New in at Google is the Gmail Priority Inbox which prioritises your mails for you. Google’s anti spam service is probably the best in the business and I never get spam on trefor.net (in all fairness the service used by Timico is also pretty good but I never get spam using gmail).

This is because Google has such a fantastic antispam engine and because it carries so many mails on a daily basis that it learns very quickly what is and isn’t a spam mail.

This same learning process is applied to the new Priority mailbox service. When I signed up for the service Google ran a test on existing emails in my inbox and to my amazement it was spot on. It deprioritised mails from Facebook, for example, and marked blog comments awaiting moderation as important.

As I use it I know it will also get better.

Google ad over.

This was extremely irritating – I can’t imagine anyone likes being suckered like this. I have checked and there doesn’t seem to be a telephone preference type service for mobile numbers.

The originating number was 08452860706 which is operated by DXI Easycall, a hosted contact centre business. You can call the number and take your mobile number off their database but you have to listen to the whole ad first.

Ofcom should add mobile numbers to the TPS service. 

I periodically get called on my mobile by real people trying to sell me stuff.  I don’t mind this so much as I sometimes take the opportunity to try and sell our own services to them which confuses the heck out of some sales people.

It does amuse me when I am cold called by people trying to sell me a mobile upgrade which happens a couple of times a year. I can almost see their eyes light up when I tell them I am almost certainly long since out of contract and then they get confused when I tell them I don’t care about getting a new phone and reducing my bills.  If they had proper records they would know that I am a mobile service provider myself, or my company is.

PS I do really care about having lower phone bills – I just tell them that for effect

PPS I have actually been thinking about getting a new phone – an Android one probably. I’m just waiting for the right one to come along.

Junior position with great career potential in fast growing market leader. Suit someone with a couple of years experience or a grad with nouse. Must be a geek.

More on website here, give me a call, send email or leave comment on this post – it will not get published.

In reading this blog your ISP will have directed your http request across the internet from its own network to the Timico network and to the server hosting the website.

This server has a public facing IP address, part of a contiguous block  that is advertised to the whole internet. The internet knows where the server is because every single ISP router in the world carries a record of it in what is known as the internet routing table.

Of course the depletion of the IPv4 address pool means that more of these blocks of IP addresses are being used up and therefore more routes are having to be carried in memory by routers.  What’s more as the address space diminishes the size of block being handed out by the regional registries (RIRs) is going to get smaller.

As addresses run out it is also expected that individual ISPs will subdivide the blocks they have in order to sell on (a process known as deaggregation and not allowed really).  The problem with all this is that the number of routes being carried is going to increase at a much faster rate than has historically been the case.

If you check out the chart below (courtesy of an excellent resource called the cidr-report) you can see how the number of routes has grown since the inception of the technology in 1989.

growth of the internet routing table (courtesy of cidr-report)

Note the glitch in 2001 – can anyone guess what happened there?  This all amounts to the periodic need to upgrade routers being used so that they can cope with the additional number of routes carried – it all takes memory and processing power.

On a personal note of interest Timico got into the ISP game in 2005. The number of routes has more than doubled in the intervening 5 years. You can draw your own conclusions as to the resultant effect on the complexity of the internet but I’m sure it wont be a linear model.

The service is initially only for Orange HD handset to Orange HD handset.  This is quite easy to do as “on-net” HD calls using the same codec don’t require transcoding and also do not therefore enter into the black art world of interoperability. 

HD voice has been the subject of discussion amongst the VoIP community in the UK this year.  A fair few vendors (Cisco, Broadsoft, SNOM, Polycom, YeaLink to name some) already support the codec and it is perfectly feasible to operate a simple enterprise HD voice network. I am not aware of any businesses actually using HD Voice though I’m sure that there must be a few case studies around.

The problems arise whan you want to talk to handsets that do not support HD voice.  To do this a network must provide support across many more elements other than just the handsets.  This includes gateways to the PSTN,  media servers and conference bridges.

There is a whole new cost dynamic involved with this. Each of these elements will have codec licensing costs and due to the likely additional processing power requirements of this codec will probably support a reduced number of simultaneous voice channels driving up the cost per channel.

On the plus side HD Voice does apparently keep people talking longer so revenues should increase – though obviously not if all calls are free “on-net” as is often the case with both mobile and voip.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am a HD voice fan and I think the technology has much to offer but it will be some time before it becomes truly mainstream. Fair play to Orange though for taking the initiative.  Read their press bumpf here.

If you want to know more about the codec there some stuff on Wikipedia. Peering house and network operator X-Connect is driving industry adoption – you can find them here or drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch.

PS when I got in this morning I couldn’t find the announcement on the Orange news website so I looked at Everything Everywhere but I couldn’t find anything anywhere:).

I’m not sure what that says about my other posts but in answer to this huge demand I am happy to report the winner  of the August competition – this time for the best cheesecake – is Paula Davies (no relation afaik).

This was probably the  hardest one to judge so far so well done to Paula and commiserations to Wayne Mills Kidals, Andrew Massing and Fiona Sage whose creditable entries are being sold off for 50 pence a slice – all monies to local charity.

judging the Timico cheesecake competition

and the winner is Paula Davies

This emotional pull was made more stressful by the fact that news is disseminated and commented on so quickly these days that to write about something that is more than a day old is to be seen to be writing about a historical event and not a current hot topic.

Fortunately last week’s Google news has spilled over into this week and I am back in action. This news concerns Google and its supposed pact with Verizon regarding Net Neutrality – both companies support the idea of an open net for fixed line services but with loopholes for mobile traffic and for some specialized content.

This has prompted widespread protest including the delivery to Google’s offices last week of a 300,000 signature petition “upholding the values of net neutrality, a founding principle of the net that states that all web data is treated equally no matter where it comes from”.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not) last week’s quarterly meeting of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) saw a debate concerning the subject of Net Neutrality. LINX meetings are gatherings of the techies who actually run the internet and should therefore have the best appreciation of the issues surrounding this contentious subject.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that engineers overwhelmingly support the idea of a free internet. The issue comes down to how do we go about defining net neutrality. It certainly is not possible to run the internet without some kind of network intervention, at least not in any way that makes economic sense.

Take for example the sporting events of this summer. Most ISPs’ networks hit capacity during the Football World Cup and Wimbledon Tennis. In an unmanaged network this would have resulted in traffic congestion and a degradation of the customer experience. Fortunately by and large the customer experience was not affected this summer because the vast majority of consumers internet connections were being managed. This means prioritising time sensitive applications such as VOIP, video and gaming ahead of less time critical ones such as the oft vaunted Bit Torrent file sharing.

To provide a network that can cope with unlimited traffic is something that consumers are unlikely to want to pay for. Based on the traffic levels this summer this would potentially add 50% to the cost of the average broadband connection (back of a beermat guestimate – a big proportion of the cost of broadband delivery is the backhaul bandwidth). Is this something that concerns the proponents of Net Neutrality?

There is more. To save costs frequently accessed web content is delivered from caches provided by Content Delivery Networks. When you are watching a programme on say the BBC you are probably watching something delivered not by the broadcaster itself but by such a CDN even though it looks to your browser as if you are accessing the BBC website.

To do this the network has to intervene to redirect the traffic and must therefore be inspecting the traffic for the content type. Does this contravene the principles of Net Neutrality?

There is lots more. The internet is filled with bad guys after your money or wanting to hurt you. Some of these operate spamming techniques to get at you. A good ISP will prevent these spam attacks from reaching your PC. You can sit at a Network Operations Centre and see the attacks coming in waves – literally. This SPAM is discarded before it reaches you or filtered so that you can chose whether to receive it or not. This is a direct involvement in manipulating your traffic. How does this stand in respect of Net Neutrality?

Internet users are daily subjected to Denial Of Service Attacks (DOS). DOS Attacks are used to maliciously bring down the internet connection/server/business of an individual or organisation. Often they are means of cracking the defences of a business to gain access to their network. ISPs prevent these attacks by black listing the originating IP addresses and thereby stopping access of the bad guys to their customer. This is intervention in the network but how does it stand in respect of Net Neutrality?

The whole debate, which has been going on in the USA for some time has now reached Europe. I am not sure what the answer is because it is a hugely complex subject. Regulators such as Ofcom are now getting interested but I am pretty positive that neither the regulator nor their political masters will have a good enough handle on the wide issues involved to make sensible decisions (witness the Digital Economy Act).

Having said that I am also not sure that leaving it to the market is the right answer as players with significant market power will flex their muscles when they feel they can get away with it – it is human nature.

Lets discuss.

Los Trios Timicos - Trefor Davies of Timico with Ann Hallett and Lee James of CMC Partnership

Had a visit from CMC Partnership today.  They are a fast growing provider of project management and consultancy services based in South Wales.  They are also a customer – it is great to meet customers and in particular as they work in such a diverse range of industries – one of the nice things about being a Communications Provider.

Ann Hallett and Lee James from CMC proved to be a very talented duo and great sports by joining me in a rendition of La Bamba by Los Trios Paraguayos. Readers will also remember the B side of the 1966 hit : Llama En El Cuerpo. We didn’t play the B side.

The photo above is us (Los Trios Timicos) doing the reprise.

In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.

At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.

This is happening because cost of Ethernet has come down dramatically over the last 18 months and is happening at a time when the use of IP networks for serious business applications (offsite backup, DR, Citrix, hosted voip, sip trunks, video conferencing etc etc) is seeing a big growth in demand.

This is fine and exciting but the other big change is the advent of broadband connectivity over the BT 21st Century Network (which incidentally is also the carrier for the Ethernet services). BT saw quite a slow start to their ADSL2+ service but this year has seen connections ramp up and go through the 1 million subscriber mark. At the same time BT Wholesale is getting its act together in starting to productise some of the advanced features available for broadband on 21CN.

These include Annex M services already launched by BT. Annex M allows ADSL2+ subscribers to trade some of their downstream bandwidth for more upstream. Users can get up to 2.3Mbps according to the spec though the usual caveats regarding quality of the line etc apply.

BT has also added an Elevated Best Efforts tier to its standard Best Efforts ADSL2+ service. This allows for higher minimum levels of performance for individual circuits at the busiest times of the day.

The final improvement is going to be Real Time QoS, currently in trials and due for release at the end of March 2011. The addition of Real Time QoS to the portfolio will finally make a real 21st Century Network of 21CN.

Currently best practice for rolling out VoIP over broadband to businesses is to provide a separate line for the VoIP traffic. With Real Time QoS this has the prospect of changing so that very small businesses can run both voice and data over the same ADSL line.

Although businesses are starting to use their internet connectivity more and more suggesting that more than one ADSL might be appropriate in any case this is being catered for by the introduction of Fibre to the Cabinet FTTC (see many posts and pages on this blog) and Fibre to the Premises which should satisfy the bandwidth needs of many businesses for the immediate future.

The beauty of this newly connected IP world is that the ADSL network will nicely complement the Ethernet network. Whereas ISPs have been able to offer QoS over Ethernet their QoS offerings over ADSL have never really matched Ethernet for the levels of control. Although running an uncongested core network will go 95% of the way to assuring a quality experience the lack of control at the BT Exchange has always taken a little of the edge off the story (or shine off the ball seeing as this is still the cricket season).

In 2011 businesses will be able to run MPLS Wide Area Networks, mixing and matching connection types with uniform levels of QoS. The caveat here is that BT is not planning on rolling out multilevel Class of Service over ADSL (or FTTX) but having Real Time QoS for critical applications such as VoIP is going to be a huge step up from where we are today.

Nov 16 2009 10% – dropped through 400,000,000 mark
Jan 20th 9%
Feb 25th 8%
May 10th 7%
June 2nd 6%
August 5%

Currently we seem to be using a /8 block every three weeks. With 9 blocks left before we are down to the last 5 (at which point IANA will distribute these simultaneously to the 5 Regional Internet Registries) it looks like we have 27 weeks to go to IPv4 Exhaustion.

In my book this is February 2011 and not the June date reported by the Exhaustion Counter on this blog.

Anecdotally there is already a “private” market for IPv4 addresses and at last night’s LINX meeting people already mentioned that availability of free IPv4 addresses was one of the criteria they used in looking at potential company acquisitions. Someone has even already put a block up for sale on eBay as an experiment (now withdrawn).

Whilst the world is not fully up and running yet with IPv6 the situation is not as bad as it may seem. The map below, produced in early 2010 by Timico’s number one peering partner Hurricane Electric, shows that most countries (in grey) have some kind of IPv6 POP.

map of IPv6 penetration globally - grey is good

HE have a novel method of getting their partners to test IPv6 interoperability with them – by offering them T shirts. Note the sharp increase in test activity when the TShirt offer was made.

effect of Hurricane Electric T SHirt offer on IPv6 testing

Thanks to HE Director of IPv6 Strategy, Martin Levy for the pics

You can track the actual number of IPv4 blocks available at the IANA website here.