Re: [**EXTERNAL**] Re: Half Fibre Pair

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/27/21 18:11, Rod Beck wrote:

What is interesting is this new deep sea design. In the old days 
cables had 4 to 8 pairs max. Now I am seeing Orange talking about 18 
pairs and 24 pairs. With more widely regeneration.


Because of the way current submarine cables are being built (mainly by 
the content folk, less by traditional telco's), limiting the number of 
fibre pairs does not make sense anymore, especially for them since they 
would be partnering with some carriers along the route.


I mean, you're already laying it. Fibre, itself, doesn't cost that 
much... the cost is elsewhere.


Mark.

Re: [**EXTERNAL**] Re: Half Fibre Pair

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/27/21 16:52, Fox, Barbara wrote:

I asked a submarine guy how much the fibers can carry because this 
sounded low to me.  His response:




That was just an example to illustrate the commercial contracting, not 
the technical capabilities.


Cables currently being laid in the sea are going in at anywhere between 
16 and 24 fibre pairs. The design capacity per fibre pair of these 
systems is 20Tbps, with a possible 480Tbps of Shannon limit capability.


Mark.

Re: Half Fibre Pair

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/27/21 13:39, Rod Beck wrote:

How much spectrum is a half fibre? It must be standardized in some 
fashion.


It would be based on the amount of capacity each fibre in the overall 
system can carry across a given line system span.


So say a cable system is able to carry 960Gbps per fibre pair, and it 
has 5 fibre pairs, that means a half fibre pair purchased by one of the 
consortium members would be 480Gbps.


It is also possible for a consortium member to own a full + a fractional 
fibre pair, e.g., two and a-half fibre pairs. In such a contract, for 
example, say a 24 fibre-pair system could carry 1.2Tbps per fibre pair, 
that member would have 3Tbps of capacity.


Mark.

Re: Half Fibre Pair

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/26/21 22:51, Rod Beck wrote:

Can someone explain to me what is a half fibre pair? I took it 
literally to mean a single fibre strand but someone insisted it was a 
large quantity of spectrum. Please illuminate. On or off list as you 
please.


It is language used in the submarine world, where a member of the 
consortium may not be able to afford a full fibre pair on the system.


Don't take it literally :-).

Mark.

Re: Uganda Communications Commission shutdown order

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/19/21 17:15, Sean Donelan wrote:


There is only one problem in engineering -- scaling.

Country internet shutdowns never go to zero.  There's usually 5% to 
15% left over connectivity. There are always a few embassies, 
international companies, NGOs and even government offices itself with 
left over service.


Satellites (even next-gen) are great for small outposts, ships, oil 
platforms.  But have scaling problems, i.e. billing millions of 
customers without the government noticing.  Large capacity earth 
stations and cable landing sites are noticable.


The mobile phone carriers and ISPs serving the other million(s) 
customers will obey the government shutdown orders. Its very difficult 
(cost, techincally, access) for the ordinary consumer to get around 
their own government's orders.  Yes, the rich can always afford/get 
sat-phones and sat-modems.


When an autocratic government notices too many people using something 
else, it can become very painful for those subscribers.


And of course, international treaties (ITU) covering satellites and 
international radio transmissions are written by governments.


Satellite solutions are not ideal for large scale use-cases. These would 
be for the odd business, the odd whale, that sort of thing.


At scale, satellite doesn't work anymore, not even in Africa.

That said, it's easy to hit people where it hurts by getting the mobile 
operators to block access, especially in Africa. That is how most people 
get (and stay) connected. For a tiresome gubbermint, the extra 5% - 15% 
connectivity that remains after all the blocking dust has settled, is a 
small price to pay to keep the remaining 85% - 95% disconnected.


Mark.

Re: Uganda Communications Commission shutdown order

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/19/21 16:28, Denys Fedoryshchenko wrote:



Starlink needs expensive modem, that is not only too expensive for 
such countries, hard to import, but can be also reason for very long 
prison sentence.
Some nanosatellite with amplified BLE compatible frontend might do 
miracles. It is impossible to block ISM band countrywide, anybody can 
climb a hill and point mobile to sky and receive regional news. No 
need even for custom software, just any software that can receive BLE 
data (development/debugging tools).
As kind of PoC, Norby cubesat with LoRa telemetry is being received 
over the world on 1000+km distances on DIY antennas.


Satellite is hard to control, and there are several ways to get it into 
a country and have it function for purpose without any real drama.


It's where we came from :-)...

Mark.

Re: Uganda Communications Commission shutdown order

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/19/21 11:49, adamv0...@netconsultings.com wrote:


Hopefully starlink and other similar projects will help bring these numbers
down a bit.
But I think starlink has been already outlawed in some countries?


Moonshine satellite links abound in many places they shouldn't be. It's 
cops & robbers stuff...


Mark.

Re: Uganda Communications Commission shutdown order

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/13/21 23:39, Alejandro Acosta wrote:



So sad to read this. How is it possible to think this is good to 
anybody?.., ok, maybe to the very high politicians of the country, but 
no one else. Not less than 44 million people negative affected.



That's it.


Just to give you a scale of the problem - ISP's were instructed to 
terminate services at their edge. So ATM's were also down, i.e., you 
can't pick up cash if you wanted to.


Mark.

Fwd: [apops] APRICOT 2021 call for presentations reminder

[Mark Tinka]

FYI.

Mark.


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:[apops] APRICOT 2021 call for presentations reminder
Date:   Tue, 19 Jan 2021 17:59:19 +1000
From:   Philip Smith 
Organization:   Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Operational Technologies
To: ap...@apops.net



Hi everyone,

This is a short reminder that the call for papers for APRICOT 2021 is 
still open and the PC is eagerly awaiting your presentation or tutorial 
proposals. Please do not wait until the last minute, as the PC is 
filling the programme on a first-come first-served basis.


Please submit on-line at:

http://papers.apricot.net/user/login.php?event=128

Note that APRICOT 2021 is a virtual event, entirely on-line.

Because of this, the PC will only accept Peering and IXP Personals prior 
to the event starting. Submissions must be of a single slide listing the 
operator's PeeringDB entry. Please use the form at 
https://2021.apricot.net/program/peering-personals/ to submit your 
Peering or IXP Personal for APRICOT 2021.


Thanks!

philip
--
___
apops mailing list
ap...@apops.net
https://mailman.apnic.net/mailman/listinfo/apops
Website: www.apops.net
.

Re: Parler

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/10/21 16:09, Mike Bolitho wrote:

It has nothing to do with networking. Their decision was necessarily 
political. If you can specifically bring up an issue, beyond 
speculative, on how their new chosen CDN is somehow now causing 
congestion or routing issues on the public internet, then great. But 
as of now, that isn't even a thing. It's just best to leave it alone 
because it will devolve into chaos.


I think the days where engineers felt that they didn't need to 
understand (to some degree) what happened on the penthouse floor are 
dead & gone.


If you haven't yet realized this, eish...

Mark.

Re: Parler

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/10/21 15:43, Mike Bolitho wrote:


Can we please not go down this rabbit hole on here? List admins?


Why not? Seems terribly relevant to us.

Mark.

Re: WhatsApp's New Policy Has...

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/8/21 19:26, Drew Weaver wrote:


This might be anecdotal but there is a ton of debate about whether or not 
Telegram is encrypted.

This is not anecdotal though, on Wednesday night I saw an interview with a security expert on CNBC 
and he indicated that they knew that the riots in DC were going to happen because they had been 
"monitoring the extremists Telegram groups". What they didn't say was whether or not they 
were simply members of those groups, or monitoring from a "networking/technology" sense. 
I'm not sure if Signal does groups the same way that Telegram does but that one is widely believed 
to be much better than Telegram as far as privacy and security.

Telegram is a tremendously useful (and free service) for connecting to 
Elastalert for all manner of notifications, but we have since moved to Teams 
for that just because we can't really be sure what is going on under the hood 
with Telegram.

Just some things that I have observed, not trying to start a holy war.


My rudimentary understanding of Telegram is that group messages are 
client-server, which is why new members can read old posts when they 
join a group.


Signal, on the other hand, is p2p for members within the group. No 
messages are ever sent to their cloud.


Mark.

Re: WhatsApp's New Policy Has...

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/8/21 19:00, Ge DUPIN wrote:

There is also Telegram, which is quite good 


My rough formula:

    Signal > Telegram > iMessage > WhatsApp

Mark.

Re: WhatsApp's New Policy Has...

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/8/21 18:56, Andy Ringsmuth wrote:


Same boat here. I don’t even have a FB account but I am in a handful of 
WhatsApp groups.


Ditched my Facebook account in 2012, after some glitch posted private 
messages to one's time line. Never looked back.


Mark.

WhatsApp's New Policy Has...

[Mark Tinka]

... finally been the final push all my friends needed to dump it and 
move to Signal.


Several of the WhatsApp groups I'm on have, as of this morning, been 
disbanded and re-launched on Signal.


Facebook say the new policy applies to business accounts, but heck, the 
cat's out the bag and gone.


What's most amazing to me is that a lot more people seem to be a tad 
more concerned about their privacy, when they ordinarily wouldn't have.


Mark.

Re: nike.com->nike.com/ca

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/6/21 23:41, Kain, Becki (.) wrote:

At home, using 8.8.8.8, if I goto www.nike.com , 
I get rerouted to nike.com/ca. I cleared the dns cache (I’m running 
Catalina macos) and rebooted just because.  Anyone else seen a 
weirdism on this?  thanks




What happens if you use your ISP's resolvers, instead?

Mark.

Re: NDAA passed: Internet and Online Streaming Services Emergency Alert Study

[Mark Tinka]

On 1/2/21 22:40, Sabri Berisha wrote:


Aliens always invade New York, so I'm safe up here :)


I thought that was Roswell :-).

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 21:44, James R Cutler wrote:

Supplying any configurable residential CPE would not necessarily be 
cheaper. The tracking and accounting for the hardware and qualifying 
said hardware, not to mention truck rolls for hardware updates, could 
well be more costly than fielding support calls (which would likely 
not decrease anyway).


Probably why the free plan doesn't include a router :-).

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 19:00, Mike Hammett wrote:

People love throwing their own router behind whatever Internet 
connection they have. It almost never fails to cause a problem.


I'd only do it if I could guarantee the ISP's CPE will run in Bridge 
mode, or if I can get access to their router to fiddle with.


Router upon router is just bad news.

Google's OnHub (and by extension, their new wi-fi routers) treat Bridge 
mode as evil. At least, it's there.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 18:50, Aaron Wendel wrote:

The majority of our customers are still on Brocade MLXs.  We're in the 
process of upgrading all our equipment to Arista switches to 
accommodate the increased demand for 40G and 100G ports as well as 
implement 400G ports.


Unfortunately, switch pricing hasn't kept up with trends in the FTTx space.

You'd think major switch vendors would want to corner this market, but 
it seems the data centre business is just too sweet.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 18:42, Aaron Wendel wrote:

Oh, we still get calls about speed issues. It's always wonderful when 
someone puts their own 10 year old Linksys WRT54G and double NATs 
behind our CPE then sends in a speed test wondering why they're only 
getting 10Mbits on their Gbit line.  We get those ALL the time. :)


I'd be keen to know if they are a large proportion of your support 
calls, on the whole.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 15:42, Darin Steffl wrote:

Oh they'll get plenty of support calls still, almost all about wifi 
issues. They'll be connected to 2.4ghz on an old device, run a 
speedtest and only get 30 mbps and complain they're not getting 950 
mbps on their free connection.


WiFi issues will always cause support calls no matter what isp. The 
denser the area, the more wifi interference that exists and will drive 
more calls.


I didn't say those won't come in, I meant that I don't expect them to be 
the majority.



Again, it seems nice to be able to do this but most companies don't 
have idle resources sitting around to give away things for free. We 
have zero extra time to work for free.


Didn't know you had joined KC Fiber.

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 04:41, Keith Medcalf wrote:


Are you sure that is not related to "residential services" being of a generally lower quality than business services?  It has 
been my experience that shoddy service generates higher need for "support" than does "non-shoddy" service.  In this 
regard, the price for "business" services should be less than "residential service" by a couple of orders of magnitude 
since it costs orders of magnitude more money to "support" shoddy services than non-shoddy services.


Considering that Aaron said 98% of their residential customers are on 
the free plan, and that they use Active-E with every 1Gbps customer 
getting a proper switch port, I'd hazard the bulk of their support 
queries to be non-techie customers needing software support (grandma, et 
al), or fibres being cut.


It wouldn't seem like they'd be getting calls about "speed" issues, 
which are most annoying ones :-).


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/29/20 02:06, Matthew Petach wrote:



Mark,

I think you may have misunderstood Keith's comment about
it being "all a matter of time-frame."

He's right--when the sun consumes all the hydrogen in
the hydrogen-to-helium fusion process and begins to
expand into a red dwarf, that's it; there's no going
backwards, no putting the genie back into the bottle,
no "renewing" the sun.  It's purely a one-way trip.

Now, as far as humans go, we're far more likely to be
extinct due to other reasons before we come anywhere
near to that point.

But as far as the physics goes, the conversion of biomatter
into petrochemicals in the ground is more "renewable" than
the conversion of hydrogen into helium in the sun.

It's just that we're far more likely to hit the near-term
shortage crunch of petrochemicals in the ground than
we are the longer-term exhaustion of hydrogen in the
core of the sun.   ;)


You're right - I misunderstood Keith's comment about that.

I try to keep it real :-).

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 22:02, Mel Beckman wrote:


Darin,

Surely you at least give the paying customers priority over the 
non-paying? It’s one thing to say “I have to write paychecks no matter 
what”. It’s another to say “I’ll give away my support to free 
customers AND degrade support for paying customers as a result.” Your 
tech support guy “walking Grandma through getting her email” is 
necessarily not accessible for the duration to paying customers.


This means your staffing must be large enough to never have any 
queuing, or you’re giving away your paying customers' time to 
non-paying customers. Neither approach is scalable in a competitive 
business environment, because SOMEBODY is paying for all those 
resources, and if it’s your customers, they will buy elsewhere. Your 
approach only work until you run out of other people’s money.


It's quite fascinating to me how some folk are trying their darnedest to 
fit someone else's creativity into their own mold, so it's more 
understandable to them :-). We live in an age of curiousity, which has 
quickly replaced the age of expertise. If you don't know, ask...


The MUA many (if not all) of us are using to read this has been obtained 
for free, and with ongoing support, no less. I'd like to see someone 
dish out cash for a commercial alternative.


As are a ton of apps and services we use in our daily lives.

Pretty sure someone in the infrastructure space figuring out some 
creativity that actually improves someone else's life with minimal 
burden either way is right up there with, "That's alright with us"...


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 22:24, Aaron Wendel wrote:

We still build when needed. We're in the process of building to 700 
new apartments so we can provide them with free service.  We're 
actually pulling 576 strands into the basement of one building to 
backhaul each apartment to it's own switch port in the new hut we just 
deployed to service that new development.  (we don't use a PON 
system.  Everyone has a dedicated switch port.)  Also, keep in mind 
that this isn't all we do.  This is a very small part of a much bigger 
pie.  So I agree with you.  If this was it then it would make no 
sense.  When you look at all the pieces together it makes perfect sense.


* Drops mic *

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 20:47, Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail) wrote:

A company doing what you describe is one I’d really love to work for.

May that philosophy of business be richly blessed.


Couldn't have said it better myself!

Needless to say, when you work with passion and authenticity, somehow, 
the millions follow. You can't keep them away.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 19:48, Darin Steffl wrote:


Aaron,

The "Free" service doesn't cover your cost of support which is much 
higher for residential than any business customer. Our residential 
customers call at least 15x more often compared to business customers 
compared on a 1:1 ratio.


I honestly can't fathom providing free residential service because we 
make enough money on the business side of things. You should be 
charging something, at least $20-30 per month.


Why "should" they be doing anything?

If their Metro fibre business allows them some change to prop the rest 
of their community up in a way that does not put them out, who are we to 
say they need to conform to what our "gold standard" of economics is?


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 19:15, Aaron Wendel wrote:

The $300 covers the equipment and the time to send someone out to a 
house to install it.  If $300 is too much you can pay in 12 
installments of $25.


The TIK alone costs us about $250.


Still love it :-)!

Thanks for sharing.

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 19:11, Aaron Wendel wrote:

Actually our free service doesn't have limitations, has an SLA, no 
time/term restrictions, a CPE, support, etc.  I explained the "why" in 
a different post so I won't go over it again.  98% of our residential 
customers are on the free plan.


Guess my conjecturbation was not shy to show up :-).

Thanks for clearing up. It's great to see that you are relying on your 
cash-cow to be able to extend this free service to the less fortunate!


That's purpose!

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 19:01, Aaron Wendel wrote:


Darin,

We charge a $300 one time install charge to cover our costs on the 1G 
service (which can be paid out at $25/mo if you can't afford $300 all 
at once).


The area we serve is mainly lower and lower-middle-class income with 
an 80% transient population.  Seven years ago, when "digital divide" 
and "digital literacy" were the buzz words, we instituted our "free" 
1G service in an effort to level the playing field for the population 
who, otherwise, can't afford internet at all, let alone at that 
speed.  Until recently we didn't charge for residential service at any 
tier.  Rather than putting in "income tiers", making people fill out 
applications for assistance, etc. we just made it free for everyone.  
We also provide free 100G service to the local school district as well 
as free service to local government, police, fire stations (Firemen 
(and women) had to pay for their own internet to use while they were 
on duty before us), library, churches and other non-profits.


That's the why.  The how is that we control a LOT of fiber in the 
metro area that is in use by a lot of very large providers that 
everyone's heard of.  We make enough money doing that so we don't feel 
the need to charge the residences for a basic level of service.


I love it!

Well done, and really creative!

Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 16:57, Mel Beckman wrote:

It’s not just the lithium load in the environment that is of concern. 
As early as 2018 the US EPA had collected data on the incidence of 
so-called “hot fires” caused by lithium batteries in the waste stream. 
So far, nobody has been killed. But it’s only a matter of time before 
someone is, given that there are no thermal protection measures built 
into the cells themselves, only into a functioning product. But the 
industry has dismissed self-extinguishing batteries as too impactful 
on weight/performance ratio.


https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-03/documents/timpane_epa_li_slides312_ll_1.pdf 



Certainly, poor handling as part of disposal of spent Li-Ion batteries 
is likely not well appreciated. Worse when you are dealing with 
stationery storage like residential, commercial and utility applications.


It's a terrible idea to handle Li-Ion battery disposal without 
expertise, understanding and training. The fact is that for the 
pervasiveness and proliferation of Li-Ion technology,  its safety is not 
a very well understood in many respects, with physical handling being, 
perhaps, the least appreciated.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/28/20 05:29, Brandon Martin wrote:



Interestingly, the Lithium content is the, in theory, valuable part of 
it. There's not actually much Li in a typical Li-Ion rechargeable 
battery (much less than a Li metal primary cell), but my understanding 
is that it's enough to have people interested considering that we're 
already basically consuming the world's Lithium supply just about as 
fast as we can economically mine and refine it.  However, that may 
account for the apparently low recyleable content of a given battery. 
By mass and volume, it's mostly electrodes, which are common metals, 
and paper separator which is worthless.


I would imagine that, as "dead" Li-Ion cells become more available and 
demand presumably continues to rise (absent a better battery tech), 
folks will get more serious about recycling the electrolyte.


A lot of the development of Li-Ion batteries has gone into cost 
reduction. Very little of that has been spent on recyclablity. The lack 
of regulation around this hasn't helped either.


However, there are a number of initiatives afoot that may see this 
improve in the next decade. Moreover, the theory is that the nickel, 
cobalt, manganese and lithium available in spent batteries is not unlike 
highly-enriched ore. If these metals can be recycled at scale, it lowers 
the environmental impact (less need to mine natural ores), as well 
reduce the cost of the new batteries.


It's one area to watch.

For the moment, Li-Ion batteries are not terribly clean from a 
recyclability standpoint. But as renewable storage goes, it's the least 
of all evils that has great potential to be cleaner from ongoing 
development.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/27/20 21:56, Keith Medcalf wrote:


Me too.  On top of that, diesel and gasoline are pretty reliable.  Though some people may argue about 
"renewables" the fact is that it is all a matter of time-frame.  Solar power, for example, is not renewable.  
Once it is all used up, it will not "renew" itself -- and this "using up" process is quite 
independent of our usage of it, as it happens.  The time to depletion may be somewhat long, but it still has a time to 
depletion.  Oil and Gas, however, is a "renewable" resource and as a mere physical and chemical process it is 
occurring at this very moment.


Well, the sun can't be "used up". You just have to wait 12hrs - 15hrs 
before you can see it again :-).


Seriously, though, solar != storage. You can have solar (power) without 
storage. It's not very useful when you have a grid outage, or on days 
with low irradiation, but for what it's worth, it will do its thing.


Renewables is not about lasting forever, but about lasting for as long 
as they can with minimal impact to the environment. Economically and/or 
physically.


Having spent some time on this, for me, it's about comfort, and quality 
of life. If you look at renewables as pure cost-benefit analysis (to the 
Economics majors, that's RoI), you'll be sorely disappointed.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/27/20 21:51, Sabri Berisha wrote:


Netflix has a documentary on it, "Fire In Paradise". Gives me the chills
every time I watch it.


I'll have a sniff. Thanks!

Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/27/20 19:49, Michael Thomas wrote:

We can't get enough solar panels on the roof to charge a battery big 
enough to handle a multi-day outage, and the battery as quoted is only 
charged from the panels, not from the mains. It's easy enough to get a 
transfer switch though for the battery subpanel to hook the generator 
up to. If I really wanted to get fancy, I could supply the generator 
from our house propane tank, but it's not that hard to just use the 
normal 5 gallon type tanks.


Fair enough.

Naturally, if you're looking at multi-day outages, then you'll likely 
reduce your load quite substantially for the period, allowing you to 
keep the battery running until the following morning when the sun comes up.


But yes, in your situation, a multi-day outage would not be that 
different from an off-grid self-generation scenario; in which case, a 
generator is necessary to recharge batteries, particularly on cloudy days.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/27/20 18:57, Baldur Norddahl wrote:



Here in the civilised world we bury the wires ;-)


I'm certain every country has a combination of both... one of those more 
than the other in some places, but a combo nonetheless.


Ultimately, it's most unlikely that any utility company is going to 
serve the growing needs of the world, as a going concern. If there is a 
chance you can self-produce, to some extent, that'd be worth looking into.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/27/20 18:14, Michael Thomas wrote:

We have both, and are going to get a battery. But the battery would 
probably only be good for about a day which is not enough, especially 
with these planned shutoffs because they have to inspect their wire 
plant in daylight.


If you can add some solar panels to that, you would be in a better 
position to prolong the battery's utility.


I'd say dump the generator, and invest that money in solar panels, 
rather. Batteries are way more costly than panels, and if you can have 
both, you're going to be better off in the long run.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 20:48, Darin Steffl wrote:


Aaron,

One simple question. Why on earth would you offer free internet 
service? How and why? Your site show 1 Gig symmetrical for free when 
you should be a minimum of $65 per month to be competitive.


They also ask for no monthly fee after a single payment of US$300.

Considering the 2Gbps package costs US$49.95, you'd guess they'd value 
the 1Gbps service at, say US$27/month, give or take.


So that US$300 provides a bit of coverage, perhaps 1 year, in which time 
they'd have likely upgraded the customer.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 20:48, Darin Steffl wrote:


Aaron,

One simple question. Why on earth would you offer free internet 
service? How and why? Your site show 1 Gig symmetrical for free when 
you should be a minimum of $65 per month to be competitive.




For me, looks like a loss-leader to reel customers in, perhaps with some 
limitations, no guarantees, time/term restrictions, no CPE, no support, 
e.t.c., that make a "smooth" upgrade to 2Gbps or 3Gbps more sensible.


My theory would be that getting customers on to the platform is the 
hardest step. Once they're on, pivoting them isn't difficult, 
particularly if you nabbed them from a competitor that was charging them 
some $$ for 10Mbps.


Think about it, they don't offer a "Multi-Gigabit Wireless Router" with 
the 1Gbps service. Chances are the customers who choose this package 
either have a crappy device, or will likely buy a crappy device on their 
own. They'd never trouble the 1Gbps product, probably call KC Fiber for 
to complain about not getting 1Gbps, upon which KC Fiber recommend their 
own CPE, a more guaranteed package, e.t.c., and in comes the 2Gbps or 
higher, revenue-generating service.


One the network side, it's just the same port, different (cheap) optic. 
A cheap port in use for free is better than an unused port, if the 
switch and fibre are already installed, and at less than 60% take-up.


It's creative, I like it!



Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 23:57, Michael Thomas wrote:



Yeah, it burned somebody's house to a crisp here last year around 
here. It certainly makes the case why leaving professionals in charge 
of power issues is the better idea. although with pg it's a tough 
call, my telco not so much.


I considered a generator at some point, for home back up.

In the end, and for various reasons, I settled on renewables.

I'm just not sure where all that Li-Ion will go after 15 - 20 years of 
use, though...


One European manufacturer (the one whose battery I bought) says that as 
of now, they can only recycle 20% of each battery they sell. To me, that 
sounds like just the metal case enclosure, and the plastic facia.


Ah well, maybe disposal tech. for Li-Ion storage will have improved by 2040.

Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 22:58, Michael Thomas wrote:



Here in California the new reality is that multi-day outages are now 
common. The first few planned outages were 3-4 days, so that would be 
on the edge, especially if it's for gabby granny on the phone for 
hours.This all depends on the weather, and for snow related outages 
they can go on for days. We have a generator because of this, but 
everybody getting a generator in the middle of the Berkeley Hills 
would be something of its own horror show, but it will probably come 
down to that.


I know someone who will sell you a Powerwall :-), not that I'd recommend 
it...


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 20:30, Aaron Wendel wrote:



https://www.kcfiber.com/residential 


Curious, any chance you took over Google's fibre project :-)?

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 20:30, Aaron Wendel wrote:


We run MikroTik RB4011s for residential speeds between 1G and 10G or 
just supply a media converter.  For residential 40G and 100G we just 
drop in Arista or Extreme switches.  SMBs are normally just a media 
converter or direct fiber handoff.


https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_5hacq2hnd_in 



There are not a lot of options for good, off the shelf 10G CPE 
equipment.  The handful of 10G residential customers we have seem to 
be happy with the tik.  The couple that don’t use it have rolled their 
own solution.


Like anything, I’m sure once the major home broadband providers start 
to catch up with us smaller guys the vendors will catch up as well.


I like the Tik for a home CPE because it will keep getting updates for 
as long as you have it.


That is unlike typical home CPE that need to be swapped out every year 
to pick up a new feature.


It does not surprise me, one bit, that the Tik is just about the only 
half-decent 10Gbps-capable CPE out there that won't break the bank. The 
fact that you can get software updates for it every few weeks/months 
makes it a lot more compelling than your usual CPE suspects.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 20:00, Tony Wicks wrote:


Actually the equipment vendor's build in this sort of situation is normally 
directly related to the availability of affordable chipsets from the likes of 
Broadcom. For example the chipset in my XGSPON router is a BCM6858. No vendor 
is going to spend money to produce a CPE that no one will buy. Once the likes 
of Broadcom produce an affordable solution then all the main vendors will roll 
out CPE in short order.


So by your logic, the chipset is the problem, otherwise, people will 
just keep buying more bandwidth for its own sake, even when they don't 
need it :-)?


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 19:58, Michael Thomas wrote:



The thing is that the pandemic has changed the game on the ground: 
there is an actual feature differentiator to be had. But having dealt 
with the Linksys folks in the past I don't put out much hope that 
they'll take advantage of it. The software development side was a vast 
black hole where time stands still. It seems the entire industry is 
like that.


A jump from 10Mbps to 100Mbps is a differentiator.

A jump from 100Mbps to 1Gbps, even though more difficult, is also a 
differentiator.


A jump from 1Gbps to 10Gbps... yeah, as my Ugandan friend would say, 
"That's a hard paper".


One would ask, "What happened to all the Gbps in between :-)?"

Again, your issue isn't the bandwidth itself. Your issue is how people 
use devices, as well as the limitations of those devices themselves.


You can, pretty much, forget about much of the world using a wired 
device, going forward.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 17:55, Baldur Norddahl wrote:



Since a lot of ISP equipment only has tiny buffers you will generally 
be unable to get great downloads from sources far away.


This is true for any application, in general.

500ms vs. 1ms for download efficiency will always show you what they are 
made of, regardless of how ridiculous the buffers are.


The solution has always been to get content as close to the eyeballs as 
possible. The positive side-effect with this, also, is that downloads 
complete sooner, freeing up the line quicker.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 17:35, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:



Perhaps there are some issues at other parts of the network that 
limits their speeds? I'm in Stockholm, Sweden, with plenty of local 
CDNs located just 1-3ms away from me.


The Swedish model (Stokab) is one to envy. If only other gubbermints had 
the political will to copy this. But alas.



Here the "truth" is that if you game, you need to have a wired 
connection to your gaming computer. All gamers "know" this.


I don't have experience with PS5 and perhaps what you're saying is 
true for that customer base. I'd say it's not true for Xbox or Steam 
customers as they see speed prominently displayed on the screen.


https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/games-apps/troubleshooting/troubleshoot-slow-game-or-app-downloads-on-xbox-one 



"Go to My games & apps > Manage > Queue and note the download speed 
shown on the game or app that’s being installed. "


Very handy.

Never owned an Xbox, so didn't know this.

That said, as popular as gaming is, I'm not sure it represents the 
global FTTH demographic. Also, for day-to-day gaming, I believe the 
worry will mostly be about latency and packet loss, than raw throughput. 
Raw throughput will be key when you're downloading new games or updating 
old ones, and chances are this will happen less frequently than just 
regular playing.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 16:38, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:



Considering my PC often saturates my 1000/1000 Internet access when 
downloading, I don't see why the 1GE NIC on PS5 wouldn't be the 
bottleneck if it's sitting on higher speed Internet access.


My experience with customers who've bought 1Gbps FTTH service is that on 
a good day, they may see 500Mbps. On average, they'll live somewhere 
between 180Mbps - 350Mbps, with a random spot-check. It's alright for 
providers who offer this to let their NOC's handle the problem, because 
most users are connected to the Internet wirelessly, using devices that 
do not require more than a couple of Mbps of bandwidth at a time.


Wired devices such as gaming consoles won't tell you anything more than 
how long it will take a download to complete. So you are not probably 
going to work out whether the PS5 is running at 1Gbps or 230Mbps, as 
long as your psyche is happy with the service you are buying from your 
provider.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 15:45, Niels Bakker wrote:



Why wouldn't it go even faster, assuming it got fitted out with a 
faster network controller than what they shipped with?  The storage 
system in the PS5 as sold can transfer at 5 GB/sec and the APUs have 
the regular set of crypto acceleration instructions.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551165/sony-ps5-playstation-5-no-m2-ssd-expansion-launch 

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/71340/understanding-the-ps5s-ssd-deep-dive-into-next-gen-storage-tech/ 



No one argued that Sony could build a half-decent console. Wired via 
Ethernet, that's unlikely to be the bottleneck.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 13:41, Nuno Vieira wrote:

Once upon a time a wise main said “Who in their right mind would ever 
need more than 640k of ram?”


While everyone will take a chance at using this line at some point in a 
computing career, it's somewhat disingenuous to compare (or equate) the 
640KB of RAM to anything today. There is always bare minimums we must 
hit before any additional infrastructure does not yield any further 
value. In economics, I believe it's called the Law of Diminishing Returns.


640KB may not be sufficient for any personal device today. However, what 
would you do with 256GB of RAM on your computer that you can't do with 
64GB, in a home/domestic setting, as an average user?


Yes, 1Mbps of bandwidth is likely too small for today's Internet, but 
what would you do with 10Gbps that you can't with, say, 750Mbps?


Maybe we shall have VR on our devices which will make Zoom much more 
pleasant to use, but for as long as you don't see any 10Gbps CPE or 
XG-PON roll-outs happening en masse, that should signal something to you.


There was a time when the number of megapixels on a phone or camera was 
the most important thing. That doesn't matter anymore, to the point of 
actually more megapixels returning poorer image quality. Just compare a 
photo taken in WhatsApp vs. a photo taken in Apple's native Camera app, 
same device. The smarts aren't in the hardware anymore.


Similarly, while 10Gbps to the home may have sounded completely 
noteworthy in 2005, surprisingly, perhaps less so in 2020. Likely 
because the way the Internet works, how data is delivered, how it is 
stored, the role of the device, e.t.c., all make the case for either 
more bandwidth (on the provider/backbone side) or less bandwidth (on the 
consumer side).


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 13:41, Nuno Vieira wrote:


Once upon a time a wise main said “Who in their right mind would ever need more 
than 640k of ram?”


While everyone will take a chance at using this line at some point in a 
computing career, it's somewhat disingenuous to compare (or equate) the 
640KB of RAM to anything today. There is always bare minimums we must 
hit before any additional infrastructure does not yield any further 
value. In economics, I believe it's called the Law of Diminishing Returns.


640KB may not be sufficient for any personal device today. However, what 
would you do with 256GB of RAM on your computer that you can't do with 
64GB, in a home/domestic setting, as an average user?


Yes, 1Mbps of bandwidth is likely too small for today's Internet, but 
what would you do with 10Gbps that you can't with, say, 750Mbps?


Maybe we shall have VR on our devices which will make Zoom much more 
pleasant to use, but for as long as you don't see any 10Gbps CPE or 
XG-PON roll-outs happening en masse, that should signal something to you.


There was a time when the number of megapixels on a phone or camera was 
the most important thing. That doesn't matter anymore, to the point of 
actually more megapixels returning poorer image quality. Just compare a 
photo taken in WhatsApp vs. a photo taken in Apple's native Camera app, 
same device. The smarts aren't in the hardware anymore.


Similarly, while 10Gbps to the home may have sounded completely 
noteworthy in 2005, surprisingly, perhaps less so in 2020. Likely 
because the way the Internet works, how data is delivered, how it is 
stored, the roll of the device, e.t.c., all make the case for either 
more bandwidth (on the provider/backbone side) or less bandwidth (on the 
consumer side).


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 09:44, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:


By which you mean that they can safely afford to bandwidth-surf again because
the average usage is so much lower than the peak?


Unless you are providing some kind of service from your home, yes.

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 07:32, b...@theworld.com wrote:


Another way to phrase the question (which was the subject of much
dispute 30 years ago) is:

Which would you rather have (I'll use modern speeds):

1gb flat rate

10gb metered

Where metered 10gb could cost less than 1gb when you don't use it, or
about the same at ~1gb, but more if you use >1gb?

It's possible this pricing model is reawakening.

Back then I argued the bigger pipe / metered was preferable. Then
again it was mostly non-residential.

But admittedly most seemed to prefer the lower speed unmetered. They
preferred the billing predicatibilty and didn't like the idea that a
"power user" (in the residential context that might be "kids") could
jack up the bill.

I suppose that depends a lot on what the actual prices of a flat-rate
1gb vs a fully saturated 10gb. If it's $50 vs $100/mo perhaps some
would say ok I'll risk the $50 overage, if it's $50 vs $500/mo maybe
not.


It's all the sales & marketing people trying to find new ways to sell 
the same bandwidth so they can keep getting their annual bonuses. Has 
nothing to do with trying to move the state-of-the-art forward :-).


If the price differential between 1Gbps flat and 10Gbps metered is not 
that great, many (not all) will prefer the higher bandwidth, especially 
if it comes with "plenty" of data (say 1TB/month). The customer feels 
like they are getting more for their money, and the provider knows there 
is no chance the customer will ever hit 10Gbps, meaning they don't need 
to roll out network, and can up profits.


Today, if I switched providers, for the same amount of money I am paying 
now, I'd be able to get a 1Gbps service, easy. I don't do it because 
packet loss (or lack thereof) is more important to me than more 
bandwidth. The backhaul provider I use is also a customer of mine that I 
know knows how to run a decent network. I'd not risk potential packet 
loss by switching to a provider who can give me 5X the bandwidth for the 
same price, especially because overall performance of the home won't 
gain much beyond the 200Mbps I currently have.


But, as they say, YMMV.

Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/26/20 00:32, John Levine wrote:


I agree it is odd to make 100/100 the top speed. The fiber service I
have from my local non-Bell telco offers 100/100, 500/500, and
1000/1000. FiOS where you can get it goes to 940/880.

The obvious guess is that their upstream bandwidth is
underprovisioned, or maybe they figure 100/100 is all they need to
compete in that particular market.


GPON upstream capacity is not symmetrical to the downstream. Above a 
certain threshold, providers will sell less upload than download, 
depending on how many customers are provisioned on a given OLT.


XG-PON is symmetrical, but not as widely deployed.

Providers that deliver services over Active-E do not care.

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 23:22, Niels Bakker wrote:



Download times:-

180GB at 100 Mbps: 4 hours
180GB at 1000 Mbps: 23 minutes


For a number of reasons, highly unlikely your console will pull at 
1Gbps, but yes, it would certainly pull quicker than 100Mbps :-).


I'd just get my 4hrs of sleep, but then again, I'm not a gamer :-).

Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 23:04, Michael Thomas wrote:



I mean, i understand the arm's race, but now it seems to be an arms 
race for its own sake.


It is, because it is hard to be different when all you know is to sell 
bandwidth.


The next level of differentiation is being a fibre provider, and selling 
large amounts of bandwidth for less, and less, and less.


It's a total lack of creativity in the infrastructure space, where the 
only goal is to maintain customers on the books.


One of the mobile operators in South Africa, just last week, launched 
new data bundles for customers below a certain age. I mean, how many 
ways can you slice the selling of data because you can't be creative in 
other ways?


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 22:49, Michael Thomas wrote:



But using the right queuing disciplines it a lot cheaper than the 
brute force and ignorance of just upping the bandwidth, right?


Consumer ISP's have realized that they can make money selling Gigabit 
services, because the ones who really know how to harness it are few & 
far between.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 22:40, Chris Adams wrote:


Bandwidth is like disk space - you think "I'll never use all of this",
and then the availability changes behavior.  Having ability to do more
means your behavior changes to utilize more.  We don't NEED high speed
Internet to download games - we could leave the download running
overnight for example - but being able to download big games in minutes
means we get to try more games, finding new things to like.


I don't disagree with this - having more bandwidth means everyone in the 
house can do what they want without impacting the other. And that 
probably makes sense for 500Mbps - 1Gbps of service to the house, which 
is why there are plenty of CPE and ISP services to solve for that today.


10Gbps, on the other hand, is a real problem to justify... you are more 
likely to hit device limits than fill up 10Gbps for a basic home.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 21:57, Tony Wicks wrote:


I Have an RB4011 and while it does work very well for the price it is not 
really practical for the sort of people who don't reside on this list.


Which says what about 10Gbps-in-the-home practicality?



  Firstly the single 10G port means you have to connect it via a separate 10G 
switch and then vlan the external connection to the ONT via another switch port.


That would typically be the ISP-facing side. Not your problem.



  Secondly the physical format is great for those of us who love the idea of a 
passive cooling rack mount device but not so much the stick it on a shelf 
masses.


Again, where's that 10Gbps practicality for the home?



  Thirdly the interface has way too many knobs for anyone who does not know 
what MPLS stands for.


Winbox is not too bad. I use it everyday for my little hAP ac2.

That said, for US$199, this would be a steal - for the folk that reside 
on this list.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 21:45, Michael Thomas wrote:



Obviously for downloads it's nice, but how often is that happening? A 
time or two a month max? It seems sort of strange the providers would 
build out infrastructure for such a niche activity.


Haha, that's the trick; they don't.

Because the logic is similar to yours - how often will customers be 
pushing that much traffic, and if at all, for how long?


Most providers will sell 1Gbps without doing anything different to the 
infrastructure, because they know most customers probably have no clue 
about the difference between 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 802.11a, b, g, n, ac and ax, 
Cat-5, 5e and 6, range extenders, boosters, the works.


If it were me, I'd do the same, as a 1Gbps consumer provider :-). Heck, 
it's free money.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 21:39, Cory Sell via NANOG wrote:

I saturate my 1G connection most during game downloads, file 
downloads/uploads, full backup uploads, etc.


Same here, but how often does this happen?

I upload my videos to Youtube once a week, if not less, at the most. The 
kids, more regularly, but the 100Mbps I had before could cope. So what 
the 200Mbps gets me now is half the time, which isn't saying much.



I also self-host a lot of services for personal use and having that 
peak speed is really nice when you need it.


Nothing wrong with that, but if you had 500Mbps on a given Sunday, would 
you life be half as bad?



It also had no traffic limit per month which is my biggest complaint 
about the lower tier services and also a huge complaint I have with 
regards to the direction that residential services are moving towards.


Marketing at play :-).

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 21:34, Niels Bakker wrote:

Gigabit speeds are about bursting.  Foreground activities like gaming, 
making online reservations, streaming won't take more than that, but 
anything faster is really nice to have when you're waiting for the odd 
software download to finish. (You may have noticed that they've been 
increasing in size this year.)


Agreed, but how many "Gigabit" speeds are sufficient for bursting.

The level of burst is congruent with the the amount of generation all of 
your devices require at the same time.


Then you hit the device limits itself, e.g., wi-fi on the device, wi-fi 
on the AP, routing on the home gateway, whatever actual backbone the 
provider has, e.t.c.


Then the fact that not all the devices in the home are going to be 
generating burst data at the same time, or even on the same day. That 
iOS update may ship to your phone on Monday, but the kids will only get 
it the following Saturday, for some reason or other.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 20:21, Jared Mauch wrote:


Think more using your PON network to also serve commercial customers so you 
don't need high end CPE to hit 1-5Gbps or WDM setups. .


This already happens today, because sales folk want to close deals. 
Whether PON actually works for an Enterprise customer is not their problem.


Mark.

Re: [External] Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 20:10, Hunter Fuller via NANOG wrote:



It would meet some customers’ needs because multiple people could use 
1G of service at a time. I think it is interesting to distinguish “>1G 
CPE” from “true 10G CPE” and I suspect many / most customers are 
looking for the former.


Large upstream capacity has always been about aggregation of the downstream.

The 100Gbps or 400Gbps backbones we deploy, as operators, are not 
symmetrical with what our customers buy.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 20:03, Cory Sell via NANOG wrote:

Just because nobody is mentioning it - you can always build a 
pfSense/VyOS/Vyatta box in whatever form factor you’d prefer. Even can 
run within a VM if you really want to.


Not exactly "home" friendly :-).

Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 20:18, Bryan Fields wrote:


My point was the gear is not there yet for the non-technical people.


And that is saying much...

Most TV's, the PS4, the Apple TV, e.t.c., still run at 100Mbps max., 
offering plenty of 4K services.


There clearly is no legitimate use-case for Joe and Jane at their home 
re: 10Gbps.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 19:45, Bryan Fields wrote:


That has 1 10g port.  How can that be a 10g CPE?


Realistically, what are you going to be running at 1.01Gbps inside your 
home at any given point?


Yes, this may or may not be a rhetorical question.



so, not 10g :)


Show me a single production-level 10Gbps port that runs at 10Gbps :-).



Add in some services and I bet it goes down from there.


Yes, those are just plain old IP routing numbers.

Add IPSec and QoS, the numbers fall to between 20% - 40% of that.



The bigger question in all this if you're doing 10g to the residential user,
what are they going to use for their home router/NAT device?  Even 60 ghz wifi
routers top out at like 5 gbit/s, and NAT at this speed means a powerful CPU.

10g to the home is a great idea to think about, it's just not terribly
practical for most customers unless they want to drop 1-2k on routing gear and
nics.  This is always changing, but it's going to be a few years until we
reach the right performance and price point.


Well, the initial question is what is going to drive that kind of 
capacity in a home setting?


Unless you are providing some kind of service at some kind of scale, I 
just don't see homes blowing through 10Gbps, never mind 1Gbps.


I just bumped my FTTH service up from 100Mbps to 200Mbps, and aside from 
faster Youtube uploads for my DJ sets, I'm struggling to fill it :-).


I have a mate up the road who just paid for a 1Gbps FTTH service because 
it was the same price as a 100Mbps one. He generally lives between 
900Kbps and 20Mbps.


Gigabit-level FTTH services for the home, I feel, have always been about 
marketing ploys from providers, because they know there is no practical 
way users can ever hit those figures from their homes. But because users 
want to "feel good" and "brag" about their Gigabit home connectivity, 
they'll pay for it. Heck, if I were a consumer ISP, I'd do it too :-).


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 08:04, Tony Wicks wrote:


Stand alone RGW's are hard to find, I'd be interested to hear if people have 
found anything smaller than the Mikrotik RB4011...


Funny, that's the very unit I recommended as well in my previous post to 
Brandon :-).


As reasonably-priced devices that will have half decent working code go 
(for 10Gbps, no less), it's hard to beat the Tik.


I'd still never use them in production, but for home CPE's, you bet I 
would.


Mark.

Re: 10g residential CPE

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/25/20 05:53, Brandon Martin wrote:



One of my router vendors has been teasing me with a "true 10Gb" router 
due out 1Q 2021.  I've been told to expect NBASE-T (1G, 2.5G, 5G, 10G) 
on both WAN and all LAN ports + 802.11ax "Wifi 6" with at least 5Gbps 
of real-world IPv4 throughput with NAT and essentially wire-speed IPv6 
without NAT or content inspection at a realistic price point.  I'll be 
interested to see what they actually deliver as that would make 
future-looking multi-gig deployments actually meaningful.


For the home, if you're looking at shipping 10Gbps-based CPE's for under 
US$200, I can't think of anything other than the Tik:


    https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_rm

They claim:

    - 2.6Gbps forwarding for 64-byte packets.
    - 7.8Gbps forwarding for 512-byte packets.
    - 9.7Gbps forwarding for 1,518-byte packets.

Mark.

Re: Are the days of the showpiece NOC office display gone forever?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/23/20 07:41, Wayne Bouchard wrote:


And if the last 15 years has shown us anything, it is that when you
can't get past the auto-attendant and talk to a real human, and if
that person can't talk to you like a person instead of reading scripts
at you, your stress levels go way up as does your desire to break
things. Automation in customer service (or excessive emphasis on
procedures) is a really nice way of taking a five minute problem and
turning it into an hour long ordeal.

(pet peeve)


The good news is that choice deals with this problem.

The level of patience we've had to allow this type of customer 
interaction has been drastically reduced by our experiences with free or 
paid services we experience with apps on our phones. Without realizing 
it, our basic expectations rise from how we experience one app that has 
nothing to do with the other. It put more stock in choice.


Either we are deleting an app 5 seconds after it doesn't meet our 
re-trained expectations, or we are cancelling a contract and moving on 
to another provider.


I, like you, refuse to call a call centre and ask for support. The same 
goes for online services whose support is limited to bots or FAQ's. The 
moment I can't get a fix via an e-mail and I have to speak to someone 
waiting with a script, I cancel and move on.


Mark.

Re: Are the days of the showpiece NOC office display gone forever?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/17/20 00:50, Matt Erculiani wrote:

But unless you have an entire organization dedicated to automation 
development or pay an incredibly large sum of money for pre-built 
packages, the business decision may still be made to actively monitor 
the network with eyeballs.


Solutions do exist, or so the salesmen/women that peddle them tell me.

I'm not convinced. Also, I'm a bit ancient.

Mark.

Re: Are the days of the showpiece NOC office display gone forever?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/16/20 23:48, Max Harmony via NANOG wrote:


It seems like the "something impressive looking" might just change. Add a bit of 
marketing copy about how "our monitoring is distributed, just like our servers" (or some 
more punchy variant) and show customers what the smaller monitoring stations WFH employees are 
using look like.


Nowadays, customers tend to care about you watching their circuit, and 
service.


Most still get surprised when they don't understand why the NOC never 
knew their circuit went down, and need help understanding the difference 
between monitoring the core, and monitoring customers who choose to 
purchase that service.


Mark.

Re: Are the days of the showpiece NOC office display gone forever?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/16/20 22:49, Eric Kuhnke wrote:

With the covid19 situation, obviously lots of ISPs have their NOC 
personnel working from home, with VPN (or remote desktop) access to 
all the internal tools, VoIP at home, etc.


In the traditional sense, by "showpiece NOC" I mean a room designed 
for the purpose of having large situational awareness displays on a 
wall, network weathermaps and charts, alerting systems, composed of 
four or more big flat panel displays. Ideally configured to be 
actually useful for NOC purposes and also something impressive looking 
for customer tours.


To what extent potential customers find that sort of thing to be a 
signifier of seriousness on the part of an ISP, I suppose depends on 
what sort of customers they are, and their relative degree of 
technical sophistication.


Are the days of such an environment gone forever?


The customers we've been dealing with, particularly this year, fancy 
being listened and spoken to more than what our brand of NOC coffee is.


Mark.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/16/20 22:31, b...@theworld.com wrote:


I'm not so sure. If someone got the banks, credit card (fintech), big
online shopping, etc (tho not a lot of etc needed) on board, the "head
count" for that wouldn't be very large, and others would join
(particularly retail) just to not be left out...

One can build a quite different network on top of the existing
infrastructure at least to get started, NEWSTUFF/IP.

That would only then require buy-in by end-users but if that's what's
on their phone etc and the only way they can access banks, shopping,
etc.

People here would deliver all those packets since it'd just look like
IP and go from there. Reminds me of the old expression "when it's time
to hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope" (when it comes
time to replace this internet they will deliver our packets.)

The obvious (to me) change would be positive id of anyone accessing
that new network.

The voice system seems to have achieved this to about a 99% level
which is more than good enough. And it would be a boon to them also,
no more annoyingly free voice/video stuff. By which I mean if they
thought it was credible they might pony up a billion or two to get it
going.

Then if they hit some critical mass they can consider replacing IP and
routing regimens etc also (the goal being largely to secure it), on
top of the existing "wire" infrastructure.


All this would achieve is break-away networks, either atop or adjacent 
to the current Internet.


Considering that there are quite a few countries that have folk 
transacting more on their phones than via conventional banking means, 
with major content providers looking to get into that game, I don't see 
this working beyond a private experiment, that likely wouldn't get far.


But hey, it's 2020. Crystal balls aren't what they used to be.

Mark.

Fwd: [apnic-talk] APRICOT 2021 call for presentations

[Mark Tinka]

FYI.

Mark.


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:[apnic-talk] APRICOT 2021 call for presentations
Date:   Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:52:26 +1000
From:   Philip Smith 
Organization:   PFS Internet Development Pty Ltd
To: apnic-t...@lists.apnic.net
CC: APRICOT PC Chairs 



Hi everyone,

As I mentioned last week when I sent out the Call for Volunteers for the 
APRICOT PC, APRICOT 2021 will be online in February next year. Same 
dates as we had planned for the in-person meeting.


I've included the call for presentations below - looking forward to 
receiving your presentation proposals!


Thanks!

philip
--



CALL FOR PAPERS
===

The APRICOT 2021 Programme Committee is now seeking contributions for
Presentations and Tutorials for the APRICOT 2021 Conference.

We are looking for presenters who would:

- Offer a technical tutorial on an appropriate topic;
- Participate in the technical conference sessions as a speaker;
- Convene and chair panel sessions of relevant topics;

Please submit on-line at:

http://papers.apricot.net/user/login.php?event=128

Tutorials will take place during the week of 22nd February.
Conference sessions and the Peering Forum will take place on the week
of 1st March. All APRICOT 2021 sessions times will be one hour long,
with up to four sessions scheduled per day.

CONFERENCE MILESTONES
-

Call for Papers Opens: Now
Draft Program Published: As Papers Confirmed
Final Deadline for Submissions: 7 February 2021
Final Program Published: 14 February 2021
Final Slides Received: 21 February 2021

*SLOTS ARE FILLED ON A FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED BASIS, REGARDLESS OF
PUBLISHED DEADLINES*

PROGRAMME CONTENT
-

The APRICOT Conference Programme consists of three parts, these being
Tutorials, the Peering Forum, and Conference Sessions.

Topics proposed must be relevant to Internet Operations and Technologies:

- IPv4 / IPv6 Routing and Operations
- Internet backbone operations
- Peering, Interconnects and IXPs
- Network Function Virtualisaton
- Network Automation/Programming
- Content Distribution Network technology & operations
- Research on Internet Operations and Deployment
- Network infrastructure security
- IPv6 deployment on fixed and Wireless/Cellular networks
- DNS / DNSSEC
- Access and Transport Technologies, including Cable/DSL, LTE/5G,
wireless, metro ethernet, fibre, segment routing
- Content & Service Delivery and "Cloud Computing"


PEERING FORUM
-

Due to APRICOT 2021 being held online, the PC will only accept Peering
Personals prior to the event starting. Submissions must be of a
single slide listing the operator's PeeringDB entry. Please refer to
https://tinyurl.com/y46954n5 for how to create a successful Peering
Personal presentation.


CfP SUBMISSION
--

Draft slides for both tutorials and conference sessions MUST be
provided with CfP submissions otherwise the submission will be
rejected immediately. For work in progress, the most current
information available at time of submission is acceptable.

All draft and complete slides must be submitted in PDF format only.
Slides must be of original work, with all company confidential marks
removed.

Final slides are to be provided by the specified deadline for
publication on the APRICOT website.

Prospective presenters should note that the majority of speaking slots
will be filled well before the final submission deadline. The PC may,
at their discretion, retain a limited number of slots up to the final
submission deadline for presentations that are exceptionally timely,
important, or of critical operational importance. Every year we turn
away submissions, due to filling up all available programme slots
before the deadline. Presenters should endeavour to get material into
the PC sooner rather than later.

Any questions or concerns should be addressed to the Programme
Committee by e-mail at:

pc-chairs at apricot.net

We look forward to receiving your presentation proposals.

Mark Tinka, Marijana Novakovic & Philip Smith
Co-Chairs, APRICOT 2021 Programme Committee
--
___
apnic-talk mailing list
apnic-t...@lists.apnic.net
https://mailman.apnic.net/mailman/listinfo/apnic-talk
.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/16/20 02:38, b...@theworld.com wrote:


Somedays I wonder if it's some vast, well-funded, Spectre-like
organization whose backers just want to see trust in the internet
undermined in the public's eyes on behalf of their own non-internet or
anti-internet (think: phone companies who'd love to charge you per
email and web page access for example by forcing you onto some private
network) enterprises, large bricks+mortars interests etc.


If it were, they'd be fighting a losing battle.

The Internet has acquired exponential scale. It would never operate in 
such a pay-to-click model.


Mark.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/14/20 19:44, Laszlo Hanyecz wrote:



This stuff is definitely the most visible type of scamming but this is 
not any different from swindling people at a flea market. It isn't so 
much hacking as just using internet to communicate with people and 
then tricking them.  I think this is a different skill set than 
gaining access to personal data though.


Gaining access to someone else's computer's files has historically not 
been a big deal, so I'm guessing it didn't become a huge problem 
because there was little to gain from doing it.  It might be 
inconvenient for people, it might be used as part of a larger con 
against a victim, but it still requires a lot more steps to profit 
from it.  We all know that we can't stop that from happening, but even 
going back to the early 90s we've had malware protection vendors 
making money off this fear, and the problem has now reached a point 
where the placebo security won't cut it and we'll have to start 
figuring this problem out.


The impact of these kinds of breaches has always been minor, but in 
the past 10 years we've placed more and more things into primary 
storage on a computer, including cryptographic secrets which only 
function if they're kept secret.  Losing a wallet full of credit cards 
isn't as bad as losing a wallet full of cash. There wasn't any way to 
put money into computer files before, but now there is. Even if only a 
few people carry money, if it's easy to steal millions of wallets and 
costs nothing, it's worth doing it for the hope of eventually hitting 
a money holder.


There is value in hacking services in the cloud to gain user information.

Right now, hacking credit rating clearing houses is big business, as an 
example, because almost every piece of single information of any 
economically-active member of society is on there. And there has been 
some success in obtaining that information, the effects of which we are 
not yet able to really quantify.


Mark.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/14/20 19:08, Miles Fidelman wrote:

As to chess... I've begun to think that the game to master is now 
Go... capturing territory, not pieces, and instantaneous global state 
changes.


#TheQueensGambit :-).

Mark.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/14/20 18:38, David Bass wrote:

It becomes more clear when you think about the options out there, and 
get a little creative.  Now a days it’s definitely chess that’s being 
played.


You're right, it really doesn't take much. Preying on humanity can yield 
great results.


One that has started springing up in my neck of the woods - to simplify 
car-jacking) - is to obtain a list of customers that subscribe to a 
vehicle tracking service. The thugs will then call a customer, claiming 
their tracking device is faulty and needs to be checked physically. The 
thugs will come to your home or office, tell you that in order to 
finalize the fix, they need to test drive your car. And boom, that's 
your car gone!


The hacking, now, IMHO, is to obtain user information to profile who is 
exploitable, and how. After that, low-tech rules.


Mark.

Re: "Hacking" these days - purpose?

[Mark Tinka]

On 12/14/20 18:23, Ryland Kremeier wrote:

I would have to disagree. Considering the amount of people who have 
bitcoin, and even less the amount of people who farm it, or have 
farmed it before it became so difficult. It seems much more likely 
that the wide-spread infiltrations of every-day systems is for 
information and DDoS over bitcoins.


I seriously doubt it’s that hard to sell information to companies, as 
they most likely don’t care how you got that information.


If information wasn’t key, whether it be for selling to another party, 
or scraping that data for easy to social engineer targets; then I also 
don’t think that fraudulent calls would be so prevalent these days. 
Where the main target is older people who will fall for their basic 
tricks and end up losing potentially thousands per person.




Tend to agree.

Despite all the advice and mindless videos out there to help people 
protect their data and/or not fall for basic scams, a lot of people 
still do.


Humans' capacity to want to believe in and trust others is a strong 
avenue that the scammers exploit to get paid. More so the older folk, 
yes, but even the young, tech-savvy; particularly those who have been 
too busy flipping between apps to realize that the Internet can be a 
dangerous place.


You'd be surprised how innovative and simple these scams are, and 
actually becoming less and less sophisticated, which makes them even 
more dangerous.


Mark.

Re: Weather Service faces Internet bandwidth shortage, proposes limiting key data

[Mark Tinka]

I've got plenty of spare capacity in Kenya - I can give them a couple of 
Gbps for just US$1,000/month :-).


_classic_

Mark.

On 12/10/20 15:27, Mel Beckman wrote:
Something is stupidly wrong here. From a non-paywallled article (WaPo 
blocks me from reading its content):


https://newsbeezer.com/aus/the-national-weather-service-is-facing-a-lack-of-internet-bandwidth-and-is-proposing-access-restrictions/ 



———


The weather service hosted a public forum on Tuesday to discuss the 
proposal and answer questions. When asked about the computer 
infrastructure investments that would be required to keep these limits 
off, agency officials said a one-time cost of approximately $ 1.5 
million could prevent interest rate restrictions. The NOAA budget for 
fiscal 2020 was $ 5.4 billion.


However, Buchanan stated that the real cost of solving the problem 
would be higher since the $ 1.5 million would “be just one component 
of a multi-faceted solution.”


Forum officials also said that management of the weather service was 
aware of the relatively low cost of solving the problem, but that the 
agency was facing “competing priorities”.


Buchanan said that dissemination of data is a priority for the weather 
service’s leadership, but that it is “continually” weighed against others.


When asked if Congress was aware of the agency’s data dissemination 
challenges, forum officials said they did not know.


Senator Maria Cantwell (Washington), a Democrat on the Senate Commerce 
Committee that oversees NOAA, said a request to upgrade the weather 
service’s computer infrastructure would likely receive non-partisan 
support.


———-

This is either some kind of bizarre political maneuver, or bureaucrats 
at NWS need to be seriously fired and replaced with competent people 
who‘s tech jobs have been waylaid by Covid.


Obviously it’s a trivial task to fix delivery capacity, if it will 
only cost  $1.5 million to an agency with a $5.4 */billion/* budget. 
And how does a 2000-employee agency blow through $5.4 billion a year 
anyway?


This stinks to high heaven.

-mel via cell


On Dec 10, 2020, at 12:15 AM, Rich Kulawiec  wrote:

Weather Service faces Internet bandwidth shortage, proposes limiting 
key data

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/23/20 18:14, Thomas Scott wrote:


"Terrorbits" sounds like a 3 year old unplugging a router - over and over


Because of dead wi-fi, or just for giggles :-)?

Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/23/20 15:50, Mike Hammett wrote:

I eagerly await a more substantive response. This is from a position 
of inquiry, not a position of combat. I'm new to the world of hardware 
that has those capabilities, so if there's something better, I'm all 
for hearing about it.


What I meant was MACSec would also be my go-to, and doesn't necessarily 
scream "cutting edge" :-).


Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/23/20 14:40, Mike Hammett wrote:

I've been looking at some deployments in areas with sketchy political 
forces and I was looking to use MACsec.


How underwhelming :-)...

Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/23/20 09:52, Carsten Bormann wrote:


I know most people here don’t care (because they don’t have to(*), literally), 
but there are standards for these things, and there are reasons for the way 
that they have turned out to be.  If you want to taste a little treatise from 
engineers who do care (because their job is building things that measure), you 
can look up https://u.nu/correct-units .


Given that Tbps is still relatively uncommon in many operator networks, 
it's not uncommon to hear people say Megabit and Gigabit with no 
problem, but say Terabyte when referring to Terabit, as well.


That one does get to me, but I'm often boozed up on enough wine to care :-).

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED! - Update!

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/22/20 12:25, d...@darwincosta.com wrote:

“Saw the same” after installing yesterday Big Sur and suddenly 
received a notification “this version of little snitch is no longer 
supported by macOS. It’s looks like I have to pay 25€ for a new 
compatible version.


My advice would be to keep Catalina :-).

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED! - Update!

[Mark Tinka]

So after installing Little Snitch and basically denying "trustd" any 
kind of Internet access, I have been seeing reasonably normal jitter 
with Bluetooth enabled.


It's not that Bluetooth stops scanning, but it's not scanning as 
aggressively. So after a few minutes, there will be very high jitter 
when Bluetooth scans the environment, but it would affect only a single 
packet. It's easily reduced its chattiness by 99%.


I don't have any empirical data to support the claim that Little Snitch 
has anything to do with it (and I am too lazy to dig further into it), 
but the reduction in jitter is massively noticeable since Little Snitch. 
Which means I can now run Catalina with Bluetooth enabled and not have 
any wi-fi problems.


Just FYI, for the archives :-).

Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/21/20 01:20, Mel Beckman wrote:

I’m sure the implication that “safe, secure” refers to less 
susceptibility to eavesdropping. But of course fiber can still be 
tapped trivially with angle-of-incidence intercept taps.


I think the implication was some measure of superiority compared to 
existing operators, for anyone who signs texts based on how many buzz 
words are in the schpill.


Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/21/20 01:06, Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG wrote:


> high speed, safe, secure global fiber connectivity

More importantly, can someone tell me what 'safe global fiber 
connectivity' is?  As opposed to 'unsafe global fiber connectivity'?


Do these guys have the market cornered on not string fiber optic cable 
at throat-level across roads or something?


Freaking marketing droids.


Clearly the target is non-African customers with Africa on a to-do list...

This, I want to see...

Mark.

Re: A letter from the CEO

[Mark Tinka]

Oh dear, what will poor Kenya ever do :-)...

Mark.

On 11/21/20 00:22, Josh Luthman wrote:

Got this message to me directly as well as through the list.

@6x7 this list is *NOT* to be scrapped for email addresses for your 
marketing purposes.  This is complete garbage.  I'll be sending a 
message directly to k...@6by7.net  as well.


Josh Luthman
24/7 Help Desk: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373


On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 5:19 PM 6x7 Networks - Lady Benjamin, CEO 
mailto:b...@6by7.net>> wrote:



/A letter from the CEO of 6x7:

6x7 Networks and Communications Authority of Kenya
announce type approval to import 8tbps/second internet
routers./



Hi, Lady Benjamin from 6x7 here, and I'm proud to share with you
an update on me and the company.

Through our adjunct division, 6x7 just received type approval from
the Kenyan government to import core routers capable of over 8tbps
(8 terrabits per second).  This will enable us to enter the Kenyan
IP transit and transport markets, and service both datacenter and
soon office buildings and eventually residences with high speed,
safe, secure global fiber connectivity. The market in Kenya is
severely impacted now due to limited fiber availability, and 6x7
will leverage it's undersea connections to bring more wholesale
bandwidth into the area, creating the economy by which we expect
to grow.


  Thanks for reading, I'll be doing a regular set of these
  newsletters, and if you like them or want to reach out,
  please contact us at k...@6by7.net !


-LB
Ms. Lady Benjamin Cannon, ASCE.


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Re: Telia Not Withdrawing v6 Routes

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/18/20 14:58, adamv0...@netconsultings.com wrote:


 From my experience, most of the SPs spend a considerable time testing for SW 
defects on features (and combinations of features) that will be used and at 
scale intended,


I'm not so sure about that, actually.

I'd say there are some ISP's that spend some (or a considerable) amount 
of time testing for software defects.


My anecdotal experience is that most ISP's have neither the time, tools 
nor resources to do significant testing of software. More like, "is the 
version anything after R1, has it been around long enough, has it been 
recommended by TAC, are the -nsp lists raving on about it, is it a 
maintenance release, is the caveat list too long, does my vendor SE 
approve", type-thing.




  that's how you identify most of the bugs. What you're left with afterwards 
are special packets of death or some slow memory leaks (basically the more 
exotic stuff).


Which the majority of ISP's likely will never test for.

Mark.

Re: Telia Not Withdrawing v6 Routes

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/17/20 08:54, Saku Ytti wrote:


I put most of the blame on the market, we've modelled commercial
router market so that poor quality NOS is good for business and good
quality NOS is bad for business, I don't think this is in anyone's
formal business plan or that companies even realise they are not even
trying to make good NOS. I think it's emergent behaviour due to the
market and people follow that market demand unknowingly.
If we suddenly had one commercial NOS which is 100% bug free, many of
their customers would stop buying support, would rely on spare HW and
Internet forums for configuration help.


Not to mention that many of us would not need to be around to babysit 
all this dodgy software.


Definitely bad for business :-).

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

On 11/17/20 09:26, Saku Ytti wrote:


https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491
I am not trying to make any argument, just wanted to add context.


Yes, saw that too, and that post by Apple is also highlighted (and 
explained) in the same report.


The Gatekeeper OCSP checks remain unencrypted.

It still leave two glaring issues:

 * Apple are still not saying anything about their OS apps bypassing
   local firewalls and leaking our IP address and location past any
   VPN's we may be running on Big Sur.

 * The backdoor in iMessage's encryption that allows Apple and other
   "interested parties" to view our iMessage texts.

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

I'm not generally into conspiracy, but as I keep trying to work out the 
issue I described in this thread, I came across this:


    https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

Might explain quite a lot, actually, (particularly at the FAQ section 
under "When did this start?") and why it feels like macOS has taken a 
huge dive (that I couldn't explain) since Mojave.


I still have High Sierra installed on my 2017 15-inch Mac, and will 
likely keep it that way forever... if for nothing else, but as a 
reference of what once was.


Staying away from Big Sur for as long as I can.

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

Thanks, J.

So I did test this a few times as well. The only thing I had enabled 
(during the first test) in "System Services" was "Find My Mac". 
Everything else was turned off, and the issue remained.


Just to confirm that this was a clean install of Catalina, so the only 
wi-fi AP in my history is my home one, as I haven't worked in a cafe, 
airport, or hotel since then :-).


Since disabling Bluetooth and the system stabilizing, I've re-enabled 
"Location-Based Suggestions" and "Significant Locations" only. 
Everything else under "System Services" is still turned off, including 
"Wi-Fi Networking".


That said, you did mention that you've fixed this on Big Sur. I am still 
running Catalina. Considering Apple's history of dodgy initial releases 
of a new OS, I'll give Big Sur a few months (or a year) before I feel 
it's safe to upgrade. I'm already having to deal with Catalina as it is, 
which is why I have High Sierra installed on my old laptop for my 
weekend DJ streaming habit :-). OBS Studio seems to like High Sierra 
better than Catalina, hehe.


Many thanks for working on this - it's most appreciated!

Mark.

On 11/10/20 16:30, J. Hellenthal wrote:

Hey Mark,

Went through a bunch of tests here. Seems I’ve cleared up the matter on this macOS[1] Big 
Sur at least by disabling Wi-Fi Networking under “Location Services -> System Services 
-> Wi-Fi Networking [2]”. It seems at least from perspective that something changed 
there and causes the Mac to scan more aggressively when more than one access point 
(generally speaking your SSID & SSID + 5G) has been logged at a location as 
accessible. This same thing could be observed at least on my system while having those 
settings turned off, bluetooth on and location services enabled and opening (Wi-Fi 
Explorer[3]) which puts the interface into “monitor mode” which seems to be causing the 
contention somewhere. After those changes keep in mind I had to restart from a full 
shutdown to get to some real clean ms traffic to the router and I prefer to be connected 
to 5Ghz before 2.4Ghz.


1. Darwin Kernel Version 20.1.0: Thu Oct 29 05:35:40 PDT 2020; 
root:xnu-7195.50.5~4/RELEASE_X86_64
2. 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3xm3fpoziwe01d/Screen%20Shot%202020-11-10%20at%2008.20.08.png?dl=0
3. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wifi-explorer/id494803304?mt=12



On Nov 5, 2020, at 00:43, Mark Tinka  wrote:

Just an update on this re: the Bluetooth.

I had my AirPods paired previously for single use. I don't use them on the 
laptop (there is some latency), so I prefer the wired earphones. But it seems 
like Bluetooth was aggressively scanning for them. After removing them from the 
system, the scanning remained, but reduced significantly.

So looking at Console again, every so often, Bluetooth is scanning the network on behalf 
of the "sharingd" process.

sharingd is a sharing daemon that supports features such as AirDrop, Handoff, 
Instant Hotspot, Shared Computers and Remote Disc in Finder.

Still keeping Bluetooth off, however.

Mark.

Fwd: [apnic-talk] APRICOT 2021 PC call for volunteers

[Mark Tinka]

FYI.

Mark.


 Forwarded Message 
Subject:[apnic-talk] APRICOT 2021 PC call for volunteers
Date:   Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:37:10 +1000
From:   Philip Smith 
Reply-To:   APRICOT PC Chairs 
Organization:   PFS Internet Development Pty Ltd
To: apnic-t...@lists.apnic.net
CC: APRICOT PC Chairs 



Hi everyone,

As you will no doubt be aware, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, APRICOT 
2021 has moved on-line.  It will still be hosted, as planned, by PhNOG, 
the Philippine Network Operator Group. The new format means a reduction 
in the schedule but retaining the high quality and high relevancy of the 
content offered over the years.


The APRICOT 2021 Programme Committee is responsible for the solicitation 
and selection of suitable presentation and tutorial content for the 
APRICOT 2021 conference (https://2021.apricot.net/).


The APRICOT PC Chairs are now seeking nominations from the community to 
join the APRICOT 2021 PC to assist with the development of the programme 
for APRICOT 2021.


Eligible PC candidates are those who have attended APRICOT conferences 
in the recent past, have broad technical knowledge of Internet 
operations, and have reasonable familiarity with the format of APRICOT 
conferences.  Having constructive opinions and ideas about how the 
programme content might be improved is of high value too.  PC members 
are expected to work actively to solicit content and review submissions 
for technical merit.  The PC meets by conference call, weekly in 
frequency during the three months prior to APRICOT.


If you are interested in joining the PC and meet the above eligibility 
criteria, please send a brief note to "pc-chairs at apricot.net".  The 
note should include affiliation (if any) and contact details (including 
e-mail address), and a brief description of why you would make a good 
addition to the PC.


The PC Chairs will accept nominations received by 17:00 UTC+8 on Monday 
23rd November 2020, and will announce the new PC shortly thereafter.


Many thanks!

Mark Tinka, Marijana Novakovic & Philip Smith
APRICOT 2021 PC Chairs
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Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

Just an update on this re: the Bluetooth.

I had my AirPods paired previously for single use. I don't use them on 
the laptop (there is some latency), so I prefer the wired earphones. But 
it seems like Bluetooth was aggressively scanning for them. After 
removing them from the system, the scanning remained, but reduced 
significantly.


So looking at Console again, every so often, Bluetooth is scanning the 
network on behalf of the "sharingd" process.


sharingd is a sharing daemon that supports features such as AirDrop, 
Handoff, Instant Hotspot, Shared Computers and Remote Disc in Finder.


Still keeping Bluetooth off, however.

Mark.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

Thanks for the input, Karl.

Hopefully someone from Apple is around here and can get some ideas on 
how to fix this particular problem set.


Mark.

On 10/31/20 11:37, Karl Auerbach wrote:


Let me jump in and add a bit more information.

I am not an RF guy - I stopped playing with radios [and TV] in the 
days when they used vacuum tubes (yes, really.)


Many laptops share radio and antenna resources between WiFi and bluetooth.

Bluetooth lives on the 2.4ghz band.  Wifi presently uses both that 
band and also a 5ghz band. Different antennas might be used for each.


I encountered Wi-Fi/Bluetooth contention issues a couple of years back

My home wifi has (or rather had) distinct SSIDs for Wifi on the 2.4 
and 5ghz bands.  It was a rough attempt at manual load and distance 
balancing.


(Our house is in a relatively quiet area, RF wise, so there's not 
really any seriously competing wi-fi - or for that matter cell signal, 
broadcast TV, or FM radio.)


I began to notice that when I had one of my laptops on the 5ghz WiFi 
and was listening to music via some bluetooth speakers that my remote 
terminal keystrokes sometimes had that sluggish feel that is familiar 
when doing remote terminal command-line stuff over long paths with a 
lot of latency/jitter.  And at the same time the music via Bluetooth 
often broke up or stuttered.  There was a clear correlation between 
the two problems.


I had heard from some Linux kernel developers that deep down in the 
Linux kernel the simultaneous use of Wifi on a 5ghz channel and 
bluetooth on 2.4 causes a lot of thrashing and flogging of the the 
radio system.  I don't know, but I suspect that as a result there are 
queues of outbound traffic waiting for the radio or antennas to become 
operational on the channel they need.  I have no idea what happens to 
inbound frames when the radio system is tuned elsewhere - I never 
measured whether the frames are lost or delayed.


I suspect similar issues are present in *BSD, MacOS, and Windows kernels.

So I did some simple empirical testing to compare life with the laptop 
coerced to use an SSID present only on the 2.4ghz band. The problems 
went away.


I went back to the laptop, but coerced onto the 5ghz band for WiFi 
and, voila, there was trouble.


I've done this with a MacBook Pro (circa 2015 model) using various 
versions of MacOS and with my rather newer Linux laptops (mostly Dell 
XPS units with Fedora.)  Same sorts of behavior.


These were all i5 based units with 2 or 4 cores - plenty of CPU power 
to simultaneously handle an SSH remote console client and a music player.


I did not test with mobile phone or tablet platforms.

I do not know if the single radio issue is the result of cost savings 
or some radio-engineering or antenna issue.  I do suspect that these 
things could become more troublesome as WiFi 6 and/or 5G start to use 
some of the higher frequency allocations around 5.9 and 6ghz.)


(A few weeks ago we switched our home WiFi to a WiFi 6 [Netgear 
Orbi-6] mesh system that does not appear to allow separate SSIDs for 
the 2.4 and 5ghz bands, so I can not repeat these tests without 
constructing a test network with the now unused access points.  BTW, I 
did encounter the hell that is known as "reconfiguring dozens upon 
dozens of different kinds of IoT devices to use a different SSID".)


Looking somewhat off topic - it is my sense that we will be seeing a 
lot more latency/jitter (and packet resequencing) issues in the future 
as radio systems become more agile and as we begin to use shorter 
(millimeter) wavelength frequencies with reduced ability to penetrate 
walls that, in turn, cause more frequent access-point transitions 
(with possibly distinctly different backhaul characteristics).  I've 
observed that these things can cause trouble for some TCP stacks and 
some non-TCP based VoIP and streaming applications.


        --karl--

On 10/30/20 12:08 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:

Hi all.

So I may have fixed this for my end, and hopefully others may be able 
to use the same fix.


After a tip from Karl Auerbach and this link:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/97805

... I was able to fix the problem by disabling Bluetooth.

Re: Apple Catalina Appears to Introduce Massive Jitter - SOLVED!

[Mark Tinka]

On 10/30/20 23:57, Doug Barton wrote:

I would hesitate to blame BT. I have a macbook pro from ~1 year ago, 
on Catalina, and I use BT extensively ... mouse, keyboard, and 
headset. I do have location services trimmed down to just find my mac.


I ran: ping -c 1000 -i 0.1 

1000 packets transmitted, 998 packets received, 0.2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.255/2.378/9.095/0.634 ms

One thing that may contribute to blaming BT however is if you are 
using wifi on 2.4G only, and/or preferring it, as BT operates in the 
same frequency range neighborhood. My macbook is connected using 5G.


Happy to compare other settings if there is interest.


What I do know is that there has been more than one fix for most people 
that have had this issue. For some, it has been a dodgy app, and for 
others, it has just been disabling some Location Services.


In my case, what worked was disabling Bluetooth, in combination with as 
many Location Services as I could afford to not use.


I am able to reliably reproduce this issue, so in my case, I can 
certainly blame Bluetooth. Pity, since I do use some Handoff services 
with my other Apple devices, but I won't give up wi-fi stability for that.


And yes, this happens both on 2.4GHz and 5GHz. As you may know, macOS 
will default to 5GHz provided RSSI is at -68dB or better. My laptop only 
ever connects on 2.4GHz if I am outside my house (which is hardly). 
Inside the house, there is always a 5GHz transmitter within -38dB of me.


Mark.