Category: Techie

(via LifeHacker)
With all the buzz going on about ‘net neutrality, it might be good to actually understand what it means and why it matters.  So if you don’t already have all the necessary information on what the whole net neutrality issue is, read up on the How Stuff Works Network Neutrality Primer.

The net neutrality debate is divided into two camps: Fighting against net neutrality are the telecom companies and cable providers, who provide Internet access to consumers. Opposing them are content providers like Google, Amazon, and non-profits like MoveOn.org and the National Religious Broadcasters. But what are they fighting about?

. . .

Defeating net neutrality would give telecom companies the ability to charge content-providers (like Google, eBay and Amazon) to use their bandwidth and, in essence, have access to their subscribers. Not only would the content providers have access to the telecom subscribers, by paying they would have preferred access — higher bandwidth and better delivery of their content. At the heart of this strategy is the telecoms’ claim that they need revenue to make necessary updates to Internet infrastructure. Emerging technologies and media require improvements, they say, and the money has to come from somewhere.

Those in favor of regulation worry that telecoms will abuse their control and punish companies that won’t pay up. Catherine Yang of “Business Week” explains that, “The network operators could block consumers from popular sites such as Google, Amazon, or Yahoo! in favor of their own. Or they could degrade delivery of Web pages whose providers don’t pay extra. Google’s home page, for instance, might load at a creep, while a search engine backed by the network company would zip along.”

. . .

Two main voices have emerged, each supporting one side of the issue. Confusingly, both organizations’ mission is to “save the Internet.” HandsOff.org, or “Hands off the Internet,” is in favor of the telecoms. In favor of Net Neutrality is SavetheInternet.com. Consider each of their positions in their own words (for a more exhaustive representation of their purposes and goals, visit their Web sites).

There’s a large chunk of what the article covers, but there’s more to learn.  The primer explains what net neutrality is, why it matters, and what some well-known “experts” are saying about the issue.

[tags]Network neutrality, How Stuff Works, LifeHacker[/tags]

Ed Felton has taken the time to reconsider Sen. Stevens argument that the Internet is a series of tubes.  He has re-written Sen. Stevens comments as what was likely intended instead of what came out of the Senator’s mouth.  Then, Felton takes the time to explain why the argument is still wrong and the errors in Sen. Stevens’ examples.

From the lowliest blogger to Jon Stewart, everybody is laughing at Sen. Ted Stevens and his remarks (1.2MB mp3) on net neutrality. The sound bite about the Internet being “a series of tubes” has come in for for the most ridicule.

I’ll grant that Stevens sounds pretty confused on the recording. But’s let’s give the guy a break. He was speaking off the cuff in a meeting, and he sounds a bit agitated. Have you ever listened to a recording of yourself speaking in an unscripted setting? For most people, it’s pretty depressing. We misspeak, drop words, repeat phrases, and mangle sentences all the time. Normally, listeners’ brains edit out the errors.

. . .

In particular, let’s look at the much-quoted core of Stevens’ argument, as transcribed by Ryan Singel. Here is my cleaned-up restatement of that part of Stevens’ remarks:

. . .

His examples, on the other hand, seem pretty weak. First, it’s hard to imagine that NetFlix would really use up so much bandwidth that they or their customers weren’t already paying for. If I buy an expensive broadband connection, and I want to use it to download a few gigabytes a month of movies, that seems fine. The traffic I slow down will mostly be my own.

Second, the slow email wouldn’t have been caused by general congestion on the Net. The cause must be either an inattentive person or downtime of a Senate server. My guess is that Stevens was searching his memory for examples of network delays, and this one popped up.

Third, the DoD has plenty of reasons other than congestion to have its own network. Secrecy, for example. And a need for redundancy in case of a denial-of-service attack on the Internet’s infrastructure. Congestion probably ranks pretty far down the list.

The bottom line? Stevens may have been trying to make a coherent argument. It’s not a great argument, and his examples were poorly chosen, but it’s far from the worst argument ever heard in the Senate.

I snipped out big parts of the write-up, but the main thrust of the article is here.  In the end, it looks like Sen. Stevens was trying to make a good argument but lacked sufficient understanding to do so.  But in doing so, he let us in the geek community know how the fight for and against ‘net neutrality will be argued.

[tags]Network neutrality, Sen. Stevens, Internet, Series of tubes[/tags]

This story at Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless offers insight into the value or good backups and the importance of testing everything that affects the backup routine.

A Toronto advertising firm had a really good systems administrator who was religious about backup. For years, they had been in good shape. He even tested the restore/recovery process from time to time as part of their disaster planning. Smart.
As part of their growth, the ad firm moved into new larger facilities a few blocks away. The architects coordinated with the techs to make sure wires were put in the right place, phones, VoIP, 1Gig backbone… all the stuff modern companies have when they do things right.

Then, the company moved. All the typical stuff that happens during a move happened. Testing was done on everything that was moved. All was good.

Continue reading “On the importance of backups”