DARPA would have you believe that it’s the brilliance of modern day social networks that led an MIT-based team to win its red balloon challenge this weekend, and while there’s no doubt that the presence of the internet assisted in the locating of ten randomly placed floating objects, we’re crediting the bright minds at the university for their strategy of soliciting team mates. The challenge was constructed in order to “see whether social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter should be seen as credible sources of information,” not to mention investigate new ways to react to various threats that need instant attention. Less than nine hours after the contest began, MIT‘s team had deflated the hopes of around 4,000 other teams by finding all ten, though it’s hard to say exactly how many members were out looking. You see — MIT established a website that promised hundreds, even thousands of dollars to individuals who sent in the correct coordinates of balloons, noting that the $40,000 in prize money would be graciously distributed should their efforts lead to a win. DARPA may call it a triumph of the information superhighway; we’re calling it victory in numbers.
Some might say that Microsoft just can’t catch a break. Others might argue that it’s getting exactly what it deserves. Whatever your take on the situation, it seems as if Microsoft may finally have the EU off of its monstrous back (at least momentarily), as a report has surfaced noting that said software giant is nearing approval for a new browser ballot screen demanded by the European Commission. As you well know by know, rivals Mozilla, Opera and Google all submitted change requests to EU regulators in hopes of having browser selection boxes randomized and not displayed within Internet Explorer. Purportedly, the all-clear will come down on December 15th (or earlier), and the antitrust case will be settled as Windows customers have a clearer choice when it comes to selecting a go-to browser from day one. ‘Course, said ballot screen wouldn’t be pushed out to existing users until early next year, but when it goes live users will be able to decide between Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari for their browsing needs. Huzzah!
With the debate on net neutrality in full swing in the US, we’ve been hearing about Bandwidth Hogs again. ‘Bandwidth Hog‘ is a sound bite that conveys a strong emotion: you can virtually see the fat pig chomping on the bandwidth, pushing back all the other animals in the barnyard with his fat pig shoulders all the while scrutinizing with his shiny piggy eyes to see if the farmer isn’t around…
The image is so powerful that everyone thinks they understand what the term means , no one questions if the analogy is correct. In discussing this issue, Herman and I realised we had serious doubts about the existence of that potentially mythical beast. In fact, we are not sure even the telcos know what a bandwidth hog is and does.
But it makes great headlines: “Net Neutrality will force the telco’s to give The Internet away to Bandwidth Hogs”. They claim that bandwidth hogs steal all the bandwidth and cause network congestion, and therefore their behaviour harms all the other regular and peaceful law-abiding users. And to add insult to injury they pay the same price as the others! No, policing and rationing must be applied by the benevolent telco to protect the innocent.
Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the way that telcos identify the Bandwidth Hogs is not by monitoring if they cause unfair traffic congestion for other users. No, they just measure the total data downloaded per user, list the top 5% and call them hogs.
For those service providers with data caps, these are usually set around 50 Gbyte and go up to 150 Gbyte a month. This is therefore a good indication of the level of bandwidth at which you start being considered a “hog”. But wait: 50 Gbyte a month is… 150 kbps average (0,15 Mbps), 150 Gbyte a month is 450 kbps on average. If you have a 10 Mbps link, that’s only 1,5 % or 4,5 % of its maximum advertised speed!
And that would be “hogging”?
The fact is that what most telcos call hogs are simply people who overall and on average download more than others. Blaming them for network congestion is actually an admission that telcos are uncomfortable with the ‘all you can eat’ broadband schemes that they themselves introduced on the market to get people to subscribe. In other words, the marketing push to get people to subscribe to broadband worked, but now the telcos see a missed opportunity at price discrimination…
As Herman explains in his post, TCP/IP is by definition an egalitarian protocol. Implemented well, it should result in an equal distribution of available bandwidth in the operator’s network between end-users; so the concept of a bandwidth hog is by definition an impossibility. An end-user can download all his access line will sustain when the network is comparatively empty, but as soon as it fills up from other users’ traffic, his own download (or upload) rate will diminish until it’s no bigger than what anyone else gets.
Now I’m pretty sure that many telcos will disagree with our assessment of this. So here’s a challenge for them: in the next few days, I will specify on this blog a standard dataset that would enable me to do an in-depth data analysis into network usage by individual users. Any telco willing to actually understand what’s happening there and to answer the question on the existence of hogs once and for all can extract that data and send it over to me, I will analyse it for free, on my spare time. All I ask is that they let me publish the results of said research (even though their names need not be mentioned if they don’t wish it to be). Of course, if I find myself to be wrong and if indeed I manage to identify users that systematically degrade the experience for other users, I will say so publicly. If, as I suspect, there are no such users, I will also say so publicly. The data will back either of these assertions.
Please email me if you’re interested. And please publicise this offer if you’re not in a position to extract such a dataset but are still interested in the answer. This is a much more important question than knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!
Reprinted with permission from Fiberevolution; written in collaboration with Dadamotive. Megahog source image from the AP via TheAge
The lucky residents of Portland, Oregon are the first to test out Comcast‘s just deployed and long-expected data usage meter for its customers. The interface is self-explanatory, but customers who have long been trying to guesstimate how close they are to their 250GB limit should be jumping for joy right about now. Comcast says the data is refreshed about every three hours, and that the median usage of its customers is somewhere around 2 – 4GB per month. No word on further rollout of the usage meter — but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for you.
White space devices seem likely to play a major part in the FCC’s solution to the wireless spectrum crisis. Operating in the buffers between frequencies used by television broadcasts, these devices will be able to exploit TV’s airspace without interfering with the incumbent users’ traffic. The unlicensed utilization of white spaces has been approved going on for a year now, but really important government stuff has gotten in the way of making that vote a reality. It was only recently that Claudville, Virginia got the very first such network, and initial results show that it hasn’t disrupted any of the fine, fine programming percolating the local airwaves. The only issue we see is that your WSD will need to be capable of both identifying its own position by GPS and hooking up to the database to find out what bands it may use, but then it’s not like anyone sells smartphones without these capabilities nowadays, is it?
Even if you don’t have a favored fighter in the browser wars, you have to admit Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been looking mighty unfit over the last few years. Younger and fitter contenders like Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have arguably overtaken the old stalwart, and now Microsoft is making some much-needed noise about fighting back. The software giant has been giving developers and curious journalists a very early peek into its IE 9 progress at PDC, with its stated ambitions including faster Javascript (see table above), HTML5 support, and hardware acceleration for web content. By harnessing DirectX and your graphics processor, the new browser will offer improvements in text readability and video performance, as well as taking some of the load off the CPU. Development has only just got under way, mind you, so there’s still plenty of time to screw it all up. Or make it awesome.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Google today unveiled more details of Chrome OS, a lightweight, browser-based operating system for netbooks.
With a strong focus on speed, the Chrome OS promises nearly instant boot times of about 7 seconds for users to login to their computers.
“We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast … to boot up like a TV,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google.
The first Chrome OS netbooks will be available in late 2010, Pichai said. It will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you’ll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.
Google is currently working with unnamed computer manufacturers to define specifications for these computers, which Pichai said will include larger netbook-style computers with full-size keyboards, large trackpads and large displays.
Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives — they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and internet-based storage for saving all of your data.
All the applications will be web-based, meaning users won’t have to install apps, manage updates or even backup their data. All data will be stored in the cloud, and users won’t even have to bother with anti-virus software: Google claims it will monitor code to prevent malicious activity in Chrome OS web apps.
“Chrome OS is a totally rethought computer that will let you focus on the internet, so you can stop worrying about your computer,” according to a Google promotional video shown at the event, held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California.
As part of its announcement today, Pichai said that Google would be releasing all of the operating system’s code and design documents to the public.
Introduced in July, Chrome OS is a Linux-based, open-source operating system centered on Google’s Chrome browser. Applications will run exclusively inside the browser, Google said Thursday.
“As of today, the code will be fully open, which means Google developers will be working on the same tree as open developers,” said Pichai.
The OS’s focus on design is consistent with the company’s stance that the future is in the web. In July, Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist, spoke on a panel about app stores, in which he said native apps (such as those available for the iPhone) would be obsolete in the future, and that the web will “become the platform that matters.”
“Every capability you want today, in the future it will be written as a web application,” Pichai said Thursday.
Netbooks — lightweight, low-powered subnotebooks — were the surprise hit of 2008 and 2009. However, with the growth of netbook sales slowing — and the prices of some full-powered notebooks dropping below $400 — the continued viability of the netbook sector is an open question.
Though netbook shipments are falling below manufacturers’ expectations, the inexpensive, low-powered devices appear to still be selling well. Pichai cited research figures from ABI research indicating that 35 million netbooks shipped in 2009, more than twice the number sold in 2008.
Manufacturers have yet to announce pricing on netbooks shipping with Chrome OS, but Google expects the cost to be about the same as current netbooks. On average, netbooks cost between $300 and $500.
Videos demonstrating Chrome OS’s user interface, security, fast boot and other features are below the jump.
We’re not really sure whether to consider this patronizing or genuinely useful. Former Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton, who is herself at an advanced age now, has partnered with Wessex Computers to create a custom Linux desktop targeted at easing the elderly into the use of a computer. Dubbed SimplicITy (the Brits do love their puns), it features only six chunky buttons that lead to a web or file browser, chat, email and profile apps, and awesomely enough, video tutorials from Valerie herself. Once you get your web-legs under you and feel confident enough to handle more complexity, you can disable the SimplicITy desktop and use a more conventional Linux distro. Hit the read link for a video of one lady’s reaction to the software.
Comcast customers have been no stranger to bandwidth shenanigans over the years, from the whole torrent filtering mess to the 250GB monthly cap. Now the company is back with a new data throttling scheme intended to put the kibosh on excessive traffic during those times when the network is already being overwhelmed. The two-tiered system is put on alert if either more than 70 percent of your max bandwidth (downstream or upstream) is used for more than 15 minutes or if your particular Cable Modem Termination System gets congested and it decides that you’re partially responsible. Should you run afoul of the traffic warden, expect to find yourself down-throttled for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilization rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes. If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn’t notice any difference whatsoever — unless, of course, John McCain gets his way. Warning: PDF read link.
[Via Slashdot] Update: Due to crossed wires when researching this piece, we mistakenly reported that this policy was new. It is not. In fact, the throttling detailed above has been in effect for nearly a year.
Comcast customers have been no stranger to bandwidth shenanigans over the years, from the whole torrent filtering mess to the 250GB monthly cap. Now the company is back with a new data throttling scheme intended to put the kibosh on excessive traffic during those times when the network is already being overwhelmed. The two-tiered system is put on alert if either more than 70 percent of your max bandwidth (downstream or upstream) is used for more than 15 minutes or if your particular Cable Modem Termination System gets congested and it decides that you’re partially responsible. Should you run afoul of the traffic warden, expect to find yourself down-throtted for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes. If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn’t notice any difference whatsoever — unless, of course, John McCain gets his way. Warning: PDF read link.
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Every ISP’s discussions of pricing plans, 
