Communications

The day the routers died (to music)

The RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam has ended and Raindeer just uploaded this summary to his blog Lunatic Thought:

"The RIPE 55 meeting has just concluded. There was much debate on what to do on the imminent depletion of the unallocated IPv4 pool in 2010. We could do nothing or we could create a market place and facilitate transfer of IP-adresses, but it's all a train wreck waiting to happen. This is best shown however by a beautiful song "The day the routers died" also available on Youtube written and performed by Gary Feldman. So please all upgrade to IPv6 soon, or else you will not get 40Gbit/s to your mother."

and points to this wonderfully funny video:

VON Conference (Boston) next week; Connect 2007 (Madrid) week after

Fall VON 2007 in Boston

I'll be VON from late Monday afternoon until Thursday afternoon next week.  I'm speaking on the panel,

Trend Spotting on Thursday, November 1, 2007, 9:00am - 10:15am with:

• Ofer Gneezy, President & CEO, iBasis
• Timothy Jasionowski, Chief Technologist, Mobile Solutions Unit, Nokia
• (M) Todd Keefe, President, For Immediate Release, Inc.
• Don Price, Director Product Management  Converged Communication Division, Avaya
• Brough Turner, SVP and CTO, NMS Communications

I haven't figured out my conference schedule in detail yet.  I know I already have a few specific commitments and there are several sessions in the Innovator's track that I want to attend.  Otherwise I expect to be at the unconference as much as time will allow.

Connect 2007 in Madrid

The following week I'll be in Madrid for the European Connect 2007 conference.  Day One is mobile industry discussions between operators and major players in mobile applications and the mobile business ecosystem.  Day Two is an NMS Developers conference.

Day One follows the panel discussion format, i.e. no (or very few) slides, but rather, articulate speakers with diverse points of view generating actual controversy on stage and via questions from the audience.  This brings out a much better sense of the real issues than attending the usual trade show panel with talking heads promoting their companies' products and services.

I'm moderating the final panel of the first day using the same subject as in Boston on October 3rd, i.e.

Increasing Service Velocity

After much hype about IMS, the industry is increasingly focused on one of the many promises of this network evolution, "increased service velocity" for the operator. As part of the IMS architecture, the service delivery platform provides the means to create and deliver rich media applications quickly and easily in the operator's network. Unlike the silos that exist within operator networks today, the service delivery platform provides a horizontal layer that enables use of network resources for multiple applications. Is it all that simple? Hear from a panel of experts who are well-experienced in the realities of IMS and understand what's involved in improving service delivery and service velocity.

Panelists:

• Christoph Aktas, Strategy and Portfolio Development, Nokia Siemens Networks
• Douglas Tucker, CTO NA, Ubiquity Software Corporation
• Avraham (Bibi) Rosenbach, Co-founder, CEO, and President, Personeta
• Dean Bubley, Founder, Disruptive Analysis

Unlike the Boston conference, I've got more diversity on this panel, so the discussion should be even more exciting.  :-)

China broadband access is great, 98% packet loss on international links really stinks

Last week I was in Guilin China for Connect 2007.  Chinese friends called Guilin the most beautiful place in China, so I decided to stay over the weekend to see the sights (unedited conference and sightseeing photos here).  Between blogging the Connect conference and being there for three additional days, I ended up using the Internet more than I have on my last three trips to China combined.  Wow, what a pain.  I mentioned my set up and some of my problems in this earlier post.

Connectivity to sites within China is was just fine.  For example, here are results between Guilin and Shenzhen at different times of the day over several days:

 

 

The problem arises the moment you want to access sites outside of China.  Suddenly bandwidth drops and packet loss soars.  Here are tests to Japan and the Philippines, but the story is similar to Europe and the US.

 

 

These measurements were all with one ISP in one city but when I mentioned my problem to Chinese friends who routinely travel within China on business, they're response was "Oh yes, bandwidth to the outside is always a problem.  It's probably government policy to keep it that way."

I can't tell if the bottleneck is in the physical links or in the speed of the equipment that implements the Great China Firewall, but somewhere there's a capacity problem that's causing queued packets to be dropped.

 

Availability -- more than presence and a nice implementation to boot

I’ve never liked the term presence or the way the function is implemented in instant messaging systems.  I want to indicate my availability — something that, at any given moment, may be different for my wife, my co-workers or my friends in the blogsphere.  And, if I check my PC for messages at 6am, just before walking the dog, that doesn’t mean I’m planning to respond to those messages or accept calls or chats at that moment — my dog is desparate and she’s letting me know it!

Now there’s a new kid on the block, EnThinnai, that’s launched the beta of an information sharing site featuring privacy and control.  They also include a concept of availability that looks very much as I desire.

In addition, they’ve done a peer-to-peer implementation with a choice of query (you only ask when you’re interested in knowing my availability) or subscribe (you want to be notified when I transition to a specific state).  This makes a lot more sense to me than a central server farm monitoring everything I do and continuously broadcasting it to people who only contact me once or twice a year.

Aswath Rao has more info at the EnThinnai blog.

 

VONCamp Unconference in Boston

About 12 hours ago I had a long IM chat with Carl Ford about the Innovator's track at the VON conference.  The Innovator's track is already very interesting, but Carl is going one better and running an unconference based on the ideas of FooCamp and Barcamp.  Carl's is the VONCamp Unconference. 

FooCamp is an invitation only event.  BarCamp is open to anyone.  VONCamp is open to anyone who is attending VON.  Otherwise, the formats are similar.

The first order of the day is to determine the order of the day.  Tom Howe will lead this, but it's a free form way for the attendees to develop the agenda.  As Carl puts it:

The Innovators Forum is a series of sessions that show case companies in our more traditional format.  However dialogue in these sessions is encouraged.  The VONCamp Unconference is harder to describe,  because it gives people a chance to self identify as a speaker.  At the present time there are 12 speaking slots. If you've got something you want to discuss that's outside the formal program, VONCamp Unconference is the place to do it. We also have a SpeedDating session.   

Here are the rules:

1. There are no rules. 
2. Everyone is equal. Everyone is a rockstar.
3. Give back to the conference by participating actively. "Active participation" might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways.  While everyone is encouraged to lead a session, there are only twelve slots available.
4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. Hopefully you will walk the show floor!

Alec Saunders and Tom Howe have already signed up.  If you'll be at Fall VON in Boston, you can sign up on the wiki here.

This should be very interesting!  Thank you Carl. Hope to see you there.

An update on TD-SCDMA, China's 3G technology

I have some knowledge of 3G activities in China through NMS’s involvement with mobile video projects for various operators and equipment providers in China.  But, as I’m never sure exactly what’s subject to non-disclosure agreements, I’ve remained mum.  However yesterday, John Sun of Datang Mobile Communications Equipment gave a presentation at Connect 2007 in Guilin in which he talked publicly about the current “large scale” application trials, so there are some things I can discuss.

If you haven’t been following 3G in detail, there are three major standards.  They're all based on code division multiple access (CDMA) modulation, but they are otherwise incompatible.  Their common names are:

• CDMA 2000 in various forms:  1xRTT, EV-DO, Rev A, Rev B, …
• 3GSM a.k.a. UMTS in various forms:  W-CDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+,  …
• TD-SCDMA, for now, is a China-only development

CDMA 2000 has been the leader in available bandwidth, at least until recently, and 3GSM is the clear market share leader.  Meanwhile, TD-SCDMA remains in trial.  In fact, outside of China, TD-SCDMA is generally dismissed as a negotiating ploy by China to obtain acceptable patent cross licensing agreements with Qualcomm, Ericsson and the like.

But I haven't seen any discussion in English of the extent to which TD-SCDMA is already being deployed in China.  True, China has not assigned any 3G licenses, but under the name “application trials,” experimental TD-SCDMA networks began running in four cities in 2005.  It took longer than expected to get the system running, however, since April 2007, these “trials” have been extended to ten cities and have been substantially enlarged to what I might call “deployment scale.”  Here are the cities:

China Mobile has TD-SCDMA networks in eight cities (in red on the map).  China Netcom has a single TD-SCDMA network in Qingdao and China Telecom has a TD-SCDMA network in Baoding.  Interestingly enough, SKT is apparently running a trial in Korea.  I hadn't heard of that trial prior to John Sun's presentation and I don't t have further details on what's going on with TD-SCDMA in Korea.

Handsets support TD-SCDMA/ GSM/ GPRS so their are no gaps in voice coverage.  They also support 3G video telephony (3G-324M).  Frequency bands are 1880–1920 MHz and 2010–2025 MHz and all spectrum is available for either direction as TD-SCDMA uses TDD (which alternately transmits & receives on the same frequency).

China has committed to offering 3G mobile telephony in the 2008 Olympic cities.  I assume that will be W-CDMA if it's to be of any use to foreign visitors, however, it's also clear that TD-SCDMA service will be available in the Olympic cities.  Everyone wonders when 3G licenses will finally be awarded, but licenses are just a political act.  Construction of 3G networks is the time consuming part and that is clearly underway.

Internet Connectivity in Guilin, China — Great China Firewall, plus engineering & capacity issues

I'm in Guilin China for the Connect 2007 Asia conference.  I've got the Tor bundle (Tor & Privoxy & Vidalia) installed on my laptop so I can get around the Great China Firewall (GCF) and that works well.  Tor starts up automatically when my PC starts, but I only use it for browsing (by clicking the Tor button for Firefox) if I can't reach a site directly.  Yes, it's noticeably slower going through Tor, but it always works.  For example, just now, seeking the URLs to paste in about the GCF, I could get Rebecca MacKinnon's post directly, but timed out on this from Gigaom.  I clicked the Tor button, hit retry and the Gigaom post loaded.  So, the Tor bundle is a good setup which I highly recommend if you are traveling to China.

The bigger problem for me at the moment is basic throughput.  The Sheraton Hotel Guilin (where the conference is being held) has wired Internet connectivity in the rooms for 50 Yuan ($6.65) per day and free WiFi in the lobby, but only WiFi from China Mobile (CMCC) in the conference area (100 Yuan per day through the hotel business center for those of us without a China Mobile phone number).

Performance is roughly equivalent for all three connections.  Early in the morning or late at night (perhaps during the night, but I do have to sleep sometime), everything works well.  It's not the blazing speed I sometimes see in Beijing, but it works. Here are the results in my room at 7:37am against a server in Shenzhen (300 miles away):

and here's a test against a server in Los Angeles:

Unfortunately, by 10am things begin to slow down and by noon yesterday, I was seeing greater than 50% packet loss and it became impossible to blog the conference live.  I was using the China Mobile WiFi but going up to my room didn't help.

My guess:  There's a significant capacity problem between Guilin and the rest of China.  Not surprising I suppose, considering Guilin is a tourist city, not a business city.

Application Innovation in Asia - Connect 2007 Guilin

The second session at Connect 2007 Asia is entitled "Application Innovation" with George Cheng of NMS Asia moderating.  The panelists are:

• Ricky Chan, Vice President, Sales and Business Development, APAC, Vidiator
• Joseph Lai, Director, Business Development, EMMA
• Ben Chiu, Executive Vice President & Co-Founder, NaturalTel
• John Sun, Senior Marketing Manager, Datang Mobile Communications Equipment

Ricky Chan is first.  Vidiator is a US company, but has substantial deployments in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.  Their focus is video content streamed over IP to the widest possible variety of handsets.  The talk is interesting, but they are the Asian outpost of a US company that I was already somewhat familiar with.  As far as I can tell, they only deploy on 3G networks as that's the only way video over IP is at all responsive.

Ben Chiu is co-founder of NaturalTel in Taiwan.  Again the focus is video, but here it's user-to-user video, i.e. video blogging, live video chat (with availability, a.k.a. presence), video message box and video call screening.  This is video-centric social networking and, in typical Asian fashion, it works on both the PC-based Internet and on mobile phones.  Mobile access is the most common approach.  Ben has plenty of screen shots, many of attractive Taiwanese girls, but all the text is in Kanji so I'd have a hard time participating.

Their mobile service leverages 3G circuit-switched video.  Ben claims they are generating $20 per month of extra ARPU from those who've adopted this service.  That sounds very steep for Taiwan where average voice ARPU is on the order of $23-$25.  I'll try and get clarification from Ben directly at the end.

Ben is followed by Joseph Lia from Emma Group in Hong Kong. Their focus is mobile gaming.  Joseph leads off by quoting Jupiter Research as estimating "that nearly one-third of worldwide mobile entertainment revenues generated in 2009, will represent mobile gambling revenues."  Emma Group is another company that's built a service on 3G video telephony.  Here's a diagram of their platform:

and here are some of their mobile games.  First the slots:

then

All in all, very interesting!  None of these are open Internet applications and the last two are not even IP, instead using video over circuit-switched data, i.e. 3G video telephony, but they are small companies whose applications are being deployed by operators.  That's very different from the US where it takes months or years to cut a deal with an operator and only the well heeled need apply.

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Note: John Sun's presentation was also very interesting, but focused on TD-SCDMA infrastructure, so I'll treat it in a separate post.

Connect 2007 Asia group photo

I hope to have a better print in due course.  When I do, that will show up in my Flickr account.  Meanwhile,

Solutions beat equipment

Bob Schechter, CEO Of NMS Communications, kicked off the Connect 2007 conference in China with a global overview of mobile markets.  One interesting point he mentioned was the terrible performance of the equipment provider segment despite rapid growth in mobile subscribers.

Here are the market values of some major communications equipment companies as prepared by Goldman Sachs a few weeks ago, i.e. before Ericsson went down 25%:

The rank here is Cisco, Nokia and then RIM! (equipment and service), Ericsson, Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, etc.

If you look at the stock price performance of major equipment providers, it’s awful.  Here are the stock prices of Cisco and Nokia — neither has recovered the value they had the bubble that peaked in 2000.  Meanwhile solution companies like RIMM and Apple are far above their 2000 price levels.

Not a pretty picture for the equipment business.