The MacAlba

I’d noticed that the network link between home and the world had died at around 1pm (localtime) for the past few days. Then yesterday, Saturday, I happened to glance at the Gilat SkyEdge IP satellite modem at a telling time. The signal level was way down. The first thing that crossed my mind was that the strong wind blowing at the time had nudged the satellite dish a little. Then, just as I was musing over the problem, the signal strength started to rise, slowly and steadily. A few seconds later I realised that, given the time of day (midday if you ignore daylight savings), the sun would be behind the Optus satellite used by BorderNET.

A quick trip to Google confirmed that March and September (equinox time) were the times of the year that sun transit outages occur.

Today, I manually recorded signal strength (in dB) against time. Here’s the graph showing the results.

(click to enlarge)

It clearly shows that the carrier to noise ratio drops enough to make the signal useless for several minutes.

Sadly, from a customer service perspective and as best I can determine, BorderNET didn’t notify customers of such outages. I mentioned my lunchtime network loss to a BorderNET service desk operator on Saturday – he didn’t mention the possibility of sun transit outages. Neither is there a message on the BorderNET bulletin-board which expressly states that its purpose is to notify users of outages.

Anyway, it was interesting to experience this phenomenon firsthand.

I’ve put a photograph of the BorderNET satellite link on my photoblog to illustrate my earlier articles that were posted here.

We’ve now had BorderNET 512/128 satellite internet access at home for 10 days. The down- and up-link speeds continue to maintain advertised throughput (mostly noticeable on large file transfers). The long latency caused by the distances required to be travelled via satellite ensure that web browsing, for example, isn’t “snappyâ€? (my web request packet has to travel in the order of 70,000 km or more to get to the server; the returned data has to travel the same distance to get to me). Likewise, character-based logins to Unix systems is challenging (it takes a while for the echoed characters to get back).

I keep the satellite modem running 24 hours/day and use SNMP to record the number of bytes transferred to and from my residential network router interfaces. For reasons as yet unknown, the satellite link is reset, or the modem rebooted, daily during the early hours of the morning. This has caused problems for sessions I run at that time of day. I’ve worked around it for the time being by shifting the kick-off times of various tasks.

The satellite modem is a “Gilat SkyEdge IPâ€?. The received signal seems quite healthy – the carrier to noise level usually sits at +12.6 to +12.7 dB. It’s peaked at +13.14 dB, and dropped to +11.08 during rain. The modem is rumoured to contain a built-in proxy facility (they call it “embedded accelerationâ€?[1]) – this might explain why some non-web, port 80 communications have been difficult.

[Update April 1, 2006: the carrier to noise level dropped to +9.33 during heavy rain yesterday morning.]

The BorderNET web page which displays the volume of my downloaded data runs about 30 hours in arrears which, while not unworkable, seems to be a larger lag than is really necessary (given that I can maintain my own record of downloads in near-realtime (within 5 minutes)). [The BordetNET usage page is nearly 60 hours in arrears as I type].

I’ve called BorderNET helpline a few times but gave up waiting to speak to anybody after 10 to 15 minutes. Sadly, their help desk staffing levels seem no better than other ISPs.

All in all, though, even with the few rough edges it’s still a better service than the 45 asynchronous kilobit/sec I had via a dial-up modem.

[1] Gilat’s full name for it on their SkyStar 360e web page is “Embedded TCP/IP implementation coupled with unique Internet browsing acceleration technologies provides high performance and an enhanced user experienceâ€?. I can’t say that my user experience feels enhanced. It’s “OKâ€?, perhaps, but not “enhancedâ€?.

After a longer than expected wait, and some stuffing around, the 2-way satellite internet access service from BorderNet was installed a few days ago. In a sense the installation process was an anti-climax – it took less than an hour and a half from arrival of the installers, to the home wireless network being connected to, and operational on, the ‘net.

The service plan I chose gives us a 512 kbit/s downlink with a 128 kbit/s uplink. The price includes 5 gigabytes per month of downloaded data, with additional charges payable in excess of that limit.

I note that BorderNet now has a “traffic shapingâ€? option whereby I can opt to have the downlink data usage above the 5 GB quota “shapedâ€? down to 64 kbit/s for the remainder of the billing period. I’ll have to take note of my usage for the next 10 days or so before deciding whether to take advantage of that offer or not.

In terms of performance, so far, the service hasn’t disappointed. The down- and up-link speeds are pretty much exactly 512 and 128 kbit/s respectively. The long network latency imposed by the use of geostationary satellite is rather annoying but can’t be helped.

So, all in all, it’s been good so far.

[These thoughts are made from the viewpoint of a bystander, rather than as a participant - coComment is still ramping up and membership is currently by invitation only. I'm not a member.]

Comments pertaining to articles or items within a specific blog are normally kept as a collection of comments attached, directly or indirectly, to that article. Comments can maintain flow of conversation between blogger and reader and are an integral part of the blogosphere.

If an individual is a frequent commenter, across tens or even hundreds of blogs, then there’s no way of accessing their entire contribution as a whole. A conversation generally usually only takes place within a specific blog (usually, but not always).

That’s where coComment comes in.

CoComment will collect all related comments from coComment members into the one conversation, and publish that conversation. But I wonder how much this will split the blogosphere into the “coCommenters� and the “non-coCommenters�. The haves, and the have-nots. A conversation could become two conversations. Each hidden from the other.

Another feature of coComment is to permit a member to list their comments centrally on their own blog, say. So as well as having a blogroll, a blogger can also have their own “comment-roll� or “conversation-roll�.

Thanks to the wonders of RSS feeds, the latter “comment-roll� can also be accessed via a news aggregator. I suspect that in the case of some individuals their conversation-roll could be as, or more, interesting than their blog.

The current blogosphere has multiple, duplicate, “ping� servers. These servers collect “pings� from bloggers when a new blog article has been published. These pings are collected and used for various purposes including search engines collecting and indexing the newly published content.

Will we see multiple coComment-like services at some point in the near future? Will they interoperate, or will the comment-sphere be further fragmented? A conversation on server-X, a different conversation on server-Y.

… and how will coComment differentiate themselves from looking something like an up-market chat-room or bulletin board?

It will be very interesting to see if they can convert the high’ish level of blogosphere chatter into something sustainable.

[Update: within hours of me writing the above, coComment opened for business. Anybody can now sign up].

Technorati Tags: cocomment, Internet

After hearing that a neighbour was about to take delivery of Bordernet equipment (where that neighbour ordered the service about a week AFTER I did), I was annoyed enough to immediately phone Bordernet to find out what on earth was taking so long.

After two phone calls and about 23 minutes of being “on holdâ€? I eventually spoke to somebody. Their service-desk person hadn’t listened to the detail of the message I had left on their answering service so I had to repeat that information.

I was eventually given the name and phone number of the installers in Melbourne. Likewise, the person I spoke to didn’t listen to the information being given to him and made some assumptions which caused the process to take some minutes longer than necessary. Is “listeningâ€? a lost art?

The installer explained that someone had called me a week ago, on February 7 to be precise, but hadn’t been able to leave a message. What!! They couldn’t leave a message because they have my home phone number not the work number. Bordernet’s application process only asks for the phone number of the location at which the service is to be installed – not a contact phone number. I mentioned this (the fact that they only had the home number) to the person taking my order at the time but that snippet of data was not of interest to them.

Regardless, I had updated my contact details on the Bordernet web site but they obviously didn’t pass that information on to the installer though.

… and what exactly were the installers going to do? They had let a week pass without trying to contact me – Bordernet does have an email address for me – they managed to use it to send me an invoice.

I now have another two weeks to wait for the equipment to be delivered – then, presumably, some additional time after that before the technician pays a visit to install the equipment.

Bordernet needs to remember that I have high expectations of quality customer service (I, being me, advised them of this when I ordered the service). They haven’t met those expectations so far.

Bordernet needs to improve some of their business processes before I could recommend them to the several hundred potential remote-area users that I want to find a service provider for. I’ve already discounted one HiBIS service provider due to their lack of being able to provide a service in a timely manner.

Another week has passed since I last posted an update. It’s now two weeks since I ordered the two-way 512/64 satellite service from Bordernet. At that time I was told that I’d have the service installed in about four weeks. I haven’t heard anything from the installers as yet. I have, however, received my first invoice. Given that they’ve given me a months rental in credit (that was part of the deal), I can’t complain (yet).

As described last week, I expected to hear from the installers, before they arrive, in order to discuss any local obstacles (hill and trees) that I mentioned when I ordered the service.

They’ve now only got 2 weeks left to meet their own deadline.

Having upgraded to, or installed afresh, WordPress v2.0.1, a personal publishing platform, on four blogs over the past few days, I’m now settling back to acquaint myself with ecto (again). Ecto is a software application for writing and managing blog entries. Once an entry is ready to be published, ecto will upload the article to the blog. Ecto can also be used to edit existing blog entries, then upload changes to the published article.

Although I purchased ecto some time ago, previous versions of WordPress were buggy enough to prevent my being able to use it (ecto) to upload to blogs. WordPress v2.0.1 is the first version that works “out of the boxâ€?, as advertised. Indeed, it’s now a pleasure to use.

A particular strength of WordPress is the “plugin� architecture. “hooks� are available within WordPress to permit independent software developers to add their own specialised functionality. Of special note is the Semiologic plugin suite which can transform WordPress from a personal publishing platform into an “easy to use Content Management System�.

Resources: ecto, wordpress, semiologic plugins and theme