Opinion – Page 8 – Mike's Twitter Overflow

Why the Virgin Trains Pendolino is fail…

A repost of a slightly old note from my Facebook profile, updated…

1) Not enough seats, especially ones with tables – yes, even in first class

2) Seats that don’t line up with windows – even in first class, if you’re unlucky enough to sit in coach H, seat 02A, which has the added bonus of the rubbish table to rub a bit more salt into the wound.

3) What was that about “windows”? More like port-holes – the Pendolino has 50% less glazing compared to it’s predecessor, allegedly in the name of “crashworthiness”, but one informed source tells me that it was a cost cutting measure as well.

4) Crap heating and ventilation – a never-ending battle seems to be played out by the floor-level heaters and the ceiling-level air conditioner, your legs being toasted while your head is chilled, waves of sickening heat waft up to your face, while icy blasts blow down the back of your neck. Heating fights cooling fights heating. This is environmentally friendly how?

5) Noisy. Creaks, squeaks and rattles are the order of the day. Interior materials seem to be designed to reflect or even amplify noise, not absorb it.

6) Nasty, mucky, cramped, and smelly loos, with comedy handwashing. Dirty toilet bowls, tiny trickles of water, pathetic hand dryers.

7) “The Shop”. The railway buffet car meets 7-Eleven. Works on the assumption that passengers shall be denied edible food. Don’t even get me started on those “tubes” of UHT milk – nasty. But all tea and coffee is fairtrade, so that makes it okay. Not.

8) Just what did the person sat in the so-called “window” seat do that’s so bad that they are denied an armrest?

9) An apparently perfect Faraday Cage which prevented mobiles/3G dongles working – at least until a mobile phone repeater system was retro-fitted to each train.

10) Comedic (well, it would be if you hadn’t paid for it), unreliable provision of “inclusive” First Class food and drink. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, but whatever it is, in my experience it’s frequently not as advertised, and passengers aren’t warned in advance. When I’ve raised this with on-board staff, and with VT HQ, their response is that I “only bought a journey from A to B” and they aren’t under any obligation to provide any of the services illustrated in their marketing material, as it’s a “complimentary” service as opposed to an “inclusive” service. Bunch of weasels!

Pendolino might have taken a step forward in terms of journey time, but at the expense of several steps back in terms of passenger comfort. I guess the silver lining to this cloud is that the quicker journey time means you’re not on the dratted thing for as long.

It’s predecesor, the iconic HST, was proof that designing for both the passengers and for profit can be done.

Breaking the IXP MTU Egg is no Chicken’s game

Networks have a thing called a Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU), and on many networks it’s long been somewhere around 1500 bytes, the default MTU of that pervasive protocol, Ethernet.

Why might you want a larger MTU? For a long time the main reason was if you’re transferring very large amounts of data, you reduced the framing and encapsulation overheads. More recent reasons for wanting a larger MTU include being able to accommodate additional encapsulations (such as MPLS/VPLS) in the network without reducing the end-to-end MTU of the service, to carry protocols which by default have a higher MTU (such as FCoE, which defaults to ~2.5k bytes), and make things like iSCSI more efficient.

There’s often been discussions about whether Ethernet-based Internet Exchange Points – the places where networks meet and interconnect over a shared fabric – have been one of the barriers (there are lots!) to adoption of a higher MTU in the network. Most are based on Ethernet, and most have a standard Ethernet MTU of ~1500 bytes.

Ethernet can carry larger frames, up to around the 9k byte mark in most cases. These are known as “Jumbo Frames“. Here is quite a nice article about the ups and downs of jumbo frame support from the perspective of doing it on your home network.

The inter-provider networks to date where you can usually depend on having a higher end-to-end MTU are the large Research and Educational Networks, such as JANET in the UK. With white-coated (and occasionally bearded) scientists wanting to move huge volumes of experimental data around the world, they’ve long needed and have been getting the benefits of a larger MTU. They deliberately interconnect their networks directly to ensure the MTU isn’t reduced by a third-party enroute.

This has recently resurfaced in the form of this Internet Draft submitted by my learned friend Martin Levy of Hurricane Electric – yes, he of “Just deploy IPv6” fame.

With this draft Martin is trying to break what is at best a chicken-and-egg, and at worst a deadlock:

Should an IXP support jumbo frames?
What should the maximum frame size be?

He’s trying to support his argument by collecting the various pieces of rationale for supporting inter-provider jumbos in one place, to guide IXP communities in making the right decision, and hopefully documenting the pitfalls and things to watch out for – the worst being that your packets go into the bit-bucket because of a MTU mismatch and PMTUD being broken by accident at best or foolish design at worst.

My own personal, most-recent experience dancing around this particular handbag as with an IXP operators hat on, gave the following results:

A miniscule (<5%) proportion of IXP participants wanted to exchange jumbo frames across the IXP
Of those who wanted jumbo frames, it was not possible to reach consensus on a supported maximum frame size. Some wanted 9k, others only wanted 4470, some wanted different 9k MTUs (9218, 9126, 9000), likely due to limitations of their own equipment and networks.

It was actually easier for this minority to interconnect bi-laterally over private pieces of wire or fibre, where they could also set the MTU for that link on a bi-lateral basis, rather than across a shared fabric where everyone had to agree.

Martin’s rationale is that folk argue about this because there’s no well-known guidance on the subject, so his draft is being proposed to provide just that and break the previous deadlock.

In terms of IXPs which do support a larger MTU today, there are a few, the most well-known probably being Sweden’s Netnod, which has long had an MTU of 4470, largely due to it’s own ancestry of originating on FDDI, and subsequently using Cisco’s proprietary DPT/SRP technology after the exchange outgrew FDDI (largely because of a local preference for maintaining a higher MTU). When Netnod moved to a Gigabit/10 Gigabit Ethernet based exchange fabric, the 4470 MTU was retained despite the newer ethernet hardware having support for a ~9k MTU, and it’s explicitly required by Netnod that IXP participant interfaces are configured with a 4470 MTU to avoid mismatches. It seems to be working pretty well.

One of the issues which is likely to cause discussion is where 100Mb Ethernet is deployed at an exchange, as this, generally speaking, cannot support jumbo frames. Does this create a “second class” exchange in some way?

Anyway, I applaud Martin for trying to take this slippery subject head-on. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

The Return of “Scary Monica”

I don’t normally blog on things like TV programmes, but this week marked a highlight in the Autumn TV calendar for me: The return of Masterchef: The Professionals. Maybe it’s because I love good food. But maybe it’s because it appeals to my sense of schadenfreude.

The format is different to “vanilla” Masterchef: the eager amateur cooks are replaced by earnest chefs, ready to take their cooking up a gear; and while cuddly Gregg Wallace and his sweet tooth still front up the show, co-judge John Torode is replaced by Michelin-starred Michel Roux Jr with his classical French cooking, perfectionist presentation, demanding palate and seemingly boundless enthusiasm for good food – you just watch the smile on his face as he plates up a demonstration dish.

Just what *are* you doing to that octopus?

However, if cooking for a member of the Roux kitchen dynasty isn’t enough to make you want to raise your game, Michel Jr has a (not so secret) weapon up his sleeve – his fearsome sous chef, Monica Galetti, who seems to have a reputation for perfection and ruling the kitchens of Le Gavroche with her amazing set of facial expressions. One look from Monica, and you know whether you’ve got it right, or whether you’re in serious trouble and need to start bailing.

It’s right there on Monica’s face. The expressions say it all, you know almost exactly what she’s thinking.

I’ve never seen anyone quite have the same effect on men hardened by working in a commercial kitchen. Cooking for Monica seems to reduce the most competent of people to timid, quivering, shaking wrecks quicker than you can reduce a red wine jus on full gas. They are quaking in their boots before they even pick a knife up.

One test is that they make the chefs perform a 10-15 minute technical challenge, set by Monica, to demonstrate certain basic kitchen skills and the ability to work under time pressure, e.g. make an Italian meringue, decorate these desserts with spun sugar, make a crab salad using only meat from inside the shell, make a steak tartare, that sort of thing. To increase the pressure further, Monica demonstrates to camera first and makes it look effortless, then the chefs are brought in one-by-one to complete the challenge, receiving Gregg and Monica’s undivided attention. They are often shaking so much that I’m amazed no-one has sliced their fingers off yet.

Monica surely can’t be all scary, though? The good news is that the widened eyes, cutting critique and looks of incredulity as the hapless masscare yet another innocent scallop are rapidly replaced by warm smiles and compliments all round when there are shows of genuine kitchen prowess.

But, if you want to see grown men, some with tattooed forearms, cry, look no further.

Masterchef: The Professionals is on BBC Two Monday-Thursday evenings for the next few weeks – times vary from day to day.

Whither (UK) Regional Peering – Pt 3

Anyone still using C7513s? At the end of the last post, I vaguely threatened that at some point I’d go on to discuss IX Participant Connectivity.

The topic got a “bump” to the front of the queue last week, thanks to a presentation from Kurtis Lindqvist, CEO of Sweden’s Netnod exchange points, given at the RIPE 63 meeting in Vienna.

Netnod have been facing a dilemma. They provide a highly resilient peering service for Sweden, consisting of multiple discrete exchanges in various Swedish cities, with the biggest being in Stockholm – where they operate two physically seperate, redundant exchanges. They currently provide all their participants in Stockholm with the facility to connect to both fabrics, so they can benefit from the redundancy this provides. Sounds great doesn’t it? If one platform in Stockholm goes down, the other is up, traffic keeps flowing. Continue reading “Whither (UK) Regional Peering – Pt 3”

Just let IPv4 run out. It’s over. Just get on with it.

So, I’m currently at the RIPE 63 meeting in Vienna. Obviously, one of the ongoing hot topics here is IPv4 depletion, at times consisting of discussion on either a) the transition away from IPv4 to IPv6 via various transition mechanisms, and b) how to make the pitiful amount of IPv4 addressing that’s left last as long as possible.

One of the things that is often said about (b) is that it shouldn’t be done to death, IPv4 should just be allowed to run out, we get over it, and deploy IPv6. However (b) behaviour is to be expected when dealing with exhaustion of a finite resource.

There are similarities and parallels to be drawn between IPv4 runout and IPv6 adoption, fossil fuel depletion and movement to alternative energy techologies. The early adopters and the laggards. The hoarders and speculators. The evangelists and the naysayers.

So, for a minute don’t think about oil and gas resources being depleted, that’s way in the future. We’re facing one of the first examples of exhaustion of a finite resource on which businesses and economies depend.

If the IPv4 depletion and IPv6 (slow) adoption situation is a dry run of what might actually happen when something like oil runs out, then we should be worried, because we can’t just rely on carrier grade NAT to save us.

Latest Datacentre Expansion in Leeds

The Yorkshire Evening Post carried a story today about the future of the former Tetley’s Brewery site in Leeds, which closed back in June.

Leeds-based Internet and Telephony Services company aql have announced they are part of a consortium who wants to redevelop part of the site, to include more new co-location space, complementing their nearby redevelopment of the historic Salem Church, another Leeds landmark being saved from dereliction.

This also good news for the rapidly developing Leeds-based IXP – IXLeeds, who’s switch is co-located at the aql Salem Church facility. It opens up further access to co-location for the future, and further promotes technology growth in the region.

Old brewery buildings make good bases for something such as co-location, due to the buildings being engineered for high floor loadings. Part of the old Truman Brewery site on London’s Brick Lane was reborn as a datacentre some years ago, so there’s a sound precedent for this part of the redvelopment.

Adam Beaumont, aql founder, said that he’s “always looking for new ways to combine his interests of technology and beer” :).

This new plan deserves to go ahead for a number of reasons, and not only because it is significantly better than Carlsberg’s original proposal: To build a car park, locally dubbed as “Probably the most unadventurous redevelopment plan in the world“. Hilarious.

More specifics driving traffic to transit?

Interesting talk at RIPE 63 in Vienna today from Fredy Kuenzler of the Swiss network Init7 – How more specifics increase your transit bill (video transcript).

It proposes that although you may peer with directly with a network, any more specific prefixes or deaggregated routes which they announce to their upstream transit provider will eventually reach you, and circumvent the direct peering. If this forces traffic to your transit provider, it costs you money per meg, rather than it being covered in your (usually flat) cost of peering.

Of course, if it’s the one transit provider in the middle, they are getting to double-dip – being paid twice (once on each side) for the same traffic! Nice if you can get it!

So, the question is, how to find these more specific routes mark them as unattractive and not install them in your Forwarding Table, preferring the peered route, and saving you money.

Geoff Huston suggests he could provide a feed or a list of the duplicate more specific routes, crunching this sort of thing is something he’s been doing for ages with BGP routing data, such as the CIDR Report.

But the question remains how to take these routes and either a) keep them in the table, but deprefer the more specific which breaks a fundamental piece of decision making in BGP processing, or b) filter them out entirely, without affecting redundancy if the direct peering fails for any reason.

I started out being too simplistic, but hmm… having a think about this one…

Virgin Atlantic launches “all new” Economy service

I saw that Virgin Atlantic have today launched a new Economy inflight service – their “best ever”, so they say. There is a shiny video online.

Call me a sceptic that belongs in an episode of “Grumpy Old Men“, but I can’t really see much from the promotional video that makes me think “Wow”:

The branding and packaging has changed – all part of marketing the product to the customer
It still features that kiddies’ tea party sized “mini-loaf” of bread that I remember from my first VS flight years ago
It still contains some classic Virgin touches like mid-flight ice-cream, now served from a cutesy usherette tray
The coffee/tea cups seem smaller than before, but serving dessert with coffee/tea seems a good move, having eaten my dessert and then waited ages for coffee.
The menu cards have returned (Virgin took them away early in the 2000’s as a cost-cutting measure)
Is the new lightweight tray, with it’s little indentations, meant to remind you of being at primary school?
Along with the new space-saving and lighter tray, there seems to be a reduction in some pre-packaged optional items, which is a plus – ever thought about how many packets of unasked for sugar airlines throw away each year?
But, they still use those woeful “Dairystix” pre-packed milk tubes – a triumph of packaging design that allows you to spill weird-tasting milk over your neighbour or, if you’re really unlucky, yourself. What about a milk jug?
It looks like afternoon tea-type second services are making a comeback, having been heavily pared back in the last decade.
But the vtravelled blog article says that “on shorter flights, you will get a light meal like high-tea” – does that mean no main meal at all on some sectors?
We don’t get to see what’s inside the shiny new packages – is it still the same iffy food that was always there before?

It’s good to see Virgin reinstating some elements of the service which were taken away in cuts of the last decade, and the weight-saving and waste-reducing features deserve applauding, but “all new” and “best ever” seems to be on the verge of overstating things. If they really meant to show how good this new service was, perhaps they wouldn’t be afraid to show us what we could expect inside the boxes.

Unless it really is yet another watery, drippy, lasagne, (or the ever dreary, ever present anaemic sausage and cement mash) in which case I wouldn’t blame them at all.

Postscript:

About an hour or two after publishing this blog post, I got the following email from Virgin Atlantic…

We’d like your feedback

Dear Customer,

In an effort to better understand our customers and improve our services at Virgin Atlantic, we are seeking to gain feedback about our customers’ use of social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter.

To help us obtain this feedback, please click on the link below and fill in this survey.

So, someone or something is watching, somewhere 🙂

The $16 muffin outrage!

While it’s last weeks news, it’s still making me laugh a week later, so I thought I’d blog about it…

There was outrage that the US Justice Department paid $16 a muffin (and $10 a cookie) as part of the catering for a legal conference held at a hotel near the White House.

Anyone involved in organising conferences knows that hotels want to make a certain amount of money from a conference, which you can pretty much express in this simultaneous equation:

Income = Meeting Room Hire + AV + Catering + Hotel Rooms

Thought of simplistically, the hotels income breaks down roughly as fixed costs, such as the hotel’s overheads, the cost of consumables for the event, such as coffee and food, the costs of hiring anything special in for the event (such as AV the hotel can’t provide in-house, or additional casual staff), and a chunk of profit.

So, you can end up with a situation whereby if someone doesn’t negotiate hard enough, and not enough people stay in the hotel, the coffee and muffins become very expensive.

Whither (UK) Regional Peering – Pt 2

It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged about this topic

Probably too long, as IXLeeds, something which inspired me to write Pt 1, is now a fully-fledged IX, not just a couple of networks plugged into a switch in a co-lo (all IXPs have to start somewhere!), but has formed a company, with directors, with about 12 active participants connected to its switch. Hurrah!

So, trying to pick up where I left off; in this post, I’m going to talk about shared fate, with respect to Internet Exchanges.

What do I mean by shared fate? Continue reading “Whither (UK) Regional Peering – Pt 2”