Phil's corner

BT Tweak sub-loop unbundling prices

2011-09-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the year OFCOM ruled that BT needed to remove some cost elements from some of Openreach's charges for sub loop unbundling. Openreach have now notified OFCOM of the revised charges, which result in one price decrease and one increase with effect from 01/12/11.

The saving arises in the Shared MPF sub-loop product, where the price to connect a shared sub-loop to a CP's LLU equipment will fall from £127.61 to £115. This is the cost of hooking up the broadband part of a subscribers service to a local LLU cabinet while leaving the voice part connected to BT's telephone exchange, covering both transfer of existing lines and provision of new ones.

The price increase is in the provision of a new local subloop for the fully unbundled MPF product which increases to £127.61 "so that it properly reflects the costs of provision and thereby aligning it with the price for SLU-MPF transfer (which remains unchanged)".

No changes to the annual rental for shared and fully unbundled paths are proposed, so they remain at £11.47 and £93.96 per annum ex VAT respectively.

I was under the impression that OFCOM identified cost elements in the fully unbundled loop pricing that related to the E side from exchange to cabinet and argued that these should not be included in the rental of a fully unbundled sub-loop, but this hasn't passed through as a reduction in rental or connection charge.

None of the changes will satisfy current or potential sub-loop unbundlers, they are still left looking at a competing Openreach FTTC product where the connection charges are £80 for all flavours of FTTC and FTTP ! How can a fully costed shared sub loop connection charge for LLU come out much higher than connecting the same sub loop to an Openreach DSLAM and providing that DSLAM port and backhaul ?

When it comes to disconnection, you can cease an Openreach FTTC circuit for £5.37 but ceasing a shared sub-loop costs £100.67 !

Chattanooga FTTH economics

2011-08-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

I previously noted the rather high cost per premise of EPB's Chattanooga FTTH deployment. While this scheme is the poster child of the UK's "FTTH or bust" lobby it does look expensive in terms of cost of installation and the retail pricing would be a bit rich for our tastes too.

Obviously it's a sexy proposition to have a gigabit connection, even if only 12 residents take that service. One has to question the large debt involved in the current climate - a company with a turnover of $480m in 2008 taking on a fibre-optic bond debt of $220m doesn't look like something that would fly in the private sector. $220m divide by 169,000 residents is a debt of $1300 per head which if transferred to the UK population would be $78 billion or £47.8 billion which is 50% higher than the Analysys Mason estimate of under £30bn for point to point FTTH throughout the UK.

EPB's premise was of reducing the cost of operation of it's electric grid. The accounts show the following costs for 2008, 2009 and 2010 in $m :-

Other operation expenses :- 38.0, 38.9, 37.5

Maintenance :- 13.6, 15.6, 18.0

So it's early days but the tens of $millions of smart grid savings aren't showing up just yet.

The operating expenses and revenues of the fibre optic system are starting to take off :-

Fibre optic operating expenses :- 9.8, 11.0, 16.1

Fibre optics sales :- 15.5, 17.2, 20.9

It will be interesting to see the full picture as the system rolls out and full year accounts reflect a mature customer base. Adding $5.1m in operating expenses to gain $3.7m in revenues from 2009 to 2010 doesn't look great but the accounts of large companies don't provide a whole lot of detail.

In 2010 only 18% ($4m) of the fiber optic revenue was from residential services. When 30,000 customers paying $100 a month are fully reflected in the accounts we should see perhaps $36m of revenue making the total more like $58m with 62% from residential sales.

I look forward to the 2011 accounts, and would be happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood any of the above. It's a shame proponents of schemes like Chattanooga don't look beyond the willy waving gigabit speed into the detail in order to see if the thing is remotely affordable or sustainable.

Electric Broadband

2011-08-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

The twitterverse has carried links to a recent audio interview with James Ingraham an employee of EPB, a US local power utility based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, describing their diversification into communications and specifically fibre optic connections to residential properties FTTH.

Things are different over there, with lots of small municipality utility companies when compared to the UK's regional distribution network operators. EPB talks of being one of the biggest in the US, serving 169,000 residents in a 600 square mile area - that's a square 24.5 miles on each side, or a circle with a radius of 13.8 miles, so tiny compared to the UK operators. EPB is also what we would call a quango, or perhaps a council owned non-profit business, so it's part of the public sector unlike the UK's wholly privatised electricity industry.

I have extracted some information from the hour long interview, and added some internet research to fill the gaps, with a view to helping understand what EPB are doing and it's relevance (or otherwise) to the UK situation.

EPB have spent about $300m on installing a gigabit fibre optic network to connect up their electricity distribution assets to form a "Smart Grid" and at the same time to provide residential triple play services and business services. This project has been underway since 2008 and gigabit residential services were announced in September 2010 - so far there are "a dozen" customers taking this $350/month service.

Much of the investment was based on the Smart Grid delivering savings on meter reading, reducing stolen electricity, faster outage recovery, better design etc. A Federal grant of $111 million was provided for this aspect ($656 per resident) and a bond issue completed in April 2008 raised $220m. Personally I have no idea why a SCADA system on a power distribution network would require gigabit connectivity rather than something more like RS422 but we'll leave that to one side. Suffice to say that a belief in large savings ( $30m pa) on the electrical side drove at least $160m of this investment.

EPB's broadband products don't come cheap - 30 Mbits/s standalone symmetrical broadband at $58/month "plus taxes and fees" is probably very good value but the equivalent price point in the UK would be £58/month inc VAT and to be honest that's going to be a hard sell, as Virgin Media have found with their 50M DOCSIS 3 cable product. My £1 = $1 conversion reflects the reality of retail pricing either side of the Atlantic - if you look at the Federal minimum wage, EPB's power price per kWh or the price of a Big Mac it's invariably $1 of US street price equates to £1 UK street price.

The high pricing also has to be seen in the context of limited competition in the US broadband market - Comcast charge $100-$117/month for 50M downstream / 10M upstream cable broadband. EPB have introduced a third broadband supplier to compete with Comcast cable and AT&T DSL. Another "electric broadband" operator in Tennessee also knows how to charge - $160 per month for 16M down / 2M up service.

EPB fibre has 30,000 residential and 1,300 business customers. It isn't clear what proportion of the customers are covered but Ingraham referred to building "where population is densest and working out". About 50% of electricity meters are connected by fibre, they only run fibre where the residential customer takes broadband, TV, or phone service and the rest of the electricity meters use 900 MHz mesh networking to communicate to those with fibre connections.

169,000 residents at 2.5 people per home would give 67,600 homes and 50% of that is 33,800 so it looks like about half of the homes take the fibre service which fits with the 50% metering comment . $300m is $4,438 per home passed or $8,875 per home connected which is a massive sum compared to other FTTH projects like Verizon's FIOS. Obviously the accounting of a dual purpose project gets complicated - how much of the spend was necessary to deliver the electrical savings, and how much to deliver the fibre optic communications services ?

Community Networks or Council Broadband ?

2011-07-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been looking at US implementations of "community networks" after our local "fibre or bust" proponents were tweeting links to them.

Some of them didn't look like community networks, at least not by my personal understanding of the term. Perhaps we need a more granular taxonomy than defining everything that isn't owned by a large corporate as "community".

An article in the Huffington Post from an advocate of community networks puts forward a campaigning stance that "community networks" are at a disadvantage compared to the one or two large corporate providers present in a typical US locality (cable provider and DSL from incumbent telco). The network in question is a municipal network "Salisbury Fibrant"which offers triple play services over Fibre to the Home in Salisbury, North Carolina in competition with 7, 10 or 15M Time Warner Cable and 6M DSL from AT&T.

I call this a "municipal network" because it is financed, owned and operated as part of the local government, with some controversy as one would expect in the freedom loving and capitalist USA. In essence it's offering a 15M/15M symmetrical FTTH service at $45/month with $20/month increments to 25, 50, 75 or 100M so the 100M service is $125 per month taken on its own. There are a wide array of TV and phone bundles too. The DSL and Cable competition do look poor and appear to have dropped prices in response to Fibrant's arrival.

Those opposed to the Salisbury Fibrant project point to low takeup, high retail prices, mounting debts and increased taxes and local utility fees to pay for Fibrant. It's hard to judge the truth of the matter from this distance, but time will tell.

In nearby Wilson, NC the Greenlight municipal FTTH network has disconnected 1,000 customers who never paid a bill - an alarming figure relative to their 5,000 or so subscribers.

In the State of Vermont the city owned Burlington Telecom got into financial problems when the takeup rate for its fiber system didn't meet requirements and losses mounted. So all is not well in the world of council broadband.

In case anyone runs away with the idea that things would be different in the UK, take a look at Swindon's controversial municipal Wi-Fi project "Get Signal" provided by Digital City.

I'm sure there are proper community projects in the USA that are not council broadband, and look forward to reading about them. All links and hints gratefully received.

2M USC and Rural Digital Divide

2011-07-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

A draft Requirements Document put out by BDUK contains a couple of interesting snippets, at least in its current form. The invitation to comment has now closed.

The 2 Mbits/s Universal Service Commitment is now being expressed as "a minimum edge-of-network throughput of 2Mb/s and that most solutions will exceed 2Mb/s". Throughput is defined in the document as being measured by transferring a file and measuring the time taken, so it is the actual useful data throughput without overheads rather than the sync speed, IP profile or other higher level measure.

Interestingly, this means that a 2M fixed speed ADSL service will not meet the USC requirement as expressed, because the measurable throughput of IPStream Home 2000 is at best 1900 kbits/s. Current MaxDSL services will need an IP profile of 2500 to meet the spec which is a sync speed of at least 2848 kbits/s at the ATM level.

In the same document (p19) an example of a Local Authority call-off shows the speed vs rurality hierarchy at the core of BDUK's plans :-

5A1 Delivery of 50Mb/s to xx Market Towns (Example) L2

5A2 Required for delivery of 20Mb/s to 50Mb/s to xx Villages L2 (Example)

5A3 Delivery of < 20Mb/s to xx Hamlets (Example) L2

5A4 Required for delivery of xx Community Hubs (Example) L2

5A5 Required for delivery of 2Mb/s to edge of network access speeds L2

to xx Rural Communities (Example)

So if you live in a Hamlet (OS definition " small, isolated group of houses without a church. ") then it's ADSL2+ or less for you. Granted it's an example, and the document is a Draft, but it does suggest what we have to look forward to.

Another recent BDUK publication is the Data Model Explanatory Notes which accompany a model that appears not to have been published. This model looks quite interesting as it calculates funding requirements and costs for deploying various broadband solution. It also reinforces the notion described above that isolated and sparse rural types will be getting BDUK's slowest offering :-

" The superfast broadband model therefore calculates costs and revenues for the final third on a cabinet by cabinet basis. The cheapest cabinets in terms of investment gap per customer served are upgraded first until a floor threshold for fibre coverage (e.g. 90% of premises) has been reached in every Local Authority area and fibre connectivity to every community has been provided.

Premises that are expected to receive less than 2Mbit/s, after targets for fibre coverage have been reached, are input into a wireless and satellite cost model. For 10x10km grid squares with a population density above a chosen threshold it is assumed that a wireless mast is constructed, and all premises in grid squares below this threshold are served with satellite. "

From this I conclude that if you can currently only get 2M ADSL then you'll be offered a wireless solution if the population density is sufficient, or a satellite dish if not.

Digging further into "Propel Northants"

2011-06-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Trying to untangle the loss making assumptions behind the DCF analysis of the "Propel Northants" project I have observed the following questionable assumptions :-

Take-up aspiration is very low - "a total connection rate of 30% of the total private sector premises passed in year 2026"
Rate of take-up growth is abysmal - "2% of all existing Private Sector premises (B Type and non B type) passed are connected each year"
A wholesale only "Open Access" model is used, with a modest proportion of revenue captured as a result - "it is assumed that the wholesale network operator takes 50% of the total retail revenues achievable"
Retail pricing model is unambitious, matching first generation broadband pricing with a SOHO office internet / telephony bundle at £35 per month
Large parts of potential market are excluded - "Other Public Sector premises (i.e. Education and Health) do not connect to the network and procure their telecom services via an alternative route"

The network is a substantial investment and isn't going to be achieved by community activists digging trenches - 110 km in 10 distribution rings are proposed, connecting to 224km of core fibre ring with 8 points of presence.

Capital costing is in line with corporate civil engineering costs, as one would expect from a report prepared by Atkins and The University of Northampton. The figure of £1,309 per business and public sector premise passed is perhaps not unreasonable, but escalates to an eye-watering £7,644 per premise connected when the low takeup assumptions are factored in.

"Propel Northants" could represent a good launch platform for further growth of FttH services in Northamptonshire, but its current economics leave it stillborn.

Can the above weaknesses be realistically addressed to make the project an attractive investment ?

How to lose money fast ? public sector fibre optic broadband

2011-06-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a report prepared by Atkins and the University of Northampton which considered the costs and benefits of building a fibre optic broadband infrastructure in Northamptonshire to produce economic growth - Propel Northants.

As a numbers man I have been digesting the discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis which shows a lot of red ink in Table 33. The project starts with £30m of capital expenditure in Year 0 and then makes a loss every year for 15 years, producing a NPV of (£57m). This says that the project is the same as burning getting on for £60m in a bin outside the council offices.

To be fair the annual loss does decline through the project, and is only a million quid by 2026, but it is still a loss from start to finish.

I will write more on why I believe the DCF produces such a dire result as I get my head around its assumptions. One obvious factor is that Health and Education are assumed to do their own thing and are therefore not included as potential revenue customers of the fibre network. This is a shame as a) these are two of the biggest players in the public sector and b) the model assumes that the fibre network gets 80% of the retail revenue from public sector customers (as opposed to 50% from private sector) with its open access wholesale model.

BDUK and Community Broadband

2011-06-07T04:18:00.000-07:00

The ongoing process to try and connect up 1/3rd of the country for less than £60 per home rolls on with the publishing of their first "Delivery Model" document and related procurement announcement of around £2bn of public sector contracts, picked over in depth by Lindsey Annison.

The Delivery Model has several references to community engagement in broadband provision, with the word "community" featuring 93 times in the 60 page document. Selected highlights are :-

Point 7 of the Executive Summary sates that "Contracts are expected to include provision for Community Broadband Hubs where there is sufficient demand for them" and goes on to suggest they are exploring what the specification of such a thing might be and what demand there is for them.

Section 2.4.1 makes it clear that Community Groups are part of the intended audience of the delivery model document and Section 10 sets out potential roles for and involvement of such groups. Principle 3 (4.2.3) is to "Promote the involvement of local communities" including to "Explore the viability of the provision and use of a Broadband Community Hub at a local level". Principle 11 is to maximise competition " including SMEs and community suppliers as appropriate".

Section 9.2.3 looks to community champions to support demand stimulation, against a background where BDUK see potentially low takeup of superfast broadband in areas that currently have a workable standard broadband service.

In section 10.2.4 the bar is set for a local community to be at least 100 households that are sufficiently concentrated to be connected to a single "point of presence". A target of at least 40% of households signing up for the setup and monthly charges of any proposed community scheme is suggested as a minimum.

BDUK have funded The Rural Broadband Partnership at ruralbroadband.com to act as a focal point for Community Broadband issues, presumably burying the Community Broadband Network's role in this sector for good.

In Section 10.4 we get down to the nitty gritty of delivery, with BDUK stating that "In the majority of cases, community groups will not be involved in the actual delivery of the broadband infrastructure". They see a role in "raising awareness", "stimulating demand" and informing local bodies (Councils) of the community's needs. They go on to say that "In a minority of cases the community may become involved in the delivery of broadband infrastructure. This is expected to happen where the proposed broadband investment will not otherwise meet the community expectations. It may involve the use of a Community Broadband Hub."

Section 10 is fairly inclusive in its approach, while at the same time fairly dismissive - "Demand for this option is uncertain", "Demand for this option is unproven" and so on. The three main options identified for Community Networks are :-

Community access point - support of an existing access point with an affordable annual rental and monthly bandwidth charges.
Community network extension - arranging wayleaves or digging in ducts etc to facilitate extension of a private sector network where the community doesn't wish to build or maintain the whole network but at the same time wants more than is on offer on the usual commercial basis.
Community design and build - the whole network owned and operated by the community.

So the document provides hooks for community projects to latch on to, but the money simply isn't there to give them the handouts that most will crave. It does have sufficient references to Community Broadband Hubs to make it difficult for Councils and their large corporate suppliers to totally ignore them, but at the moment the references are so vague they don't cast a lot of light on the subject.

Hopefully subsequent versions will firm up on the Community Broadband Hub concept.

Community broadband gets "Parish Pump"

2011-04-11T01:07:00.000-07:00

The wireless community broadband network serving Wennington (Wennet) is looking forward to increased connection speeds as they start to take advantage of a "Digital Parish Pump" in nearby Wray village :-
Wennington's network was originally built using Locustworld 802.11b wireless mesh boxes and had its internet feed provided by Lancaster University Network Services ( LUNS ).

The feed was contractually 2 Mbits/s symmetrical (same upload and download speed) but in practice could burst to higher speeds. The first wireless link to LUNS was carried on a public sector educational network CLEO which has recently been transferred from LUNS to a BT-led consortium that has indicated that it will only guarantee to supply service until February 2012. Technical changes have also reduced the burst speed to the contractual 2M limit which has reduced the service quality for residents and businesses.

Wennington is therefore faced with a challenge of replacing their "middle mile" internet feed, increasing its capacity to handle more users with increasing usage, and upgrading their wireless network internally to escape the constraints of 802.11b.

A potential solution has appeared in the form of a "Digital Pump" facility kindly negotiated with a Lancaster University Network Research & Special Projects Unit project in nearby Wray. This project is an extension of the University's NRSP Living Lab rural broadband project into the arena of television over the internet including P2P broadcasting. As part of the project an increased capacity feed into the village was required and the project has procured a WEES fibre connection from BT Openreach to connect the village to the university at 100Mbits/s, over which 20 Mbits/s of internet transit will be carried for Wray village.

It is the presence of this fibre and the ability to add a further 20M of internet transit to it that has provided a way forward for Wennington. With the £10.4k pa cost of the fibre already absorbed into another project the internet connectivity becomes available at £6,000 pa for 40 Mbits/s at 5:1 contention. £500 per month ( £12.50 per month per Mbit/s) is the sort of figure that a community network of at least 25 users has a chance of affording and the extra capacity will allow more subscribers in notspots to be brought onto the network bringing in extra revenue. Initially 20 Mbits/s will be purchased for Wennington and 20M for Wray.

The "Parish Pump" costs £6,000 pa for a low contention 40M internet transit plus £10,400 pa to rent the BT fibre in the "middle mile" 12 mile run back to the University network centre. This latter charge is distance related, and would be twice as much to reach out to Wennington directly. In the case of Wray a £7,500 "excess construction charge" was applied by Openreach on top of the 2 * £975 installation charge - this covers costs above those allowed for in the standard price.

For comparison a BT leased line of 30 Mbits/s on a 60M bearer was quoted at £64,000 pa with an initial cost of £76,000. So the Digital Parish Pump is providing 40M for less than one third of the annual cost of a leased line. An additional 40M would cost less than £6,000 pa using the existing and paid for fibre, showing the benefit of having a broadband supply point in the village rather than buying individual services from a remote point.

As part of the Digital Parish Pump service the users of the network are allocated an IP address by the University network services, however Wennington owns its own IP block and could equally use those once the appropriate entries were in the routing tables. Email and other services are used from "cloud" providers like Google Mail and no other services are included with the "raw" contended internet connectivity.

Now that the Digital Village Pump / Parish Pump is on stream a wireless link using equipment supplied and configured by NextGenUs has been established to connect to a nearby farm that is also served by the Wennington network. The link was installed by the local aerial installer and Wennet team members and paid for by Wennet CIC. Early work on the wireless routing and equipment options was done by the University under a commercial contract paid for from an NWDA Innovation award received by Wennet in 2008/9. NextGenUs did the final wireless survey and planning, with help from Google Earth and the local knowledge of community broadband volunteers.

Everything is poised for action now as two other users connected by fibre to the farm are enjoying the new service and a progressive rollout of enhanced wireless devices connecting back to the Digital Village Pump (DVP) via the farm is the next step. Plans are also afoot to dig a fibre optic cable to the DVP replacing the current wireless link to the farm - this will provide higher capacity and greater reliability.

Initial speed tests from the farm have exceeded 30 Mbits/s both upstream and downstream :

The only cloud on the horizon is that the University's funding of the £10,400 pa fibre "middle mile" connection does depend on externally funded projects beyond 2011. Should that be in danger it is possible that Wennington's network could expand enough to carry the cost, providing the financial and voluntary resources are available to do the job in time.

In providing rural next generation access it is this "middle mile" that is often an insurmountable problem. Internet transit charges are low compared to the cost of extending that connection out into the countryside from a metropolitan data centre. Rented BT fibre circuits have an install cost and an annual rental price per end plus an annual charge of 36p/metre (£360 per km, £580 per mile) for the "main link" connection between exchanges if the two ends are not served by the same exchange.

Thanks to project members for the Skype interview and information on which this post is based.

Can a County Council manage ?

2011-04-02T04:21:00.001-07:00

Reading an excellent article by Robert Dale I started to reflect on how the likes of Cumbria and Lanacashire County Council are handling their broadband projects with part of the funding coming from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) .

Both counties have EU public tenders out, currently viewable online Lancashire and Cumbria.

Robert says that "local authorities should make finance facilities available specifically for these communities to move ahead with their own broadband when and where possible" but I really don't think they are up to that task in the way they currently operate. I say this based on my previous experiences in the private sector where we managed a capital investment programme of £20 - 60 million per year. It may be helpful to compare the approach taken.

I worked in a multi-site manufacturing company where we made investments to increase profitability through cost reduction or new products, invested in replacement works for equipment at the end of its life, upgraded facilities to meet new regulatory or other standards, and so on. There was active competition for the capital funds from the factories and we could have easily spent double what we had allocated by the Board of Directors. The administration involved a handful of people with a larger committee of technical and financial gurus joining senior line managers to argue out which projects were funded, canned or deferred. We'll call this process our "Capital Expenditure Committee" or CEC.

In the Broadband case we could cast BDUK as the Board of Directors, or maybe the County Council or its Chief Exec, setting the size of the budget. The officers of the Council could be equivalent to our CEC. If they were they would probably divide up the money into categories - for example Broadband notspots, Village pump pilots, FTTH pilots, Improved mobile broadband coverage, etc etc - and invite people to make submissions for funding. However they can't work like that, because they don't have any "customers" for the capital projects like we had factories.

In our case when a factory bid for funding and won it then they would procure the engineering and other services to deliver the project. Some of the resources may be their own labour, others would be bought in. The Factory Manager had responsibility for delivering the project on time and on budget, and was also effectively the "customer" of the CEC process in getting access to the money. Their submission for project funds would typically have to include detailed costings and supplier tenders at the later stages, we had 2 - 4 stages of application over 18-24 months depending on size and complexity of project.

The County Councils don't appear to have any customers. There isn't a mechanism in place for a community leader or broadband champion (equivalent to my Factory Manager) to ask for money from one of the pots or to influence what gets delivered in their area.

What we see in practice is the County Council writing a tender that effectively outsources the whole intellectual project of managing the expenditure and delivering the benefits. The large company winning the tender, for example BT, gets to make all the decisions about what to do where. It is responsible for delivering what it says it will at the tender stage which means a massive conflict of interest where the suppliers of goods and services are the same people deciding the best way to deploy those goods and services. The end users and local communities have no voice in the process.

A possible approach to match what Robert calls for, along the lines of my previous experience, might look like this :-

1. BDUK and County Council / Chief Executive define available funds, priorities and goals of expenditure and sets total expenditure budget.
2. County Council decides how to break up the total into parcels of expenditure to cover areas of activity, priorities, geographical areas, etc etc.
3. Community groups, local small companies, 3rd sector bodies, County Council departments, District or Parish Councils bid for appropriate funds to do their project to meet one or more of the objectives. Let's call them project sponsors.
4. County Council officials, BDUK, invited experts form a Capital Expenditure Committee to award funds to the best projects to the Project Sponsors based on the case they present.
5. The Project Sponsors procure necessary goods and services to deliver their project and manage its implementation.

With this approach there is no single large scale tender. There are multiple opportunities for SMEs, local companies etc to be Project Sponsors and get funding to deliver something. There are opportunities for suppliers big and small to tender for supplying goods and services to the Project Sponsors. There are opportunities for the 3rd sector to be a Project Sponsor, and so on. In other words it creates an eco-system of enterprise and empowerment to deliver an overall goal.

Would this deliver a better outcome than a single tender to a company with a turnover of at least £100m pa, as specified in at least one of the tenders ?

Let's try to illustrate the difference :-

Final Third Mathematics

2011-03-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

The "Final Third" is a concept describing the one third of the UK population (maybe 80% of land area) that it is forecast won't receive Next Generation Access (NGA) to the internet through the "normal" commercial provision driven by market forces.

I do wonder if the Final Third actually exists, if projects like Ashby-de-la-Launde can solve a broadband notspot without any public subsidy, maybe it's code for the areas that BT and Virgin aren't going to provide with NGA without a subsidy. Let's park that for now.

To "fix" the Final Third NGA problem, and to address the more immediate "Commitment" to prove "2 Mbits/s" access "Universally", we have Broadband Delivery UK BDUK and it's war chest of £530m. This is where the maths comes in.

The Final Third is described in a bit more detail by DCMS as about 9m premises, 1m of which are likely to be too expensive to provide with superfast broadband. Superfast Broadband is defined by DCMS as "potential headline access speed of at least 20Mbps, with no upper limit". In addition to 8m premises within the scope for public assistance for NGA there are an additional 2m households that DCMS recognise do not have a "good level" (or in some case, any) broadband. In addressing the 2m it is preferred that they leap straight to NGA.

So, £530m divided by 8m = £66.25 per premise for NGA. Even £530m divided by 2m is only £265 per property. The BSG report on wireless / satellite access prepared by Analysys Mason showed capital costs of at least £200 per home for even the lowest bandwidth provision to the most favourable geotypes. From this it is clear that the £530m cannot fund the Final Third (or even 8m of them) with any form of connectivity, and it requires considerable private sector investment.

This is of course understood by Jeremy Hunt, who has said that 95% of the funding will come from sources other than Government. So the message is clear, BDUK are not going to pay for your broadband problem to be sorted out, any more than BT are. They don't have the money.

Given this situation, should we not be trying to get on with some private sector and/or third sector projects ? If 95% of funding has to come from these sources I would venture to suggest that at least 80% of NGA or notspot connections will be funded entirely from non-Government cash with the rest on some "matched funding" or "gap funding" basis.

Upgrading infrastructure

2011-02-11T04:35:00.000-08:00

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, recently called for more action to deliver access to superfast broadband in pursuit of that Agenda.

Bemoaning the decline in rate of new connections she said that "Maximising broadband access obviously takes a mix of players and a mix of technologies, and the role of fibre is central."

It is good to see both mix of players and mix of technologies given prominence. The UK's current public sector broadband procurement process seems to be working against the former, and if your tender results in a choice between hammer providers you're going to get a solution involving only nails which works against the latter.

Personally I would like to see more diversity at the heart the BDUK pilots and funded projects. It should be a specific objective to try at least 5 different approaches in both technology and delivery organisation - otherwise BDUK and the County Councils are left trying to predict the best medium to long term solution without giving the other solutions a decent run for the money.

It would also be good to see more tolerance and acceptance in the debate around broadband delivery. If fibre to the cabinet is adequate for 10 years in appropriate areas then should we not welcome the provision of extra bandwidth as part of Neelie's Digital Agenda and the economic hopes riding on it ? Why do we spend so much time decrying solutions other than our own favourite - a sales tactic I have never liked. Can we not celebrate any increase in bandwidth or coverage if it helps someone in some way, especially if it pays its own way ?

The last twenty years has seen bandwidth grow in steps by changing the technology at each end of existing copper infrastructure. From 9600 baud modems through to 56k modems, then ADSL from exchanges, ADSL2+ and now VDSL2 from cabinets. All have been relatively low cost stepwise upgrades that have seen us get 18 million broadband users in the UK. The money spent on this has not been wasted, and investing in FTTC is not a waste of money if it pays off the investor within the useful life of the assets.

If universal FTTH will cost £5, 10 or £30 billion then the interest we save by deferring that investment by a year is a very substantial amount of money. So it makes sense to me to upgrade the infrastructure as and when it ceases to deliver adequate services to a location, and not get in a huge rush to spend money we don't have to meet a demand that maybe isn't actually here yet.

For some locations the time for an upgrade was 8 years ago. 10km of twisted pair copper isn't going to deliver an ADSL broadband service of any speed so there is a case to re-engineer such locations with either fibre optic connections, wireless or other solution that provides the needs of the user economically. These locations may be predominantly "rural"but some will be in built up areas and "electrically remote from the exchange" is probably the guiding principle.

If we draw an 800m radius around a BT cabinet the area covered is 2 sq.km which with 80,000 cabinets gives us a coverage of 160,000 sq.km. That's 66% of the UK land area, but only if we're lucky to have no overlaps and an even distribution of cabinets across the land - which clearly isn't the case. We are still left with at least a "final third" that is out of range of the "cabinet circles", plus a good number of customers that aren't connected to a cabinet at all. Even adding in VDSL2 from the exchange only adds another 5500 circles so less than 7% extra.

Where I'm heading with this is that there are places which have had no broadband for 8 years, like Ashby-de-la-Launde, and we do not appear to be addressing them as a specific target. Rolling them up into a county wide scheme may still see them left out as "the uneconomic part" as councillors seek to deliver maximum connections per public expenditure. Should we not identify them and have a specific plan to solve their problem ?

Do we need a BT Openreach product that is a single run fibre optic upgrade from exchange to premise that could be ordered in the same way as a new telephone line, perhaps. This would start the incremental upgrade to our telecoms infrastructure in the areas that are currently the least well served.

If we don't have a plan for BT to upgrade its infrastructure, or for Virgin Media to expand its, then we need a plan for an alternative infrastructure in areas where the existing services are inadequate. This probably means a plan to specifically not spend public money within 2 or 3km of a BT telephone exchange, other than in exceptional cases with demonstrable infrastructure problems.

IPv6 Part 1

2011-02-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

It seems about time to start looking at and understanding IPv6 ahead of the inevitable transition. One of the ISPs resold by South Witham Broadband is Entanet and they are active in supporting IPv6 so I bit the bullet and bought a £10 Speedtouch 546v6 off Ebay to provide a bridged connection to my ADSL line.

The Speedtouch is used to provide a transparent bridge between the BT provided ADSL link to my router, in other words it acts as an ATM to ethernet bridge and allows the router to activate a PPPoE session and log in to Entanet. My router isn't IPv6 yet, but I can use a PC directly for starters. My initial objective was to get the bridge mode and PPPoE working, rather than change everything at once and then struggle to understand why it wasn't working.

First I put the Speedtouch in circuit as a conventional PPPoA NAT router, as it comes out of the box, and established that it worked. Then I switched it to PPPoE NAT mode retaining the login username / password on the Speedtouch. That worked too, so then I set about switching to bridge mode.

The instructions at the above entanet page didn't work for me, nor did several others on the internet. Using the command line interface on the Speedtouch is very powerful but some prior knowledge is helpful. I know now that the multiple levels of interfaces have to be dissembled and assembled in order, and most online guides don't do this. The stack of layers looks something like:

PPP

Ethernet

ATM

ADSL

So you can't remove or edit an ATM layer if the Ethernet layer that runs on it is still active. The command sequence from entanet missed out the command for the ethernet layer :-

ppp ifdelete intf=Internet
atm ifdetach intf=atm_Internet

To get the second command above to work you have to precede it with

eth ifdetach intf=ethoa_Internet

otherwise you get an obscure error message suggesting you typed the interface name wrong !

A Norwegian called Roy has the simplest approach - tear the lot down and start again - posted on his blog I tweaked this for the UK VPI/VCI settings of 0,38 and reproduce it below :-

ppp relay flush
eth flush
atm flush
ppp flush
atm phonebook flush
saveall
atm phonebook add name=BrPPPoE_ph addr=0.38
atm ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_atm
atm ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_atm dest=BrPPPoE_ph ulp=mac
atm ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_atm
eth bridge ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_br
eth bridge ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_br dest=BrPPPoE_atm
eth bridge ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_br
saveall

This works fine, the Speedtouch becomes a brick with a phone input and an ethernet output and my WRT54GL router running dd-wrt firmware does the PPPoE log in to Enta.

Zen Internet have a template to download to the Speedtouch 5x6 routers, making bridge mode a drop down option. I haven't tried this, but it looks a good place to start if you prefer a point and click solution.

Next time we'll try to use an IPv6 capable device to log in. I have a new Mikrotik router ordered and I'm also waiting for Entanet to confirm they've switch my IPv6 on.

How Scaleable is Localism ?

2011-02-04T03:32:00.000-08:00

The decision by Lancaster City Council to abandon a pilot Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband project in favour of a County Council scheme raises some interesting questions about the appropriate scale of localism.

Both projects were seeking public funding, £0.75 and £20m respectively, and both were obviously addressing the same issue. There is no reason however why the smaller scheme could not have continued and had its area excluded from the County scheme.

The local scheme was aimed at addressing known notspots (areas with either no broadband or less than 2M downstream) and was a full NGA solution with Fibre to the Home (FTTH). As part of the project preparation a lot of groundwork had been done getting small businesses on board with the proposal. An experienced local expert (Barry Forde) had contributed to the design which was innovative and also depended on community contributions to reduce cost.

The county wide scheme will not be able to rely on achieving the same level of local engagement. It also requires a minimum £20m investment contribution and by adopting a single partner for the whole county restricts itself to large telecoms companies or groups of companies acting together (as in S Yorks Digital Region). By nature of its size it will be slower to deliver and not solve the immediate problem of some notspots.

If we have a "localism" agenda, what is the scale of project we should attempt ? How far does "community" stretch and at what point does it fragment into multiple smaller groups ?

I don't have any answers, but a county is clearly too big a unit. The Cumbria Broadband Project is promoting "parish champions" and the BDUK backed pilot is targeting the Eden Valley rather than the whole county, both of which sound like good ideas.

By going for large schemes we rule out a single coherent community of interest in the project and we restrict the eligible solutions and solution providers to those that can handle large projects and have access to large investment budgets. Is that necessary ? or desirable ?

Perhaps we can't use County Councils to deliver local solutions, unless they are specifically charged with developing solutions made up of manageable sized units that can be individually tendered and tailored to suit an appropriate sized community ?

County Wide NGA for Lancashire

2011-02-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

The Leader of Lancashire County Council has made a decision to "select a strategic partner" in order to "maximise the benefits from the deployment of superfast broadband across Lancashire". Impressive sounding stuff, subject to getting the nod by Cabinet on 3rd February.

In the report from the Chief Exec sets out the benefits of 'superfast broadband' or 'Next Generation Access' and observes that "About 34% of premises across Lancashire will not have superfast broadband by 2015" - hence the decision to proceed with a project to do something about it. The report also identifies key features of the project and potential partners :

Partners are expected to invest at least £20m to match the ERDF bid by the council.
The private sector partner will own the superfast broadband network
The private sector partner will be required to ensure open, equitable and transparent access to the network open to all service and communications providers
Partners to identify the extent to which existing technology in Lancashire, e.g. the Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online (CLEO) network, can be utilised
The completion of the network within 2.5 years from commencement of deployment
Delivers optimum coverage for the available investment funding, aiming for close to 100% coverage in Lancashire, including rural, remote and sparsely populated areas
The County Council will not prescribe the technology.

A study by Analysys Mason for the NWDA last year titled "Making NGA a Reality in the Northwest" looked at the costs of providing NGA to areas in the region (not just Lancashire) likely to be left out of a commercial provision and concluded that the cost of providing FTTC to those properties would be about £164m with the cost of FTTH some six times higher and just short of a billion. Given the current state of finances the FTTC solution is somewhat inevitable and it was also the route taken by the South Yorkshire Digital Region project.

I will put money on BT winning this tender, as they did the CLEO operating contract by forming a JV with Lancashire County Council. They even have a JV company up and running to do it. They may be the only company big enough to deliver it in the timescale, and certainly they have a track record of providing a competitive set of retailers unlike other "open access" attempts that have failed to impress.

So what will a BT technical solution offer, and how can a tender document pre-empt some of the likely shortfalls ?

BT will use FTTC fibre to the cabinet to connect a large proportion of the population to NGA. VDSL from the cabinets will deliver the sort of bandwidth seen as necessary in the next 5 years at around 18-20Mbits/s sustained demand for streaming HD video.

Those not connected to a cabinet will not get FTTC, unless BT undertake to re-engineer their copper network to make interconnection points at cabinets available. This I think is unlikely. So a different solution is required for those close to the telephone exchange and for those far away but not connected via a cabinet.

For those close to the exchange without a cabinet a universal upgrade to ADSL2+ services would be a start, but it isn't NGA. This means either fibre from the exchange to the home (FTTH), more "artificial" cabinets to create break-in points, or adoption of exchange based VDSL - currently not practised in the UK but potentially a solution.

Those further from the exchange but cabinet-less could again be addressed by FTTH or by fixed wireless broadband dimensioned to deliver a next generation service, as described in a recent report to the Broadband Stakeholders Group.

The final group of customers will be far from the exchange on long lines, possibly in isolated or sparsely distributed properties, and possibly in a current "not spot". For this group there are the same options - fixed wireless or FTTH. Copper based solutions are ruled out by the line length and consequent signal loss, and there is no concentration point to deploy FTTC.

In odd cases a satellite solution or non-NGA 2 Mbits/s broadband over copper might be used for properties that are otherwise "awkward". Remember we're looking for "close to 100%" not actually 100% with no exclusions. These folks will get the "Universal Service Commitment" rather than "Next Generation Access".

So what should the tender document say ?

It should specify a minimum sustained downstream bandwidth for the service, perhaps 18-20 Mbits/s on the basis of future bandwidth needs.
The above speed should be achievable for at least 90% of peak hours 8am - 10pm.
Upstream speed shall be at least 5 Mbits/s or 25% of the minimum downstream.
NGA solutions are required for >97% properties close to and connected directly to telephone exchanges, that are not served by cabinets.
NGA solutions are required for >90% of more distant properties that are not served by cabinets.
Every single property shall receive at least a 2 Mbits/s downstream / 500 kbits/s upstream service to meet the universal service commitment, by whatever technology.

Such a specification is technology neutral and could be met by BT, by an HFC cable network operator building out or by a brand new FTTH infrastructure provider. The numbers can be adjusted to individual taste, but the above might fit the bill without the invoice being too big.

The biggest risk in my view is that we create "NGA doughnuts" of FTTC around exchanges with nothing in the middle and nothing outside of the ring of cabinets around the exchange.

Broadband Bandwidth Requirements

2011-01-30T03:43:00.000-08:00

When considering how to address broadband notspots, or planning future broadband provision, it is useful to put a number on the estimated bandwidth requirements. A number of generic assessments have been published in the past, some of which are discussed by Jon Hunt on his blog.

In general the predictions are based on exponential growth and most were made a few years ago. Just like Climate Change modelling doesn't explain recent snowfalls in the UK, the prediction in 2006 that by 2008 a bandwidth intensive household may need 18Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream either didn't come to pass or those households had to move to Virgin Cable areas or get some specialist connectivity.

A more recent report suggests compound growth of 40% pa from 2010 to 2016 - that's a factor of 7.5 by my reckoning, so the average Talk Talk or BT Wholesale IPStream user will see their provisioned capacity rise from 60 kbits/s to 450 kbits/s. That doesn't sound much of a challenge, although matching it with an increase in the end user link speed from 5 to 37.5 Mbits/s would be. OFCOM in their recent consultation on Market 1 broadband pricing used a lower growth assumption of 23 %pa compound or a factor of 3.5 over 6 years.

Is 37.5M the right figure upon which to base a discussion of near future needs ?

Analysys Mason don't think so. Their comprehensive report to the BSG looked at the forecast demand in order to assess the costs and viability of using wireless and satellite solutions to cover notspots and provide next generation access.

The peak demand in 2016 according to Analysys Mason (AM) will be 19.3 Mbits/s for 2.3 members of a household each watching an HD video stream at 8.3 Mbits/s.

AM also see average peak bandwidth demand at 700 kbits/s per household rising to 1450 kbits/s in the high video use scenario. In fact most of their foreseen demand is for video, suggesting that NGA is becoming "Next Generation TV" rather than "Next Generation Internet Access".

This does beg the question as to the suitability of the internet as a video delivery mechanism and I cannot help but think a wider debate about how best to provide video and TV is required, rather than focussing on "the internet".

Digital TV, Satellite, HFC Cable TV surely need to be part of an NGA strategy if the "internet" part of the demand is only seen by experts as 20 GB per month in 2016 and that can be met with bandwidth of about 85 kbits/s average peak per home at 8pm.

Do I need an ISP

2010-12-07T00:28:00.001-08:00

I used to know what an ISP was for. They took your modem signal via the phone network, converted it back into TCP/IP data and passed it onto the internet :-

In the hopefully near future, Next Generation Access (NGA) will give me a TCP/IP connection over fibre optic (or xDSL, WiMAX, LTE, EFM or whatever) from a local network provider. If they provided transit to the internet it would be job done :-

This latter scenario is very similar to Virgin's cable broadband or to LLU ADSL, where vertically integrated providers take data from a local point directly to the internet. The prevailing "wholesale" model and the much talked about (but seldom existing) "open access" network doesn't allow the local network operator to provide internet connectivity but forces them to route traffic via an ISP in order to foster competition. The competition is mainly in price and add-on services as the local connectivity is fixed :-

Notice how in this case we have two entities or networks passing data from the local exchange equipment to the internet. This is purely for regulation and competition reasons. I may be using no services at all from the ISP, other than getting my data out onto the Internet. If the telco were allowed to do this directly I would not need the ISP.

ISPs can of course offer a range of other services beyond connectivity however I generally source these from the internet or "The Cloud" in order to be independent of connectivity provider and location. My 3G Android smartphone operates using cloud based services with the network operator (Vodafone) providing local access and internet connectivity only.

Given the track record of networks like Neuenen, Ashby, S. Yorks Digital Region, Fibrecity etc etc in attracting credible and known retail ISPs I really do wonder if there is any merit in insisting on open access or wholesaling arrangements. Do they not add complexity both in networking and business process terms rather than providing a simple one shop supplier of access to the internet from my home ?

Fibre Tax Fig Leaf

2010-12-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

I'm kinda bored with reading people droning on about how the UK's taxation of business assets shouldn't include fibre optic networks (presumably electricity distribution networks are a "legitimate" target for taxation) and how this massive and inequitable tax is holding back the progress of network deployment in the UK.

Some months ago the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) and the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) worked together to clarify the current regime, and to come up with valuations for Fibre to the Home (FTTH) and Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) networks. This was done because the networks are new and as such there isn't a database of costs, rents, receipts and expenditure or other measures of valuation that can be applied to these assets. The VOA Guidance Note came up with a figure of £20 per home connected for FTTH networks. This £20 is the rateable value, the actual business rates charged will be slightly less than £10 per year with discounds available for small companies and charity / not-for-profit entities at the discretion of local rating offices.

Those of a campaigning bent also point out the cost to operators of rates on long distance fibre networks. They are particularly exercised about this because they hate BT and BT's fibre network is assessed as a whole and not using the per km table published by the VOA. Other operators can negotiate with the VOA to use alternative methods of valuation and various tribunals and courts have so far ruled that there is no unfair discrimination against other operators such as Vtesse Networks.

I always like to put numbers on things, as it brings the issue into focus and shows if my understanding is correct. If I were to start a network company and run a pair of fibres 25km to the nearest interconnection opportunity in Peterborough the rateable value from the table is £500 per km for 2 fibres in the range 10 to 100km long. So that's an RV of 25 * 500 = £12,500 on which I would pay annual business rates (technically "National non-domestic rates") of 41.4% * £12,500 = £5175 per annum. If I use this to serve 500 customers then it's £10.35 per year per customer. If I set up a broadband charity or not-for-profit community association I may get "relief" on 80% or as much as 100% of this, or if it were my only small business I may get a reduction from "small business relief". The VOA provide worked examples (PDF download).

If my fibre were deemed to be part of a FTTH network and were my only network asset it would appear to fall under the £20/year per home connected scheme :-

(Diagram from VOA document).

So in my case y=25km and I pay £20 * 41.4p = £8.28 per home connected per year.

Clearly it would be in my interest to avoid having the 25 km run be valued separately and additional to the FTTH network, but the numbers here really aren't that scary and investment blocking, are they ?

Virgin Speed Con

2010-11-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

Virgin Media have a publicity campaign currently, calling for "honesty in broadband speeds". As well as operating a cable broadband / TV network that covers just under half UK households they provide ADSL broadband nationally over BT phone lines.

The cable service is a "hybrid fibre coax" network using DOCSIS3, the connections are made at fixed speeds of 2,10,20 and 50M with 100M scheduled soon. Less than 100,000 of their 4m plus customers have opted to pay the fairly high price for the 50M service.

Much of the campaign is about "what speed you get compared to what you pay for". There is a large flaw in the concept in that most of the UK broadband connections that are at a fixed speed are Virgin's cable connections and only these "pay for a speed". The rest are rate adaptive ADSL connections that go as fast as the line conditions permit. Cable prices are based on speed, ADSL prices are mainly fixed monthly fees for variable rate products.

So if you look at the measured throughput / speed of a Virgin cable connection you are seeing how congested or otherwise their network is, but when you do the same test on an ADSL line you are combining the effects of the line length with the network congestion and you don't know which is which. So a rural village line may get a speedtest of 2Mbits/s on an "up to 8M" service and you don't know if that's a brilliant result for a 5km line or a poor result for a 1km line.

Moving on to Virgin's "national" ADSL service we get to see some truly misleading marketing. My local exchange has only BT Wholesale equipment, a "Market 1" exchange, and therefore any broadband service will be delivered using BT services. My line(s) are 2.5km long and can just do the full 8128k sync speed if I pay attention and use the right hardware, but more typically they sync at 7000 - 7800 kbits/s.

If I go to the Virgin web site I can enquire about their services, put in the postcode and I am told :-

"You're in a Virgin National broadband area
You can get up to 20Mb broadband down your existing phone line.
But you're not in a fibre optic cable area, so we can't give you Virgin TV."

well the second sentence is completely incorrect as there aren't any 20M or 24M ADSL2+ services on the Wansford EMWSFRD exchange.

So much for this "honesty". Is it a "con" to offer me "up to 20Mb" when it simply isn't available ?

Onward to the number checker, which has the following small print..

"Broadband speeds:
Broadband connection speeds are dependent on a number of factors, such as the distance between your telephone exchange to your house and the line quality, so whilst your broadband speed can vary, Virgin Media National Broadband will always give you the maximum connection speed available based on these factors."

the result for my line is...

"6.0 Mbps - 7.0 Mbps
Great news! Your phone line is lovely and speedy
Unlike some others we're not into capping the speed you get, so we'll always give you the fastest possible broadband we can."

well I agree with the speed prediction, but it isn't what an "up to 20M" ADSL2+ service would give me because there isn't one available.

I wonder what this crap on the results page is about - "Unlike some others we're not into capping the speed you get" - all of the BT provided services on our exchange are up to 8M MaxDSL and all work the same way - nobody caps the speed.

Honest ? You decide.

Mac OSX 10.6.3 Retail on a Dell Mini 10v - Pt 1.

2010-08-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

A while back I became interested in creating a "Hackintosh" ie a PC running Apple's Mac OSX. This became practical when Apple started using Intel hardware rather than their previous architecture, thereby losing one of their USPs and becoming "just another computer". Of course Apple can continue to differentiate itself with its premium priced and quality hardware, and with its operating system Mac OSX. Apple also use a "closed ecosystem" of approved software and hardware to deliver the alleged Mac "it just works" experience.

Of course when you dig into something you find the cracks under the surface. OSX supports a very limited range of hardware and is not without its foibles- for example if you don't set a password then the 'sudo' command to obtain elevated privileges simply doesn't work - no warning or error message, it just returns to the command line without having done anything !

So, onward into the Hackintosh world. A lot of enthusiasts have done a lot of good work and there are many 'how to' guides out there. In my opinion at least 98.5% of the information available is potentially unhelpful, primarily because it is out of date. Much of the material about OSX version 10.6 relates to 10.6.0 and is applicable to the launch of that version, creating a flurry of activity. If you are kind enough to buy a Mac OSX DVD from a retail supplier like Amazon for less than £30 you will get at least version 10.6.3 (at the time of writing - mid 2010) and that won't work with much of the stuff published for earlier versions.

If you want to start with version 10.6.3 then look very hard at the resources you use. Forget anything from 2009 or earlier.

Having learned this lesson the hard way, I decided to document my successes (or otherwise) in providing an OSX operating system on low cost commodity PC hardware. I chose the Dell Mini 10v and Mini 9 and an Advent 4211 as these have the best compatibility with OSX, according to one of the compatibility charts.

I should point out that using OSX on "non-Apple branded hardware" contravenes the OSX licence. The retail DVD comes with some Apple stickers that make your hackintosh "Apple Branded" :-)

So, down to business. I am going to install a "vanilla" retail version of OSX 10.6.3 Snow Leopard using an external DVD drive plugged into a Dell Mini 10v. The approach used is to have a pre-boot environment loaded onto the Dell in order to boot the Mac OSX DVD which is otherwise unbootable.

After a number of dead ends and literally hours work my recipe for success is as follows :-

a) Dell Mini 10v Model 1011 - not the earlier or later models. Try Ebay !
b) External USB DVD / CD drive for example Samsung SES-084C for <£30
c) Apple OSX Snow Leopard Retail DVD for £25 from Comet and other retailers.
d) Bootable Empire EFI pre-boot environment CD v1.085 Generic - download the iso via Prasys' blog or direct Link to zip file with two ISO files - use the normal version.

First steps :

1. Burn the Empire EFI pre-boot environment CD ISO to a CD using any computer / operating system. You could even use the Dell Mini and external drive. If you use Windows you may find Alex Feinman's ISO Recorder handy, it gives you a right mouse "burn image to CD option".

2. Hook up the external CD drive to the Dell and put the CD from step 1 in the drive. Reboot it and as it starts press F12 at the BIOS screen to get a boot menu - select CD/DVD drive and Empire EFI will boot up, you may have to press enter if the screen fills up with progress messages.

3. Empire EFI will show the bootable operating systems on the PC and itself as options to boot. At this stage you need to flip the CD out of the drive, insert the Snow Leopard OSX DVD and wait for a minute.

4. Press F5 to have Empire EFI re-scan available bootable systems, it will include the Max OSX Install DVD. Select this option with the mouse or cursor keys and click or press Enter to start the boot up.

5. The screen will go grey with an Apple logo in the centre of the upper half. In the lower half you will see a rotating wheel for some time as the OSX installer loads.

OFCOM reveals a bit more

2010-04-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

OFCOM have released data on compliance of individual ISPs with the Broadband Speed Code of Practice, in response to my Freedom of Information Act request.

The extended report shows how individual ISPs performed in the recent mystery shopper exercise, rather than the ISP sector as a whole. In general the additional data is sensibly restricted to the larger ISPs where sufficient number of mystery shops were made to give some confidence in the findings. OFCOM have also clearly identified where the difference in performance of an ISP is statistically significant - in other words a big enough difference not to have occurred by chance or by sampling error.

Noticeable differences that were statistically significant :-

BT were less likely to give speed estimates on the phone without prompting, O2 were most likely.
Sky were most likely to quote either a speed range or a headline package speed on the phone.

Plusnet and Talk Talk websites had the lowest failure rate in providing a speed estimate.
Sky website was the most likely to fail to provide a line speed.
Sky website provided a range of estimated speeds in more cases than average (21%).
Virgin DSL website only provided headline or package speed in 35% of cases.

O2 had best consistency in matching speed estimate between telephone agents and ISP website.
Sky had the lowest consistency between phone and website.
Virgin DSL were worst at getting telephone estimates within 1M of website estimates.
Virgin DSL were the worst at explaining that the speed was an estimate and may be different in practice.

BT speed estimates were closest to the BT Wholesale line checker results.
ADSL2+ speed estimates showed more variation from BT Wholesale checker than plain ADSL.

BT scored lower on perception of the knowledge of their telephone agents.
Plusnet's telephone agents were perceived as the most helpful.

I hope that consumers will find the additional information helpful in choosing an ISP, and that ISPs will consider their own performance and continue to work towards improved compliance with the Voluntary Code of Practice. There are detailed charts in the revised OFCOM report, see links below, from which one can also draw conclusions that may not be statistically significant.

[ OFCOM Research ][ Enhanced Report (PDF) ]

Free iPlate - for £200 !

2009-11-17T04:12:00.000-08:00

BT developed the iPlate or "BT Broadband Accelerator" to isolate the ring wire and allow use of ADSL on any extension. This device is easy to fit and costs less than a tenner, or if you're a BT Total Broadband customer you can have one for £1.20 postage.

There is a bit of a catch for some customers in that the iPlate will only fit on a modern NTE5 master socket with a detachable lower half faceplate, as explained on the BT Total Broadband site.

What if you don't have an NTE5 ? You really should try to get one if you have more than one extension socket as it gives you a "test socket" for diagnostic purposes and also allows you to fit a fully filtered faceplate for the ultimate ADSL efficiency.

BT's terms and conditions don't allow you to fit your own NTE5 as it is their network demarcation point and they don't want anyone accidentally connecting it to the mains or making other errors. So if you want a legal NTE5 you'll need to get BT to fit one.

There is a BT price list item for this, it costs £25 + VAT for "Conversion of hard-wired master socket to Linebox and Regularisation of illicit master socket" which is discounted to £0 if there is a disabled person in the house. If you have 2 or more lines the subsequent ones cost £26.25 + VAT.

This item was originally free for everyone as part of the migration of household wiring to the modern plug in phones. Similarly low priced services are available for conversion of ISDN or Highway lines to analogue - £42.55 + VAT. I've had the latter done personally, and it cost £50 at the time (17.5% VAT).

My reason for writing this item is that it turns out to be quite difficult to impossible to actually obtain the £25 + VAT service from BT, despite it being in the price list. Some people have had it done for free, some as part of a broadband fault visit but many have found they are being quoted around £200 for the service (some have been billed this after being told it was free).

So what's going on ? We have a published price list which falls under OFCOM regulation and yet we can't get the service offered at the price displayed.

I made an enquiry, referencing the price list item, and was quoted about £200. When asked for a breakdown the response was "I have checked the details of the charges and can confirm that the engineer’s visit charge is £125 and the charge for the extension socket is £70 which makes £195 in total." (Note that I wasn't interested in an "extension socket", but there you go, and the price list charge for an engineer visit is £115 not £125).

It appears that customers are being quoted, and/or charged, the price for a new extension rather than for bringing the network demarcation point up to current standards. It isn't possible to arrive at the prices quoted / charged by adding up engineer visit charges and hourly rates, and in any case time based charges are only relevant where there is not a fixed price for the activity in the price list.

Attempts to get clarification from BT have failed, perhaps OFCOM should be the next stop.

This is an important issue, as houses wired with BT sockets in the 1980s are often "star wired" without an NTE5 and hence have wiring that will give ADSL speeds much lower than is possible, or in some cases ADSL services that don't work because of the internal wiring. This was recognised in the "Digital Britain" report where a substantial number of houses were going to be improved to 2 Mbits/s by attention to their wiring.

If we're going to give people the broadband they should be receiving, let's have access to a cost-effective NTE5 installation service to isolate the internal wiring. It's already in the price list, just let us buy it ! Please ?

iPlayer streaming test

2009-05-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

How does the BBC's iPlayer get on streaming video on a connection limited to various speeds ? Below are traffic graphs showing how the iPlayer uses bursts of download where possible, but as the available bandwidth reduces it has to take up everything it can.

Graphs are 2M, 1M and 0.5Mbits/s download rate.

BT i-Plate filter

2008-07-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Samknows reports the introduction of BT's Patent Pending iPlate. This is another take on filtering of the bell wire and works by interposing a plate between the master socket wall plate and detachable faceplate. On this plate is a circuit board which provides a 22 mH choke in series with the bell wire to minimise interference pickup from both wired and plugin extensions.

The iPlate is intended for end user fitting using only a screwdriver, without disconnecting and reconnecting wires. The iPlate plugs into the wall plate and the faceplate into the iPate, the extension wires on the faceplate are passed through a slot in the bottom of the iPlate to save the effort of remaking the connections.

In addition to the series choke on the bell wire both of the signal lines 2 and 5 pass through another twin coil device with a ferrite (?) core. Here's a photo of the device:

The coil device looks like a transformer (to a relative layman) however the DC continuity of both signal lines is maintained so it appears to inductively couple the two lines while at the same time inserting a 4.6 mH inductance into each. The device is marked B302H.

Here are some more general shots of the iPlate

The iPlate is intended for a specific set of ADSL users - those who don't want to get involved in wiring changes and who have a BT NTE5 master socket with a T Telecom or BT Piper logo. The new Openreach logo NTE5 plates (as shown in the photo) already have the bellwire choke built in. Non-NTE5 faceaplates can't accept the iPlate.

An iPlate is probably best suited to users who want to use ADSL on an extension, as it will minimise the impact of extension wiring. It does not replace the microfilters you need on each phone / fax / Sky box.

If you can use the Broadband adjacent to the NTE5 master socket then a full filtered faceplate is a better choice as it removes the need for microfilters and removes the ADSL signal from the extension wiring.

If you have a DIY bent then simply removing the ring / bell wire from terminal 3 of your master socket will achieve what the iPlate sets out to do - isolate the ring wire as a source of interference.

Here's a simple circuit diagram of the iPlate internals :-

If anyone can offer an explanation of the function of the twin coil device please post a comment below. Thanks.

LLU coverage

2008-03-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

One hears a lot about Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) and its contribution to the UK broadband market. It is worth reflecting on how widespread its coverage is :-

With thanks to SamC of samknows.com for the graph (current as of posting date).

A green dot is a telephone exchange with one or more LLU providers. A red dot is an exchange with none ie BT Wholesale only, or no ADSL.

MaxDSL speeds in practice

2007-11-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

When BT brought out MaxDSL "up to 8M" broadband the naysayers and cranks with sand in their vagina blurted on about how nobody would get an 8M connection. We can now see how wrong they were thanks to Entanet's BRAS profile distribution. This reveals that 21.6% of their users have a 7150 profile, the maximum you get with an 8128 connection. a further group 10.4% have a 6500 profile which means the speed is at or above 7392 kbits/s. If we add in the 2.3% with a 7000 profile we can see that one third of Entanet's users are at or above 7392 and over 20% are at the full 8128 speed.

The Enta display is dynamic so here's a snapshot copy for posterity :-

Bandwidth update

2007-09-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

Over at Entanet the BT Central capacity has been sweating this weekend, it was running at capacity from 10am Saturday through 2am Sunday, then the late risers of Sunday morning brought it up to capacity at 11am where it has been sat up to 4.30pm when I'm writing this. A perfect illustration of the demand expanding to meet the supply when there is no constraint - Entanet's 300 GB off-peak allowance is effectively "no limits" as only a few % of their users could ever get 300 GB/month in the available off-peak hours.

Broadband bandwidth

2007-09-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to observe the total load on Entanet's ADSL broadband connections via their on-line monitoring. This also shows the expected maximum rate for users on each of the BT Central connections feeding ADSL traffic into Entanet.

Entanet (via their resellers) offer a range of packages with fixed GB/month limits for example 30 GB/month peak / 300 GB/month off-peak. To get 300 GB/month would require the user to average 2 MBits/s through the off-peak period so in reality this is only available to a very small percentage of subscribers. "Off-peak" starts at 10pm and the surge in load is clear from the graph, usually taking until 2am to return to its pre-10pm level :-
There is clearly a lot of unused capacity in the 0200-0800 window and its a pity the downloaders that fire up at 10pm don't use scheduling software to exploit this slack period. As things stand Entanet use an "anti-loss tool" to throttle the individual connections down to 2 Mbits/s in order to avoid packet loss when the 10pm surge occurs.

Another interesting aspect is the fairly consistent upload (green) trace, running at about one third of the maximum downstream capacity. If this upstream traffic is capacity limited, as seems like with Asymmetrical DSL,a change to faster upstream speeds or to symmetrical technologies like FTTH would see a large increase in demand - possibly exceeding the download demand.

Windows Security - damned if you protect yourself, damned if you don't.

2007-09-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

It seems widely acknowledged that Windows has some design issues and Microsoft has some QA issues that result in a fairly significant stream of security problems and fixes with Windows operating systems. Combine that with its dominant role in the market place and the loathing of Microsoft that can be found in some quarters and the net result is a fairly toxic security environment with legions of spammers, hackers and malware creators doing their best to get into your system.

No problem, you might say, simply get all the Microsoft automatic updates and use good security products and your problems will be over. Yeah, right !

Automatic updates generate an unstable computing environment where things that did work suddenly stop working. A wireless card perhaps, or a software application. Worked yesterday, won't work today. Hmm, I needed that. Oh well, never mind. Perhaps another update will fix it.

In addition to Windows updates the antivirus and security software suites rely on frequent updates, patches and fixes to maintain their defences. This may mean that a dial up user goes on line and half way through downloading his email the antivirus has an update to install so it stops the email scanning to update itself. The result is a dropped POP3 session requiring a restart of the email client and another download of all that stuff you were part way through receiving. Oh well, at least I know my spam has been filtered with the latest virus signatures.

Internet Explorer has stopped working again, and I see the Trend Micro PCCillin icon has vanished from the systray, so an update of something has broke that. Does this mean I have no security now ? I have two other browsers (and another operating system) to go at, so life goes on.

The more I think about this the more I am convinced it can't continue. I cannot live with an Operating System that is dependent on frequent updates to keep itself safe - the result is just too unstable.

Equally I can't be doing with Internet Security products that slow the machine down noticeably and break themselves and other things with monotonous regularity. A customer spent £60-odd quid on Norton 360 and it doesn't auto-update, so it declares itself insecure and spooks the guy - LiveUpdate appears to be broken and there is no fix available. Are Symantec a bunch of total Fuckwits ? selling a security product with a broken updater is perhaps worse than selling a vulnerable operating system that is dependent for protection on security products.

So try buying a PC without Windows - you can forget an HP, Acer, Samsung, Sony or Asus for a start. All of these will ship desktop or laptop retail PCs only with a Windows OS installed and paid for, even if your first act will be to format the HDD and put a Linux CD in the drive. Unbelievable.

Hacking a Livebox, Pt.1

2007-06-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

I acquired a Wanadoo Livebox made by Inventel - model DV4210-WU - and set about trying to get inside its head. My motivation for this was to attempt to change the ring voltage on the phone port for the VoIP service, more on that later. After the inevitable Googling around I concluded that I needed to downgrade to an earlier firmware to ensure the hacks would work - so I went from 5.06.2-uk to v5.04.3-uk using a "repair CD" downloaded from here and followed the instructions from that site. Basically you put Linux commands into the Router name field and a "backdoor" executes those commands and installs a telnet server for you. Much of the original work was done by Andy Potter - respect.

The hardest bit was getting the Livebox to download the file from my laptop, in the end Filezilla FTP server managed it as I could define the default directory that the Anonymous FTP user would use.

Once I had Telnet access I was able to roam around and explore the config files. For my dorthcoming VoIP activities it was interesting to look in /etc/invoip.conf and see a line IFACE=ppp0 #add - this looks like an opportunity to point the thing to use eth0 instead and allow it to connect via another router ( common request from users of the similar BT HomeHub).

To unlock the Livebox and allow it to connect to a different ISP (ie not Wanadoo / Orange) you have to generate an 16 byte key and plug it into a converter on Andy's site to generate the unlock code. The equivalent feature on Scumperson's site generated a wrong code (three characters) but it turned out this also happened on Andy's site when using IE6 on the laptop rather than Opera9 on the desktop !

For the record, the correct answer was "Your unlock key is: wyq0je1wctkbz8j2" from a 16 byte code of "bqjtyewzkw8201jc". With that entered into http://10.0.0.1/brdgoff.html the Livebox was able to connect to Demon happily. http://10.0.0.1/brdg.html confirms the current lock status.

Next I need to research how to stop it "phoning home" and updating itself to a firmware version with no hacking loopholes.

So the story so far is that I have telnet access to a Livebox, can use it to connect to a different ISP, but it isn't configured for VoIP.

New BT faceplate - BFFP

2007-05-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

I previously speculated that BT might abandon the 3rd wire (bell wire) but it appears they are taking a different tack and have come up with a new type of faceplate for the NTE5 master socket. This is the BFFP (Bellwire Filter Front Plate) also marked in some cases as "Induction Face Plate". I believe this may become standard issue shortly.

The BFFP inserts a single component - an inductor or choke - between the ring circuit capacitor in the NTE5 backplane and terminal 3 on the faceplate socket and extension wiring connectors. A simple and elegant solution to reducing interference pickup from the bell wire. An inductor has a low resistance to DC current but an increasing resistance (strictly speaking increasing reactance ) to higher frequencies. This allows it to pass the low frequency ringing voltage but to attenuate high frequency ADSL-type signals or noise. The DC resistance of the inductor measures at about 35 ohms, presumably because it consists of a long length of fine wire wound round a ferrite core.

A nice man sent me some of these early BFFP's to try. I installed two on domestic installations where the ADSL may have been affected by extension wiring. Case A was a new ADSL customer with a wired extension that was not in use at the time. Case B was a customer with problems getting ADSL to work reliably, suffering low speeds and unable to connect their two Sky boxes to the phone line. Case B had several extension legs connected to the NTE5 master and a further extension plugged in, the ADSL modem was at the end of one of the extensions.

Case A.

In this case the ADSL router was plugged into the faceplate, so the BFFP was only needed for the extension wire. Removing the extension would have been better, or to preserve it for future use I could have fitted a full filtered faceplate.

Using a BT Voyager 105 USB modem the test socket in the NTE5 gave a downstream line rate of 4544 kbits/s with an attenuation of 48.5 dB. Restoring the faceplate with its extension wiring gave a line rate of 3520 kbits/s, a loss of 1 Mbits/s. Switching the standard faceplate to the BFFP with the extension connected gave a line rate of 4256 kbits/s - 288k less than the test socket but 736k faster than the standard faceplate - a useful improvement from a single electronic component !

From the bit plots below we can see that the ring wire reduces the number of bits carried in higher frequencies and prevented use of the "scatter" of higher channels that were capable of carrying 2 bits. The BFFP restored the use of many, but not all, of the high frequency channels out to the right of the plot.

Clearly the BFFP makes a substantial improvement, reducing the impact of the extension wiring by over 70%. This may not be enough for a perfectionist, but its a very quick and low cost fix.

Case B.

This was a more complex case, an existing broadband user with their "Home Hub" on an extension but only connecting at 288k downstream, 448k upstream. A reboot lifted this to 1152 kbits/s downstream. The Voyager 105 test modem managed a line rate of 960 kbits/s with a fairly poor looking bin plot (see below). Connecting to the test socket behind the NTE5 upstairs gave a big increase to 2688 kbits/s which was more like the right speed for the location (over 2 miles from the exchange).

With a BFFP fitted and back downstairs on the extension the Voyager 105 gave a downstream line rate of 2560 kbits/s which is only 128k less than the test socket. This was a good outcome as it avoided wiring a long unfiltered extension or moving the customer's router upstairs. After hooking up one of the Sky boxes and retraining the Voyager managed the same 2688k as it had in the test socket.

Connecting the Home Hub back up gave a surprisingly good connection at 448 / 3,392 so the BFFP accounted for a threefold increase in downstream sync speed !

Finally, a quick look inside the BFFP to see how it works. Note that this may be a prototype and the final product may look different, which would be handy as currently they are nearly identical to look at apart from the "bulge" covering the inductor.

FUP - Why all the fuss ?

2007-03-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Lots of hot air is currently in circulation on the subject of Fair Usage Policies (FUP) on some UK broadband services. Typically services using an FUP are advertised as "unlimited" as they do not have an explicit rigid data quantity limit such as 20 GB. An ISP like Demon with an FUP may take action against subscribers that transfer more than 50 or 60 GB per month.

ISPs use an FUP as one method to limit peak demand on their services. Demon's ADSL was becoming near-useless at peak times (09:00 through 23:30) until they invoked the FUP and restricted some high users to 128k in peak times, thereby reducing the load and improving speeds seen by the vast majority of customers.

Other methods are in use, such as traffic shaping or throttling certain protocols (FTP, NNTP and P2P are common targets), capped accounts which stop working at a pre-defined GB limit, metered accounts charged per GB and so on. With over 100 ISPs to choose from there is plenty of variety and nobody need have a service that works in a way they don't like, if they bother to do some research first.

Why are these methods necessary ? in essence they are there to protect the interests of the majority from the excesses of the few. Residential broadband is a contended or shared service which means the total end user link capacity is way in excess of the capacity further down the line. If a few people set out to use their line flat out, as opposed to the bursty use the system is designed and sized for, then congestion occurs and everyone gets stressed.

As an example, a 622M connection to an ISP can carry at least 30,000 connections however it only needs 100 of them to be 6M connections running full blast and everyone will see a slow down.

Some idealists argue that the ISP should just provide more bandwidth. The problem here is economic, the 622M connection costs £120,000 per month and our end user subscription of £20 contributes less than £10 per month towards it. So logically we are buying about 52 kbits/s on average or if you prefer 6 kbytes/s or about 15 GB per month if used consistently 24/7.

If we want accounts where everyone can pull 50 GB per month then we need to be paying £20/month more under current pricing regimes. Nobody wants to do that, of course, they just want to have their cake and eat it.

So ISPs have to hold the peak time demand at a workable level, and the average demand at something around 15 GB/month or less. Plusnet choose to use heavy traffic management and shaping, some ISPs have GB limits as low as 2 or 5 GB/month, others have FUPs. Plenty of choice is out there in the market.

The advantage of an FUP is that it allows an intelligent being to take a view on the use of a connection. It will be obvious to them that a 24/7 BitTorrent addict trying to download the internet is different to a typical user with variable usage. The baying mob however demand "clarity" of the FUP limits so they can operate at 99.9% of the limit thereby missing the point entirely - to manage the average does not require that you limit everyone to the average, merely that you lop off the top end demand to hold the average at the right level.

Some seeking clarity of a contract term that incorporates leeway for reasonable behaviour is more than likely setting out to be less than reasonable. Nobody worries about the exact trip point of a speed camera unless they are bent on breaking the speed limit and trying to get away with it.

So for the majority of users an FUP is a perfectly reasonable way for an ISP to manage demand. The action level isn't fixed as it depends on the usage patterns of the user population. I believe it is better for most users to have an FUP kicking in at 40, 50 or 60 GB than a rigid cap at 20 GB.

The only people it doesn't suit are the roaming band of heavy users who aren't prepared to pay the economic cost of their habits and move from ISP to ISP as their presence either results in an FUP, traffic management, unusable service or the ISP goes bust. One day they'll figure it out and start paying their way.

Vista sorted

2007-02-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

Have now got my multibooting Vista sorted. Once I got rid of Skype with its 30 kbytes/s upload and download I set about exploring the rules around location of files etc for the booting of XP and Vista in a dual (or more) boot situation.

Turns out that XP's boot.ini, ntldr.exe and ntdetect.com have to be on the active partition which in my case is the Vista one, so I end up with these three files in the same partition as Vista's /boot directory. Once that was in place everything "just worked" with Vista's boot loader told that Vista and XP are on the same partition / drive. Obviously they aren't on the same partition but the entries in boot.ini define that with absolute reference to partitions.

With hindsight I didn't need EasyBCD and I didn't need to tell the Vista bootloader that XP was on a different drive. All that achieved was getting rid on the "ntldr bad or missing" error without actually allowing Vista's boot manager startup routine to boot me into XP.

So, to summarise :-

1. Format the partition you want to use for Vista using a Vista install CD / DVD, don't use 3rd party formatting tools yet as NTFS has changed with Vista.

2. Reboot into XP and make the target Vista partition the Active partition from within XP so that Vista will actually load into it. Vista install can format a partition but not make it active !

3. To dual boot succesfully put ntdetect.com, ntldr.exe and boot.ini from the C:\ directory of the XP installation into the root directory of the Vista partition where the /BOOT folder will also be. This should be the active partition. It may be wise to do this as part of step 2 so that Vista has things in the right place from the word 'go'.

A 3rd party utility like EasyBCD may be required to add XP to the boot menu if it isn't there automatically, but it won't help you with the files in (3.) being in the wrong place.

OSS to the rescue

2007-02-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

EasyBCD restored XP to the Vista boot manager in a way that avoided the "corrupt installation" error, but left me with a situation where selecting XP just takes me back to the boot manager :-(

Stuck the Freespire ISO in the CD drive and rebooted, using Gparted to select either XP or Vista as bootable allowed a reboot into a working version of either, although the "front door" method remains broken. Added Freespire to the 3rd partition and the resulting GRUB menu offers me Freespire, Vista and XP as a triple boot menu - all of which work - RESULT !!! OpenSource rides to the rescue and allows me to boot into XP or Vista via a menu.

After checking out the sound card in XP (updating its drivers to identify exactly which version of Soundblaster Audigy I have) I was able to download 40 MB of Vista beta drivers for the sound card - now we have sound output and the microphone works too.

Lessons learned :-

1. Check out each item of hardware and look for Vista drivers, don't trust the Vista system scanning tools they may give you wrong information about compatibility. Do this while you still have XP and can specifically identify the model and version of each component.
2. Don't use anything other than Vista to format the disk or partition Vista is going on - NTFS has "evolved" under Vista and most if not all of the 3rd party tools are currently broken.
3. If dual booting Vista and XP expect to be told XP is broken when it isn't. Keep the XP Setup CD in its box and fix the boot manager references with EasyBCD
4. Vista isn't any more complete than previous versions of Windows, within minutes I was having to download utilities to perform tasks that other Operating Systems do out of the box.

I'm still in information overload seeking a solution to the circular booting situation with XP off the Vista boot menu.

A little bit of Wow!™

2007-02-11T05:39:00.000-08:00

Thought it was time to look at Vista so ordered the OEM version of Home Premium for £70 off www.ebuyer.com . The Vista compatibility wizard didn't like the RAID controller or the printer at home so decided to dual boot the XP machine in the office as that seemed OK.

DVD duly arrived, partitions setup with PartitionMagic and booted to the DVD. Vista installer saw all the partitions and I asked it to format the target one, which it did. It would then not install as it could find "no available supported hard drives to install Windows Vista on" or words to that effect. Presumably that excludes the one it just formatted :-) Many dual-booters have hit this problem and it is well documented on the web - the partition you intend to use has to be Active in order for Vista to install so I rebooted to XP and set the target partition as active with Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. Rebooted to the DVD and started the install.

After installation the machine rebooted straight into Vista. I had been intending to listen to a radio show while doing this so I was somewhat miffed to find I had no sound available. "No sound devices are installed" or words to that effect - Vista doesn't recognise my Sound Blaster Audigy card - so much for "Living your digital lifestyle in full" - more like "in silence" !!!

Creative look to have Beta drivers so I'll have to get back to XP to explore which one of those I need, as the software update utility "does not yet support Vista".

While faffing with Vista I took the opportunity to download a Freespire ISO as the 3rd OS on the machine is currently Linspire. Managed to do this OK but then discovered Vista doesn't know how to burn an ISO to a CD it simply created an iso file on the CD - another coaster !

Fortunately someone is on the ball and Iso Recorder v3 is Vista compatible. CD burned OK :-)

In an attempt to add an XP / Vista boot menu option (which I had expected to appear automagically) I downloaded EasyBCD to tame the all-new Vista bootloader manager, added the XP drive and rebooted.

Got the boot options menu up but it said XP was corrupted, went into Vista, set the XP partition to Active, rebooted straight into XP. I see a pattern emerging !

So Vista gives me no sound and can't burn CD ISOs out of the box. It can partition and format a drive but not set the partition to Active and hence it can't
install into that which it just created - nice, not.

Not a good start. Now in XP trying to find Vista sound card drivers.

Skype stole my PC :-)

2006-11-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

The office PC seemed sluggish, looked at the network stats and it had hundreds of connections. Firewall shows it has the preset maximum of 2000 data streams currently running through it. Skype is the culprit, using 6 kbytes/s up and down for its P2P services :-

Cisco ATA186 SIP & BT Broadband Talk

2006-09-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

The ATA186 works OK with Sipgate, given the vagaries of Sipgate. I found the logging utility useful, 'prserv -t' in a command window gives you a diagnostic chatter from the ATA186 :-

060914|22:42:58 >> SIP << 060914
22:42:59 Refresh DNS for sipgate.co.uk d90a4f17 0 0 0 0 060914
22:42:59 Trying 1st IP ADDR d90a4f17 060914
22:42:59 proxy=sipgate.co.uk:5060 060914
22:42:59 Stun Svr[0]=217.10.79.2:10000 060914
22:42:59 [0]REGISTER Retry 0 060914
22:42:59 [0]Reg Resp 401; Unauthorized 060914
22:42:59 [0]REGISTER Retry 0 060914
22:42:59 [0]Reg Resp 200; OK 060914
22:42:59 [0]Reg OK (270) 060914
22:42:59 NextReg in 206 060914
22:43:20 0:30;0,0,0,0,

(note the typical Sipgate registration failures). I changed the audio mode setting to 0x00050005 in order to get in-band DTMF to use with IVR systems, the default did not send tones out onto the PSTN. An ADSLguide poster had been fishing in his Voyager 10V for the settings for BTBBT and posted them on their VoIP forum.

Telnet into the Voyager 10V (admin/admin) and with the command 'sip show reg' you can see what's going on :-

Connection Info:
-----------------------------------------------------

TEL number : 445601484xxx
Expire Time : 3600
Status : Registration OK
Registrar : btsip.bt.com:5060
Proxy : btsip.bt.com:5060
Service Domain : btsip.bt.com
Outbound Proxy : sip.btsip.bt.net:5060
Enable : Yes

TEL number :
Expire Time : 3600
Status : not ready or no need to Send Registration
Registrar : btsip.bt.com:5060
Proxy : btsip.bt.com:5060
Service Domain : btsip.bt.com
Outbound Proxy : sip.btsip.bt.net:5060
Enable : No

-----------------------------------------------------

So the 10V looks to be 2 line capable. More of that another day..
the 44560 number is the incoming phone number of my BTBBT service and this becomes the UserID UID0 on the ATA186. Plug in the password, the Proxy and Outbound Proxy settings from above and try it.....

Got a dial tone, seemed to register, but can't call out (engaged type tone). Tried dialling into the 0560 number from BT line, silence all round :-(

Changed the RTP / Media port from Sipgate's 5004 to the 49152 revealed by the 10V :
[admin]# sip show rtp_port
SIP : RTP Port Number = 49152

Still no good. Mental note that there is no STUN server configured. Tried Sipura default RTP setting of 16384 - same. Twigged that the 10v was still on line, unplugged it.

Still no outgoing calls, but made an incoming succesfully - voice and all !

Time to go to sleep on a high note, meantime here's the failure log :-

060914|23:37:54 Calling 1571
060914|23:37:54 SCC Cmd[0:0]CLIP
060914|23:37:54 SCC Cmd[0:0]CALL
060914|23:37:54 [0:0]Start RTP Rx
060914|23:37:54 RTP Rx Init: 0, 0
060914|23:37:54 [0]INVITE Retry 0
060914|23:37:55 [0]INVITE Retry 1
060914|23:37:56 [0]INVITE Retry 2
060914|23:37:58 [0]INVITE Retry 3
060914|23:38:00 [0]INVITE Retry 4
060914|23:38:02 [0]INVITE Retry 5
060914|23:38:04 change next hop[0]: c = 2
060914|23:38:04 Trying IP ADDR 51906a28
060914|23:38:04 INVITE TO; TryAltProxy
060914|23:38:04 Response=400; Bad Request
060914|23:38:04 INVITE failed

Cisco ATA186 SIP image.

2006-09-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

BT's Broadband VoIP service BTBBV was originally supplied with Cisco ATA186 ATA hardware using the MGCP profile. In the beginning mine arrived before the service was up and running so I flipped it into a SIP profile and used it with FWD. BT have now moved their rebranded Broadband Talk service onto SIP and sent me a BT Voyager 10V ATA. Time to get the 186 back into service on SIP....

First problem was finding the ATA on the LAN, pressing the red button on the 186 with the connected phone off hook brings up the IVR voice menu and keying 80# has it read out the IP address. I was then able to see the 186 web interface at http://ataip/dev

Next to locate the SIP image and upgrade tool. This is something you can get from your VoIP provider, buy from Cisco or Google for ata186us.exe and use your imagination. ata186us.exe is the loader and the image file is *.zup

Make a note of the current firmware version at the bottom of the web page or use IVR 123# and IVR 123123# - in my case Version: v2.16.1.ms ata18x (Build 030814a)

You then run an upgrade TFTP server on a local PC with a command like :-
sata186us ATA030100SIP040211A.zup -d1 -any2
where any2 means do the upgrade even if its a different version to the old one.

the onscreen instructions tells you to..
"Using dialpad of your telephone (attached to your ATA box),
press ATA button to go to main menu, and enter:

100#10*0*0*23*8000# (to upgrade code)"

there is then a long and agonising pause, followed by the IVR lady announcing "upgrade succesful" - Result !

Back to the web interface to check....
Version: v3.1.0 atasip (Build 040211A)

Off to sipgate to look at the example ATA186 configuration. Loaded up my details then hit a "password change" screen from the ATA. Google reveals the default to be '0' so I change it to a 4 digit PIN (in case at any point I have to put it in the IVR). That works, so now I have to get the settings loaded up and debugged.

Update on phone wiring for ADSL.

2006-06-01T03:34:00.000-07:00

BT have introduced "MaxDSL" services which give "up to 8M" depending on line conditions. These services are "rate adaptive" which means the speed achieved by the modem depends on the line condition - a good short line will achieve 8128 kbit/s downstream and the longest poorest line will either drop to 160 kbits/s or fail to connect. In general this means people are getting faster speeds with Max than before, as the previous limits were conservative.

Getting your wiring in order with Max could give you faster download speeds and higher reliability (less errors), and it is worth doing this before changing to Max so the initial training period reports your line at its best. If your attenuation is 35 dB or less you should get 8M, falling to 2M around 60 dB although some have achieved 4M at this distance.

The best option for wiring is to have a filtered faceplate from Clarity.it or ADSLnation.com fitted on your NTE5 master socket. If you don't want your modem or router next to the master socket you can run an unfiltered extension line from the back of the filtered faceplate.

If you don't have an NTE5 master with removable faceplate it should be possible to get BT to fit one for about £30. Some people have achieved this for free, others have been quoted over £100 - its at the bottom of this page at £30. Probably best to call 150 and say you "want to wire up a permanent extension and you don't have a linebox to connect it to". Don't mention broadband, for simplicity. They won't fit a filtered faceplate, just an NTE5 for you to fit one to.

If you don't get an NTE5 then removing the ring wire / bell wire from terminal 3 of your master socket will get most of the benefit. Since writing the original item I have found a couple of installations where it was necessary to remove all of the ring wires from terminal 3 of all the extension sockets to get the results. Bear this in mind if the first one doesn't do it for you.

Please note that the colour codes on cables are for convenience, the blue and white pair is conventionally used for the phone signal on terminals 2 and 5 but you may find the green/white pair being used or the orange/white pair. Other colour schemes may be encountered, including single (solid) colours. The important thing is that you only need 2 and 5 for the phone to work and that the same colour should be used on the same terminal of each socket.

Finally, remember that removing the ring wire reduces noise on the line but you still have to filter every phone/fax/sky box/alarm/56k modem to avoid them interacting with the ADSL signal. A filtered facaplate removes the need for separate microfilters.

More on phone wiring

2005-08-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

Or should that be Moron phone wiring :-)

After the success with taking the ring wire off and improving the SNR I was blessed with a free speed upgrade to 2M by my ISP Demon which was facilitated by ADSLguide getting my entry changed in BT's line prequalification number checker.

This speed upgrade took the downstream SNR margin down to 25 dB, still healthy but I was pleased I did the ring wire thing to improve it. Last night I hooked the ring wire up again and the ADSL modem lost sync, it re-trained to an SNR of 12 dB and ran OK but clocked up errors. The reason I put it back on was to look at the frequency effects of the interference, using a Sagem F@st 800 modem's diagnostic mode.

The first plot is with the ring wire disconnected, showing a wide range of useable frequencies. The second plot shows the effect of reconnecting the ring wire - it loses virtually everything above frequency band 140 with a consequent loss of ADSL data carrying capacity. The lower frequencies are a lot more ragged too. It would still operate at 2Mbits/s but was clearly less capable than before.

With the higher frequencies rendered unuseable by the ring wire interference, the modem is forced to cram more data into the lower frequency bands. This in turn makes it more sensitive to interference as a higher SNR is required in order to use more bits per channel.

So at least we can see why the ring wire impacts upon the SNR, it is adding interference in the 600 kHz - 1 MHz range. This is AM radio territory, so perhaps this should not be a suprise - for all I know the ring wire may be a nice wideband AM radio antenna, built into my house :-)

For my final experiment I hooked up a filtered socket from ADSL Nation in place of the master. This provides a filtered and unfiltered socket on the front, and an IDC terminal block for filtered extensions on the back. So I used it to provide me with a filtered ring wire that could supply ringing voltage to all the extensions without compromising the ADSL. This works well and maintained the 25 dB SNR and over 10 hours my router only clocked 3 CRC errors.

LocalSNRMargin = 25.0 dB
LocalLineAttn = 32.5 dB
LocalTxPower = 10.5 dB
LocalFastChannelRxRate = 2272000
LocalFastChannelTxRate = 288000
LocalFastChannelFEC = 0
LocalFastChannelCRC = 3
LocalFastChannelHEC = 0
RemoteLineAttn = 22.0 dB
RemoteSNRMargin = 29 dB

The only point in doing the filtered ringwire bit, as opposed to simply disconnecting the ring wire, is to leave the extension wiring fully functional, such that if you aren't using ADSL any more or leave the property the phone sockets will behave as expected. One wonders if at some point BT will abandon the ring (3rd) wire, it may have made sense 20 years ago for electromechanical bells but its a real nuisance with ADSL broadband.

The images below show the "before" bin plot with the original ringwire connected, the filtered ringwire connection and the "after" bin plot using the filtered ringwire.

Finally, just a reminder that the above refers to star or spur wired systems where an NTE5 master socket can't be fitted. The NTE5 filtered faceplate is the preferred solution where it can be used, it incorporates filtered extension wiring and, if needed, an unfiltered extension connection for a modem distant from the NTE5 linebox / master socket. Having said that, one ADSLguide user has reported improved SNR through removing the ring wire from his filtered faceplate - so if you are trying to squeeze the last few kbits/s of speed or are trying to make a dead or unreliable line work it may be worth a try.

ADSL tweaking.

2005-08-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

Most broadband in the UK is ADSL supplied over phone lines. This involves a cunning plan to send frequencies of 100 kHz up to 1 MHz (AM through Short Wave radio) along the line superimposed on the low frequency voice signal. This allows speeds of several MBits/s to be transmitted over twisted pair copper cables only ever intended for analogue voice, quite neat really.

Nowadays ADSL is supplied "wires only" ie BT put the signal on the line and the user gets to make it work. When the twisted pair phone wire arrives in the user's house it is converted by a "master socket" to a 3-wire system where the 3rd wire provides a ring circuit, originally designed to power clunky bells in old steam phones, see this explanation. This 3rd wire is a "bit of an issue" as it makes the nicely symmetrical balanced twisted pair into the equivalent of a 3-legged ballerina.

In my case, the ring wire runs around my house as part of the feed to at least 6 extension phone points, in doing so it acts as a nice big aerial (antenna) to collect any radio transmissions and random electrical noise that may be passing through. It then feeds this mush back into one side of the twisted pair through the capacitor that is there to provide the ring signal and consequently degrades the ADSL signal.

This "degradation" appears as a reduction in the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and as CRC errors counted up by the modem and in some cases causes disconnections or prevents the end user getting the speed their line should be capable of. As we move to faster speeds and to "rate adaption" where the ADSL goes as fast as the line allows it, the dear old ring wire will slow down our connections.

So, what to do with the 3rd wire. The Rolls Royce solution comes in the form of a filtered faceplate (photo on right) which fits onto modern BT NTE5 lineboxes and provides ADSL and voice on separate sockets with filtered extension wiring connectors at the back. This keeps mush from the extension wiring, including the ring wire, out of the ADSL signal. It also avoids needing to use microfilters on each telephone appliance, which is A Good Thing™. Also available from ADSLnation.com

However, many of us don't have a nice NTE5 terminating our incoming phone line.

My phone line comes into a junction box in the roofspace from which the wires run in a "star" or spur configuration, the "master" socket is on one leg of the spur system and is identified by having a ring capacitor and a surge arrestor fitted.

As I have no NTE5 I can't use a filtered faceplate without a re-wire, so a bit of innovation is called for.

The photo on the right shows the back of my master socket with the ring wire disconnected from terminal 3, the other half of the orange/white pair is also disconnected from terminal 4. A higher resolution photo is at the bottom of this article.

By disconnecting the ring wire from the master we remove the 3rd leg and restore the balance / symmetry to the line.

Well, so much for the theory, what difference does disconnecting the ring wire actually make ? The stats from my router below show the results :-

Before, with ring wire (1 hour stats)

LocalSNRMargin = 20.5 dB
LocalLineAttn = 32.5 dB
RemoteLineAttn = 23.5 dB
RemoteSNRMargin = 25 dB
LocalFastChannelCRC = 22
LocalFastChannelHEC = 6

After, ring wire disconnected (20 hours)

LocalSNRMargin = 32.0 dB
LocalLineAttn = 32.5 dB
RemoteLineAttn = 23.5 dB
RemoteSNRMargin = 29 dB
LocalFastChannelCRC = 2
LocalFastChannelHEC = 0

So we see an increase in local SNR margin of 11.5 dB, meaning the router sees 11.5 dB more of the useable signal from the exchange after subtracting the noise. Going the other way the exchange gets to see 4 dB more of useable signal from the router. These figures after rebooting the router so it could adapt to the new line conditions.

20 hours after disconecting the error counter hadn't shifted from its initial value of 2 errors, compared to 28 CRC & HEC errors in just one hour with it connected. Result !!!

The phones still ring because they are using micro-filters and each of these has its own ring capacitor on the phone outlet side of the filter. If you disconnect the ring wire it would be prudent to re-connect it if you move out of the property, so the next occupier's phones work as expected.

Enjoy !

VoIP USA

2005-07-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

I took the covered wagon from Minneapolis up to Fargo, North Dakota (it was a DC9 actually, a bit late and very hot as it was 90 °F and sunny).

After visiting Walmart - 8pm on a Sunday - BestBuy, OfficeMax, OfficeDepot and finally Radio Shack (Tandy as was in the UK) I accumulated enough bits of wire to power and connect my BT Broadband Voice box (Cisco ATA186). I am connecting the laptop wirelessly to the hotel hi-speed internet and a crossover ethernet cable connects to the ATA186. The laptop is on an external IP address and the ATA gets a 192.168.0.x address from the laptop. I took a photo but seem to need yet another bit of wire to get it onto the laptop - there is no GPRS signal for the Treo600 to email me the photo it took. Watch this space. Picture here shows laptop on left connected by crossover cable to ATA in centre with hotel phone on right. Can't get the in-line image upload to work :(

The system works a treat, I accidentally called someone in the UK at 03:30 (woops) but then saved an arm and a leg by collecting my mobile voicemail at BT's offpeak Orange rate of 11.4p/minute rather than making a roaming Orange call at £1/min or whatever.

This was my first "hotspot" experiment - how to hook a dumb ATA up to a service that requires authentication via a web page. The laptop handled the authentication and hid the ATA from the hotspot - but how would you do this with an 802.11b SIP phone ??

I phoned across town via the UK to my friend in Fargo who has cable internet and a Vonage VoIP service (2 lines) with no analogue phoneline. There was a marginal delay but not the sort that makes conversation difficult. His ATA is the Linksys PAP2 but locked down to the Vonage service.

In Best Buy there were several routers or ATAs on offer with bundled VoIP service. Generally you get a mail-in rebate or account credit equal to the hardware cost when you sign up for the service. The kit included ATAs and routers with VoIP phone ports in both wired and wireless flavours.

Clearly the market focus is on getting cable internet users (the vast majority) to use VoIP in preference to analogue PSTN phone lines. The monthly cost is much lower and a bundle of services like voicemail are included for free.

From South Witham to Minneapolis airport

2005-07-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

This comes to you via the wireless internet access at MSP airport, a pay-to-use service which I access via IPASS roaming thanks to a prepay facility run by the folks at http://www.roamintl.com/

Yesterday's VoIP-a-thon at S Witham was interesting. A collection of many different ATAs, IP phones and Skype over bluetooth headsets. Basically it all "just worked" via Tom's wireless network, which runs on beer and tobacco. http://www.wireless.southwitham.net/

My PAP2 worked good on two accounts, also the Cisco BTBBV box fired up nicely on the SWBB net once their MAC codes were granted access by Tom. NO port forwarding or firewall fiddling required. We also dipped our toes in the confusopoly of charging rates to different types of number / different countries.

Best go now - off to queue behind a "line" of Americans taking their shoes off to go through a metal detector (?).

Linksys PAP2 - out and about.

2005-07-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

I thought I would try to see how little configuration I could get away with. A couple of posts by others suggested port forwarding to the PAP2 wasn't necessary and indeed after turning it off in my router (Belkin wireless ADSL jobbie) I can confirm this. Equally I don't have any ports for RTP streams open, and no STUN server settings.

I rebooted the beast this morning and it still worked, then rebooted the router too and that didn't affect it. Then I took it to the office and hooked it up behind an Intertex IX66 router without doing any port openings or forwarding - and it worked there too ! Granted some ports may have been open from previous VoIP efforts. So pretty robust and portable really.

All in all a success. The office DECT phone (BT Diverse 5310 - Siemens) would ring on incoming calls without the microfilter, it also showed the caller identity so CLID works fine too both in and out.

One thing that can catch you out is the lack of refresh on the Info page of the web interface - clicking on Info doesn't refresh it, it needs a browser refresh F5 to bring it up to date and show the current time and call / line status.

Its a bit clunky having a local 01780 incoming number as you can dial the VoIP number from BT locally without the 01780 code but to dial out over VoIP always needs the full dial code and number. I think a tweaking of the Dial Plan could fix this - insert 01780 in front of any number dialled that starts with a 7. Something else to learn how to do.

For VoIP to work in consumer land I think the ATA needs to be pre-configured to the account and tested before shipping. NAT routers could cause enough headaches without the poor user having to learn to setup the ATA.

I can see why people are shipping ADSL modem/routers with VoIP functions built in - better Quality of Service and no NAT workaround issues. Sipgate are selling a router / ATA from AVM for £120 that provides two analogue phone VoIP ports as well as the usual ADSL modem/router functions. Appears to have some integration of the analogue PSTN phone line too.

Linksys PAP2-NA - Day 2

2005-07-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

After inspecting the firewall logs I could see incoming traffic bouncing off the firewall that was from sipgate IP addresses and on SIP ports, so I put the Linksys into the DMZ on the router exposing it to the ills of the internet.

Calling it from the landline I got ringing tone but the DECT phone on the Linksys didn't ring, and there was no flashing LEDs etc to indicate activity. On inspecting the Info page I could however see that it was ringing. Inserting an ADSL microfilter in between the DECT phone and the PAP2 brought it to life - clearly the output needs an RJ11-BT adaptor that includes a ringing capacitor (provided in my case by the microfilter). So it is actually working with Sipgate on Line 1 while in the DMZ !!

Without the ring capacitor you can answer the call if you know its ringing, but that is only evident from the web interface :-(

Reading up about the Linksys PAP2-NA I discover that it is allegedly the same unit as a SIPURA SPA2000

The forums at http://voxilla.com/PNphpBB2.html were very helpful, and include configuration tools for common ATAs and poplar VoIP service providers, very useful !

I turned off the DMZ on the router and it still works. Not sure it will survive its hourly re-registration though. I have port forwarding of 5060 and 5061 to the Linksys but no other router tweaks. May need to test its resilience.

Inspired by getting the first line to work I set about connecting the second up to beta VoIP service from 18866.co.uk - this sat saying "can't connect to registration server" and declined to do anything - no blue LED :-(

After messing around with Line 1 for a while I looked at the settings in Line 2 and saw that they were corrupted - what should have been "sip.call18866.co.uk" in the Proxy field had morphed into something like "985@-16,1428@-16,1777" which is a tone definition or dial plan config - so the moral here is to check what is actually saved when you hit "Save" by revisiting the same page.

Corrected the settings and Line 2 leapt into life, made a call out and all worked well. I tested it by ringing my answering machine, to ensure 2-way audio was present.

Cool - 4 blue LEDs all shining nicely at me. Lets see if it lasts. Still not in the DMZ.

I found a load of NAT and STUN settings at the bottom of the SIP page when viewed in Advanced mode as Admin. Currently they are blank however the voxilla config wizard gives the settings for sipgate. I'm never quite happy with these 2-line devices having one set of parameters for something, nagging doubts that it'll work for both providers. For reference I have Firmware Version: 2.0.12(LS)

Off to buy some cake to celebrate.

Linksys PAP-2 experiences

2005-07-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

An "as it happened" walkthrough of setting up a Linkysys PAP-2 :-

The Linksys PAP2 is an analogue telephone adapter (ATA) to allow a normal phone to make Voice over IP (VoIP) calls. It has an ethernet socket to connect to a broadband router and two RJ11 phone sockets. Wall mounting screw holes are provided, as is a plastic foot to allow the unit to sit vertically on a surface. At 4 inches (100mm) square by an inch (30mm) thick it isn't large.

I bought mine from http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/ for just over £40 inc VAT and p&p. The price was the main reason for selecting it over the Sipura models.

The box says model PAP2-UK but the device PAP2-NA, as the quick installation sheet says to dial "1 + area code + number" it would appear to be a USA model localised for the UK by adding a clip-on 13A plug for the power supply and a few sheets of CE compliance information.

On plugging in to the LAN and powering up I had one intense blue LED pulsing away with the letter D in morse ie -.. -.. this is the power LED. Not quite the "all LEDs will be solidly lit" of the documentation. I had to find an RJ11 to BT adapter so I could plug in the DECT phone I planned to use.

After a bit of thought I realised that the LAN LED was not lit and nor was the other end on the router, so tried a different cable and got the LAN LED up and the power LED stopped flashing - one step forward ! Reverted to original cable after a bit of wiggling plug in socket.

I see from the router that I can ping the PAP2 on the IP address it collected by DHCP. Popping the relevant IP address into Firefox I get to the Linksys PAP2 configuration page. Under Line 1 it correctly shows the Hook State: as "On" and it toggles in response to me keying the DECT phone. So far so good. There is however no dial tone, so I will RTFM and set it up as guided.......

First tried the phone keypad tone IVR menu - punch **** into the phone keypad and it responds verbally, hang up to exit. So I know the phone connection works, and where to go if I needed to set up the IP address manually. 110# discloses the current IP address, 100# says if DHCP is enabled or not. 732668# (reboot#) and 73738# (reset# - a factory reset) might be handy later.

Back to the web interface - this has Basic View and Advanced View modes, and runs in Admin and User modes (the upper right of the screen says User Login when in Admin mode, and vice versa). Default is to have no passwords, though the CD manual refers to setting passwords via the IVR system. This looks a bit clunky - "To enter A, B, C, a, b, or c — press 2" - however its actually just using a PIN as to put in Phil you would enter 7445, its not like texting and pressing the 2 key 5 times to get a 'b'.

Clearly the assumption in the manual is that the unit is shipped pre-configured with a voice service, as the last chapter of the manual concludes
"Configuring the Settings for Your Internet Phone Service
If you want to change the settings for your Internet phone service, visit the website of your Internet phone service provider and make configuration changes online. For more information, refer to the instructions provided by your Internet phone service provider."

The IVR menu command 7932# is to enable/disable the web interface, this is where a password would be required if a service provider had shipped the unit locked down to their service.

So, another cup of coffee then let's try to figure out the setup :-)

In the User mode, Basic or Advanced view, there are 4 screens on the web interface titled Info System User1 User2. Info is a Status screen, System covers TCP/IP network settings and password and the User screens are full of Speed dial, Suplementary services, Distinctive ring and othe ruser features.

Change to Admin mode and extra screens become available - SIP, Regional, Line 1 and Line 2. Sounds like I'm going the right way. In the Advanced view version a further screen - Provisioning - appears. Checking back at some of the other screens I can see that Advanced really is when it comes to things like defining dial tones and codec pre-selection strings. Let's stick to basic for now....

Under Regional I select GMT +1 for the timezone and put in the date in mm/dd/yyyy format and the time in hh/mm. The screen actually specifices mm/dd but that left me in 2003 ! There's a drop down box for setting FXS impedance - this is set at 600 (ohms ?) but the dropdown box has a myriad choice of ohms + capacitance values. If I find out what the UK phones expect I can change it later.

Line 1 looks to be the place for setting up the account details. I'll start with a Sipgate account from www.sipgate.co.uk as this gives me a free regional incoming number that matches my local dial code 01780. The PAP-2 isn't listed on Sipgate's help pages, so I look at the "other devices" page, then revert to the X-ten page where you can get a personalised setup screen pre-filled with your details (bit of a crutch for a newbie). Taking the minimalist approach I entered :-

Proxy: sipgate.co.uk
Display name : Phil Thompson
User ID : 140xxxx
Password : *****

the default SIP port (5060) and registration time (3600s) seemed to match sipgate's needs, so I hit "Save settings", get a "please wait page - bit of red and blue flickering from the power LED and, lo, the Line 1 blue LED is lit :-) and the Info page shows Registration: Online under Line 1 Status. Flip the DECT phone open, punch the green button and YES ! we have a dial tone.

The sipgate account page shows me online, so I dial up from the BT landline and the X-ten softphone on my PC leaps into action. Oh pooh. Two things registered on the same account.

Shut down X-lite, redial, "the service cannot be connected" message from BT. Let's try outbound - dial the sipgate 10000 test number and yes, a German guy talks back at me. So I have an outbound phone service but not incoming - sounds like a job for "Router Man".

The only port forwarding to the desktop is port 4569 which is IAX2 protocol, but I do know the X-lite was setup to use STUN in some way.

After hacking around I can get silence from BT when I try to call myself, but nothing else happens. Try again in the morning.

EU sugar regime

2005-06-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Well the EU has managed to upset everyone with its proposed reforms of the sugar regime. It has to do something as the exports currently involve a subsidy that exceeds WTO commitments. Too much money is being spend subsidising export of surplus sugar.

The chosen path is a dramatic 40% price cut, which is expected to put several EU countries out of the sugar business. Unfortunately it will also impact heavily on developing countries that have preferential access to the premium price EU market - either former colonies in the ACP (African Caribbean Pacific) group or the Less Developed Countries (LDC's) who were progressively gaining access to EU markets for everything but arms (EBA) exports including sugar.

So the poor folks in Guyana, Barbados, Swaziland, Fiji, Mozambique et al will get to share the pain with the EU farmers and processors. I guess they're just collateral damage from Oxfam's intensive lobbying efforts, so I hope they know who to blame. Similarly if I were a beet farmer with a trailer load of beet it would be tempting to clamp it in the doorway of an Oxfam shop :-)

The price cut is of course just one way to achieve the WTO obligations. Oxfam is now in a tyre smoking U-turn crying out for prices to be maintained so that its customers in the developing countries keep their access to the premium price market. Well tough shit guys, you should have thought of that when you were mouthing off about the price so much. Put "EU sugar price" into Google and see who's to blame for raising the profile of the price issue.

Something we haven't heard much about is the detail of the subsidised exports. The EU regime is complex, but doesn't involve handing wads of cash to beet growers or to beet processors, so its not a direct subsidy. Instead its a rigged market with a high price for sugar and for sugar beet, so the farmers and processors get their rewards from selling at artificially high prices.

To keep a lid on this there are production quotas, limiting how much can be sold within the EU as these prices. Surplus sugar produced outside of quota is sold at the world market price, quota sugar that is surplus to consumption requirements is also sold onto the world market but in this case the seller gets an export subsidy funded by a levy on all the quota sugar beet grown and produced. The idea is that the levy pays for all the subsidy and its self financing.

In addition to this mechanism the EU imports over 1m tonnes of raw cane sugar and some of this is also surplus to consumption requirements and so gets exported. The export subsidy on this is paid by the EU budget out of taxpayers money. Tate & Lyle received £100m in one year from the EU for subsidised exports of surplus cane white sugar.

So part of the current problem is not just the price but the surplus of quotas over demand. The French, to pick one example, have a beet sugar production quota that exceeds their national consumption by 1.7 million tonnes. The UK by comparison produces about half its needs from beet. So the UK beet farmers & British Sugar have traditionally paid for the export subsidy on French surpluses without getting any export subsidy themselves, but nevertheless enjoying the fruits of the high internal prices.

So the French sit there with a production quota of 3.8 million tonnes, hoping we won't notice, waiting for Ireland's sugar industry to go bust so that its 200,000t quota can be grabbed by the French as an outlet for its huge excess of production over consumption.

Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium are other countries with ample surpluses of production over consumption - total 1.2m tonnes - that get exported with a subsidy. Strange isn't it, another Old Europe vs new Europe situation. Rather than addressing the institutionalised excesses of Old Europe the EU come up with a severe price cut that will hit many coutries in the EU hard, including the new entrant Eastern countries and as a side effect dump on our overseas friends struggling to make ends meet.

Break the ice

2005-06-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

Well, here we go. I wonder how this works !

It looks pretty cool, with elaborate fonts and stuff that will be way beyond my artistic talents. It even has HTML editing, gosh.

Let's post it and see....

Phil