Last night, we had another power cut in the flat around our area. Although a little frustrating, the part that really has begun to annoy is the fact that our ISP, or to be more precise, upstream of them, where Kazakh Telecom’s hardware comes into play, is unable to automatically enable internet access following suck black outs.
Normally, this would mean Irina waiting until 9am, phoning our ISP’s technical staff, and them then contacting Kazakh telecom to go and kick their server until it admits that the internet exists, and clients are wanting to connect.
However, as I previously noted on this blog, yesterday, today AND tomorrow are all public holidays. This means there are NO staff at the ISP, and no other contact methods are available. So it looks as though I will have no internet at home for a few days. I’m just hoping they and Kazakh Telecom both decide to do some work this Sunday, else it will be another day before I can get online.
In case any smart arses want to leave a comment, I am currently at the in laws, using their PC, as we came round for the day.
I really need to get on with my work over the next few days, to ensure I have some money available when I go to Britain, but it looks like I will just have to recalculate my spending money again.
It could have been worse, at least the power cut was in the middle of the night, so was not so frustrating as usual. That said my new UPS seems incapable of shutting down the PC properly, and so unless I catch it in time, the computer is just turned off; this is what caused the last hard drive to fail. I’ll hopefully trace what is causing the issue, and get it sorted soon.
Aug 31 2007
Another Power Cut
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Aug 20 2007
Not Just Me – Skype
Over the weekend I had terrible problems signing into Skype, though Live Messenger had no issues. Due to the previous problems I have encountered with our local ISP, I just assumed they were doing some work on their servers, and were perhaps having to block ranges of ports whilst they were carrying out work. It now looks as though the ISP is not to blame, as Skype have released an official statement explaining they had encountered unexpected technical difficulties, that had led to some users not being able to sign in. As I don’t often use Skype for IM, it did not really effect me a great deal, but had I been in Amsterdam already, this could have caused problems, as I intend to use my PDA’s Skype application (with whichever free WiFi spots I can find) to avoid having to pay for calls back here to Kazakhstan. Other users who had to redirect Skype audio calls to a mobile have been asking if they will receive a refund. (In case you haven’t come across the system yourself, audio/video/typing conversations between two computers are free, if you need to dial a ‘real world’ telephone, be it mobile or a landline, you need to purchase some Skype credit.)
Aug 15 2007
Tiscali Once More
As I recently mentioned in my Tiscali Begs For Mercy post, ISPs are starting to wail loudly that companies introducing video on demand services are going to require Tiscali et al to improve and expand their current hardware. The Register have published a report along the same lines, over here.
I’m not positive, but I am assuming that when The Register refer to Carphone Warehouse’s involvement in the situation is connected with the company’s TalkTalk scheme? Anyway, check out the comments section as well, to get a feel for how Brits are reacting to Tiscali’s statement.
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Aug 14 2007
Tiscali Begs For Mercy
As you will know from my previous posts here, my opinion of Tiscali is pretty low. Having worked for ISPs in the past, and specifically for Tiscali’s technical support department at one point, I feel I have a little insight into their business methods. For your average, light-traffic user, they perhaps are slightly higher up than AOL, but not by a great deal.
Anyway, Tiscali has warned UK customers that they had better not start using video on demand (VoD) services a lot, or else the ISP will have to shape their traffic. Check the BBC article for a bit of background info. Well? I’m waiting…. have you read it yet? Right, I will assume you at least skimmed it… I loved the section where Tiscali refers to their current traffic shaping of other Peer To Peer based applications. Whilst they make it sound like no harm is done, many of their customers have reported dial-up like speeds. Combine that with Tiscali’s fair use policies, and you begin to see just how restrictive they are becoming.
You can of course see where the company is coming from – if everyone is using connection at 100% of its capacity 24/7, the whole network will suffer. However, as technologies and applications improve, the usage patterns on the internet will also follow suit. You can not realistically expect customers to not use VoD because their ISP has not got the infrastructure in place to cope with the demand. It simply reeks of Canute ordering the tide to turn back. (Though that is not the best analogy, as the King was merely proving one of his excessively complimenting courtiers that he was not all powerful).
Anyway, enough of my preaching on top of a soap box, I understand Tiscali is a business with a need to profit, they just always seem to rub me up the wrong way…
Aug 02 2007
UK ISPs Misleading Customers
According to a recent BBC article, British internet service providers are not being completely forthright when it comes to advertising realistic figures for ADSL connection speeds. Although many quote figures of up to 8Mbps (1024Kbytes/second§), unless you happen to live next door to the local exchange. In actual fact, the average connection was only rated at 2.7Mbps!
I need to check how Mum and John’s connection is behaving when I get back to Britain, though they are with Pipex, so I am not to worried about it. I’ll also need to see if Dad wants to start his ADSL some time soon, so I can sort things out for him next month.
§ Obviously this figure does not take into account protocol overheads, and would require the server or collection of peers you are downloading from to be running at full steam.
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Aug 01 2007
Tin Cans Upgraded
Ahhhhhhh, the first of the month. Not a reference to a BLACKstreet track, merely a report on our ADSL connection now being back to its awe inspiring 256KBit status. Until I have used 3 Gig of internet traffic, then it is back to 64Kbit download, 32Kbit upload once more. Last month saw 16Gig of downloaded traffic, and I did not even grab any large torrents…
The part that made us giggle is when Ira asked our ISP why the speed had not been reset at the beginning of the month… It turns out they have to go and manually re-assign my speed in their system – there is no automatic reset each month. Which makes me wonder if we can find out whether the same person is responsible for limiting the speed each month. If so, I wonder what his vices are… perhaps a bottle of vodka would enable him to forget to restrict my speed each month… I’d feel a little bad doing that in Britain, but as life is approached differently here, if you can’t beat them, join bribe them 🙂
Hopefully we will get a 1024Kbit connection soon, unfortunately you need to visit the ISP office in person, and they keep the same hours as Irina does at work.
If we do get the upgrade, it will cost the same, and the limit to 64/32Kbit kicks in at the same point, so I don’t really understand why anyone would ask for a lower speed… (They originally did not mention that prices were the same for an unlimited account at different speeds).
Jul 31 2007
20hrs Of Slow Net Left
So, it turns out our ADSL connection is not quite as unlimited as originally claimed. Once you have downloaded 3Gb in any given month, your speed is then restricted to 64Kbit downloads, and it looks like 32Kbit uploads. On the plus side, it turns out it does not cost anything extra to go up to a 1024Kbit connection, as opposed to our current 256Kbit one.
So, our internet will soon be 4 times faster for the first few days, then 4 times slower (or 16 if you go from 1024>64!) for the last 15Gb or so.
Originally I had thought that the slow connection was due to our modem or their servers playing up, so at least I know there are no issues; I just wish they had told us the full details of the deal before we signed up. However, compared to the months of dial up access to the internet, when we paid by the minute, things are now so much better, here in Kazakhstan 🙂
Jul 20 2007
Technical Issues
The blog is currently taking minutes to load on my PC. I do not know if there is a problem with my PC, or the server this blog is stored on. If you have had difficulty accessing this site in the last day, my apologies. If you haven’t, then it may be my PC, and I need to get in contact with our ISP down the road again.
I should probably also ask them why my upload is limited to 32Kbit 🙁
Anyway, if this site is appearing fine to everyone else right now, please ignore this post.
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Jul 17 2007
OECD Broadband Report
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a report on broadband prices & speeds in developed countries. The report states that users are receiving hugely varied standards and price structures, with a very slow take up in the use of fibre optics to replace the copper twisted-pair cabling still used in most country’s telephony systems.
Obviously those countries that had taken up fibre optics had the fastest speeds available, with Japan, Korea, Finland and Sweden offering 100Mbit connections in many areas.
Of the developed countries surveyed, Turkey was the most expensive, with pricing equivalent to $81 per Mbit per second! Compare this to just 22 cents in Japan, and you can start to see the disparity.
I have not yet figured out exactly how to calculate the prices quoted, but for comparison, our ISP here in Kazakhstan charges around $150 per month for a 256Kbit connection, or around $100 if you decide to download than 700Mb (per MONTH!)
When you check this against the Swedish price of $10.79 (the cheapest in the survey), or even the most expensive (Mexico) at just $52.36, which is 4 times quicker anyway, at 1Mbps.
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Jul 03 2007
More Goodies From Britain
Big thanks to ChrisD, who despite still not having written his post on last year’s trip over here, has mostly redeemed himself by donating a portable hard drive to my storage collection. AlexC kindly bought it over in her luggage, which with all the other things for us in there (more to come on that later), did not leave a lot of room for her own stuff.
Not only does this now bring the total space available to just over 1 Tb (1024 Gb), he also filled the hard drive with the downloads I requested from him (we originally only had a 700Mb per month allowance from our ISP). I should of course point out that I own all the original media for these files, but they are in the UK, and to heavy to transport out here…
Anyway, all the tunes and movies have made a very welcome return to this flat, so thank you both 🙂
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