I’d like to call your attention to this Network World article called “Stop inventing mobile phones.” To be brief, there’s a huge market for mobile phones – the physical devices that is – and the operating systems and applications for them. But in this rush to develop a better box, it often seems that the infrastructure to operate them – the network – hasn’t kept up with that innovation.

Does this sound familiar?

It often seems like we come up with the applications first, then try to develop the infrastructure to support it – not just in mobile technology but in all of technology. The car was built before the highway system, for example. RealPlayer tried to show video back in the day of the 56.6k modem.

But as Network World points out, there are so many competitors in the crowded mobile phone marketplace. This is great for innovation, but all of these mobile phones have been hamstrung by a lack of innovation in the mobile infrastructure.

Generally, it’s not a good idea to deploy apps until you verify your network can handle them.

ComputerWorld is saying that “IT job statisfaction plummets to all time low” in an article by Patrick Thibodeau.

Hagan said there is a lot of pent-up dissatisfaction in the IT workplace, as well as a backlog of people who normally would have moved to a different job in a stable economy. The recession has resulted in "unnaturally low attrition levels," he said.

I’ve just handed in my two weeks notice.

No, that’s not a hypothetical or hyperbole; I really did. January 22, 2010, will be my last day at CA|NetQoS.

Thing is, I’m not dissatisfied with my job here. I’m actually quite satisfied with it. When you talk about carrot and stick motivations – there’s no stick.

I’m taking another job because that job allows me to do something I’ve wanted to do my entire adult live – live and work in another country. In this case, specifically, I’ll be working for a startup called TemplateDigital.com, and living in Tauranga, New Zealand. CA|NetQoS always required (with good reason) that I remain here, and telecommuting wasn’t an option.

Even so, over the past three years, what I’ve been able to do here has helped me – I’ve been very happy here, and I think that the main factors in why I’ve been happy comes down to two things: the freedom to try new ideas, and a culture that rewards learning new skills. Because of this, I’ve been doing more work with video production and editing. I think my writing’s improved as well.

It is these improved skills and this risk taking, in fact, that allowed me to land the new job; but also kept me happy at this one.

Over on Slashdot, where they’re discussing the article, a prevailing thought has been that a few people are happier as contractors than they are as full time IT professionals. There are a variety of reasons, but one of them is the freedom of risk-taking and the ability to drive one’s own learning.

Anyway, I have to start packing, so the rest of this article will be written by the Marke-Tron 3000™ blog-posting robot, who we’ll have to rely on until we can line up a replacement.

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The Consumer Electronics Show is about to begin in Las Vegas; and it’s interesting to see some of the technologies that are coming out – and speculate on how they might impact the enterprise IT environment.

First, there’s the Phone Wars, heating up with Google coming out with the Nexus One, which is an open smart phone, compared to the current market leader, the Apple iPhone, which is a closed smart phone. 

It looks (to me, anyway) like Apple’s making a similar mistake to what they made in the 1980s and early 1990s – they’ve created a closed-down product and priced it at a premium, while competitors are creating much more open products which start out as expensive but become less so as the technologies mature.  This openness allows Google to take more risks with offering services related to the Web and leveraging cloud computing.  (After all, a smart phone has a teeny-weeny little processor in it – you don’t want to do any heavy number crunching on that!)

Still, the iPhone has one main advantage over Nexus (and RIM’s BlackBerry) – the iPhone has hardware encryption that cannot be turned off, and applications are tightly controlled.  In short, it’s more secure, making possible inroads into enterprise markets.  ReadWriteWeb has a few pieces of advice from their coverage of the Nexus One that IT managers can follow to secure it for use with an IT network – especially on government networks or defense contractor networks.

• Make sure that the device can be locked and swiped of its data if a user loses their Nexus One.


• Make sure Exchange ActiveSync is installed on the device so permissions for accessing data can be set up according to the policy set by the enterprise.


• Provide the ability to configure the device to remotely provision application clients and device interfaces used to reach the application source (e.g. Wi-Fi, VPN).


• Allow for PKI support that allows Android devices to receive and ingest digital certificates. The use of certificates helps automate connectivity to enterprise applications via Wi-Fi, VPN and web by making authentication transparent to users.

There’s also the impact of the Cradlepoint 4G routers – devices that essentially convert and route ambient city-wide 4G WiMax signals to the more prevalent 802.11n signals which more standard WiFi network interfaces can use.  The idea is that people who have WiFi, but not WiMax, on their laptops can use 4G service, as well as enable someone to pay for one 4G connection, and transfer that to multiple boxen – roommates, for example, or even small businesses. 

Finally, there’s the expansion of the VUDU service.  VUDU is an on-demand Internet movie rental service – you hook up a box to your TV, and voila, you can rent movies from it.  It’s branching out, however, as it’s now going to be available built-in to multiple TVs, and will have internet “applications” for specific sites – Flickr, Pandora, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Stock Tracking, etc.

Because of technologies like Vudu, we’re starting to see the – well, not the beginning, because we’re too far in – but the “beginning of the middle” of the TV/Internet convergence. 

It seems less like “news” and more like an eventuality, but Skype is putting forward an HD version of its software. In addition to two-way video teleconferencing at 720p on computers, Skype is teaming up with LG and Panasonic to produce TVs with Skype built in – including webcams and connection – no computer required.

I had a feeling this was coming back in October 09, when Lifesize announced its “Passport” product that would allow you to hook up Skype to a 720p TV. I would not be surprised if much of the technology that went into the passport ended up in the new LG and Panasonic TVs.

Obviously, higher resolution Skype means higher bandwidth needs for Skype on your network. Well – eventually. See, most Webcams aren’t high-definition, and so you’ve got a little bit of time before HD webcams hit the market. They’re not cheap either – HD requires larger sensors to produce an image with the same amount of light as SD, so early HD webcams are going to be around $100 USD or more; compared to $15-20 for a cheap webcam.

What we have here is a similar kind of network disruption technology that occurred when YouTube went high def; only this time, instead of sucking down only bandwidth, Skype’s conversations are also latency based. So, if you’re not using Skype for business, you’re going to want to keep it out of the latency sensitive class of service; and if you are using Skype for business, you’re going to want to make sure it has the bandwidth it needs in the higher level QoS without it drowning out your other latency sensitive apps.

We’ll try to get more details on Skype’s codec and bandwidth requirements soon.

There’s a joke about how Bono, once, while performing at a gig, asked for total silence, then, slowly, started clapping his hands. Once. Then Twice. Then three times. And, still clapping, he said to the crowd: “Every time I clap my hand, a child in Africa dies.”

At which point, the crowd yelled back in unison: “Then stop doing it, you evil son-of-a--!”

We wouldn’t normally be talking about Bono except that he’s recently written an editorial in the New York Times talking, in part, about intellectual property, taking the stance that:

“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files.”

The comparison isn’t apt. The movie industry is actually doing quite well, despite the fact that the filesize hasn’t been an issue for either copyright infringers or legal downloads. (High definition instant streaming, after all, is a reality.) And I have never heard of anybody pirating a newspaper – their problems are coming from entirely different sources altogether. Television advertisements are going down, yes, but that’s mainly due to digital video recorders that allow you to skip commercials and increased competition from video games and the Internet – not TV piracy.

Users on various social media sites (such as Reddit.com) are angry at him because they feel it’s a bit of a conflict of interest to have Bono, a major holder of intellectual property (in the form of his stake in Elevation Partners as well as his U2 songs) writing an editorial in the New York Times calling for tracking of content online.

In fact, he cites China’s efforts to track online dissent as evidence to show that content can indeed be tracked online – simultaneously arguing for a totalitarian approach to network control by the state while completely missing the point that even a totalitarian approach to network control by the state doesn’t catch every dissenter or file sharer.

Musicians are angry at him for arguing that “the young, fledgling songwriters” (whom Internet distribution has actually served the most) “can’t live off ticket and t-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us,” when the realities of the music business is that unless you are huge, like U2 or Bono, you typically don’t get any money off of the albums, and live entirely off of ticket sales and merchandising.

(You could chalk the latter up to ignorance; but when you have a podium as large as Bono’s, and a forum as great as the New York Times, it behooves you to do some research before speaking with authority.)

But this should also make network managers angry as well. First, he suggests that the “reverse Robin Hooding benefits… rich service providers.”

You know, I don’t see it. Legal streaming video, like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Skype, etc. are more than enough incentive for people to buy high-throughput and high-bandwidth packages; copyright infringement, if anything, increases the amount of traffic on the network, which leads to (slightly) lower profits for the ISPs – and in some cases, leading to poorer network performance. Look at Comcast’s use of the Sandvine solution to send forged RST packets. If copyright infringement helped, rather than hurt, ISPs, this would have been a move that made no sense for Comcast to take. (As it is, they found a different solution – but to the same problem.)

In fact, finding ways to decrease the impact of copyright infringement on network performance is a big motivator for many enterprises – not just the ISP.

But you knew that. The point is that Bono is speaking to people who don’t.

Today’s blog post – not that there are many of you out there reading this in the “dead zone” between Christmas and New Years – but today’s post was going to be on the ridiculous travel restrictions that they put into place after the averted attack on Christmas, how taking away blankets weren’t adding to security and just making people uncomfortable. Its security theatre, I know, but security theatre is only theoretically worth something if it actually makes people feel safer.

Scanning people’s shoes doesn’t really help with security, but it does make people feel safer. The security measures put into place these past couple of days seemed arbitrary, and didn’t really seem like there was a reason to do it at all, except to make people uncomfortable. That, in turn, actively works against the façade of security theatre, making people feel uncomfortable knowing that the people who were supposed to be looking out for us didn’t know what the heck they were doing.

And I was going to write something or another about network performance – going to tie in the message that network security is important, but too often, it seems like a lot of corporate security restrictions are in place that don’t really make people’s networks more secure – but do slow down the network’s performance.

It might have been a good post, except that CBS reported a half hour ago, as I was half-done with the first draft of this post that those in-flight restrictions have, in fact, been eased.

So, just when I get all worked up and annoyed over the FAA doing something that is, in my opinion, stupid, they go ahead and do something smart to correct it, and it just throws off my day.

So, to try to bring this all back to the beginning again, this is probably how a lot of people in enterprises feel when dealing with network performance problems. No matter how quickly the problem gets fixed, the user only remembers that there was a problem – not that it was fixed quickly. This is why you need to be proactive about network performance, and prevent problems, not just repair them.

According to the New York Times Bits Blog, professor David Anderegg of Bennington college suggests that the words “nerd” and “geek” are “damaging, like racial epithets, and should be avoided.”

Yet the meaning of words often evolves as the social context changes. I noted that in Manhattan’s elite high schools being called a “cool nerd” is a compliment… Perhaps that’s true in a handful of ZIP codes around the country, Dr. Anderegg conceded. But in most of America, he said, nerds and geeks are people to avoid. The connotations are a bit different: a geek suggests a person with special expertise, while nerd suggests social ineptness. And neither are cool.

I disagree with Anderegg, but not because he’s fundamentally wrong.  Being called a “geek” or “nerd” in school, where social acceptance and “coolness” are everything, it is a derogatory remark, designed to designate the victim’s “otherness,” and as such, retain the bully’s inclusiveness. 

And it’s true that in some areas of the country, and in the world, “geek” and “nerd” never grow beyond that derogatory meaning.

But in the adult world – in the world that you and I inhabit, “Geek” and “Nerd” both have complimentary and derogatory meanings.  Among practitioners of the mystic arts of information technology, “geek” is high praise – and indeed can be just as much of a word of inclusion among engineers, administrators, and architects as it was a word of exclusion in high school. Same with “nerd” in higher academia. 

The point is that over the past 20 years, in part because we nerds and geeks have lead the greatest advances in social and cultural change with the advent of the personal computer and the Internet, we have turned those words to our own advantage; those who use them as derogatory only show their ignorance when they do so.  And those who do so after a certain age also show their immaturity. 

Indeed, “nerd” and “geek” may not belong on the playground; but we must not let our language descend into a form which is only fit for schoolchildren. I will continue to use “nerd” and “geek” and use them as compliments and accolades for my friends and colleagues. 

And if “nerd” and “geek” are not complimentary in the society where you live, then your society is backwards and wrong. And I invite you to come to Austin, to San Francisco, to New York, to Seattle – to anyplace in the world that recognizes that there is beauty in the seeking of knowledge and the diversity of ideas.

Here’s another word: “Gay” has a derogatory meaning and a second, neutral one.  But no one is asking gay people to stop calling themselves gay because there are bigots and idiots out there that seek to demean the word by associating a defamatory meaning with it.  Anderegg’s argument would also apply to the banning of “gay,” – which is a word that is a badge of pride for many people.  Banning it would be giving a victory to the idiots.

And so would banning “Nerd” and “Geek” – for the same reasons.  Banning “Nerd” and “Geek” would do more to enforce in the minds of children that being a nerd or being a geek is somehow wrong, and somehow something to be avoided. 

That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  “Nerd” is a badge of pride.  As is “Geek.”  And anyone I know and care to spend more than five minutes with would be proud and honored to be called that. 

Now, I may be wrong about this. Dr. Anderegg has a Ph.D. in psychology, while I’m just some nerd…     

One of the key selling points of Amazon’s EC2 capacity is its ability to turn CAPEX costs into OPEX costs.  Or, for those of us who didn’t major in business in college, to pay for computer hardware with the “Pay For Services” budget, instead of the “Buy Stuff” budget. 

This is generally a good thing – but now Amazon’s trying something else that might lower costs even more, while selling Amazon’s cloud computing overstock – they’re going to auction off unused virtual server capacity.  Since the server capacity changes with supply and demand – so would the price, theoretically. 

Here’s how it works.  You bid a price, and if the price is more than the “spot price,” you pay the spot price.  If the spot price rises higher than your bid, however, your instances are terminated.  According to Network World:

Since Spot Instances can be terminated without warning, once a customer is outbid, they shouldn't be the only source of capacity allocated to enterprise applications that need 24/7 uptime.

No kidding.  I could see the Spot Instances being used for some additional oomph in computational tasks, but I wouldn’t want any sort of persistent application running on that thing.  I’d hate to wake up one morning to find out that my company can’t get e-mail because “whurleybird3289” outbid me by one cent…

On the other hand, there are plenty of applications that could use that oomph – video cluster rendering, astrophysics models, the B-Movie Idea Generator (used by Revolution Studios, mostly…)

Ultimately, the entire idea seems to embrace cloud computing’s core competence: low expense, while exacerbating its core drawback – low(er) reliability.

There’s also another problem – security.  Recently, a Zeus/Zbot Trojan which used a compromised EC2 virtual server for command and control – the first of its kind. 

"This is the first instance that we're aware of that EC2 has been compromised to be used to distribute malware," [Don DeBolt, Director of Threat Research for CA Internet Security Business Unit] said. "So it certainly should raise awareness. Anytime that you use a cloud-based service or a host infrastructure or applications, that increases the complexity of what you're trying to do. And if the access and application controls are not maintained securely, then it opens it up to potential compromise."

Cloud computing is great, but there are drawbacks and not being able to control every element of your network performance is one of them. 

The Kevin Rudd-led Australian government has put forward a Fiber-To-The-Home, or as the Australians call it, “Fibre-to-the-Home” initiative, including an open-access network which supposedly will provider 100Mbps connections to 90% of Australian homes and businesses.  This is presumably in order to diversify the Claudia Black based-economy, which, sometime in the 1990s, became Australia’s primary export.

One of the decisions for the network, which is a public-private partnership, is that it would only provide physical and data link layer – network layers would have to be provided by companies that wished to use the network (presumably for resale,) and Cisco Australia/NZ CTO Kevin Bloch criticized this choice, because there were only one or two companies that could afford to roll out their own Layer 3 services – cutting out smaller network providers from the new network completely. 

"So we are absolutely going back to the future and making a deeper incumbency than we've ever seen before if we don't open this up and really look at what happens in the points of interconnect that's where it's going to hurt. Everybody seems to be skirting over the issue."
While Cisco stood to gain more by selling additional networking equipment to access seekers, Mr. Bloch said it was not in the national interest to choose the path NBN Co had chosen.

Later, however, Cisco’s Australia/NZ Vice President Les Williamson, said that Bloch didn’t speak for the entire Cisco company with his remarks; that while the remarks were made “in good faith,” they didn’t take into account the industry consultation process – specifically, Cisco’s role in the Communications Alliance, which promoted the “Layer 2” strategy. 

In a statement to iTWire, Williamson clearly sought to mend its relationship with both the Government and the NBN Company.
"Cisco supports the federal government’s NBN vision and strategy as well as the process it has created in order to realise this critical initiative," he said.

Australia’s broadband initiative is one of the Rudd Government’s largest initiatves, and a promotional video for the NBN created by Alcatel-Lucent include claims that the NBN program “is not just about faster Internet,” but that “The NBN is the foundation on which we will build an entirely new way of life.”

To make the point, the promotional video whacks a stick-figure upside the head with a stop sign, presumably a punishment for his NBN-related ignorance, and explains that Bob, a sheep farmer, will be able to throw sheep into his computer monitor and have them appear on the other end of the network connection.

IT professionals are often familiar with the Network/Server/Application blame game.  “Whatever the problem, it’s never our problem.” The avoidance of this blame game is one of the key reasons network monitoring and network management products exist; to avoid the blame game and get straight to the root cause of a problem. 

But if you were to give an award for the mother of all network performance blame games, a good candidate for the honor would be the spat AT&T and Apple are having regarding whether Apple’s iPhone design, Apple’s iPhone users, or AT&T’s network are the cause of problems like dropped calls and slow data transfer speeds.

In the midst of all of this, satirist, “The Fake Steve Jobs,” a.k.a. Newsweek’s Dan Lyons, proposed to his users that in order to protest “AT&T’s bastardly behavior over bandwidth usage,” that users should attempt to overwhelm the AT&T 3G data network at Friday, December 18^th, at noon PST, by using the most data-heavy apps possible. 

The intention, I believe, is to “send a message” to AT&T about their service – and a spike of traffic at that time would be a quick way to give AT&T hard numbers on how many of their customers are ticked off. 

An AT&T spokesman responded by saying:

“We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.”

Lyons, as Fake Steve Jobs, on the other hand, claimed that the CEO of AT&T tried to call him, but:

“He started shouting, but just then — I’m not kidding — the call got dropped, because, see, I was on my goddamn iPhone and the damn thing can’t hold on to a call in downtown Palo Alto.

I tried moving six inches to my left, and got a signal. Then I moved back, and I lost it. This took place in downtown Palo Alto at my yoga studio. I tried going outside, and got a signal again. Randall [Stephenson] called, I picked up, got dropped. I walked down the block, and dialed him back. Finally got him. He’s like, “Just don’t f***ing move, okay? Just stand right where you are and let me shout at you for a minute.” I was like, Fine, whatever, shout away, and I put the phone down on a bench and did some stretches.

Which to me implies three life lessons.  Number one, when you know you’re going to have an abnormal influx of traffic due to some event, monitor it and be prepared to switch it over to a different class of service in order to maintain mission critical applications.  Number two, be proactive in avoiding network performance problems rather than playing the blame game.  And number three, never, ever pick a fight with a satirist. 

Except Chas Licciardello.  The man is contemptible.