) and I don't want to take any of those with me up a mountain / in a boat / on a bike / to the pub.

seriously, any manufacturer who can bring back the form factor of the S5 mini, with a fully loaded spec, I'll be getting two.

BBC surrenders 'linear' exclusivity to compete with binge-watch Netflix

make them ALL available AFTER broadcast as well - FOREVER

they can make things so much more usable by catering for the exact opposite:

example: a 10 part series the wife and I watch broadcast in spring-summer 2016. it was on series record on our youview box. for various reasons didn't watch it until recently, at which point noticed 2 episodes missing (youview box was powered off due to being on holiday). went to iplayer to try to watch them - expired, no longer on iplayer. so now in order to watch those episodes I will have to go somewhere dubious to get access to them. why should I need to do that... ?

for in another example, there are numerous series that were on 10's of years ago before digital recorder boxes became commonplace (you name it, prize for the most amusing) that many of us might like to watch again. maybe we have them on VHS in the attic but the VCR long since died!

the disk and network space clearly must exists in the big bad-ass BBC datacentre to make them available to me. (if it doesn't, I'll build it for them).

this is the long tail of the distribution, watching the content months/years after original transmission that has very little impact on load but a massive impact on user experience / convenience factor.

Iplayer should simply make available everything the BBC has broadcast, ever, forever.

Brexit may not mean Brexit at all: UK.gov loses Article 50 lawsuit

Re: It's democracy or violence

F8ck you. the raw aggression of core die-hard leavers that I talked to in person before and after the vote was shameful. your rhetoric has led to real violence in documented cases. and you duped a load of middle of the road "mildly pissed off with the state of things" people into voting with you because they thought somehow it might make things miraculously better.

I'll defend the immigrants with my pitchfork. step outside if you like.

but seriously..

do any of you think about the set of circumstances that led to this?

the con:lib 2010 coalition - libs do a decent job on many policies, are vilified for one particular policy that PR dave managed to pin on them, then get thoroughly knifed in the back in 2015 by the ungrateful great british public.

dave puts referendum in his 2015 manifesto - expecting a coalition and never having to deliver on it, and then unexpectedly wins due to the aforementioned knifing.

barrow boy farage gets himself a bigger and bigger profile on a single issue , until he finally wins it - at which point they implode from the implications on their tiny brains of actually having to do something. thus proving that it was the talking about it rather than the doing of it that mattered to them. boris not a lot different except he is a wee bit smarter.

personally, I hope that the political parties split and reform, leaving us with 5 main groups:

right - leave

right - remain

centre (likely remain)

left - leave

left - remain

and the interest based such as green, ukip etc.`

I am utterly fed up with this "england voted leave, scotland voted remain" crap . Not in MY bit of england we didn't (I wish there was a way to make a uk street legally part of scotland!).

Give us a general election, with a wider distribution of parties/people to vote for who can properly reflect our views, elected under PR so that all our votes count. Let them debate the issue, and propose a question to put before the people. THEN I will respect the result.

Source code unleashed for junk-blasting Internet of Things botnet

Re: Bah!

can some white hatted dev'y types please

- decode it for us non-C speakers (speaking as a network geek who can cope with anything at network layers, but my C stopped 25 years ago, and it was sh&t then)..

- hopefully there is some signature that ISP's can be leaned on to scan for , possibly filter, and contact customers about..

- produce a benign version for counter-hacking (set random secure password, close open ports etc) and then have a big argument about how to use it..

No wonder we're being hit by Internet of Things botnets. Ever tried patching a Thing?

home routers a better line of attack

for many ISP's these are supplied or at least recommended devices, so pressure can be applied on a relatively small number of organisations (compared to I-Things) to produce a new firmware for them with an enhancement to their firewall / Upnp policy rules.. something along the lines of:

detect the OS of newly connected device - nmap OS scan.

If windows, default to outbound allow. That caters for the non-technical majority who (rightly) expect their windows machines to automatically work.

If linux or any embedded relation, default to outbound deny.

If you are running linux at home as an endpoint, you have clue, so you know how to go into your router and add the rules you need to use it.

If its an embedded IoThingy then it will ask the router to open ports....

At this point the router puts an HTTP capture on the browsing sessions from any windows endpoint, redirecting them to the router admin page, saying that the IoThingy asked for access, do you want to approve it? There should also then be a pre-canned rulebase to allow access to the various manufacturers sites so the Thing can do its Thingness without having full internet access. with a lookup of the Thing's mac address as well, the vendor can be resolved and a rule list suggested.

DDoS attacks: For the hell of it or targeted – how do you see them off?

not the best explained article

was half expecting a sales pitch at the end from one of the on-premises (inline) anti-ddos box vendors at the end.

as per astrax, its only worth doing on-premises / inline mitigation, if you have enough raw upstream bandwidth to be able to handle a volumetric attack. i..e you either are a decent size ISP, or an enterprise with LOTS of upstream (which do exist, I work at one). OR, you adopt a split strategy - on premises / always on for low/slow, upstream either in your ISP , or offload (e.g bgp redirect) for high volume.

UK's EE scores network reliability clean sweep, rival dwarves fume

Cross network roaming - PLEASE

this is not new news...Everyone has an example of where their provider has good coverage, and where it has bad/none.

Time there was another push for allowing roaming between networks within home country, some kind of "universal coverage" obligation - perhaps at lower speeds that will support voice and basic data (2.5G would do).

Why is that if I go abroad I know I am guaranteed coverage if I can see any mobile network, but at home, I am shafted if I am on the wrong network in the wrong area?

In my case, I happen to be on EE sim only, but they have no coverage in some rural areas I go to, and I know voda do, so I carry a vodafone PAYG as a backup. I don't really want to carry 2 or 3 sims. This is not about speed this is simply about being able to get ANY signal at all.

Internet exchange Linx cuts peering prices by 40% after rip-off claims

Re: per month per Mbps to 28 euro cents

do some reading about transit versus peering and how isp's of different sizes interconnect with each other before you comment...

LINX is an IXP - by definition, members are peering with each other. Linx provides a switched fabric that allows the members to send data to each other over - linx itself (or any other IXP) doesn't deliver your data anywhere.

thats the reason the prices are different. not saying that Bt's price is fair, but the service is fundamentally different.

BT customers hit by broadband outage ... again

something doesn't make sense

power to kit in a DC should be dual fed, backup generators etc, so every power outage in such a DC should not cause any disruption. that said it clearly does, because it seems that still, a DC operator saying they have full power resilience does not t in fact mean what says on the tin. which ten leads to the next oddity....

complete loss of power to a major core node in a tier1 network shouldn't cause any disruption to anyone out on the edges. traffic should simply reroute around it to alternative nodes. pretty much the definition of a tier1.

if they've lost power to devices at the very edge then those are not necessarily backed up by alternates (further out from the core you go, the harder resilience gets ) but the flip side is the further towards the edge the device, the less people will go through any one device so the less people are affecedt. If the losses are to somewhere between outer edge and core, one of various layers of aggregation, then again, there will be resilence in the design.

BT Adastral@martlesham has some very smart people who have written a lot of the books on carrier grade network design, so I fully expect them to have done their resilience design properly... which is why something doesn't add up...

Computerised stock management? Nah, let’s use walkie-talkies

db shoes / widerfitshoes.co.uk

they have a factory shop in northampton where you can try on all manner of wide sizes - E, EE, EEE, V.

Clarks "so-called extra wide" mens shoes in a size 9.5 or 10 used to just about fit me but not any more. Since discovering DB shoes - and that I am really an 8.5 long but extra-extra-wide and extra-tall - I would never go anywhere else. Drove to northampton one day a few years back tried them all on, since then I mail order the same size when they wear out, job done. Price point is a little more than clarks but nowhere near hand made territory. For hiking boots alt-berg. Go to a specialist who has the wide and extra wide, and they can modify them by moulding the leather around the bony bits... I can recommend blackburns in huddersfield.

Facebook promises release of own 'modular routing platform'

ISIS the protocol has been around for years, but its perceived as "hard/scary" by enterprise level folks, and basic kit doesn't support it, so most such networks are a (badly done) OSPF or EIGRP. Look inside a Big Service Provider Network you will probably find a well designed ISIS under the bonnet. it does somethings better than OSPF when your network scale is gigantic. It underpins some data centre fabric technologies as well. Interestingly ISIS has been reintroduced into CCIEv5 syllabus.

Petr Lapukhov is a internationaly-well-respected network protocol designer, its him thats designing it, the fact that he works for facebook just meanss that where it got design/tested/deployed first. The social content running over the top is irrelevant (I don't give a damn about facebook either, don't use it) however his protocol looks very interesting. If its good and gets wider traction, then the likes of cisco will take it on and it'll be in an IOS near you in a year or two.

All People Should Treat Nice Dogs Politely (likewise, for datacomms/info-eng finals 23 years ago)

Cisco says CLI becoming interface of last resort

nurses running the network now ?

CCNE ??? I have a CCIE, but never done a nursing test...and I don't have a beard, sandals strictly for the beach... I do wear a suit. are you going to call us boffins next?

Guis are great for bulk provide of "customer ports", similarly related automated activities, anything that fits with "orchestration" view of things, Newer network architectures that underlay SDN spine-leaf (e.g cisco ACI) autoprovisions a lot of interconnect links without human involvement. however, when your building kit on console port in a DC, fixing something remotely on a GPRS link, or troubleshooting a major network down situation in 3 mins flat with the PHB standing over you, the CLI is all you ever ever want to rely on. And trusting developers who barely know what a default gateway is to software provision the network? don't get me started..

On yer bike: Hammerhead satnav for cyclists – just don't look down

Is this just a london thing?

curious, so I just installed their app and asked it to plot me my route across milton keynes from home to work. Which can be done 95% on cycle paths, the remaining 5% on quiet residential roads.

instead, its directing me down multiple derestricted (60mph) single carriageways, around two of the worst multiple roundabouts, couple of dual carriageways round a huge 3 lane roundabout on the A5... methinks it's route planning hasn't got a clue about anything outside london?

ok so my garmin edge doesn't do much better either - but I know that is only a roadies route-finder and accept it as such. I don't use the route finding anyway, as I generally know / plan where I am going in advance. Based on the description of this I was expecting true cycle-path aware route-planning and guidance ... seems like this is a waste of time unless the mapping and route planning takes a significant step up.

and to the other MK cyclists (usually lycra roadies on skinny wheels) who use the roads when there is a perfectly good cycle path next to it - GET ON THE CYCLE PATH PLEASE you will do all of us a favour. I wish there was a hand signal I could use when in my car to tell you this without causing a road rage incident. you might think that you can go 5mph faster on the road, and it might even be true...but you will be 25mph slower dead.

How do we train the next generation of data centre wranglers?

who designs & builds the clouds?

those network designers who turn the handle - they aren't designers, they are monkeys.

proper network designers understand all the layers - physical up to application.So many people go on about this xxxaaS, "it will all be in the cloud". But a cloud is not just a fluffy thing - its some actual stuff that someone has to make work - which have lots of layers, lots of real tin in DCs, and lots of complexity - they may have lots of nice gui drag and drop me a new server in the UI, but underneath there's a lot of stuff going down that someone has to understand. Because at some point it will not work and have to be fixed. or tuned / optimised because it doesn't go as fast/far as promised. Vendors cannot support all this by themselves, you need IT bods who understand servers, networks, storage, OS, physicals , to build a cloud - all the same stuff.

the problem set (and the work that it generates) has not gone away its just moved slightly. Larger companies are building / have built their own "cloud tech" infrastructures - so the wranglers still have a place to go work. can't speak for small co's never worked in that end of the market.

probably the best way to learn this stuff nowadays, given that almost everything is virtualisable, is to get hold of a small pile of 2nd hand old-spec tin and build your own cloud. the traditional way of learning on the job is probably no longer valid if the small-co where you start out in a dogsbody IT support job is purely a consumer of cloud Xaas services (i.e. not far up the stack from dumb end user).

EE TV: Network snubs 'Auntie's antique' for mobe-happy set-top box

Re: Is it me or has this got 'Failure' written all over it?

orange had an equivalent service ready 7 years ago, using the what-was-freeserve-LLU broadband network. I was network consultant on the project. then it got canned just before launch. those in the know seemed to think that management had decided they couldn't compete with sky on the pay content front, the numbers didn't stack up based on free-to-air content. I wonder what has changed?

The internet just BROKE under its own weight – we explain how

for the 512k limit - a relatively small number of relatively old boxes still run by a subset of smaller isp's had this limit. there is a published workaround. some would have had to implement it in a hurry if they had not done so already. All the modern big internet routing tin running in the majority of ISP's, stopped worrying about this limit years ago.

IPv6 - concur . v6 is is fundamentally harder for your brain than v4, - this from someone at CCIE level. The businesses whose sysadmin/network people are at the CCNP, CCNA or CCnotatall level, are going to find it night on impossible. as other posters said, they can't expected to have clue how to setup v6 multihoming with BGP - or in fact what those words even mean! u v6 is still in the land of early adopters - geeks who want to do it cos its cool to have a v6 connection from your bedroom.. providers who can run it in self-contained fashion within their clouds that their engineers have control of (think mobile operators) . The progression into even large enterprises who can afford to have a bunch of CCIE's on the books, will take years.. why should they change? until draytek/netgear/dlink and that crowd produce a box that does it all for them without requiring thinking, it cant go mass. non-tech people can just about cope with 192.168.1.1. expecting them to comprehend 2001:DEAD:BEEF::<some EUI>/64... your having a laugh? so I fail to see how v6 ever practically gets rolled out to enough of the world to matter....

Cisco's first 8 Tbps MONSTER router goes live at Telstra

Re: Downtime

thats a phrase thats been written by a cisco marketing/pr guy and copied into the telstra press release. "Telstra says" means "telstra says on behalf of cisco". Assuming the telstra networking engineering folk know their stuff, then there will indeed be alternative routing path via different box / link.

Boffins: Internet transit a vulnerability

load of tosh

I hope the reviewers roast them.

first - he states as an assumption/requirement that you have gained admin level access to the routers via some remote exploit. Any ISP/IXP with clue, only allows admin acess to their routers from some secured internal mgmt network. There simply is NO internet facing service on the modern router that can be exploited in a properly implemented network. The best line of gaining admin access is a human level one from the inside (steal a noc engineers remote access password etc...)

second- any configuration of port mirror, flow monitor, pbr or anything at all in fact - is going to be logged . Again any ISP/IXP with clue logs every command typed on every router, and audits them.

third - any legitimate law enforcement agency just need to walk into the security NOC with a warrant and the mirroring they need will be configured to their requirements. So they don't need to hack it they just ask...

Wrist SLAP: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch hands-on

Re: It is not a music player

this needs to be done the other way round. put the network interface in the watch and the bare minimum needed to support it - drop the camera, music/video player and all that from the watch.

The phone/tablet then becomes a big screen / large battery / large compute power supporting device which has all the bells and whistles.

that way you can leave your (getting too big for your pocket these days) smartphone behind and still have a basic texting/calling device always with you, on your wrist. When you need the big screen and computing power, pickup the smartphone/tablet sized device that is linked to it.