Intelletrace now provisions all circuits as Dual Stack IPv4 & IPv6.  In preparation for World IPv6 day on June 8^th, 2011 the Intelletrace web site is now accessible using IPv6.  All internet connections using Intelletrace will receive a /48 IPv6 Network Block.

It is recommended to not use less than a /64 on any subnet using IPv6.  With the Intelletrace allocation this is 65536 /64 subnets in a /48.

Just to give you an idea of what we’re talking about here, a /64 network has 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (18 quintillion) unique IPs.  A /48 network has 65,536 times as many. For those obsessed with how large this number is, work it out and be amazed (it’s on the order of 1.2*10^24).

Test your IPv6 Connectivity

“The telecommunications industry has experienced more change in the last decade than in its entire history,” says IBM Institute for Business.

Consider that, in 1999, only 15 percent of the world’s population had access to a telephone; by 2009, nearly 70 percent had mobile phone subscriptions. If that seems unremarkable, consider that it took 150 years to add the first billion phone users. Then it took a decade to add the second billion users.

So where will the industry be in five years, in 2015? While nothing is certain, forecasters at the IBM Institute for Business Value say they see four possible outcomes, and none of them are rosy for the telecom business.

Keep in mind IBM believes it will take only five years for one of these scenarios to develop.

Scenario 1 – Survivor Consolidation:
Consumer spending for communications drops, leading to industry “stagnation or decline.”
In this rather-bleak scenario, developed market operators have not significantly changed their voice communications and “closed” connectivity service portfolios and also have failed to expand horizontally or into new verticals. That will trigger an Investor loss of confidence in the telecommunications sector, which produces a cash crisis and leads to industry consolidation.

Scenario 2 – Market Shakeout
Carriers are structurally reshaped into separate wholesale and retail businesses, and the market is further fragmented by government, municipality and alternative providers.
 In this scenario private capital is available only to dense urban areas. Telecom provider growth occurs in large part through sales of services to business partners.

Scenario 3 – Clash of Giants�
Carriers consolidate, cooperate and create alliances to compete with “over the top” providers and device manufacturers or even equipment suppliers.

Scenario 4 – Generative Bazaar
Open access infrastructure leads to more competition from “asset light” and over the top competitors.

It is easy to dismiss the level of change the last 10 years has wrought. It might be easy to dismiss the level of change IBM believes can happen in just another five years. As always, the forecast might be too aggressive in terms of its timetable.

The major implication, though, is that the telecom industry might well be a very-different sort of business by 2020, if not by 2015. If you look at revenue sources, it is virtually certain that in developed markets, less revenue–in some cases far less revenue–will be earned from voice and text services.

More revenue will be earned from broadband services, and possibly from business partners rather than end users.

Under such circumstances, ecosystem conflict is all but inevitable.

This is an interesting topic and I expect to get some heat from this one.  There are a few things you are almost guaranteed in telecom.  Most are avoidable and all are able to be engineered around as to mitigate impact.  I love the statement “ This is costing me Millions of Dollars”  this may be true, but then why is it not worth avoiding?

Unrealistic Expectations and Resolves.

• If this circuit is not installed by XYZ date “ I am losing millions of dollars”.
  • Valid Argument, however if you are ordering any service expect delays.  Most all services above a T1 enter on Fiber.  Yes even a DS3 because they are delivered at least on an OC3.  If there is no fiber present a build out must occur.  If fiber is present there must be capacity and the equipment carded out properly.  This takes time.  If anyone else is on the current infrastructure it must be scheduled.  You should get continuous updates.  You should know in advance if you are going to miss a target date.  If you need it in by a certain date,  give it twice the expected time. A T1 is 4 to 6 weeks  Give it 8 to 12 Weeks.  It is from the time you place the order.  Don’t sit on it until it is only a week out then say you need it in 5 days. Did I mention a facility check will not happen until an order is placed?
  • T1’s can have an issue as well.  It is more common in rural areas. Lack of copper Pairs.
  • Ethernet is another fun one.  Ethernet can deliver over fiber or copper (EoC) and can take some time to turn-up.
• The circuit is down and it needs to be back up now because I am losing millions of dollars.
  • If you need a circuit at its most critical point it will fail.  Let’s face it Murphy’s law is alive and true.  If this is true it screams redundancy.  The type of redundancy is dependent on your need.  If you don’t know how important it is then I encourage you to go pull the wire on the T1 or remove a cable on the DS3. If your business screeches to a stop you need redundancy.  If your consultant or technician turns red in the face and steam comes out of his ears it is one of two things.
    • (S)HE has not thought of the issue. You need to find a new consultant or engineer.
    • (S)HE has been told no to proposals for whatever reason. And you are about to get hit with something hard so run.  This is your fault, because remember “I am losing millions of dollars”.
• Ethernet for WAN connectivity.  Expect delays in diagnosis.  A tech may need to be physically dispatched to each connection point to test.  This takes time.  Much more time than traditional telecom services.  It is difficult to coordinate multiple people and takes time.  Did I mention this takes time?  Did I mention Redundancy because this takes time?  Did you pull the plug yet?
• The SLA says 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999 Up time.
  • Who in their right mind believes more 9’s = more up time?
    • This is a token.  You are paying $ 14 a day for a T1. Your circuit is down for 1 to 4 hours.   An SLA will not get you up any faster. 
    • NO Carrier can Guarantee you will NEVER GO DOWN.  No Auto Manufacture can guarantee you will never have a Car Problem (Toyota are you listening? Probably not.)
    • SLA = Money back for an outage not to excede the cost of the circuit.

Real current issue.
Spending thousands of dollars for a radio add.  Internet Connection goes down and all of the voice calls were directed to a VOIP phone number.  Bad Choice, but Ok  How could It be made better? 

This is an opinion and there are numerous ways to prevent form loosing these potential inbound calls.  It all comes down to planning.

If you pull the plug and your tech still sits there with his feet on the desk eating his sandwich and drinking his soda.  Sit and wait for 5 to 10 Min.  If you don’t have half the company ringing his phone off the hook or running in.  You have an amazing tech give him a raise and a well deserved hi five.

If the Tech logs into his computer and does something for a minute or two and goes back to his sandwich.  Again High five and give him a slightly bigger budget.  This one is thinking out of the box and doing the best with what you are giving him.

Happy testing.

On Monday, Verizon Wireless announced its entry into the market for femtocells, small home cell sites expressly designed to allow mobile phones to place calls within a 5000 Square foot radius.  This creates a Mini Cell Site.

Verizon’s “Network Extender” device is priced at $249.99, a flat fee that will not be supplemented – or subsidized – by any monthly pricing. The device is manufactured by Samsung.

Sprint also provides a similar device, the Airrave, while T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home uses Wi-Fi to connect its handsets. To date, AT&T has not announced a femtocell offering, but is currently testing 3G MicroCell.

Verizon uses the home’s broadband connection as a backhaul, essentially translating the cellular call into a VOIP connection. Who needs it? People in rural areas that may live on the outskirts of a cell site. One drawback: EV-DO is not supported, including those services that depend on it.

Using the Network Extender doesn’t incur additional monthly charges, however, users will be charged against their plan, in minutes, for any calls they make.

The service is open to Verizon customers as well as Family Share Plan members, the company said. But Verizon customers can also use a built-in management program on the Wireless Network Extender to prevent neighboring Verizon subscribers from placing unauthorized calls.

The Wireless Network Extender will be available from Verizon Wireless stores and through its Web site, the company said.

The IRIS payload from Cisco is carried by the Intelsat 14 satellite launched on 23 November 2009. The payload was powered up in orbit on 1 December, followed by network testing beginning on 17 December 2009 before the IRIS capability became operational.

Unlike previous satellite communications (SATCOM), IRIS allows the routing of IP packets in orbit across satellite beams. NC3A cites one of the advantages of IRIS over conventional satellite technology as being that it can route data between ground users covered by different satellite beams in a single satellite hop, thus reducing transponder use and increasing efficiency. Furthermore, the payload regenerates the received signals, improving the end-to-end signal performance and allowing a reduction in the size of sending and receiving terminals. IRIS will provide users with a mobile network allowing them to connect and communicate how, when and where they want, and that continuously adapts to their requirements without reliance on a predefined, fixed infrastructure, according to NC3A.   It essentially forms the backbone of a network for mobile Internet access anywhere in the world. Finally, the software of the router and onboard modem can be upgraded from the ground, increasing the flexibility of the system to implement future waveform and router standards.

NASA’s T.J. Creamer did the first tweet directly from space. At approximately 3:38 a.m. EST Friday, he wrote the first message ever posted directly to Twitter. “Hello Twitterverse!,” wrote Creamer, under the user name Astro_TJ.

NASA astronauts have posted Twitter messages in the past, but they first had to be relayed to Mission Control. Now, residents of the ISS can post directly to the micro-blogging site thanks to a new, direct Internet connection.

Creamer’s Twitter followers are becoming legion. He had about 5,000 followers on Friday, but that number had mushroomed to more than 22,000 as of Sunday.