As we all know by now, today is the 40^th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing, unless you are one of those few who choose not to believe the Mythbusters when they debunked the idea of a moon landing hoax. Then there’s my uncle Edward, who believes that the moon landing was faked from a soundstage located on the surface of the moon.

Today, the moon landing is humbling for those of us who think in terms of networks, routers, and switches – the Internet is amazing in its communication potential, but for all the good it’s done, it’s still essentially terrestrial. The furthest the network travels is to orbital distance – and only as a waypoint.

Because of the sheer distances involved, new technologies have to be invented and improved, like Vinton Cerf’s InterPlaNet; and just as the Apollo mission gave us digital watches, cordless drills, the joystick, the smoke alarm, and so many others, interplanetary Internet promises similar advances for computer technology – from improvements in security for electronic mail, to improved performance in communication challenged environments, like disaster recovery scenarios, the developing world, and the military at wartime.

In fact, it was earlier this month (July 7^th, to be exact) that the International Space Station turned on the first node in a permanent Interplanetary Internet, using a protocol known as “Delay Tolerant Networking” (DTN for short) and is designed with huge latencies and dropped packets from solar storms, or being on the wrong side of a planet, in mind.

And while astronauts typically have more important things to do, they can Twitter. (“OMGWTFBBQ - Houston, we have a problem. :-(”)

One interesting thing I just learned was that Apollo 11 had its own minicomputer on board – minicomputer in the 1969 sense of the term – because there was a 2.5 second delay between Houston and Apollo 11 due to speed-of-light issues, and that 2.5 second delay was far too long for the astronauts, hurtling around the moon, to gather, send, retrieve, and act on data. I suppose there are parallels to cloud computing here, but I’d rather not stretch it.

Anyway, that minicomputer was the first of ever smaller and smaller computers, rather than ever larger and larger computers which characterized pre-1969 computer development. Now we have computers the size of – actually, I don’t know how small computers are nowadays; I’d mention the iPhone, but you just know someone’s coming out with a cellphone twice as powerful at half the size a month from now…

Point is, today’s a day when we can look back at one of the most powerful technological and scientific triumphs with a sense of techie-geek pride. It was the nerds with pocket protectors that got us to the moon and back. And I’m proud of that.

That sound you’re hearing is the screaming of my soul being crushed.

All great journalists can maintain complete objectivity in the most trying of circumstances. I am merely a good journalist.

Well, I’m adequate.

But I think I should disclose my biases here, as this is an issue that affects me personally.

DSLReports.com reported that Time Warner has decided that Austin will be one of four “trial cities” to test out their new “Tiered Bandwidth” plans – which are essentially paying roughly the same amount of money you were before (give or take about $5) plus $1 for each gigabyte of data you transfer, over a set cap. The highest plan will be 100GB. Omar Gallaga over at the Statesman worries that the top plan it might not be enough for him and his family – I know it certainly won’t be enough for me.

The New York Times once estimated the wholesale cost of bandwidth to Time Warner at something like $0.10 per GB. At $1/GB, that’s a markup of 1000%

So I got upset. The Internet isn’t just how I make my day-job livelihood, it’s also what I use to transfer and upload the high definition videos that I put out on the Web for my moonlighting. It’s how I send raw footage to documentary collaborators. Since YouTube is the only affordable outlet for my work at this time, a bandwidth cap will make it cost prohibitive for me to continue as an independent filmmaker.

Best estimate yesterday was that I was I was using 400GB a month, and that my Internet service would increase 650%. Since then, I’ve actually looked at my home traffic data for the past 15 days. I’m happy to report that I’m only using 300GB a month, and at $1/GB, the bill would only go up about 500%.

(I could go for go for business service, which has no caps, but the equivalent of my current “Turbo” service, which provides 15Mbps down and 2Mbps up, would cost $280/mo. There are plans at $120, which is merely a 200% markup, but the $120 business class service provides only 10Mbps down, and 512kbps up.)

But what was even more upsetting was that I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first. I first found out about the story from DSL Reports. Calling up Time Warner customer service, they told me there was no plan for tiered bandwidth in Austin. Chatting with Time Warner tech support, they said it would start this month.

The actual truth is that monitoring end-user bandwidth will begin this month in Austin, but we won’t be charged for bandwidth until a couple months down the road.

But I didn’t know that until I literally had Alex Dudley, VP of Public Relations at Time Warner Cable on the line.

Time Warner is a monopoly in my apartment complex. I have checked – AT&T, Grande, Verizon – none of them offer service to my apartment.

I like my apartment. My apartment is very close to work, it has a nice swimming pool, and there’s a 100% lack of cockroaches. Essentially, I can’t justify staying there if I’m going to be paying $300/mo (or even $120/mo) for Internet service, compared to $60/mo elsewhere. In essence, I’m being kicked out of my home by Time Warner. (If one of your bills shot up 500%, you’d move too.)

I’m just lucky that my lease ends around the same time that TWC will be instituting these caps. It would have been cheaper in the long run to break my lease otherwise.

So journalistic impartiality? Well, I give it my best shot, that’s all you can ask of me in this situation.

One last thing before we get to the interview: We’ve covered bandwidth caps from Time Warner and others before in this publication. I really hope that if you’re interested in this subject, you read “Bandwidth Caps and the Cognitive Surplus.” In short: The Internet has finally given people something better to do than watch “whatever’s on” TV, and it’s creating a more participatory culture. Bandwidth caps are an attempt to stuff the genie back into the bottle. There’s more to it, of course, which is why I suggest you take a look at the full article.

A transcript of the interview with Alex Dudley – which at times seemed more like a debate – is below.

[The following transcript is mostly verbatim. A few words have been changed (ums, some interruptions, confused & corrected technical terms such as saying “gigabyte” when meaning “megabyte” and vice versa, etc.) so that the interview reads more clearly. Reporters following up on this story who need to verify the accuracy of the transcript are welcome to contact brian.boyko@netqos.com for details.]

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Brian Boyko, Network Performance Daily: As you know, I'm a customer of Time Warner in Austin. I have the biggest bandwidth plan, I think the Turbo...

Alex Dudley, VP of Public Relations, Time Warner Cable: Turbo, yes. You like it?

NPD: Well that entirely depends on the answers to some of the questions that I'm about to ask you!

Dudley: [Laughter] It always does, it always does.

NPD: It does, you know? We've actually covered a lot of this stuff, like for example, when Beaumont, Texas came out with the 40 gigabyte plan. I actually did a couple of back-of-the-envelope calculations, and - I can't give you an exact number, but I'm pretty sure I would probably go over the largest limit - which was 40 gigabytes - just myself personally. So, I'm wondering - let's just talk about the largest plan, 40 GB - how much after that, per gigabyte does the Beaumont plan cost?

Dudley: A dollar.

NPD: A dollar per gigabyte. Here's one of the big things. I called up Time Warner in Austin, through the [customer service] number - that's the customer service for Austin - everybody I've talked to says there are no plans to do monitored bandwidth, or metered bandwidth, or data caps, or however you want to call it - there's no plan to charge per gigabyte. I called up - or rather, I chatted online with a representative - a technical support representative for Road Runner, and he said that the plan would begin for Austin residents in April. So this is conflicting-- the first question is obviously, what is the story with regards to Austin, Texas, and I assume the other plans in Greensboro, and San Antonio - is it Richmond? Let me check my notes.

Dudley: Rochester, New York. So, the plan is a little bit different in some of those places. In Austin, we are going to begin metering usage in April. But we are - let me back up. The best way to think about this is that we kind of do it in three steps. The first is that we get our technical house in order so that we can actually do this. And we start metering bandwidth. And we give customers a three month grace period, so that they can see what they're consuming, get used to the new plan, figure out the right plan for them without being charged. After which, we begin to mail the first bills. So - we are going to be technically ready to meter usage in Austin in April, and we're going to begin doing so, but we are not going to begin the grace period for a couple more months. Probably early Summer. So the first time that people in Austin see a bill is likely to be Fall. Septemberish.

NPD: I was a little concerned about that - when I heard that metering would begin in April, I thought that you would start charging in April. And - I guess not. And that was exactly what I was hoping that you'd say, actually, and I didn't expect you to say it. Because, I called up, I tried to find out my usage over the past three months exactly. I couldn't do that.

Dudley: Yeah - that's - you know, look, that's one of the keys to this. We understand that this is basically a wholesale change in the way that people talk about the way they use the Internet. We get that, that this is hard. So, what we want to do is make it as clear as possible. So - in addition to the three month grace period, we've also created what we call a gas gauge that will rest on your RoadRunner home page, so you can get instant up-to-the-minute calculation of how we are measuring your usage. And that will launch at the same time that we begin metering.

NPD: The only problem is, and as I've said, these are all back-of-the-envelope calculations - I don't have hard numbers, but personally, I'm not only a journalist, I'm also a filmmaker. I make short documentaries for the Web. And the idea is that-- Essentially, I'm sending 250 megabyte files over and over and over, so one video could take about 2 gigabytes themselves. And I'm downloading stuff like the Prelinger archives - for stuff to use - public domain footage to use in my video, I wouldn't be surprised, if you add in things like Netflix, (I'm a Netflix subscriber,) YouTube, Hulu, things like that - I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up being one of the highest usage customers in Austin. Probably - if I had to guess, maybe 400 Gigabytes - and that would cost around $400 a month - which is about... my rent.

[Ed. Note: I’ve since checked my Internet usage over the past 15 days based on what Vista’s Network connection reported during that time. A more accurate estimate would be 300 GB/mo.]

Dudley: Yeah, I think there's a number of different things that you can do. First and foremost, we are going to introduce a 100 GB plan. Kind of as a response to the folks who feel that the caps are low - we're going to offer that. We haven't finished pricing it yet, so I don't know what it's going to cost. That said, I mean, if you are using, consistently, 400 GB a month, then clearly, you're a target of what's going on here. And basically, what we're saying is - because of consumers that are using amounts like this, what we're seeing is a need for network expansion. Basically what we figure is that the top 25% of users use 100 times more network bandwidth than the bottom 25%.

NPD: Well that's just standard bell curves.

Dudley: I’m sorry?

NPD: Well, when you put any system on a graph like that, I mean, that actually seems a little low because of the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle or whatever it's called. When you put something on the bell curve, of course the top 25 are going to use the most bandwidth because they're the top 25. The lowest 25 are going to use the least amount of bandwidth. It seems like - funny numbers.

Dudley: Let’s use a metaphor then. You live in a small apartment. And, you're on the same electric grid as a very fancy neighborhood with big houses. And the guy in the big house leaves every light in the place blazing all night long - has a bunch of lights outside, spotlights on his beautiful house. And you have to subsidize his electric bill, just because you happen to share the network with him.

NPD: Right... but that doesn't...

Dudley: You conserve energy; you live in a small apartment, that's what we're saying. As we need to make improvements in the network to accommodate the increased demand, we can do one of two things. Either we can just charge everybody more, and we let the smaller user subsidize the top users, or we could create a plan that has a consumption element to it that asks people to pay for what they use.

NPD: Right, but that's kind of a false choice in that-- haven't you considered using -- it's kind of a false choice because what you can do is - first of all, when you talk about something like that, with congestion, the problem with the electric grid - using that as a metaphor - is that there's a finite amount of oil in the world. There's a finite amount of output. With a cable company, what you're really talking about is bandwidth, and bandwidth is simply a measure of how much you can have over time. So when you're charging for the data, basically, to use your metaphor, I think it's particularly unfair to charge more for the person who is using 40 gigabytes after letting a download go off overnight, compared to a guy whose using, maybe, under his cap, but he's doing it the most congested part of the day. And, what I'm thinking might be a solution without caps - and I was wondering if you ever considered this - is simply tracking the high-end users, and when they're downloading a lot and the line is congested, and only when the line is congested, then perhaps, throttling back their service using QoS priorities. Giving them...

Dudley: That’s exactly what Comcast did about a year ago, and it caused a complete outrage and the FCC hauled them before the committee and told them they had to stop doing it.

NPD: Actually, I covered that. That's actually the result that Comcast applied after the FCC asked them to choose a different system. You're talking about the Sandvine stuff that was sending forged RST packets and the issue there was that the RST packets looked like they had come from the sender itself, which was essentially kind of a classic "Man In The Middle" attack. A kind of a fraudulent thing.

Dudley: So here's what I'd say about that, then. What I'd say is that there are a number of ways you can address this problem. And the way that you've mentioned is certainly a possibility. We think this one also has some merit, and we're going to test it. And we'll see what happens.

NPD: Well, I can tell you right now that it probably won't work as far as congestion is concerned, because you're not attacking congestion. You're attacking data, while data is unlimited, while bandwidth is finite. And I'm already paying, as I said, I'm a Turbo customer - I'm already paying more for more bandwidth. If you want to charge me more for that bandwidth, I can go down to a lower tier in order to have it remain affordable. But, one of the things that I really can't do is, I really can't cut back on my consumption, because I do need this for both of my jobs - both this job as a journalist and as a filmmaker.

Dudley: Then it sounds like you should be a commercial customer, then, which is also possible. You know, for $140 bucks a month, you could be a commercial customer. And then there's no cap.

NPD: And can you give commercial customer service to residences?

Dudley: Yes.

NPD: That's good. That's a little bit more reasonable. Here's what I'm wondering. If a bill for a month goes consistently over, 140 GB a month - or rather the bill ends up being more than what it would cost for a commercial customer - let me start over. Basically, will customers be notified when it seems like they're going over and maybe they should upgrade to a bigger plan? Like a lot of the cell phone companies do, if they see you have like $30 worth of overage charges in a month, they'll tell you, "If you're going to keep doing this, you really should upgrade to the higher plan?"

Dudley: In the early parts of the trial, we are going to try to do that - try and alert folks when they're getting close, get them into a proper plan. But look, someone in your scenario, if you're really consuming 400GB a month, then that's not - we'll work with you on ways to curb your consumption, but clearly, if you're dependent upon it for work, you're not going to be happy with any of those discussions. So I think that for someone like yourself, a commercial account is probably the best option.

NPD: What about families that perhaps have multiple users. For me, I understand that I'm a high user, because I do videos. But the thing is, especially with services like Hulu and Netflix, and things like that - a lot of families could end up paying for one account, and everybody thinks that they're fine because they are only downloading 20 gigabytes which is half their cap, but if there's four people in the family, downloading 20 gigabytes - you start to have a problem. Will this negatively impact those larger families that need the Internet more?

Dudley: Well, I think that what you're failing to account for is that even in Beaumont, where the trial is active, 86% of our customers are unaffected.

NPD: Right, but 14% are!

Dudley: And by customers, I mean households, I don't mean individual people. So, the assumption is that the family may need more, but we haven't found that. Basically, we're targeting the highest end-users, to pay their share. So, I think that what we found is that for the majority of customers - for the overwhelming majority of customers, it's not even an issue.

NPD: Right, but 14% is a significant minority, and, I mean, my publication's called "Network Performance Daily," Chances are that my readers fall into that 14 percent. A great deal - and as time goes on, more users use the Internet for different services, and people get more Internet savvy, that 14% is just going to keep on growing. I mean, to me...

Dudley: But there's nothing to say that the plan couldn't grow with it, either.

NPD: Well, can I get your promise on that? That the plan will grow over time as Internet consumption increases overall?

Dudley: [long pause] That's a tricky spot for me. No. You can't. I don't make that decision. But what I'm saying is that there's nothing inherent in the capped levels that prevents us from doing that from an engineering perspective.

NPD: Alright. I just have to ask this stuff, and I'm sorry for putting you on the spot like that, but you know...

Dudley: Nah, this is okay. This is what I do. I'm happy to have a debate, so, it's not - no big deal.

NPD: Well, there is another aspect to this, and that is - Time Warner is a cable company that not only sells Internet service but also sells cable service - and I've mentioned services like Hulu, YouTube, AppleTV - those services - couldn't this be seen as anti-competitive? That all of a sudden it costs - you not only have to pay a dollar for a movie rental, but you also have to pay Time Warner a dollar and a half on top of that, for the extra bandwidth to make the movie rental - can't that be seen as anticompetitive?

Dudley: [pause] Only as much as it's anticompetitive for ExxonMobil to charge you the gas to drive down to Blockbuster to rent your video.

NPD: Right, but if you walk to Blockbuster, you're fine. I mean...

Dudley: That’s right, and if you stay under your cap, you're fine.

NPD: I - well you're still, if you stay under your cap, you're still charging per gigabyte - it's like... if you

Dudley: No we're not. We're charging for an allotment of gigabytes. We're charging for a monthly plan.

NPD: Right, but what I'm trying to say is...

Dudley: It has a limit. Much like you're - look, I don't know why this is such - why this is foreign to folks. You know, you're either paying for consumption... I mean, the concept of paying for what you consume is not a foreign one. I understand that it's different from the way we've charged for the Internet in the past, and we admit that. But the concept that you pay for what you use is how you buy just about everything.

NPD: Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that there's a way to pay for what you use and tackle consumption, without a data cap which has all these other side-effects.

Dudley: It's not a cap - you're thinking about it wrong. I mean we're calling it a cap, but it's not a cap. We don't stop you from consuming after you go over that cap, we just charge you differently. It's the same thing with a cell phone plan.

NPD: Yes, but it's effectively - it's a de facto cap. The argument is entirely that you are doing this entirely to get users to change their behavior. And what I'm--

Dudley: No we're not. We don't care - use as much as you want. All we're asking is that you pay for what you use. We're happy when you use - I mean, if you want to use 400 GB a month, and pay for it, we love you.

NPD: So this isn't a congestion solving problem?

Dudley: It is in -- it's a congestion solving problem in one of two ways. Either it will provide us with the revenue stream needed to beef up the network, or folks will change their consumption habits, which is entirely possible. But - it's not - that's not to say that-- it's completely content and protocol agnostic. We don't care what you download from where.

NPD: And that's great. I love that.

Dudley: I'm sorry?

NPD: I love protocol agnostic solutions - I think they're great - I just think that there are other protocol agnostic solutions that, perhaps, would be better than what you're doing.

Dudley: And if there are, and we will certainly look at all of them, then we will naturally be incorporated into this. And again, this is just a trial, so... I understand that as a heavy user, you're concerned - and your readership maybe heavy users too, and they're concerned about their personal skin in this game, and that's understandable. But I think that basically, it would be hard for anyone who consumes 400 GB a month to say that that doesn't cost us as your network provider a lot to service you. And it doesn't impact the levels of service on those with whom you share your bandwidth.

NPD: Right, but the point that I'm trying to say is that I'm perfectly fine for you charging me more, but charge me more based on the bandwidth I use, not on the data I download. You can use QoS policies - because I can't filter how congested the lines are on my end. You guys have to do that on your end. I'm just - what I'm trying to say is - yes, I'm a heavy user, but the heavy user isn't making problems for his neighbors if he's doing it when none of his neighbors are using the Internet.

Dudley: Hmm - and I don't disagree with that point, that that doesn't impact... I mean, you can't impact service on someone who is not online. And I don't disagree with that. But it still costs us money - the increased usage still costs us money to make the network able to accommodate that. And that's just a fact of business.

NPD: But you've already charged me more for my Turbo plan... You've already established, that "if you want this level of service, if you want this level of bandwidth, you're charging me for that Turbo plan." Now you're also saying, "In addition to that, you're going to also charge me for consumption?"

Dudley: That's exactly what we're saying.

NPD: Alright. No disagreement here. I know. I'm being rough. I don't like to be rough.

Dudley: No, it's okay. Look, I understand. This is a very passionate issue. It's very close to people like yourself that are heavy users. I get it. It's fine.

NPD: This corporate plan that you're talking about, how is it different from a personal plan? So, let's say that I do decide to go to the $140 a month plan.

Dudley: Just call us and ask for a business class account. And basically we come and hook up a corporate connection. It's a different customer service queue too. There are other advantages for you.

NPD: This is interesting - can we resell that? I know that residential services, you are not allowed to resell that, there was an article about someone who was trying to pull a fast one and resell 35 cable modems - with business class, am I restricted? Because I'm thinking - if it's going to be like $140 a month - that's still a pretty penny, and if I can get my neighbor to go with me on it, if he's got a Wi-Fi - if we can work out some sort of sharing deal, I have the landline so I'll maybe pay a little bit more - sort of like, "Internet Roomies."

Dudley: I don't know if that's possible or not. I'm not familiar with the service agreement on that. But they'll - just give us a call and the people that sell that service can answer that question. I mean, look, we're not interested in folks reselling our services, so I think that's what we're trying to prevent, but whether you guys could link as one business account, I don't know. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility, but I could be wrong.

NPD: Well, thank you very much for talking - I know that I talked a lot - is there anything else you'd like to add?

Dudley: No, I think - for your readers it's different, but for the vast majority of our customers, they won't even notice a difference, and I think that - and I know that's probably not music to your ears, but at the same time, what we're doing is trying to ensure that we're maintaining a level of service that folks are happy to pay for, and if we don't make some sort of investment in this, or if we don't at least acknowledge that there's an issue here that needs to be addressed, then by the time we need to do it, it'll be too late. So this is an experiment. One of the things we're going to measure is customer reaction, so, you know, it's an important part of the process and we're happy to listen to our customers. But, you know, so far, the reaction has been what we've expected, fairly even across the board. So we'll see what happens and we'll make decisions based on what we see.

NPD: Alright, well again, thank you for your time.

The last time we saw Ben Erwin, he was playing Ping Pong while explaining how to leverage Cisco’s NAM. Today, we went out into the woods and filmed his alter ego, “Network Survival Expert Moose Dentabling” out in the Texas wilderness, relying solely on what he can find inside old network gear for survival.

Really, I think it might just be that case of insanity that’s been making the rounds. We really can’t justify this other than we thought it would be cool, and it was 72 degrees with no humidity in the middle of February, so we were willing for any excuse to head out and still “work.”

So please enjoy “Geek Vs. Wild.” You can view it here, or you can check it out in full high definition at the YouTube page.

But while I’m on the subject – or rather off the subject, I wanted to mention a couple of things. First, when I was uploading the video to YouTube, I noticed this gem about a bunch of geeks who incorporated network monitoring (for fault) into their Christmas Lights setup.

Second, you’ll notice in the video that we used the iPhone “Campfire” app. For $.99, it was worth the laugh, but I had a heck of a time getting it onto the iPhone. See, the iPhone only allows you to sync to one computer at a time. You used to be able to hook up an iPod via USB to any computer and then use that to play music directly from the iPod, provided that you had iTunes. Not anymore – if I wanted to install the “Campfire” app, I would have had to delete all the songs on my iPod so that I could “sync” with the new computer.

Why couldn’t I have just bought the application and downloaded it over the 3G network? Because Apple/AT&T prevents the installation of applications over 10MB in size over the 3G network in order to preserve that bandwidth. A smart move, but combined with the sync problem, it created a major headache.

Why did you do that, Apple? Why can’t I use my iPhone at work and at home?

Eventually I did have to erase my iPhone music, which ticked me off, naturally. It just goes to show that you can be overzealous regarding security (in this case, the technology securing me from accessing the music I own), and overzealous regarding network performance and end up with ticked off end users.

Back in September 2007, we wrote an article on Adblock Plus, an extension for Firefox that blocks advertisements from loading on Web pages.  It was one of our hits.

It came after some controversy about a Web developer blocking Firefox because of what he perceived were problems with Ad-block… robbing him of his revenue.  But we argued that enterprises should, in fact, encourage Adblock – maybe even to make it mandatory – because each ad which isn’t served means that there’s less bandwidth taken up, which frees up more bandwidth for other applications.

But we didn’t quantify exactly how much bandwidth blocking ads would actually save.  It took AdblockPlus themselves to actually do so, in a blog post that they entitled: “Anatomy of Ads.” Using Dilbert.com as a test bed, they found that:

• Ads triple the amount of data one has to download (over 450 kB increase).


• When downloading the page the first time (without caching) the delay due to ads is not notable. However, these measurements have been made with a very good internet connection, modem users will see something very different. Also, it doesn’t consider the time for server name resolution (all names were already cached) — resolving nine server names instead of just one usually makes a huge difference.


• Dilbert.com is really good at caching, often you can go back to the main page without contacting any server at all. Unfortunately, ads pretty much destroy this advantage by requiring almost every ad server to be contacted. This means that instead of showing up almost immediately the pages take more than 3 seconds to load.

Dilbert.com also includes 8 remote JavaScript files – so you’re loading eight different servers when you just want the content on one. 

But let’s not kid ourselves – while Adblock might have some performance benefits, it wasn’t invented to improve network performance.  It was invented because Internet ads can be intrusive and abusive.

If you look at the history of mass media advertisements, the trend has more or less become one of increased unobtrusiveness.  First came show sponsorships, then came the 30-second spot – a much less annoying form of advertising.  While there are some exceptions (Head On?) the advertisements of today are as a whole less annoying than early advertisements of the 1950s.

Additionally, the next step – product placement – is a less intrusive form of advertising than commercial breaks.  Certainly, used incorrectly, they can be tacky, but correctly used, they don’t interrupt the flow of the narrative. 

Web ads have defied this tradition – getting more annoying and intrusive, with pop-ups, pop-unders, flash ads, video ads, and the aforementioned eight separate scripts.  Even content providers are frustrated by the fact that advertisers they choose to block on their own sites (because they disagree with the content or the presentation) then do an end-run around those content providers, a move equivalent to theft-of-services.

I don’t want to get on a rant here, but as an advertiser, time is valuable.  The best online ads are usually something that either adds content or information or enhances the original Web page – things like “Whopper Sacrifice.” 

I’ve gone on a rant here.  Point is that until online advertisements are going to respect that they are, in effect, selling product on “borrowed bandwidth,” they’re just going to continued to get blocked. 

According to Brad Reed at Network World, Gartner has published a list of the “10 most important strategic technologies of 2009.”

The list includes green IT, mashups, Web-oriented architecture, and unified communications – repeats from last year. It also includes cloud computing, “beyond-blades servers,” business intelligence systems and heterogeneous systems, which are, according to Network World, systems that mix processor types in a single system under one OS in order to incorporate the functions of several different appliances into one server system.

Careful counters will notice that that’s two short. The full list and report is only available to those who purchase it from Gartner’s Web site. It’s like the punchline to the old joke, “How do you hold a technology blogger in suspense?”

But most of the other eight rely on an unstated assumption of a well performing network. Cloud computing and mashups may be getting information from a large number of geographically diverse servers and databases to get the information needed – network connections between those servers need to be monitored and maintained, whether it’s an internal IT department that’s responsible for the infrastructure or the service provider is responsible for it.

Unified communications, of course, requires deliberate and accurate configuration so that voice, video, and data can coexist on the same network. Green IT typically means some sort of consolidation – and either data center or server consolidation requires well functioning networks, as the users move further away from the application’s data.

But its heterogeneous computing that has my imagination.

Since we started establishing universal standards for communication (i.e., UDP, TCP, IP, etc.) the idea has always been that we can be more effective at performing tasks by networking computers together than any one particular computer can be. With multithreading, we can split an application up among multiple processors, with virtualization, we can host an application on any hardware; with cloud computing, we can remove the user interface from the computer that actually does the processing.

Isn’t this the next step? Programs that can be run from anywhere, and processed on any computer – or all computers – on the network, without regard to what type of hardware are in the computers or where the computers are physically located?

Well, what that would mean is that for processing-intensive tasks, such as video rendering, scientific modeling, data processing, etc., the bottleneck will move from the CPU to the network. That means that in such an environment, network performance would be the only IT performance that really matters.

Kinda gives me chills up my spine. Maybe it’s a future that never comes to pass – but I sure hope it does.

President-Elect Barack Obama, recently put a new video on Change.gov, the official Web site of the office of the President-Elect. In the video, Obama is seated in the office of the President-Elect, sitting in the chair of the President-Elect in front of the desk of the President-Elect. And if I had to guess, he’s probably reading prepared notes from the teleprompter of the President-Elect into the YouTube camera of the President-Elect.

These YouTube videos aspire to function much like an online, 21^st century version of the FDR’s “Fireside Chats.” Coincidentally – or perhaps not - Roosevelt’s first Fireside chat, broadcast in 1933, was entitled, On the Bank Crisis. This was also the subject of Obama’s broadcast. And like FDR, Obama is proposing a federal employment program much like Roosevelt’s New Deal.

During the New Deal, the Civilian Conversation Corps, or CCC, was a work-relief program designed to keep people employed with a semi-steady paycheck. One of the main ways that the CCC employed young Americans was by putting them to work solving the environmental problems of that era – which mainly involved flood prevention, soil erosion prevention, wildland fire suppression, reforestation, et al. You can go to Wikipedia for the full details.

Similarly, Obama’s plan, (or the sketches of it outlined in the short YouTube video), calls for increased energy efficiency in national infrastructure. Obama didn’t mention it specifically, but it’s not a far guess to think that part of this process will be “greening” Federal IT – and that usually means server consolidation (perhaps aided with WAN Optimization) and virtualization – to do more with less of a power draw – as well as putting the network to new uses, such as teleconferencing instead of spending money on airfare. Both of these will require network monitoring and adept management.

What Obama did specifically mention:

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15^th in the world in broadband adoption.”

Hmm. Sounds familiar. Sounds like something we’d say. (Mr. President-Elect, are you subscribed to our RSS feed?)

The CCC, and similar program WPA, also focused on building and improving the infrastructure of the country – broadband improvements, of course, are improving digital infrastructure. (Of note – American broadband improvements must be done on American soil, and can therefore be almost “outsource-proof.”)

Also of interest was Obama’s pledge that:

“In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system – and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.”

We at NetQoS have a little bit of familiarity with how difficult medical networking needs can be. In Volume 3 of Performance Edge Journal, we published a case study of OSF Healthcare, which is a network of multiple acute care, long-term care, and college of nursing facilities and also a primary care physician network.

One of the applications that OSF wanted to implement included Picture Archival and Communications System (PACS) – in order to send and manage very large cardiac images. The application had very slow response times, and you know, when something’s wrong with your ticker, time’s of the essence.

Anyway, NetQoS considers this one of our big success stories. Through SuperAgent, they found that the delay was caused by excessive server response times, and using ReporterAnalyzer, they were able to figure out that some cardiac images were being sent to different sites across the WAN and not stored locally, slowing down retrieval times considerably, taking up large amounts of bandwidth unnecessarily.

Whether or not Obama’s plan will actually work, at least he seems to be aware of the real need for network performance in the healthcare industry.

At the risk of waxing political; Obama talking about technology policy means that the next four years (at least) will be interesting times for geeks. Under the Clinton and Bush administrations, discussions of what should be done about networking issues were mostly confined to – well, to blogs like this. (And even then, it was mostly confined to Slashdot). But, whether or not you agree with him, Obama seems to be using the power of his office – or of his future office – to call attention to the problems that up to now, only us techies were paying attention to.

With the economy in a general nose dive, I figured that we could talk about something fun today. At every trade show, conference, and event with more than one vendor competing for your attention, there is bound to be “swag” – giveaways of small objects designed to be taken home and enjoyed with friends and family who will ooh and aah over the corporate logo printed thereupon.

Every industry has swag, but the tech industry tends to be very well represented, if only because geeks like toys and t-shirts. (Our “network rockstar” T-shirt did particularly well).

But how much swag is really out there? Just as a little experiment, I was wondering if you could do me a favor and gather up all the swag you’ve received over the years – all the t-shirts, funny glasses, USB drives, etc., take a picture of the pile, and send it to brian.boyko@netqos.com. I’d like to post some pictures online – especially if you’ve got an interesting story to tell about the swag.

For example, perhaps you met your spouse because of swag. Or you managed to use swag, duct tape, and a swiss army knife to defuse a bomb… who knows. Point is, I’d love to hear from you and figure out exactly what’s out there, swag wise.

So, how does this tie into network performance? It doesn’t.

What?

I can’t have other interests in the general tech industry? I’ve got to turn everything into a metaphor for the importance of measuring latency and jitter, or lowering the mean time to repair when something goes wrong? I’m a human being, not some sort of… network performance machine.

Although if you are interested in a network performance machine, check out our fine offerings at NetQoS! We’re giving away free t-shirts with each qualified demo.

Slideshow behind the cut.

Continue reading "Swagflation" »

First off, congrats to Nick Carr – we’ve talked with him (and disagreed with him!) often on the blog and we’re thrilled that he managed to go toe-to-toe with Stephen Colbert on last night’s show.

And, thanks to the Colbert Report’s online presence, here’s an embedded player with that interview.

Although the book plugged is “The Big Switch,” the majority of the interview talks more about the implications of dwindling attention spans due to the Internet’s “hyper” hyperlinked nature – a topic not covered in “The Big Switch,” but instead in the cover article Carr wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”

The idea, as we’ve mentioned before, is that Carr believes the end result of the attention getting behavior of the Internet is that it will “scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”

“When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net's image. It injects the medium's content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we're glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper's site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”

During the interview, Colbert made a play of ignoring Carr to check his iPhone. Now, that that does happen in real life, but I’d say that’s more an indication of individual rudeness then of culture spinning on a dime over the concept of hypertext.

The same criticisms that Carr makes of the Internet could be made of the newspaper – you’re trying to read one thing but it’s broken up, put next to all these other interesting articles, and ads designed to catch your attention… with all these… analog gewgaws, how is one supposed to be informed?

We’ve mentioned before that the limits on network performance limit the ability to communicate complex thought back when the Atlantic Monthly article first came out. But, we missed an opportunity to get less academic, more practical, and closer to the issues in a corporate network environment.

While we disagree with Carr’s diagnosis that the Internet causes short attention spans, (I’m a pro-blogger at a tech company, raised on Nintendo and MTV – I’m the poster-child for the 21^st century digital boy, and still I managed to summon the concentration to read the book Nick Carr wrote…) we do agree that human attention spans are short.

When I worked at a supermarket retailer, back in the early 2000s, as I’ve mentioned (and complained about) we were using a java-based networking app that took one to two seconds to input each number and move to the next field, and processing the entire report took minutes. The network performance was absolutely horrible, and as I pointed out before, we would have mentioned it in the hopes of having the performance improved somehow, except that we all realized that our jobs were essentially superfluous anyway and that we could all be replaced by a very small shell script that could parse the orders as they came in instead of printing them out and having us enter in all of them by hand.

Of course the lot of us at the data entry farm had CNN.com, Slashdot, and All Your Base Are Belong To Us and Hamsterdance open while we waited for the pages to load. (It was a simpler time back then.)

Of course, if we didn’t have outside Internet access, we could very well have distracted ourselves offline with desktop toys or conversation. We did that often anyway – as I said, it just took forever for those fields to come up.

I’ve also heard, second and third-hand, stories of other companies who are shocked to find that employees are going on to do other tasks while they wait for reports to generate, fields to come up, and pages to load – so if you’re honestly worried about dwindling attention spans, it might be better to not curse Google or the Internet, but to go in and actually improve things where you can.

Part one of a series.
Part One: Interview with Texas State Rep. Joe Driver
Part Two: Interview with Matt Miller, Institute for Justice
Part Three: Interview with Capt. RenEarl Bowie, Texas Private Security Bureau

by Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

Recently, a posting on Slashdot linked to a story from PC Magazine called “Texas PC Repair Now Requires PI License.” Obviously, this story has gathered tons of attention, and if strictly true, would have a major impact on IT departments across the state, if not the nation.

The law in question is Texas HB 2833, which is an updated collection of amendments to laws regarding private security services. It explains who, exactly, is required to get a private investigator’s license.

The controversial bit of the law in question seems to be this bit. The underlined part is what has been added:

SECTION 4.  Section 1702.104, Occupations Code, is amended to read as follows: 
Sec. 1702.104.  INVESTIGATIONS COMPANY.

• (a) A person acts as an investigations company for the purposes of this chapter if the person:




• (1)  engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employment to obtain or furnish, information related to:




• (A)  crime or wrongs done or threatened against a state or the United States; 


• (B)  the identity, habits, business, occupation, knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, movement, location, affiliations, associations, transactions, acts, reputation, or character of a person;


• (C)  the location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property; or


• (D)  the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property;


• (b)  For purposes of Subsection (a)(1), obtaining or furnishing information includes information obtained or furnished through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the content of, computer-based data not available to the public.

Because the law can be difficult to interpret, the Texas Private Security Bureau issued an opinion statement which clarified their position on this matter. The controversial statements there seem to be:

Computer Repair & Technical Assistance Services October 18, 2007

Computer repair or support services should be aware that if they offer to perform investigative services, such as assisting a customer with solving a computer-related crime, they must be licensed as investigators… [Text of law posted above.]

Please be aware that providing or offering to provide a regulated service without a license is a criminal offense. TEX. OCC. CODE §§1702.101, 1702.388. Employment of an unlicensed individual who is required to be licensed is also a criminal offense. TEX. OCC. CODE §1702.386.

and:

Computer Forensics August 21, 2007

First, the distinction between “computer forensics” and “data acquisition” is significant. We understand the term “computer forensics” to refer to the analysis of computer-based data, particularly hidden, temporary, deleted, protected or encrypted files, for the purpose of discovering information related (generally) to the causes of events or the conduct of persons. We would distinguish such a content-based analysis from the mere scanning, retrieval and reproduction of data associated with electronic discovery or litigation support services.

For example, when the service provider is charged with reviewing the client’s computer-based data for evidence of employee malfeasance, and a report is produced that describes the computer-related activities of an employee, it has conducted an investigation and has therefore provided a regulated service. On the other hand, if the company simply collects and processes electronic data (whether in the form of hidden, deleted, encrypted files, or otherwise), and provides it to the client in a form that can then be reviewed and analyzed for content by others (such as by an attorney or an investigator), then no regulated service has been provided.

… Consequently, we would conclude that the provider of computer forensic services must be licensed as an investigator, insofar as the service involves the analysis of the data for the purposes described above.

In order to clarify some of this and figure out what this would mean to both personal computer repair technicians and network engineers, analysts and system administrators, we contacted Texas State Representative Joe Driver, who authored the bill, Matt Miller at the Texas branch of the Institute for Justice, which has launched a suit against the Texas Private Security Bureau, and RonEarl Bowie of the Texas Private Security Bureau. We’ll have podcasts and transcripts available on this site soon.

First, Texas State Representative Joe Driver, Author of Texas HB 2833:

Editor Brian Boyko, at NPD: So, could you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do in the Texas Legislature?

Rep. Joe Driver: Hi. My name’s Joe Driver, I am state representative from Garland, Sachse, and Rowlett area which is Northeast Dallas County. I’m the current chairman of the Law Enforcement Committee, and this is my eighth term.

NPD: How often are each of those terms, two years, four years?

Driver: Two years.

NPD: So you have 16 years of experience writing legislation. And you authored this bill, I believe it’s [Texas] HB 2833?

Driver: Yes, sir.

NPD: Now that's currently a bill, not a law, correct? Or has it been passed?

Driver: No, it's been passed. The governor signed it.

NPD: Let me just bring up the law right here - and I'm looking at it. It is "an act relating to the licensing and regulation of certain private security services." Could you tell me a little bit more about what this act was designed to do?

Driver: Basically, it was a clean-up situation for the Securities Act. We felt like we had to go in and clean some things up. Some of it was old stuff, some of it was new stuff, but basically we worked pretty hard to try to just get it so that it was easier for people to interpret and - you know, some things hadn't been changed for quite a few years, so we were going through it, trying to just basically do a real thorough clean-up, and it turned into what you'd call an omnibus bill which is basically something that encompasses a lot of different areas.

NPD: How has the law changed for people who practice investigative services?

Driver: Well, there's quite a few changes in there. I really truthfully couldn't go into all of it, I mean, it's a pretty good sized bill. Of course, the one that's - there's some area that's getting some, I don't know, "interest" out there, but I think it's interest that has been generated by a group of folks, and basically in their newsletter, they just opened a new chapter in Texas and decided to file a lawsuit. That's all in one sentence - so it sounds like they decided to file the lawsuit so they could bring some attention to their new chapter.

NPD: It does to me that the law... now, I am not a lawyer...

Driver: Me neither.

NPD: I am not a... um... pretty good reader of bills. So, what I wanted to know... The claim is that people who repair personal computers would need to get a private investigator's license in order to continue repairing computers.

Driver: Yeah, and that's what they're claiming. It's interesting that they're claiming all that, and they filed a lawsuit on the same day that they decided to open their Texas chapter. To me, I just felt it was a way they're getting a lot of free publicity, and a lot of free press, and free TV time and free radio time, because the bill to me, it says what it says. There's three words that describe somebody that repairs computers, and that's if people retrieve or provide information, and there's three words that somebody "reviews, analyzes, or investigates" that material, then, they do need to have some sort of security clearance because they're delving into people's private lives or private property on the computer.

NPD: The one thing that I noticed was that it seems very clearly that this is for personal computer investigators, like someone who does analysis to determine whether a crime has been committed or something has been stolen, or intellectual property has been violated. It doesn't seem to me that this would apply to people trying to just recover information for the person's wishes.

Driver: Right, and you're correct. You used one of the key words in my opinion, which is "analyze." "Review, analyze, and investigate" are the three key words, in my opinion, that drive the need for people to have some kind of license. Because if they're doing some of that, then they don't need to be - it doesn't need to be just anybody able to do that - they need to have somebody that has a security license. But if someone's just retrieving information and providing information for someone who is going to analyze, to use one of the words, then that's just a regular computer repair person. And those guys are great, they're good at what they do, and we never intended for them to get any kind of license other than have the ability to repair.

NPD: So, how do you think this came about - you mentioned that there was a new group - I think I may have a copy here of - are you talking about the Institute for Justice?

Driver: Yeah, yeah, that's them. Well, and I think - to me - that - I mean I've got something, I don't know if it’s a press release or just some information about them, but they actually said in here that they tell about how they're the "nation's leading litigators." They have a little cute name for them, and I thought I could think of that, but I'm not coming up with it. But, they basically said, "we fight for the rights of those violated by the government." And they're opening their new Texas chapter today (whenever this was written) by filing a lawsuit against the Texas Private Security Board. So they're kind of kicking off their opening - well, what better to draw attention to someone's opening then to get a lot of free press - they don't have to go out and advertise because - and I'm not criticizing you guys [the media] because, I'm just saying, that - to me, that's what they intended and that's part of what they did.

So. Lawyers can interpret, like you and I know, and we're not both, either one of us, luckily, they can interpret the same word three different ways if you get three different lawyers. And, I think that's what they decided to do here, and - to me, if someone reviews, analyzes, or investigates, they need a license. If they're just retrieving, providing or preparing information, that's what computer companies do, and as long as they want to do that, they're fine.

NPD: There is another possibility though - there is, - you wouldn't call them computer repairmen. There are people who work in enterprise networks, and we even have a term for it, "Network Forensics."

Driver: Like forensic scientists and all that stuff?

NPD: Not so much forensics...

Driver: That's the investigative part.

NPD: Not so much forensic scientists like a criminal forensic scientist. But for example, if a network is running slowly, not running at peak performance, there are tools that people can use to determine which computer may be slowing it down. Is it a virus - and that's all investigative work, but not investigative work related to criminal activity. It's just - so basically I'm wondering if maybe the law could have been written - not thinking about this possibility, and that maybe there might be some sort of loophole that needs to be amended. Does this just not apply to companies trying to improve their network performance?

Driver: Truthfully, you may be just a little bit out of my realm of comprehension on that, because, maybe that's something we need to look at tweaking, along those lines, to clarify that situation. We talked to lots of folks when we were writing this. Maybe we didn't talk to enough folks. But, as far as those types of things - maybe just a little bit far out of my comprehension on that. But the whole deal - like, if you have an IT person, (just cause that's all the terms I know,) IT person that somebody says, "Hey, we want you to delve into this person's computer, and find out what's going on." Well, if they delve into that person's computer, and - this is all I know about computers - and hands the information over to somebody else, then they don't need any kind of license because they're just doing their retrieving job. So, if the area you're talking about is different from that, you're probably out of what I understand and maybe something we have to look at.

But - anytime we do anything this massive, a lot of times there are areas of tweaking. But I just thought the coincidence of this particular group filing this lawsuit and bragging about filing the lawsuit on the day they opened their new chapter was just - coincidental and - because the intent of the bill was, as I've been saying, was, if you retrieve and provide information, you don't need a license.

Because I'm sure not trying to put anyone out of business. I'm a small business person, I would never do that!

NPD: What business do you run?

Driver: I'm in insurance sales.

NPD: What I'm wondering is if there is - like a specific exemption in the law that - most of these forensic investigators for network performance tend be of one of two types - the first time is that they're in-house, and that the company hires these people to do this job on the computers that the company owns. And if there's a specific exemption for investigative work on material that you own yourself. And the second, sometimes the people are hired by the company as a separate company - not direct employees, but outsourced. Is this something that might be protected under the law even if it falls under the "investigative" arm?

Driver: If it falls under the investigative arm, probably not, but I - I don't know about what you're describing to really comment more than that. I mean, I wish I did. But in this particular case, I don't. It's just a little deeper into the computer world than I know about.

NPD: You don't foresee legis-- any activity... what's the word I'm looking for...

Driver: A future bill, maybe, corrective measures, tweaking, something along those lines?

NPD: I was actually thinking of enforcement against-- you don't see this possibly being enforced against..

Driver: I don't. I don't. I really don't. I don't see - and then again, and it may be something that we may need to look at. And we may have somebody else look at it. Every time we have something like this come up we have people that want to tweak it just a little bit or change it just a little bit. And I'm not hardcore set against it. If it causing somebody problems then we ought to change it. I don't foresee it doing that but, I don't know. I mean, I really don't think it is. But if we find out that it does, that's what we're there for, to make sure it's written correctly and if it's not, we're going to change something a bit to make it right. Cause we're not after anybody, that's for sure, except the people that are doing investigative service for a living and yet, they don't want to bother with having - giving any kind of background or being qualified or licensed in any way.

NPD: That's pretty much all the questions I had.

Driver: Well, I wish I could have given you better answers. I think I kind of danced around one that - just because I don't have enough knowledge.

NPD: Don't worry about it - I'm not saying that - we're getting into some technical stuff. This isn't even a technical bill.

Driver: Not in intent, anyway.

NPD: History's full of bills that had to be amended after the fact because of something.

Driver: Well if you find out more information about it and found we really need to do something about it, call me back, and we'll get back in session, maybe we can use you for a little information, as far as how to do it right.

Representative Joe Driver can be contacted via e-mail through the Texas House Web site.We will have interviews with Matt Miller at the Texas branch of the Institute for Justice and RonEarl Bowie of the Texas Private Security Bureau available on this site shortly.

Network Performance Daily is based in Austin, Texas.

We've finally got Joel Trammell's opening address from NetQoS Symposium '08 online and digitized. For those who couldn't make it to the live presentation, I hope you enjoy!