At every beauty pageant they always ask the bikini-clad candidate, what is your wish for mankind. Everyone always says the noble standard answer, "World peace" and the crowds cheer. However if I were ever the Miss Canada candidate, I would have to make my answer, free broadband Internet access in Africa.
I cannot claim this idea as my own but it starts with an obscure agreement between the government of the Province of British Columbia and a major Canadian telco Telus Corporation signed in July 29, 2011. BC is in a business agreement with Telus, for a transfer of $10.00 Canadian (if I read that right), to provide access to all residents in BC access to broadband Internet and telecommunications services to have access to the social benefits of connectivity for economic initiatives, access to government services, electronic health and
education services. Contract in pdf here.
The 109 page document signed by the Minister of Citizen's Services and Open Government outlines lots of provisions including askingTelus
- to facilitate last mile connectivity
- expand cellular coverage in rural areas
- maintain Central Office live status if no other ISP is available
- to provide carrier service to the CO for a small ISP
- set a fair wholesale pricing list
- to not compete with eligible ISPs to provide the retail broadband services to end users, except where Telus already has cellular coverage (EVDO, HSPA, LTE) and DSL
The agreement seems to support fair market prices for the consumer and a non competition period of three years, and seems to leave it up to Telus to build the infrastructure, the way I understand it. Sound like a pretty sweet deal for all!
I read a recent article on CNN that poverty in the USA was linked to lack of access to basic telecommunications and Internet because job searching opportunities and even access to higher education and everything these days were most accessible to folks with Internet access, and the have nots were hurting even more with lack of it. We'll see how this reaches out the more rural communities and people living off the grid. Imagine what it could do for a developing nation! Access to information and the capability to communicate and collaborate with other humans.
In my search for the road to world peace, I came across the most inspiring article on CNN by Hamadoun Touré who writes the best case scenario for how mobile broadband could save Africa and help them reach Millennium Development Goals. The UN Millennium Development Goals are best summarized in three categories of education, health, and the environment, and the author sees mobile broadband playing a key role in each. Alright, he takes the crown from Miss Canada's idea.
"If you combat disease, you also reduce child mortality; if you give every child a primary education, you promote gender equality. It is because these goals are interlinked that broadband is so important."
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/27/opinion/technology-toure-africa-mobile/index.html?iref=allsearch
The government priority or foreign aid should be geared at building the infrastructure to support the broadband network or even mobile public transport vehicles equipped with low-cost wifi repeaters.
Here are examples of the Smartphone usage helping local businesses
1) Regular weather updates for the farmer on his Smartphone to plan his planting and seeding schedules
2) GPS geolocation capability for precision farming and optimizing fertilizer and pesticide usage
3) Online access to employment and training in Kenya
4) A young entrepreneur who developed an app for children to improve literacy, numeracy and general knowledge and the platform to delivery the wifi Internet access by public transport vehicles
As long as the kids don't spend too much time playing Angry Birds, here's to saving Africa one smartphone at a time.
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Forever Stocks to Buy
Bill Gates buys $571 Million dollars in stocks on this ticker. Are you gonna read on? He calls these kind of things, like Mastercard and the Deer & co (farm equipment) his Forever stocks, things that you could hold on to forever.
What are Warren Buffet and Bill Gates buying.
Personally I would consider Cisco a Forever stock, and for sure Lululemon. I'm just bragging because I made over $200 in one day on that stock the other day. I bought the shares at $71 and it went up to $72-something. I say something cuz I'm obviously not managing my own money, too busy studying for these Cisco exams but there you go. Imagine if I had bought these in 2009 when they were $9 something a share, and then they split at $100 a few months ago.
My friend works at Cisco in Silicon Valley Kanata and he writes the Cisco IOS. They get stock options so that's pretty awesome. He was explaining to me this new thing with delivery of wireless in a metropolitan area and enabling mobility by having the user keep the same IP. The cellular bandwith is getting to congested so it sounds like folks in Hong Kong are moving over to the internet routing. Sounded really impressive, I'm not in mobile or wireless but that sounds really neat.
I won't be rich like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, just working full time hours on routers and switches but atleast I know what is powering those supercomputers at the NYSE, forever!
What are Warren Buffet and Bill Gates buying.
Personally I would consider Cisco a Forever stock, and for sure Lululemon. I'm just bragging because I made over $200 in one day on that stock the other day. I bought the shares at $71 and it went up to $72-something. I say something cuz I'm obviously not managing my own money, too busy studying for these Cisco exams but there you go. Imagine if I had bought these in 2009 when they were $9 something a share, and then they split at $100 a few months ago.
My friend works at Cisco in Silicon Valley Kanata and he writes the Cisco IOS. They get stock options so that's pretty awesome. He was explaining to me this new thing with delivery of wireless in a metropolitan area and enabling mobility by having the user keep the same IP. The cellular bandwith is getting to congested so it sounds like folks in Hong Kong are moving over to the internet routing. Sounded really impressive, I'm not in mobile or wireless but that sounds really neat.
I won't be rich like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, just working full time hours on routers and switches but atleast I know what is powering those supercomputers at the NYSE, forever!
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Would you like a slice of Raspberry Pi?
10,000 units sold out in minutes, a $35 programmable GNU/ Linux mini computer the size of credit card. I gotta get one of those on the next batch they bake. It was created in Toronto and manufactured in the UK!
It's so sweet that the inventors initially created this device to be accessible in cost and available one per person with the intention that kids could learn programming.
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| Image Source |
It's so sweet that the inventors initially created this device to be accessible in cost and available one per person with the intention that kids could learn programming.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Superpowers in the Super Computing Race
Forget the arms race, it's all about supremacy in super computers and math skills. I saw a desktop CRAY computer running the simulations for certain DSP solution for Matlab and Simulink, and it got me thinking, well what if I had a business case and I could ask my boss to buy me one? First off though, I would have to clearly explain what is 786 gigaflops, and if it will run Linux.
A teraflop is a measure of a computer's computing speed or processing power, based on the acronym FLOPS - Floating Operations Per Second. A teraflop is a trillion or 10 to the 12th-power flops (Note the use of the plural, no need for an additional "s"), available on the market for most affordable parallel computing solutions. And of course, within the realm of possibility or imagination is a computer capable of petaflops, a thousand teraflops or a quadrillion (thousand trillion) flops.
Supercomputers are capable of so many amazing tasks, previously to discover new elements, detect dark matter components. simulate nuclear chain reaction or particle collisions. At present, they can model climate change, crack codes, model protein behaviours and drug reactions. Therefore it's obvious that the top buyers include the biosciences, computer aided engineering and defense industries. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM are all competitors in the market. This CRAY system came out in 2008, so I'm a bit 2000-and-late but in this world, by the time you've already built and deployed the number one system, someone has already imagined something 20 times better.
Canada
As of Nov 2011, Canada did not have a system listed within the public top 500 supercomputer list. Boo.
However we do see Supercomputers on the trading floor at the Toronto Stock Exchange (perhaps the server room) called electronic traders. Math geeks design the algorithms (users input parameters like selling or holding thresholds) or dark pools (when trades have to be hidden from algorithms).
Computation resource allocation on the SciNet, another system at the University of Toronto is very competitive though. The Compute Canada's Resource Allocation Committees are in charge of connecting researchers with computational and personnel resources to run calculations for biomedical research, climate change modeling and even galaxy formation simulations.
Japan
Japan ranks number one. As of Nov 2011, the K Computer, based at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Japan was the first to clear 10 petaflops, beating its own record. Hardware includes 705,024 Fujitsu Sparc64 processor cores.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57324194-264/japanese-supercomputer-first-to-clear-10-petaflops/#ixzz1mwp3L6yU
US
The Blue Gen/L can do 0.5 Quadrillion operations per second, the most powerful in 2005-2008. The Blue Gen is deployed at Livermore, San Francisco where 263 supercomputers from the Top 500 list also reside.
The up and coming Sequoia is being built by IBM, for end 2012, capable of 20 quadrillion operations per second, that's 20 petaflops. The main challenges being to write software to run across all the chips amounting to 1.6 million processors 96 racks of 32 slim servers
I like the supercomputer made from many old model Sony PS3's in parallel used by the US Air Force for satellite imagery analysis, demonstrated years ago. Many researchers have already done the same though this is no longer possible with newer generation PS3.
China
In Nov 2010 China was number one with the Tianhe-1A doing 2.5 Quadrillion operations per second
by Dawning Information Industry Ltd. Tianhue means "The Milky Way", although surpassed within six weeks by Japan. Another amazing fact, China owns 74 of the 500 biggest supercomputers in the world
By 2020 the Chinese have something in the works to rival 500x Sequoia and 8x power of Tianhe
Cisco
Anyway it's not supercomputing but here is the fastest Cisco switch ever. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps6021/product_data_sheet0900aecd8017a72e.html I'm bringing this up simply because one has to consider connectivity to these super computers and all the glorious applications.
A teraflop is a measure of a computer's computing speed or processing power, based on the acronym FLOPS - Floating Operations Per Second. A teraflop is a trillion or 10 to the 12th-power flops (Note the use of the plural, no need for an additional "s"), available on the market for most affordable parallel computing solutions. And of course, within the realm of possibility or imagination is a computer capable of petaflops, a thousand teraflops or a quadrillion (thousand trillion) flops.
Supercomputers are capable of so many amazing tasks, previously to discover new elements, detect dark matter components. simulate nuclear chain reaction or particle collisions. At present, they can model climate change, crack codes, model protein behaviours and drug reactions. Therefore it's obvious that the top buyers include the biosciences, computer aided engineering and defense industries. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM are all competitors in the market. This CRAY system came out in 2008, so I'm a bit 2000-and-late but in this world, by the time you've already built and deployed the number one system, someone has already imagined something 20 times better.
Canada
As of Nov 2011, Canada did not have a system listed within the public top 500 supercomputer list. Boo.
However we do see Supercomputers on the trading floor at the Toronto Stock Exchange (perhaps the server room) called electronic traders. Math geeks design the algorithms (users input parameters like selling or holding thresholds) or dark pools (when trades have to be hidden from algorithms).
Computation resource allocation on the SciNet, another system at the University of Toronto is very competitive though. The Compute Canada's Resource Allocation Committees are in charge of connecting researchers with computational and personnel resources to run calculations for biomedical research, climate change modeling and even galaxy formation simulations.
Japan
Japan ranks number one. As of Nov 2011, the K Computer, based at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Japan was the first to clear 10 petaflops, beating its own record. Hardware includes 705,024 Fujitsu Sparc64 processor cores.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57324194-264/japanese-supercomputer-first-to-clear-10-petaflops/#ixzz1mwp3L6yU
US
The Blue Gen/L can do 0.5 Quadrillion operations per second, the most powerful in 2005-2008. The Blue Gen is deployed at Livermore, San Francisco where 263 supercomputers from the Top 500 list also reside.
The up and coming Sequoia is being built by IBM, for end 2012, capable of 20 quadrillion operations per second, that's 20 petaflops. The main challenges being to write software to run across all the chips amounting to 1.6 million processors 96 racks of 32 slim servers
I like the supercomputer made from many old model Sony PS3's in parallel used by the US Air Force for satellite imagery analysis, demonstrated years ago. Many researchers have already done the same though this is no longer possible with newer generation PS3.
China
In Nov 2010 China was number one with the Tianhe-1A doing 2.5 Quadrillion operations per second
by Dawning Information Industry Ltd. Tianhue means "The Milky Way", although surpassed within six weeks by Japan. Another amazing fact, China owns 74 of the 500 biggest supercomputers in the world
By 2020 the Chinese have something in the works to rival 500x Sequoia and 8x power of Tianhe
Cisco
Anyway it's not supercomputing but here is the fastest Cisco switch ever. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps6021/product_data_sheet0900aecd8017a72e.html I'm bringing this up simply because one has to consider connectivity to these super computers and all the glorious applications.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Linsanity of Super Lintendo
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| Valentine Cupcakes by Nora, Bliss & Co. in Calgary |
While most people were eating Valentine cupcakes, my very lucky sister in law was at the big Raptors and Knicks game at the Air Canada Center! I haven't seen Jeremy Lin play basketball, I don't know what he looks like, but he is all over my friends' facebook posts.
"So tonight, all the good little Asian boys and girls will put down their violins, close the piano covers, postpone Calculus club and put away their Chinese/Korean school homework. Bubble tea shops will be empty from east to west, and even Battle.net will be silent and barren. They will quiver with excitement over their bowls of rice as they turn on the TV. And for what? A basketball game. Yes, this is Linsanity." quote from buddy Thomas, about the you-know-who.
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| Linsanity Game on Valentines Day |
There's already a Wikipedia article written about him, throngs of asian girls and boys are drawn to him because he is the guy who made it big on the NBA from out of nowhere (well Harvard actually), he's smart, friendly, fairly tall for an asian guy, and is a Christian. I use the term asian because he's actually an American born Taiwanese, meaning his ancestors are from Taiwan and not China (very much different).
Day in the Life: Jeremy Lin. (Sneakers all in a row? Now that's hot).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLzrLXQIbwM
Anyways I really should go back to studying for the CCNA, practising piano, violin, playing Nintendo or whatever good asian kids are supposed to do.
Test Tips for CCNA, Simulators and a bullet-proof Guarantee!
1. Manage your time
The number one hint I have to give everyone: the CCNA Exam is a test of power and speed, you have to know your material solid and answer the questions quickly. The prof said that the number one reason for failure on the exam is not lack of preparation (I could argue with that) but rather, running out of time! You have remember to ask yourself, "Is this your final answer?" because once you click "yes" or "submit", there is no back button, you cannot go back!
2. Core Knowledge
Videos for ICND1 and ICND2 free on the Cisco Learning Network.
Here is a breakdown of the core areas the exam was testing, taken from my real score sheet in November 2011. I am not breaking any oaths or sharing any secrets about the exam.
A good collection of resources at www.cisco.com/go/ccna-study
3. Hands On Experience
Apparently the original purpose of CCNA was to certify someone already with the job experience as a Network Administrator, who has spent years on the job doing this. In fact Cisco never offered Bootcamp courses and it was the training delivery vendors that developed their own courses to cover relevant subjects, in preparation for the CCNA Exam. Now it seems like everyone is taking the boot camp courses: the newbies, managers, purchasers. The courses often come with extra lab time on the router simulation lab, but it is better to have your own equipment. Unfortunately not many people have access to a test lab or one with enough routers to generate any trouble to troubleshoot!
Packet Tracer is another program folks use for router simulation. My buddy recommends http://www.gns3.net/ and it's free, if you have your own IOS images then you're set.
4. Read the Fine Print
Rather I should say, read between the lines. For multiple choice questions, there will always be an obvious oddball answer, and perhaps one or two that are very close but there is something that makes one answer more correct or superior.Unless of course the question was, choose two then you should make sure you choose two.
If you're really pressed for time, well you still have to give an answer for every question. Make a guess, pick C or ACDC whatever random pattern you have to resort to in a bind.
5. Get it Right the First time...
However, heaven forbid if you should fall short of 825/ 1000, read the fine print on the vendor's exam guarantee. I took my bootcamp course with the Global Knowledge and I'd have to say their certification guarantee is bullet proof. Upon course completion you get one CCNA exam voucher and 10 hours of lab time with KAPLAN. If you have fail the exam, fax in the fail results and ask for a voucher for the retake exam (within one year of the course date). If you fail the second round, perhaps you should reconsider your career choice. JK! Global Knowledge offers a free retake of the course (provide your own course materials from the first run). Then I suppose the brave could do the exam a third time. Just remember you will have to recertifiy again in three years anyway.
The number one hint I have to give everyone: the CCNA Exam is a test of power and speed, you have to know your material solid and answer the questions quickly. The prof said that the number one reason for failure on the exam is not lack of preparation (I could argue with that) but rather, running out of time! You have remember to ask yourself, "Is this your final answer?" because once you click "yes" or "submit", there is no back button, you cannot go back!
2. Core Knowledge
Videos for ICND1 and ICND2 free on the Cisco Learning Network.
Here is a breakdown of the core areas the exam was testing, taken from my real score sheet in November 2011. I am not breaking any oaths or sharing any secrets about the exam.
- Describe how a network works
- Configure, verify, troubleshoot a switch with VLANs and interswitch communications
- Implement an IP addressing scheme and IP services to meet network requirements in a medium-size Enterprise branch office network
- Configure, verify, and troubleshoot basic router operation and routing on Cisco devices
- Explain and select the appropriate administrative tasks required for WLAN
- Identify security threats to a network and describe general methods to mitigate those threats
- Implement, verify and troubleshoot NAT and ACLs in a medium-size Enterprise branch office network
- Implement and verify WAN links
A good collection of resources at www.cisco.com/go/ccna-study
3. Hands On Experience
Apparently the original purpose of CCNA was to certify someone already with the job experience as a Network Administrator, who has spent years on the job doing this. In fact Cisco never offered Bootcamp courses and it was the training delivery vendors that developed their own courses to cover relevant subjects, in preparation for the CCNA Exam. Now it seems like everyone is taking the boot camp courses: the newbies, managers, purchasers. The courses often come with extra lab time on the router simulation lab, but it is better to have your own equipment. Unfortunately not many people have access to a test lab or one with enough routers to generate any trouble to troubleshoot!
Packet Tracer is another program folks use for router simulation. My buddy recommends http://www.gns3.net/ and it's free, if you have your own IOS images then you're set.
4. Read the Fine Print
Rather I should say, read between the lines. For multiple choice questions, there will always be an obvious oddball answer, and perhaps one or two that are very close but there is something that makes one answer more correct or superior.Unless of course the question was, choose two then you should make sure you choose two.
If you're really pressed for time, well you still have to give an answer for every question. Make a guess, pick C or ACDC whatever random pattern you have to resort to in a bind.
5. Get it Right the First time...
However, heaven forbid if you should fall short of 825/ 1000, read the fine print on the vendor's exam guarantee. I took my bootcamp course with the Global Knowledge and I'd have to say their certification guarantee is bullet proof. Upon course completion you get one CCNA exam voucher and 10 hours of lab time with KAPLAN. If you have fail the exam, fax in the fail results and ask for a voucher for the retake exam (within one year of the course date). If you fail the second round, perhaps you should reconsider your career choice. JK! Global Knowledge offers a free retake of the course (provide your own course materials from the first run). Then I suppose the brave could do the exam a third time. Just remember you will have to recertifiy again in three years anyway.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Video Games in Military Training
I really should be studying for the CCNA Exam or building my test network to complete some router configurations. Perhaps I could find a good router simulation software, though nothing beats having to set up all the wiring and cabling by hand. Nonetheless, are there software packages for soldiers to do military training in a simulated environment, such as video games?
I stumbled upon an article debating whether a gamers make good soldiers. I've seen world class flight simulator programs made by the Canadian firm CAE. Reading on, I also discovered the Army's Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) to simulate the sound and feel of the different firearms used on the job for target practise. Well what happened to the firing ranges? I guess this makes an environmentally sound alternative without spent casings to clean up. The EST also provides possible scenarios to help soldiers make life changing decisions on when to shoot and when not to shoot. There was another simulator software called the Virtual Convoy Operations Trainer (VCOT) and DARWARS Ambush seems to be a big hit. DARWARS allows users to add or modify scenarios with their own learned experience.
Here's the link because it was such a page turner: http://science.howstuffworks.com/gamer-soldier2.htm
Now goes the question, if I played my daily dose of Wii golf, would that train me to be a world class golfer. Well I'd really have to say no because you need to feel the true weight of an expensive golf club, you'd have to feel the action and reaction of hitting a real ball, and experience real wind and air flow to influence the true path of the ball. There's no way to get that from a game.
In the same way, just studying for this exam on paper won't do. We don't want a CCNA "paper cert". Time to solve some real world router problems!
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| Source: Friend's Facebook post |
I stumbled upon an article debating whether a gamers make good soldiers. I've seen world class flight simulator programs made by the Canadian firm CAE. Reading on, I also discovered the Army's Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) to simulate the sound and feel of the different firearms used on the job for target practise. Well what happened to the firing ranges? I guess this makes an environmentally sound alternative without spent casings to clean up. The EST also provides possible scenarios to help soldiers make life changing decisions on when to shoot and when not to shoot. There was another simulator software called the Virtual Convoy Operations Trainer (VCOT) and DARWARS Ambush seems to be a big hit. DARWARS allows users to add or modify scenarios with their own learned experience.
Here's the link because it was such a page turner: http://science.howstuffworks.com/gamer-soldier2.htm
Now goes the question, if I played my daily dose of Wii golf, would that train me to be a world class golfer. Well I'd really have to say no because you need to feel the true weight of an expensive golf club, you'd have to feel the action and reaction of hitting a real ball, and experience real wind and air flow to influence the true path of the ball. There's no way to get that from a game.
In the same way, just studying for this exam on paper won't do. We don't want a CCNA "paper cert". Time to solve some real world router problems!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Canadian Navy invades Video game space
I always like it when the PM refers to Canadians coast to coast to coast. It reasserts Canada's sovereignty and three ocean boundaries. I also like how board games sometimes turn Geo-political too. I remember playing a good game of Mission Risk and Risk 2210 and the countries and nations we see today have boundaries barely recognizable, including Quebec as it's own sovereign entity. The moon is up for grabs and there are water colonies. Then there was the fiasco of Parker Brothers Monopoly Metropolitan Cities edition where coveted properties are labelled by city name and country. That was the case until the name Jerusalem, Israel became a hot issue and the game reverted to city names only. I believe Montreal and Toronto made the list! What is the capital of Canada again?
A Norway based game developer has launched a new video game set in 2030 when NATO and Russian forces go head to head for Arctic Sovereignty. Doesn't sound that futuristic to me. Especially the best ship Canada has to offer is the HMCS Halifax class frigate built in the 80's. Seriously? They couldn't come up with a better battleship for Canada, even a fictional upgrade? The game is called Naval War: Arctic Circle due for launch in the Spring 2013. Anyway here is the article I read but I want do dive into this more. Perhaps someday when Canada owns more than four rusty submarines.
A Norway based game developer has launched a new video game set in 2030 when NATO and Russian forces go head to head for Arctic Sovereignty. Doesn't sound that futuristic to me. Especially the best ship Canada has to offer is the HMCS Halifax class frigate built in the 80's. Seriously? They couldn't come up with a better battleship for Canada, even a fictional upgrade? The game is called Naval War: Arctic Circle due for launch in the Spring 2013. Anyway here is the article I read but I want do dive into this more. Perhaps someday when Canada owns more than four rusty submarines.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Cisco ICND1 Flashcard: Are you tech savvy about DSL, the Last Mile, NAT and PAT?
The topic of DSL was covered in the CCNA Bootcamp course as a requirement for the ICND1 Exam.
Internet Resellers
TekSavvy talk has been making the rounds lately on forums at work and online. They're in the news among the other victims of the ongoing CRTC ruling on the "usage based billing" or wholesale billing regulations from large ISPs to small ISPs. I decided to take a look at what folks were talking about - really cheap rates for high speed internet, long distance calling, residential phone and even cable at much lower rates than the standard Bell or Rogers! However the ruling will make unlimited packages impossible or too expensive, as the cost of using Bell or Internet backbone services is transferred to the consumer, say for example Bell will charge TekSavvy or Acanac an extra $22/ Mbit or 22k for 1 Gbps link. The other thing is I didn't quite understand right away, why when the TekSavvy customers had a problem and they called up TekSavvy tech support, a service call would be sent out to Bell or Rogers. Ok I get it, Bell or Rogers still provide the DSL or last mile connection. TekSavvy is an "internet reseller" or ISP.
There is a business arguement for open competition that folks are feeling very strongly about for Open Media debate and a petition. My article is purely about the electrons not the politics. Back to the basics.
What is DSL and the Last Mile?
The story begins with the telephone cabling we are already familiar with. It's copper and can carry 300 Hz to 1 MHz of data. However the human voice is only using the 300Hz to 3 kHz portion of the link, DSL can use the remainder 3 kHz to 1 MHz for high speed data, "always on". DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line, and this allows the packets to be sent over copper, owned by an ISP. It is not a shared medium, each user has his own direct connection to the DSLAM. It's scalable, adding new users does not impede the network performance. DSL can be used simultaneously as voice.
The cabling part there is also refered to as the local-loop or last-mile or the last step of the local telephone network connection. DSL may be added incrementally in any area with some distance limitations, but is not universally available everywhere in all geographic locations. Equipment required includes the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) and DSL-Access Multiplexer (Time Division Multiplexer). There is a physical geographic limitation of 5.5km distance for ASDL, and some folks would consider the "always on" aspect of the DLS as hackable; well whatever.
DSL can be used by a large company to support the "work at home" workers. The worker cannot connect to the enterprise network directly; instead he first connects to the ISP and then an IP connection is made from the Internet to the enterprise network.
There are two categories of DSL
DSL places the data upload and download above the 4kHz window, allowing voice and data transmission to occur simulataneously on the same DSL service.
ADSL Asychronous, higher download bandwidth than upload (less than 5.5 km distance)
VDSL, VDSL 2 is very high data rate
250 Mbps at the source
100 Mbps at 0.5km
500 Mbps at 1km
G Lite, G 992.2
ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL 2+
Consumer DSL aka G.Lite or G992.2
SDSL Synchronous, same capacity both directions
HDSL high data rate DSL
ISDN DSL(IDSL)
G.shdsl, symmetric high bit data rate DSL
In all instances, it's WAN access. It is not cable; cable is best described as a bus network topology, fiber under the street, copper to the home. (Why do I have this in my notes?)
Transceiver - connects the computer of the worker to the DSL, usually a modem with USB or Ethernet cable. Newer DSL transceiver can be installed on routers with 10/100 switch ports for home and office use.
DSLAM - located at Central Office of the carrier. DSLAM combines individual DSL connections into one high capacity link to the ISP and Internet.
Assigning an IP Address
Used to be that when you turned on your computer the ISP would assign an IP address to your computer by DHCP, and then when you were finished with your connection the computer would return the IP address to the pool. The only thing is, people don't usually turn off the computer so this IP address will almost permanently taken. I suppose if it was a work computer, the network administrator could use Private and Public IP addresses translation.
The global internet is like a large WAN. Servers need an IP address from the ISP and interfaces - which are manualy assigned by the ISP or dynamically assigned. When you have private IP address and need to go on line. The IP addresses will have to be translated by NAT from an Internal lab to the outside world.
Next Topic:
NAT, PAT and Overloading
Internet Resellers
TekSavvy talk has been making the rounds lately on forums at work and online. They're in the news among the other victims of the ongoing CRTC ruling on the "usage based billing" or wholesale billing regulations from large ISPs to small ISPs. I decided to take a look at what folks were talking about - really cheap rates for high speed internet, long distance calling, residential phone and even cable at much lower rates than the standard Bell or Rogers! However the ruling will make unlimited packages impossible or too expensive, as the cost of using Bell or Internet backbone services is transferred to the consumer, say for example Bell will charge TekSavvy or Acanac an extra $22/ Mbit or 22k for 1 Gbps link. The other thing is I didn't quite understand right away, why when the TekSavvy customers had a problem and they called up TekSavvy tech support, a service call would be sent out to Bell or Rogers. Ok I get it, Bell or Rogers still provide the DSL or last mile connection. TekSavvy is an "internet reseller" or ISP.
There is a business arguement for open competition that folks are feeling very strongly about for Open Media debate and a petition. My article is purely about the electrons not the politics. Back to the basics.
 |
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The story begins with the telephone cabling we are already familiar with. It's copper and can carry 300 Hz to 1 MHz of data. However the human voice is only using the 300Hz to 3 kHz portion of the link, DSL can use the remainder 3 kHz to 1 MHz for high speed data, "always on". DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line, and this allows the packets to be sent over copper, owned by an ISP. It is not a shared medium, each user has his own direct connection to the DSLAM. It's scalable, adding new users does not impede the network performance. DSL can be used simultaneously as voice.
The cabling part there is also refered to as the local-loop or last-mile or the last step of the local telephone network connection. DSL may be added incrementally in any area with some distance limitations, but is not universally available everywhere in all geographic locations. Equipment required includes the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) and DSL-Access Multiplexer (Time Division Multiplexer). There is a physical geographic limitation of 5.5km distance for ASDL, and some folks would consider the "always on" aspect of the DLS as hackable; well whatever.
DSL can be used by a large company to support the "work at home" workers. The worker cannot connect to the enterprise network directly; instead he first connects to the ISP and then an IP connection is made from the Internet to the enterprise network.
There are two categories of DSL
DSL places the data upload and download above the 4kHz window, allowing voice and data transmission to occur simulataneously on the same DSL service.
ADSL Asychronous, higher download bandwidth than upload (less than 5.5 km distance)
VDSL, VDSL 2 is very high data rate
250 Mbps at the source
100 Mbps at 0.5km
500 Mbps at 1km
G Lite, G 992.2
ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL 2+
Consumer DSL aka G.Lite or G992.2
SDSL Synchronous, same capacity both directions
HDSL high data rate DSL
ISDN DSL(IDSL)
G.shdsl, symmetric high bit data rate DSL
In all instances, it's WAN access. It is not cable; cable is best described as a bus network topology, fiber under the street, copper to the home. (Why do I have this in my notes?)
Transceiver - connects the computer of the worker to the DSL, usually a modem with USB or Ethernet cable. Newer DSL transceiver can be installed on routers with 10/100 switch ports for home and office use.
DSLAM - located at Central Office of the carrier. DSLAM combines individual DSL connections into one high capacity link to the ISP and Internet.
Assigning an IP Address
Used to be that when you turned on your computer the ISP would assign an IP address to your computer by DHCP, and then when you were finished with your connection the computer would return the IP address to the pool. The only thing is, people don't usually turn off the computer so this IP address will almost permanently taken. I suppose if it was a work computer, the network administrator could use Private and Public IP addresses translation.
The global internet is like a large WAN. Servers need an IP address from the ISP and interfaces - which are manualy assigned by the ISP or dynamically assigned. When you have private IP address and need to go on line. The IP addresses will have to be translated by NAT from an Internal lab to the outside world.
Next Topic:
NAT, PAT and Overloading
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