My current internet connection is normally rated at 128kbit/sec. They have the cheek to advertise this as unlimited broadband. For starters, an internet connection that is no fast than dual channel ISDN, and isn’t capable of playing many online radios does not seem so broad to me. Secondly, their definition of unlimited somehow equates to 10Gb of down or uploads in one month. Once you pass that gargantuan (LMAO) amount, the internet connection is further throttled down to 32 kbit/sec. That is worse than most old 56k dial up connections! All this makes getting the good jobs quite difficult online, as those with faster connections are able to reserve jobs before this PC’s browser has even opened up the initial page.
All said though, we do at least have ADSL here now, I remember when we first arrived it was strictly dial up only, and the large phone bills that would follow a few late nights online. The WiMax trial that was mentioned some 18 months ago was never completed in this area of town, so the only hope really is that the ISP will get a little more realistic in both terms of speed, and also monthly bandwidth caps.
Mar 26 2008
Broad(ish)band Got Narrower
Feb 20 2008
Amsterdam Trip IS On
Almost all the details are now sorted… We have bought the plane tickets, paid a deposit on the Apartment, now we just need to sort out a pet-sitter again. Either that or re-unit Karra and Muska with their Mum (Dasha) and younger sister (Tishka) that they’ve never met. Ira thinks 4 cats in one house would be too much work for her parents, so perhaps Mira fancies trying out living on her own again?
Anyway, see below for a map of the general area we’ll be staying in.
Sadly Alex and Mat won’t be coming this year, as was originally hoped, as their flights cost even more than ours. btw, congrats to Alex – Dryad Musings has just got an Alexa rank… around 12 million, but that is better than the dreaded ‘no data’. At one point this site almost broke into the 200k region, but since then its bounced back up to the million mark again. Which is a little odd, as my unique visitors per month have been steadily increasing, but there you go. ChrisD (who doesn’t have a blog, so doesn’t get a hyperlinked name 😉 ) can’t come either, as his new work randomly tests its employees, and he is worried about passive smoking whilst he drinks.
The apartment we are renting has internet access, but it is wired, so unless Ira’s laptop comes for the journey, we’ll in communicado for a while (my PDA/phone has WiFI and BT, but is obviously lacking an RJ45 socket LMAO)
Anyway, enough on Amsterdam for now, I’m sure I’ll be boring you with more info a lot more over the coming weeks…
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Dec 19 2007
Internet Reports
The ISP we now have our internet connection with is called Megaline. Unfortunately, since swapping to their service, everyday sees some downtime for connectivity. Even when all is apparently working, packets are often lost, and I can no longer as open as many simultaneous pages, without time outs occurring. That said, it is a lot cheaper, and although only 1/2 the speed, I do get an allowance of 10Gb/month before they throttle me down to 32Kbit/sec, from 128Kbit/sec.
Anyway, we first have a report on the UK’s lagginess (puns will stop now, sorry), when it comes to very fast internet connection availability. This is no great surprise really, given our history with BT’s (formerly part of the GPO) previous monopoly at nearly all stages of communications. Great investment will be needed to push beyond the current 24Mbps ceiling, and even that sort of connection is only really possibly if you live on top of your local exchange. Until we drop twisted pair copper lines as acceptable, the days of fibre optics into every home are a long way off, unless someone like Richard Branson decides that it is economically viable in areas when other Cable TV operators have avoided.
On a more positive note, here we have an article detailing how broadband internet connectivity (even if it isn’t globally breath-takingly fast) has rapidly become the preferred speed, compared to just four years ago, when most people considered dial up speeds acceptable. No pretty table to illustrate the point this time, sorry.
Finally, on a semi-related matter, the BBC News site had details on how some European nation’s citizens are rejecting land lines altogether, in favour of mobile phones. Although this may sound surprising at first, if you take into account that some of the nations, that were unable to develop as quickly under USSR rule, never had high rates for phone lines into every house, and how competitive some mobile phone network companies are in these markets, to try and get, then keep loyal customers, you can begin to see why having no land line number is becoming more common in some areas. Whether these figures include those that only use phone lines for internet usage, and use mobiles for cheaper evening calls etc, I couldn’t ascertain.
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Dec 05 2007
Megaline Is In The House…
Rather than a crappy MC name, Megaline is the name of the company that now has the responsibility of providing our internet connection. Anyway, 20-something hours after being told that our new connection was live, and the new connection details, we eventually had an IP address once more. Changing from an internet network arrangement that utilized some servers before getting to the real ISP in use, to a simpler PPPoE connection had given me some hope in that there would be less packet loss, as less hardware in the chain generally means less to go wrong. Sadly, this has not been the case, with complete loss of data throughput occurring a couple of times today already. Although this only occurred when opening around 30 pages in FireFox at the same time as a torrent downloading, to see a decrease in network stability was not what I hoped for. I will be monitoring the connection over the next few days, to see if problems only occur under such ‘heavy’ usage, or if this is a regular occurrence. If this does happen often, there is probably not much I can do about it – even less that back in Britain in fact, as I can’t see much action being taken once any fault is reported.
Anyway, I now get an extra 3Gb per month before being throttled, the price is around four times cheaper, so I can’t really complain. But watch this space for further efforts of me trying my best anyway 😉
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Dec 04 2007
No Internet At Home
As I mentioned yesterday, we are changing our ISP to Megaline. Right now, there is no connection at home, so I am posting this from the office at work. If anyone needs to get in contact, telephone or texting would be best. David, if you are reading this, I hope you arrived safely in Almaty, and look forward to meeting you soon. Assel, just in case I don’t meet Walton in time, have a safe journey.
Megaline, in the 1 in a billion chance you read this, I am not picking up an IP address from your hardware, all other settings are OK (VPI, VCI, LLC, PPPoE etc.)
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Dec 03 2007
The Internet Is Dead, Long Live The Internet…
OK, melodramatic post title, but in case it flew right over your head, I’m referring to The King Is Dead, Long Live The King! (or Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi! (yes, I wikied before posting to make sure I had the correct words 🙂 ))
Anyway, our current internet connection is over priced, under powered, and has a relatively low data allowance per month. This is on an ‘unlimited’ connection. It is currently 256Kbps, which drops to 64Kbps after 7Gb has been downloaded. The new connection will be through Megaline, almost 80% cheaper, and have a monthly allowance of 10Gb. Unfortunately, they only offer 128Kbps on their unlimited packages, and after those 10Gb, the connection is throttled to just 32Kbps – worse than dial up! However, with the money saved, and the extra 3Gb per month, I think we made the right choice.
I’m posting this now in case there is a problem, and we do not get the new connection working once the old one has been terminated – if I don’t post for a while, you know why.
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Nov 21 2007
The End Is Nigh?
In just a few years time, serious congestion could effect anyone who uses the internet for bandwidth intensive uses, or even perhaps just simple site browsing. Although the company behind the report have succeeded in getting the BBC News site to publish an article based on their research, I am definitely going to go and try and investigate more before telling everyone I know to get ready for a global cyber-gridlock.
I do remember that such reports were banded around just prior to this millennium starting, and how things have turned out OK so far. This could be down to serious investments by ISPs and backbone providers, or that the original reports were exaggerated. More likely a mixture of both. Anyway, take a moment to read the article, and let me know what you think.
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Sep 19 2007
Hope For UK With Next Gen Broadband?
Other than possibly the worst PR photo§ I have ever seen, a recent BBC article caught my attention.
Although Britain has reasonably good ADSL coverage, it took a long time, and BT (British Telecom) dragged their feet in some areas, a lot. As they previously had a virtual monopoly on the residential telecommunications industry (barring oddities such as Hull which have the Kingston company serving them), BT were loathe to invest a serious amount of money on fibre optics, for example, just to see other companies come in and profit from other’s investment.
This has left Brits lagging behind in post-ADSL technology, meaning even true 8Mbit connections are still rare to find. LLU (local loop unbundling) has gone some way to remedying this situation, but to ensure we are not left behind, something needs to be done soon.
Check out the story, and I’d be especially interested in hearing from readers who come from other countries as to what your local telecoms infrastructure is like.
Just don’t get me started on Kazakhstan. 128 or 256Kbit ? BROADband to the rest of the world!!!
§ I did check before making that comment – although he does seem to have under bite, the majority of his other publicity photos do not accentuate it so badly.
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Sep 17 2007
Another Couple For My Readers To Answer…
Please?
Does any know what causes (Windows) programs to maximise their windows off centre. That is to say instead of a newly-maximised window taking up all available desktop space, apart from the taskbar at the bottom, it leaves some space (at the top and left in my case), and the bottom of this window is actually not visible. Sometimes simply restoring it to a non-maximised state, and then re-maxmising fixes the issue, other times it refuses to work at all.
I have a nVidia 7900GT graphics card, with the 162.18 ForceWare drivers. This behaviour occurs whether or not I have both the monitor and the TV configured to be used, or just use the monitor in isolation. I am going to try and see if there is a more recent driver to download, but in the mean time if anyone has an insight into this issue, please do leave a comment.
Secondly, with reference to Windows Updates – does anyone know which file the downloaded updates are stored in? I want to be able to transfer downloaded updates to another installation or different PC. I am hoping when I then connect to Windows Update, and the system discovers which updates are needed, that rather than downloading them all, it will assume I previously chose to download but not install them, and thereby save a lot of time (and in my case monthly bandwidth allowance). Anyone happen to know the answer?
Last minute addition… I knew there was another – my Winamp default keyboard shortcuts no longer work. To clarify, I am used to bringing up Winamp, pressing ‘C’, and having the music pause. The strange thing is that this behaviour stopped occurring without any updates or plugins being installed. I thought I had the solution when I enabled global hotkeys and simply added ‘C’ as a shortcut to Pause. That worked great.
Until I typed out aCtually in a program. At which point Winamp faithfully paused the music. D’oh. That’ll be Global hotkeys then. I checked the normal shortcuts had not been changed without me noticing by Nullsoft/AOL, but all looks well there – anyone have any insight into this?
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Sep 13 2007
No Sleep – Average Faces And Gigantic Firewalls
OK it is 6.55am over here, and I am still up, hoping to catch another WorldWide Wednesday opportunity over at PayPerPost, as I managed to last week (see the Argus post). If it does not appear soon, I shall give up and grab some sleep. The official release time for these opps is Wednesday midday until Thursday midday, EST. Here in Astana, Kazakhstan, we are 10 hours ahead of that time (no daylight saving time adjustments over here), so if I’m lucky, I may not miss the releases whilst asleep.
In the mean time, here are a couple of articles I found interesting…
Although I will not need to get a new passport for another 6 years (and therefore, unless a new law is passed, not have to have biometric information added to it with a RID chip (thats a whole other ‘Aware Or Conspiracy Nut‘ post for another day…) facial recognition is already in use at the passport control areas I usually use when flying home. Because of this, I need to remove my glasses (and also not smile, I recently discovered) to ensure that the cameras in the official’s booths can easily measure the distance between my eyes, nose, mouth size etc. and compare it to the passport photo. Although this software aids the fight against the use of false ID, it is not perfect. This BBC article explains how a researcher has discovered that by averaging different photos of a human face into one composite, both computers and humans make less mistakes comparing real life faces to the photo. This should eventually lead to a higher accuracy rate…
Lastly, we have another article, this time on how the Chinese Great Firewall is not so great when under strain. The article goes into some detail about how the Chinese authorities actually manage the flow of information on subjects they would rather their citizens did not have unfettered access to. However, I would really like to hear from anyone who has some first hand knowledge in this area (are you reading this Gavin?), as I was previously under the impression that the so called Great Firewall of China was infact NOT centrally administered or even based, and that the blocking of sites and information was the responsibility of the different ISPs that serve different areas of China. From previous blog posts I have read elsewhere, a resident of one area in China may find they are able to access sites that someone thousands of kilometres away can not. Anyone able to enlighten me?
[sidenote]
I have just noticed this blog is #1 on Google for the term Aware Conspiracy Nut 🙂
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