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10GBASE-T – becalmed on a painted ocean?
While the new Power over Ethernet standard, 802.3at and the 802.11n standard are still locked in the filing cabinet labeled ‘not yet ratified’, another little known standard that also seems to be becalmed, is that defining the 10GBASE-T PHY – i.e. the electronics and power needed at port level to drive 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) over copper.
However, 10GbE switch hardware vendor Solarflare and others are probably putting a fair amount of overtime to sort this out.
In a world which is seeking to reduce power utilization across all hardware, releasing new kit which increases the leccy bill – well, in the words of that well known Harry Enfield character, Mr You-Don't-Wanna-Do-It-Like-That, “I do not believe you want to do that.”
Talking to Force10 Network’s Steve Garrison about the situation, his view was, “The truth is that the industry is still in quandary over this – we're still in the same boat – we can't give our customers the right mix of price and density until the IEEE comes back with a much lower power consumption standard.”
For a technical discussion of the factors involved in the move to 10 GbE over copper, check out Solarflare CTO Steven Pope’s in-depth analysis of the current state of play.
I’ll leave the final word to Garrison, “At this time it's still a wait-and-see situation and the customers are saying ‘at that price I'd just as soon move to fibre.’”
Watts it all about – Cisco? – It's all about Watts.
So Cisco has decided not to wait for ratification of the IEEE 802.3at standard, also known as PoE-Plus, for supplying network kit with more power than can be provided using the older 802.3af standard. They're launching, what they're called enhanced PoE (ePoE) on their switch platforms, because their Aironet 1250 802.11n wireless access point needs just too much oomph from those 802.3af switch ports.
Having a quick natter on the phone with their CTO for Cisco's access networking and services group, Pat Calhoun, he spelt out how they're going to proceed with ePoE. Basically they’re not going to change how power is supplied over the cables, which is something the IEEE standards group is considering for 802.3at. Cisco will use the Cisco Discovery Protocol to negotiate with network devices requiring more than that deliverable by 802.3af. This means that legacy 802.3af-compliant devices will still work, but if the Aironet 1250 AP is not connected with Cisco’s ePoE system, you’ll have to turn one of the radios off. This can’t be done dynamically either, due to how the 802.11 wireless standard works.
So, are there vendors out there whose 802.11n APs can operate at full clip and still conform to 802.3af power requirements? Well, there are some who say they can, but I suppose until you try them out, you’ll never know how it performs in practice. Remember the 802.11n and 802.3at standards still haven’t been ratified yet, making the whole combination look like a bit of dog’s breakfast at the minute.
Does copper sweat?
In answer to the question does copper sweat – yes, BT will be sweating the UK’s copper network infrastructure for all it’s worth – the 21CN project will see to that. However, BT’s local access network business, Openreach, has announced further details of the fibre rollout at Ebbsfleet Valley in Kent. Just south of the Thames near Gravesend. The area is larger than the City of London central area and has Ebbsfleet International station close by.
From August 2008 optical fibre will be used to connect residences on Land Securities 1,000 acre new build project. Around 10,000 homes will be built in the Ebsfleet Valley and it looks like they’ll all be getting 100Mbit/s.
Why the government hasn’t said that all new homes must have fibre is a great example of short term thinking to my mind. Short term normally translates to “it’s too expensive”, in these debates, but if you’re building new houses I would’ve thought, a tiny bit extra on the mortgage wouldn’t make that much difference. Also, if the house gets sold, having an optical fibre connection looks like a great selling point to me.
Until then I suppose having a house next door to a BT exchange looks like the next best thing, since even when 24Mbit/s is eventually rolled out across the country, there’ll not be many having those headline speeds.
At the minute, fibre isn’t being pulled in Ebbsfleet, but come August it looks like I may be having a wander down there to see how things are going.
I did have a chat on the phone with Land Securities head of project management Andy Freeman about what’s happening. The first properties are being built now and will be available late August and September, all things going to plan. The fibre will be pulled through a standard BT duct and Openreach will make it available to comms providers, including BT retail, who’ll be providing the services to users, although on day one you won’t have the full range of providers you’ll have on copper.
Freeman said that where the houses are being built, it’s been a chalk quarry for the past 100 years, so the first decision Land Securities made was not to put legacy infrastructure in. Freeman pointed out that it didn’t make any sense over a 25-30 year development to put anything other than optical fibre in and added that if nobody had stepped up to the mark like BT did, they would have brought in the expertise themselves. However, BT would not have stepped up if “we hadn’t pushed them for four years to do it,” commented Freeman.
“There’s probably a snowball at the top of the hill now and this will be a quantum leap above what’s obtainable on copper and you’ll be able to turn up the speed as and when there’s a demand,” Freeman added.
Why notebook PC makers will be happy about the MacBook Air
When Steve Jobs stepped up to the podium at Macworld earlier this week, I’m sure notebook PC makers were -- how can this politely be expressed? -- demonstrating signs of trepidation. Today, they’re going to be a lot calmer. Calmer and happy too.
Apple has done an amazing job on the PC industry ever since Jobs’ return. For once, the term "messianic" might be appropriate, or as close as it ever becomes in terms of technology. Where Apple had not executed in the Jobs 2.0 era was in mobile computing where its products often looked heavy and unwieldy. Little wonder that most of us expected a subnotebook that would offer a truly portable alternative for rail commuters and others who need something that really does sit comfortably on the lap rather than perch like a suitcase on beer pump. We were expecting something wonderful, disruptive and market making
The MacBook ain’t it.
With a 13.3in screen, this is a device that sits halfway between what I would have thought would be the two main target audiences. Hard-core graphics workers will lament the lack of an even larger display and feel that processor and RAM options are limited. Generalists will wonder why they need such an unusual mixture of lightweight product and full-size format.
Adding to the list of caveats, there will be big concerns about external optical drives, lack of fixed Ethernet, and the sole USB port. OK, so you can buy add-in extras but this is a specification that has “compromise” written through it like Blackpool rock. It is also a product that screams like a catwalk vamp about Apple's old failure -- a preference for style over substance.
Both sets of users will be thinking long and hard about the price. The US sticker is harsh enough but the UK tariff is just abusive. Whatever happened to the special relationship, you guys?
Apple has been on a golden run for a long time and the MacBook Air would appear to have redeeming features interms of its trackpad and screen. But this is product would appear to be more iScrewedup than iPhone.
More rootkit evil this way comes
Does milk curdle when you place it next to your PC when it's firing up? You may have a rootkit, and VeriSign security outfit iDefense, has tipped us the wink about a nasty rootkit which appears to active in the wild, which could takeover PCs and form the basis of a fairly pervasive botnet.
The rootkit, works its evil by infecting user systems after they’ve visited a website hosting a malicious IFrame. IFrame’s are HTML tags which allow website coding meisters to embed other HTML documents, like advertisements, inside the main document. On having a shufty at what visitors may think is a normal website, the rootkit infects the master boot record (MBR).
Currently iDefense say the following exploits can be used to infect users systems: all Microsoft OS-based: JVM ByteVerify (MS03-011), MDAC (MS06-014), Internet Explorer Vector Markup Language (MS06-055) and XML CoreServices (MS06-071). However there’s no reason why other un-patched OS bugs couldn’t in future be used or other application vulnerabilities.
Once this rootkit is on your system, since it loads before Windows loads it can hide from Windows and other security tools that run under Windows. You’re therefore reliant on your anti-virus vendor package being able to detect the rootkit and remove it. There may be a better option though, if you use tools like Acronis True Image to create a backup of your entire system. True Image also backs up the MBR - and because True Image boots from CD before Windows loads, the rootkit doesn’t get a chance to execute and do its thang.
So if you think that you may have a rootkit, you can flatten the infected MBR (see picture) and continue merrily on your way. There are other tools out there, and Windows OS CDs have also got options to write a new MBR to your system, although I suspect these were put there originally to repair non-bootable Windows systems.
The trick is - knowing that you have an infected MBR – which seems like a hard call to make, unless you are at one with your PC in a yogic type of way.
HSUPA by USB stick
Should you care that Vodafone launched a High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) service in the UK in early December? Well unless you're a mobile road warrior, probably not. HSUPA, should, according to Vodafone, give you around 5Mbit/s when downloading and around 1.5Mbit/s when uploading content.
I’ve been giving one of Vodafone’s new HSUPA devices a roll, and at the minute I’ve seen a maximum of 2Mbit/s when downloading data in central London (postcode W1A). However, I haven’t had a full strength connection yet, so there’s probably a bit more gas in the tank.
The modem comes in a neat USB stick form factor though (see picture), and also has a usage tracker as well, which makes keeping to that 3GB ‘fair usage’ limit a lot easier. Vodafone say they won’t charge if you go over the ‘fair use’ limit, but will ask you to ‘temper your usage’, if you keep breaking the limit.
Data transfer speed is one thing, but what about latency - which is just as important. Well, if you ping Google’s web site through your work connection, you should see times in the 15 millisecond region and around 25 milliseconds on your home broadband connection. I remember Orange’s HSDPA service, the 3G service before HSUPA, giving ping times around 170 milliseconds. The ping times Vodafone’s service has given have been as low as 105 milliseconds - all the better for drawing web pages that bit quicker.
The device costs £49 on an 18-month contract with a flat rate price per month is £25 and you can also use SMS on Vodafone’s USB modem. We'll be putting out a full review in a few weeks time.
You can run but you can't hide
Is the demise of the polar bear a shoe-in? If the arctic totally melts, will these fearsome beasts be only clocked in Zoos? What is this to do with network technology? Why all the rhetorical questions?
Well, it seems that SeeMore Wildlife Systems has a tie-up with RealVNC to use their software to monitor the bears in the Hudson Bay area of Canada. The cameras used to track the bears are attached to a Tundra Buggy and backhauled via microwave links to the town of Churchill and then via the internet to the control centre in Alaska. Sounds like a neat use of technology, but if the arctic does melt, it may be that the bear’s main food - seals, which they catch when the seals pop up for a breather through holes in the ice, might be less bothered.
I’ll be reviewing the latest version of RealVNC later this month, but I wonder if the bears are intelligent enough to realise that a much more abundant food source is available further west – checking on their movements over the web.
