Category: Uncategorized

Back in January I did a quick analysis of current prices for IP transit data here because I continue to be amazed that some DSL providers keep threatening to throttle or traffic shape users with above average monthly data consumption [in the hundreds of GB range]. With IP transit prices being as low as they are today I wonder if there is really a significant financial reason for that?

Anyway, today I came across another interesting number: A server hosting service provider in the UK includes 10 TB of data volume over a 100 MBit/s link per month in a 30 pounds hosting package. After that the line rate is reduced to 10 MBit/s and any extra data still remains free of charge. Note that the 30 pounds are not only for the data volume but includes a high end 4 core CPU, 16 GB RAM and 2x 3 TB hard drive RAID, power to run this beast 24/7 in the package. If after the 10 TB you still want the full 100 MBit/s line speed, you pay 6 pounds per Terabyte extra.

In other words, a couple of hundred Gigabytes is nothing for them…

One thing that frequently pops up in reports about hacker conferences such as the annual CCC conference in Berlin or Defcon in Las Vegas is that many of the hackers present there are very reluctant to connect their PCs to any network there for the fear of being hacked. While this might sound like it is a sensible precaution I think this is rather worrisome.

These are the people that know best how to protect themselves and how to set up their equipment securely. And yet even these people feel they can not securely connect to the network. So what's the differences between the networks at those conferences and using networks in other places? Only the number of hackers present. But if it's not secure at those conferences it is no less secure to use networks anywhere else.

Not much trust in our computing and network infrastructure by those who know what is possible and what can be done. Makes one think…

There we go, my nephew will go to highschool after the summer break an it was about time for a mobile phone for him. Obviously there are two general choices. Either a dumb phone that can only be used for voice calls and text messaging or a smartphone that pretty much opens up the world. There's not much in between the two extremes.

The first choice would probably not bring him very far and he himself was quite insistent that he wants to play games. Quite understandable for a 10 year old. Se we finally decided to go for a smartphone. But for the moment he hasn't used the Internet much and he is perhaps still a bit too young to act responsively, to fall into the first trap that he comes across on a web page or finds stuff that is not for his age. So what to do? 

From a pricing point of view, Android phones have become very affordable and if he breaks a 100 euro device, which kids tend to do, it's not the end of the world. Also, there are about a gazillion app locker apps in the Android market that just seem to do what I want: Lock access to apps that should be off limits for the moment. That includes the web browser and the Android app market. After playing around a bit I selected App Locker as it worked quite well on my device and protects app execution with a password. The browser, Google maps and the app store are now protected.

One could also block access to settings to ensure the device is not reset to get rid of the app locker or to prevent the deactivation of the side loading blocker to install an alternative browser. But perhaps once he figures that out, he's old enough for the Internet anyway…

One thing I didn't like: The app requires full Internet access rights and wants to read the phone state and ID. Not quite what I have in mind as a privacy concerned person but at least it doesn't want to access the address book and other sensitive private information which would be totally unacceptable. Also, the device is not connected to the Internet anyway as Wi-Fi and packet data is turned off. And once it gets connected to the Internet the app can be deleted anyway.

Another of my confusing titles for a post but this little story is too and shows how beneficial it is to sometimes have a look left and right from the beaten path.

I recently bought a new sub-notebook from Lenovo and was quite irritated that the Fn function key is were the STRG key is supposed to be. It drove me crazy as I use the STRG key quite often and always hit the Fn key instead. Luckily, Lenovo is aware of its blunder and offers an option in the BIOS to switch the Fn with the STRG key. While I was doing that I had a look around what other options the BIOS offers and I stumbled over a page at the time that had a couple of options for CPU virtualization support that were all disabled. At the time I just noticed it but since I didn't see a need to virtualize anything I left the options disabled.

Then a week or so later I turned to virtualization to have a Virtualbox VM with Windows XP in it to run some networking tools that are not available under Ubuntu. Runs like a charm as reported. Setting up Ubuntu in another client container, however, did not work as smoothly, the experience was very slow and the user interface not very responsive. I tried a lot of things to improve it, more memory, more graphics RAM, etc. etc. but nothing would help.

Then, while relaxing a bit I suddenly remembered the 'virtualization' settings in the BIOS. I rebooted the computer, activated the settings in the BIOS and started Ubuntu in the virtual machine again. And voila, it suddenly ran like a charm. The speed of Ubuntu running in the virtual machine is now pretty much the same as the Ubuntu host system. Incredible! I wonder why the Windows XP client doesn't need it!? Perhaps too old 🙂

So the Fn key at the wrong place actually helped me to get this totally unrelated problem solved. This, and of course that curiosity that made me have a look at the other options in the BIOS at the time. Sometimes I am amazed how the brain works.

 

When it comes to LTE, the UK has significantly fallen behind compared to other countries in Europe that have long auctioned or assigned their spectrum for LTE in the 800 and 2600 MHz ranges. One major issue in the UK is that whenever rules for the auction were discussed there was always someone who was unhappy and threatened to go to court over the matter.

Recently, Ofcom has unveiled yet another set of rules and again the threat of going to court is being raised. But seriously, with at least four incumbent contenders for spectrum each having quite a different amount of spectrum in different parts of the frequency range I think it's almost inevitable someone will be unhappy. And even if it is only for the sake of slowing down the process because one company or another doesn't want to invest and tries to prevent others from doing so, either.

But it has been been like that forever. While four UK companies are battling over 250 MHz worth of spectrum today, court threats have been in the room even back in the 1980's when a battle ranged over just 3 MHz of spectrum between Vodafone and BT. For all the juicy details have a look at 'GSM History' by Stephen Temple where he lays it out in minute detail in Chapter 14.

If someone went to court over the matter, the UK would be in good company. In other countries, such as for example Germany, court actions over 800 MHz spectrum were also no exception. Half a year before the 'LTE' auction in Germany, incumbents O2 and E-Plus went to court over the matter. For details (in German) see here and here. In the end their complaints were dismissed and the auction took place.

Hopefully with a couple of hundred pages to justify the rules of the UK auction, the same will happen in the UK as another delay to the auction process will throw back the UK even more than the three years they are already late to LTE. Sometimes I wonder how this could all have happened!? Back in the 1980's the UK was the first European country to liberalize the telecoms market with stunningly positive effects. 30 years later they have not only lost the lead but are hopelessly behind most other countries in Europe. Perhaps it's time to settle this in court and get on with it.

One of the small disadvantages of using Ubuntu on the notebook that I carry when traveling is that some software, e.g. for network testing so far required a reboot to Windows. On my new notebook, I don't even have Windows installed natively even more so even that option, which I rarely used due to the hassle involved, is no longer available. But now there's a remedy!

When I tried to run Windows in a virtual machine (Virtualbox) on an Ubuntu host a few years ago it would work quite well but I had difficulties mapping USB hardware such as for example 3G dongles directly into the virtual machine to make them accessible to the software there. But it seems USB pass through has been significantly advanced since then. When trying again a couple of days ago I noticed that USB pass through for a number of USB 3G dongles and other USB devices from the Ubuntu host to Windows in the virtual machine now works like a charm.

USB 3G dongles recognized by Ubuntu and included in the network manager as a WAN network adapter are automatically detached when a Virtual Machine is started in which it's USB ID is configured for pass-through and the native Windows drivers immediately pick up the hardware. When the virtual Ethernet network interface in the Windows guest is deactivated its even possible to establish an Internet connection over the 3G stick and the guest machine becomes completely independent of the host's Internet connectivity. That in itself offers some interesting options for network testing.

Another cool feature of using a virtual machine for testing is the ability to take a snapshot of the OS in the machine before installing new software. Once done with the testing one click removes all changes. This prevents bloating and unwanted side effects drivers and software of different products can have on each other.

And for final comfort, the 'full screen mode' lets you forget quickly that you are working in a virtual machine while the 'seamless mode' runs program windows of the host and guest OS together on the host's desktop.

How nice!

Back in 2009, I first reported on a growing trend of network operators outsourcing their network operation to third party companies, thus in effect becoming "Hollow Operators". The main drive for some network operators to doing so was to reduce their costs. With companies like Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, NSN and others eager to pick up such deals, competition must have brought down prices quite a bit, so perhaps they even got that.

But now it seems that many of these deals have not been very profitable for some of the service companies. Light Reading reports that Alcatel Lucent wants to get rid of or re-negotiate 25% of their managed service deals as they are not profitable. Other companies also seem to have a difficult time with some of their service contracts as the report notes.

By now, however, it's likely that a significant amount of local talent previously operating a network is gone, long having been replaced by supposedly cheaper labor in far away countries. Best of luck to those hollow operators who are now faced to re-integrate their network operation or to negotiate a service deal with someone else who will not take over resources not working locally anymore. Another choice is to obviously pay a higher price for ALU to continue the operation.

I wonder how that new price now compares with how much network operation cost while it was still done in-house including the speed, flexibility and control the company had while doing so!? It was not too long ago, so perahaps someone will still remember and have a metric or two.

Contrary to popular belief that voice and SMS use is diminishing in mobile networks, Vodafone Germany has posted some interesting quarterly results. Here are some highlights:

Growing Use of Voice Calling

35.8 Million users accumulated 14.25 billion (!) voice minutes in 3 months. That's 132 minutes per month per user on average. And that number is not declining, it is actually 1.16 billion minutes higher from the same quarter a year ago, or +8.9%. Voice calling in mobile networks might become cheaper all the time but definitely not less used. Other text based communication forms might become more popular and replace voice calling in some instances but I think these numbers make it quite clear that new forms of communication are still mostly adding to traditional voice calls and texting rather than replacing it.

Rising Use of Texting

Yes, there is WhatsApp, iMessage, Google Talk, etc. etc. but the number of SMS messages still keeps growing. The press report mentions a growth of 8.9%. It's not quite clear to me if this refers to revenue growth or an increase in number of messages being exchanged. But since SMS texting is not getting more expensive the number is likely to contain both. In other words no reason to be ashamed or feeling old fashioned for preferring SMS texting to WhatsApp anc Co. 🙂

Increasing use of Smartphones and Mobile Data

A couple of interesting data points here: 80% of mobile devices being sold with a contract this quarter are smartphones. On the prepaid side, probably not one of Vodafone's strengths as a premium network, smartphone sales are 1 in 3 at the moment.

Data excluding SMS and MMS now generated 28.5% of overall mobile revenue. To set this into perspective: Total voice + texting revenue was 1234 million Euros, data accounted for 492 million Euros, up from 411 million Euros (or 19.6%) from the previous year. That number is interesting as it shows that revenue from voice and text has been pretty much flat, slightly down by 1 million Euros from 1235 million Euros a year ago.

Recently, I bought a radio so I could listen to my favorite radio stations in the kitchen. It's not an FM radio, of course as my favorite radio stations are not broadcast over the air and hey, the world has moved on that's too low tech these days anyway. No, it had to be a Wi-Fi web radio to connect me to radio stations in Italy so the Spaghetti become extra 'al dente' and to stations in the US for the fries to get extra crispy.

While the radio works well and sounds good there is one major disadvantage: When I switch it on it takes 20-25 seconds before I hear the first music. That's how long it takes for the radio to boot, to connect to the Wi-Fi access point, open a radio stream and buffer a few seconds. Hm, I would have almost accepted this, but then I remembered that my smartphone and tablet remain connected to my local Wi-Fi even while in standby mode with little power consumption and are instantly fully connected again when unlocking them. In other words, from a technical point of view there are tons of devices out there that show that it can be done a lot better.

The initial delay also doesn't compare very favorably to an FM radio that works instantly when switched on. That reminds me a bit of how it must have been in the times when vacuum tube radios had their high times. At least switching between stations is fast enough with a delay of around 2-3 seconds.

Do you have a Wi-Fi connected web radio? If so, how long does it take yours to connect to the network and a radio station before it starts playing when you switch it on?

Intomobile reports that experts from a security firm are estimating that 67.000 phones to be stolen during the Olympics, based on 50.000 phones that, according to them, are stolen every two weeks in London without the Olympics. That number sounds incredibly high, so I did some research myself.

Just to set things into perspective, the 50.000 lost or stolen phones in London over a two week period, that's 1.3 million phones over the year. There are 8.7 Londoners living in the city, and lets add 1 million travelers and round it up, so let's say 10 million people are in London on average. That means that on average every single person in London loses a phone once in 8 years. Hm, I am skeptical.

The Metropolitan Police also has some stats. They are saying that around 10.000 phones are stolen per month. That would be  120.000 phones a year, or less than a tenth of what is claimed above. When taking this as a basis the resulting number of phones that might be stolen during the Olympics would be about 6.200. Far from the number above, but still a gigantic number.