2012-01-01

Happy New Year

I would be a tad remiss of me not to wish all my readers a happy new year.

It should be an interesting year though.

We are pushing the FireBrick beyond the gigabit with multiple gigabit LNSs shared traffic policing in to our favorite telco over multiple gigabit links. This is part of a major network upgrade for us and I am actually quite pleased that this project is being organised by my staff - they are actually doing more "management" now which is saving me a lot of hassle. I have had to do the directorial steering of policies and the like but the work is being done by them. That is cool. That said I am the one that has spent the last week coding the new FireBrick shaper sharing system. We are closing a rack in THN soon that I have actually never even seen - that itself is a testament to my staff.

But there are a lot of things happening. I will remind someone that he promised me IPv6 on data SIMs "by the end of the year" in 2011 too. We have a work around, as ever.

I still think the copyright holders and legislation issues are going to have to come to a head in a big way somehow - maybe this year. It is getting very very silly now. A&A explicitly sell an unfiltered Internet connection which will make it impossible for a court order to require filtering as it would not be the service we sold. It would be an order to break every one of thousands of contracts. That will be fun if it ever comes to a court order. You can bet I will fight that one. And if I lose you can bet the some new company pops up and takes over all the contracts and is not subject to the order. Lets hope not. I suspect it has to get resolved at a higher level with a change in government policy somehow. We'll see.

IPv6 will get to be even more important - good chance RIPE run out of IPv4s this year and that will be scary for a lot of people.

I hope I get over this bug of the last few weeks, Norton claims to be "anti-virus", but does nothing for a tummy bug, shame (I should sue). Except everyone seems to have had it with blocked nose, sore ears, sore throat, upset tummy, shits, headaches, and everything else a minor illness can throw at you for weeks on end. Not funny, but it better get lost as I am getting fed up with it now and so is everyone else.

Personally there is a good chance of insulin injections this year too - with a mother than has be diabetic for around 50 years that is not a huge shock, and I think it will be a relief to get off these various pills they have me on now.

The games machine (w i n d o w s?) is working, but heats up my study even more - still racing someone to get a Wogen to level 85 though I am now playing in 3D which is very cool. TBH I am really not that keen on SWTOR - it is just WoW with light sabres. Oh, and that is bloody con too - you buy the game with 30 days game time - but it will not let you use it unless you either sign up a bank card or pay more pre-paid game time, and your 30 days gets used up while you decide. Not on! A con! I will remember to cancel my card! As an aside, that policy makes it a shite gift to give someone (I gave a mate a collectors edition pack). Really not good. Sorry Mike.

I got a few pressies right - apparently "Badass Lego Guns" (the book) went down well with Ian and his kids. Certain bottles I got people were right too - phew.

Personally - I had very few pressies. I got some nice cuff-links, a WoW headset, chocolates (good for a diabetic?), dalek jellies (fun), and a few clothes. The problem is that Christmas can so easily not be about giving. I wanted some more shirts. I normally get good quality heavy 100% cotton shirts. Told not to get any as "Christmas is coming"! I now have several "value pack" poly/cotton shirts that I would never have bought. If not for Christmas I would have got what I wanted when I wanted it. Now I feel obliged to wear something I find uncomfortable. Next year, I buy WTF I like and if someone gets what they think is the same, tough.

That said, you also have the whole measuring up what someone spent. I spent thousands on a certain person (who earns 10 times what I do) - I got cuff-links and clothes. But that's life.

What is nice is that we had no fights on Christmas day, or New Year's day (or in-between). We had all the immediate family over on Christmas day even. The young one (Bobby) got loads of pressies and had great fun. We even had a nice Chinese meal last night. It was, overall, a pleasant holiday week.

So 2012 - bring it on!

13 comments:

  1. When are you launching the ponies?

    Happy New Year

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now, some sort of device for "launching" ponies sounds like a patent waiting to be filed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. so this new ISP that is taking over the accounts and not be subject to the court order it be called Arnold & Andrews ?

    >:D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Of course, that would be what would happen I am sure :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Can I originate a data gram with any origin IP address on the A&A DSL service? If so then that could be considered bad practice (I.e. you should filter origin IP address using RPF) but if so then you do filter peoples connection so you are already in breach of contract. So what will it be? Bad practice or breach of contract?

    Or have you already got that nailed down somewhere? :-)

    Anyway, happy new year! I hope to be able to recommend AA to many more people this year.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We provide an unfiltered connection to you allowing you to send and receive traffic to/from the IPs assigned to you. We do not filter any traffic that is from your IPs from your line or to your IPs to you line. Conversely,w e don't send packets not destined for your IPs to you line and do not route packets not from your IPs from your line. That is unfiltered, IMHO.

    It is documented on the web site and I really do not think that is any issue.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh, and also we don't allow you to send traffic that is not IPv4 or IPv6 up the line - that too is not "filtering". I thing the point is that we offer an "Internet connection" which is not filtered. The fact it is an "Internet connection" has some technical aspects that mean you cannot just send jibberish (or spoofed source packets).

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  8. What do you mean by "shared traffic policing"

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  9. Basically, there is a commit rate to our fav telco that applies over all of the links, and so we have to police the traffic to be at that level. We up the level if it gets full but a one-off event going over the commit is silly expensive hence we shape/police to the level. It also allows the smarter shaper that allows VoIP priority and the like.

    When you have multiple LNSs you have a single rate limit over the lot, so they have to "share" the usage between themselves. This is done by per second stats broadcasts and policer adjustments to ensure overall it works the same as one big LNS with a single policer.

    Does that make sense?

    ReplyDelete
  10. The book is very cool thanks, we are talking kids obsessed with lightsabers and lego - they have been pushing me to strip down some of their ships so they can have a gun each to shoot eachother, but not to worry as to quote my 7 year old "it wont hurt daddy look" *chucks a handful of lego at his sister....*

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  11. And thanks to all that send pressies to the office - appreciated by all.

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  12. Thank your free ipv6 DNS service.Because we network be blocked a lot of sites. even those normal site.Could you have offer you email and I have some issue Consult with you.

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