How to write the date

Thank you Randall - I have been saying this for ages

[xkcd/1179]

It is worth elaborating on this for the hard of thinking...

1. We write numbers with the most signifcant parts on the left, even in languages that write right-to-left (I think), so, for example, the number 123 has the hundreds left (100) then the tens (20) and then the units (3). So writing dates in the same order makes sense with year, then month, then date. One could, perhaps, argue that people say "27th February, 2013" and so you should write it that way around, but people are inconsistent, e.g. "February 27th, 2013", and so on. Also, people say "Half past 2" but we know to write times logically as HH:MM:SS.
2. There are lots of good reasons to write dates and times with leading zeros as it makes them the same size and line up and so on, so using 02 for Feburary not 2. 2013-2-27 would be messy. It also breaks the following point...
3. Using dates in this format you can sort dates alphabetically and get date order. Putting time HH:MM:SS on the right means you can sort date/times.
4. This is the format used by SQL
5. Y2K has taught us to put a year in full is way better
6. Putting a year in full means you know which of the three fields is the year and so immediately know this is not either the "UK" format (DD/MM/YY) or the "US" format (MM/DD/YY) and so avoid any confusion - it has to be ISO format as nobody does YYYY-DD-MM (not even in one of Randall's examples).

I remember starting to write dates in this format when I was at uni, as it was an "international standard". I confused people by writing dates like that on cheques. But that was a few years before 1988, which probably means my memory is faulty.

Adverts

Arrrg! Adverts just wind me up.

I really try and avoid adverts - watching on-demand, or recorded - skipping adverts - but they are getting so annoying when I do catch them, in the background while I am working or playing WoW.

"Lots of insurance companies talk of multi-car discount but why only for the second car?" Well FFS, because it is a discount for multiple cars - if you only have one car it is just a discount not a "multi-car discount". Nothing wrong with a discount, but that is why!

"You can't climb Mount Everest alone, you can't even play hide and seek alone, so why try and play the lottery alone?" Well FFS, because you can play that on your own. Why is that even a vaguely sensible line of logic for an advert?

Why are there people who fall for stuff that is not just wrong but so wrong it grates to hear it.

Wake up Sheeple!

[xkcd/1013]

Disappointed with FaceBook

It is one of those weeks isn't it :-)

We have been trying some promotion on FaceBook, with an AAISP page, and some promoted posts. It is not that expensive, and we are trying to build up a bit of a community, etc. I think it is all working well, but FaceBook do have some odd ideas on some of their rules.

I did a post about trailing our new Office::1 service, and included the diagram:-

Unfortunately they rejected this as it "contains more than 20% text". I even resubmitted with a comment explaining that it is under 20% text. Still rejected. Arrrrg!

Oddly, and getting more "likes" a post showing the same image re-arranged like this was not rejected.

I have sent in a complaint and we'll see what they say.

Update: In spite of sending facebook the above re-arranged version as well they have come back with a stock reply saying my original image breaches the 20% rule. Are they stupid or what

Update: Even though they say that the rule is that the image must not be more than 20% text, the actual rule is that no more than 5 grid squares of 5x5 grid on the image must have any text in them. That is not the same as "less than 20% text" by a long way.

Disappointed with BT?

Well, not really that disappointed, but somewhat unhappy that even BT continue to disregard packet loss and round trip latency as a valid measure of the quality of their services. Overall we are quite happy with BT taking issues seriously.

They do talk of speed during peak hour, and similar metrics, but miss the point that packet loss and latency are much easier to measure and quantify and less subjective. If there is congestion or a fault, then they show in packet loss and latency.

We monitor every line every second for loss and latency and we can see when there are issues very easily. Some parts of BT, notably some of the people in BT Operate, and some more clued up support people, do understand the issue, and will take our monitoring seriously. We have used our monitoring to help BT identify major issues in their network, and even software bugs in supplier equipment. We have shown the merits of loss and latency measures time and time again over many years. I even get calls from BT asking for my help some times!

Loss and latency are well understood as key metrics for any Internet link, and are part of the contracts for some transit providers. Sadly, the product specification still does not cover these key metrics. It is ironic that, for a tenth of the price BT charge to connect me to a few hundred exchanges around the UK, I can get international transit to connect to thousands of endpoints around the globe with a contractual guarantee on loss and latency!

So, when we have one customer who mysteriously gets latency over night on an otherwise unused FTTC line, we expected a bit more from BT in terms of trying to fix the problem. This could be a simple fault or configuration issue in the network or cabinet DSLAM. Finding the cause will help ensure future faults are detected and fixed promptly helping all BT customers.

Sadly we are getting to the stage of BT basically saying they do not guarantee packet loss of latency (which, indeed, they don't), so tough! But if that means a service can be "broken" in this way, we have a service that is no good for either businesses or non-businesses as this sort of peak latency can break VoIP and gamers alike.

To me, it is a clear symptom of a fault and we are trying to help BT find and fix it.

Anyway, I think we'll look to put in a second FTTC for this customer. It may show the same issue or not. It will allow us to run completely independent tests, with only our equipment connected, on one or other line as needed to pin this down. Ultimately, if the new line works and the existing one does not, then we "fix" it by ceasing the old line. Not ideal, as we would rather the underlying cause is found.

This happens to some extent pretty much every night :-

Disappointed with Fluidata (Be/O2)

Many years ago we used to only use BT as back-haul for broadband. Following major issues with BT and 21CN deployment we signed up with Fluidata for Be/O2 back-haul as well. BT have improved a lot since then, not least in part because of the work we have put in to find and report core network issues (congestion, crashing BRASs and some other really obscure issues).

The main reason for a second back-haul is to offer choice to our customers, and specifically to allow multiple line installations to have an extra level of redundancy. The theory is that, regardless of how bad either carrier is, they will not have the same issues at the same time.

I'm sorry to report that we are now starting to see congestion issues in Be/O2. This has been going on for a while, and so far we have muddled through. The main issue here is that O2 are upgrading their network, which is good, but they are behind the usage, so there are cases of severe congestion happening and it being months before any planned upgrades. We have changed customers back to BT, or waited for the upgrades, but it is starting to be a real problem in some areas now.

I have put off blogging on this to be fair to them and give them a chance to address these issues, but we are not really making any progress on this. So, I'm just reporting how it is so that other ISPs know.

I'm pleased to say that we have really got on top of this sort of issue on the BT side - they are proactive in network upgrades now, and are responding reasonably quickly when there are exceptions. They are considering congestion issues (loss and latency) to be a fault, although it can take some persuading.

Fluidata are not, and are in fact pointing out that their "unlimited" Business grade wholesale services are not in fact unlimited. They are blaming unspecified other "super users" for causing congestion ahead of planned upgrades. Apparently we would have to justify excessive usage (excessive, on an "unlimited" service) if our users were the cause of the problem, rather the victim as in this case. That is somewhat of a concern.

It is a shame. I really thought we were doing a lot better with them and that they would take such issues seriously as a fault rather than washing their hands of them. We had lots of discussions on this early on as we had concerns that the pricing model was not one that scaled well. Whilst we all hate BTs expensive back-haul charging, the fact it is based on usage does present a business model that can scale (we'd just like that charge to be lower in BT's case). It seems that perhaps we were right to have been concerned.

The good news is we hope to have another back-haul carrier on line very soon - they do have a usage based model and are priced so closely to BT back-haul that we will be selling on the same terms as we sell BT 21CN services. We don't have any lines live yet, so cannot yet report on how well they work or how they handle faults or consider congestion issues. We'll be able to report on that after a few months I expect. This will give customers even more choice. We'll make more formal announcements on the A&A pages when we can start taking orders, but it will not be long now.

In the mean time, apparently, according to Fluidata, this is not a proper fault and can wait until April to be fixed (or sooner if they get these other super users to stop using as much). Not impressed.

Update: Slightly concerned at comments that I have got the wrong end of the stick. The above line is either considered faulty and so needs fixing promptly, or it is not considered a fault meaning I haven't got the wrong end of the stick. It should not matter if the person we by a service from buys services from someone else or not - all that matters if that the service works properly and is fixed promptly if it is not working. We don't really ask for much!

Fax is dead, and so is the internet?

We are seeing an interesting trend lately - companies finally ceasing their fax line. We see almost no faxes ourselves, but it is interesting that fax machines and lines are actually being removed finally. It was a lot slower than the demise of telex, probably because it is a lot cheaper to keep a fax machine going.

There is, however, a problem, and this is why we are seeing this. People (typically accounts departments) finally decide to cease a fax line without realising that this is the line on which the broadband is supplied. In many offices the fax line is one of the few analogue lines they have suitable for broadband as they have ISDN phone systems still. (The move from ISDN to SIP is happening slowly).

The first anyone hears about it is when the internet stops working. The end user then has to (a) get the BT line reinstated (usually reasonably quick), but then has to (b) wait for the broadband cease to close (c) order new broadband, and maybe (d) pay for an expedite on the new broadband order. Not nice, expensive, and lack of internet for a day or even a week in some cases.

So please - think of the broadband before ceasing that old fax line.

We can do broadband only phone lines to support the broadband (including taking over your old fax line) for as little as £10/month, and then there is one bill and one point of contact for faults...

I think we'll stop publishing a fax number now as well. The one thing people fax is a "tag change form" for domains, and that can just as easily be scanned or photographed on a camera phone and emailed.

Double your speed

Had a fun conversation with someone yesterday - was very much a passing comment at the end of a meeting, along the lines of "shame you can't do anything to make my home internet faster".

Alex and I immediately said "we can double the speed", and he was really sort of sceptical - heard this sort of thing before - and explained that "no, he is on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so nobody can get anything faster".

Turns out that he is in an area which only has BT 20CN lines, and they something like 5km line length.

We explained that whatever speed he can get now we can double it - it is really really simple - we just put in two lines and not one. We explained it means a second phone line, and there may be issues with lack line plant, and so on, but that a second line is usually no problem.

Turns out he has a second phone line for business use anyway, so making it two internet services is really simple, and, of course, means we can just double his speed.

It seems strange that more people do not realise this. We are not the only people that will bond multiple broadband lines. It is not rocket science. But people are just resigned to having a slow service and expect that is the end of the matter.