Sex, Drugs & Unix

running linux, again

The desktop is back with the living, or rather re-animated with some organs transplanted. The Radeon APG card, SATA and CD-RW drives survived, and i got to re-uses 2/3rds of the SDRAM, but the rest of the patient was dead before I got it on the table. The new 'zaphod' is a Shuttle SB75S with a 3.0GHz P4 "Prescot" (so 1MB of L2 Cache and a 200MHz FSB).

To my delight and astonishment, the 2.6.1 linux kernel that I was running on the old (AMD Athlon) machine booted on the P4, but then linux couldn't mount the SATA-based root. A quick review of Rick Moen's page on SATA drives showed that I should be useing sdX instead of hdX. A bit of fiddling with GRUB, and I was up.

I did have to re-build the kernel to enable the Broadcom Gb Enet and SMP so the Hyperthreading would work.

Dancing days are here again as the summer evening grows
You are my flower, you are my power
You are my woman who knows

"mahalo nui loa," to the folks at Personal Touch Computers. They seem to have a good amount of clue, nearly all the latest parts, and the guy I spoke with was friendly. The fact that they survive located across the road from compusa speaks volumes.

It will be so good to get back to my Model M keyboard. The Apple keyboards suck.

Sippin' booze is precedent as the evening starts to glow.
Jim on 07.30.04 @ 10:48 PM PST [link]

11g is fine, dude.

Wow... seems that now at least one company is now attempting to use my words to support their product. In this "blog entry" (which is nothing more than an ad for their product).

They claim, "Even with an AP in every cubicle there is no co-channel interference".

Note how the movie demos APs based on 802.11a *NOT* 802.11g. A bit of slight-of-hand, perhaps?

Here's the truth, you can't eliminate co-channel interference by tuning all the APs to different channels, given the restrictions on the number of channels in 802.11g. The myth of "3 non-overlapping channels" in the 2.4GHz ISM band is just that, a myth. While the channels don't overlap, the receivers don't have enough adjacent channel rejection (ACR) to deal with a strong (i.e. closer or high-EIRP) signal on an ajacent channel.

This, by the way, was what doomed Vivato's "multi-channel" dream. Even if you build the world's best WiFi receiver, and it somehow magically posesses 100dB of ACR, and co-locate two or three of these (in order to have a multi-channel AP), the clients, which don't have these super-radios, will interfere with each other, and the signals from the adjacent channel "APs" will also result in potential adjacent channel interfernce (ACI).

For these same reaons, Engim is also challenged to reach their goals for capacity enhancement via multi-channel operation.

But back to Propagate, the claim is easy to refute. If Propogate puts an AP in every cube, then nearly every AP has four neighbors (in the adjointing cube on each side.) Using the 8 channels present in the lowest 2 U-NII bands, we have 200Mhz of spectrum to deal with. 802.11a defines 8 channels in that spectrum, at 25Mhz centers. For the sake of discussion, lets label these channels 1-8. (The 802.11 standard uses 34-64 as channel identifiers for this part of the U-NII bands.)

If we had 3 neighbors, then each AP could be on an alternate channel (1, 3, 5, 7 or 2, 4, 6, 8), but we don't. We have 4 neighbors, so at least 3 APs will have neighbor APs on adjacent channels. For instance, 1, 2, and 3 or 5, 6, and 7. These three APs are extremely challenged to run simultaneously. If AP #1 is receiving a frame from one of its clients, and AP#2 transmits, then the frame arriving at #1 will be rendered un-recoverable. In a similar manner, if AP#1 is receiving a frame from one of its clients, and a client of AP#2 sends to AP#2, but the signal also arrives with enough power, it will also smash the frame arriving at AP #1.

At 6Mbps, the IEEE standard requires 16 dB of adjacent channel rejection. The amount of ACR required by the standard is lower as the modulation rate increases. At 18Mbps the IEEE standard requires 11dB of ACR. At 54Mbps, the ACR required by the standard is -1dB. While some chipsets perform above these requirements one has to assume that the clients perform at the minimum, since there is no way to control what client will wander into the room next.

If a 54Mbps 802.11a signal leaves a AP2 while AP1 is receiving, at 16dBm (11dBm tx power + 5dBi of antenna gain), it looses at least 47dB in the first meter, assuming free space path loss. Lets allow 10dB of additional attenuation for the signal to pass through the partition wall, and increase the path loss exponent to 3.5 (a normal 'closed office' estimate), and estimate that the signal travels 2m total. Here we've attenuated the signal 67db, so our signal arrives in the ajointing cube at -50dBm. The AP in the ajointing cube, running on an adjacent channel attempting to decode a packet at 54Mbps has an ACR of -1dB. Presto, the result is interference, but for one thing. That -50dBm signal from the adjacent AP probably set CCA on all the APs around it (at least those operating on adjacent channels.) In this case, the second AP won't send its packet until the protocol allows it to do so.

Something else I noticed. Watch the video closely and note that they're installing the APs inside the desks in the cubicles. By doing this, they may have attenuated the signals far enough such that the APs in each cube really do operate independently. Its difficult to estimate without being present, but a better 'test' (demo?) would be if they set all of those APs ON TOP of the cubes.

Propogate will counter that they also tune the power level. I contend that turning the power down isn't much of a solution. There are two problems. The first problem is that the PAs used in most cards (and APs) won't run below a power level of about 5dBm. If you'll re-run the numbers above, we still have a signal arriving in the adjacent cubicle at -60dBm or so, still to high by a lot, and still high enough to set CCA. The second, and more difficult problem is that there is no way in the (current) 802.11 standards to tell a client to tune its power. 802.11h and TPC may be an answer, someday, but the 802.11h standard was only approved in September of last year, and implementation even after a standard is approved could take years, though perhaps the requirements of the new FCC spectrum and the regulations in Europe will drive this faster.

I'm sure that the software produced by Propagate does attempt to find an optimal solution, and often does, but if it does, and throughput is preserved, it is likely only because the APs (or their clients) have to set CCA for the adjacent channel APs.

If the people at Propagate want to debate this (in public), then I welcome them. The math is straight-forward. BTW, I was specficly referring to 11g in my post. Propagate demos 11a. The reasons why may be clearer now.

In the end, 11g will be used by a large number of residential users, and very few enterprises. Where 11g is used in the enterprise, Vivato's new product is one good way to do so. I still think that Enterprise users will go with 802.11a in the Enterprise, and 11b/g at home or on the road.

mahalo,

Jim

p.s. I love the "flanger" effect while the CTO is talking. Takes it down a notch.
Jim on 07.30.04 @ 09:01 PM PST [link]

El Margarita Perfecto

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

I'm celebrating the end of my first week as a Hawaian resident... Most folks who find themselves in Hawaii after a week are either headed to the airport or are realizing that their holiday in paradise is half-over.

Mine is just starting. Things are going well. Most of the condo is setup now, we have a car, and the computers are up. Two of these died in-transit (word of warning, don't ship your computer via FedEd no matter how much bubble wrap you've used. My aluminum case is bent so badly that the motherboard has slipped its mounting screws and several of the rivets have popped. I hate to think whats happened to the drives, but the power supply takes the whole system off-line after 3-4 seconds, so I don't know yet.

Out in the bay sits "Coconut Island", and I, your humble bartender urge that we get on with the show:

2 parts Cointreau
2 parts limeade
3 parts Patron Silver
SHAKE violently with as much ice as will fit in the shaker.
strain into glasses -- or simply dump the contents of the shaker into a giant tumbler (if you're drinking alone)
add a wedge of lime
salt optional

Substituting another high quality silver tequila is OK. Porfidio is a suggestion here.

The Limeade is CRUCIAL.  All of the pre-mix crap sucks. Roses lime juice is almost OK but it goes bad immediately, and tastes like shit afterwords.

Guerro's in Austin used to have something similar called "the Don" - made with Don Julio instead of Patron. Clinton used to frequen Guerro's when he was Prez, and I imagine he downed a "Don" or two while in-situ.

Trudy's "Mexican Martini" was similar to the above recipe. However their mix is much more acidic. Too much acid and your stomach says "stop" before you fall down drunk. With the version above you fall over before there is a hint of acid in your tummy.

Variants:
If you must use a gold tequila, (if you've run out of anything good), stick with the same ratio, but use half limeade/half orange juice.

You can substitute triple sec for the Cointreau.

If you are stuck using tequila mix, cut it with orange juice or seven up. You will be able to drink more if you do.

Libero por ti la gitano
Ainero a ti li, la gitani
Ainero
Laila bien la kali
La chiner la kali
La tu raban a la kali
Poi, poi, poi
Mina, mina
Ainero per ti li
Ainero ben di la
Ainero per di
La ti la a la kali
Latila la kali

Thanks to Phil Belanger for the recipie. He is the master. Feliz cumpleaños mi amigo.
Jim on 07.26.04 @ 07:22 AM PST [link]

You Fail!

Jamie forwarded this to me, with the subject line set to "You Fail!"

----

25 ways to show you have grown up!

1. Your house plants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.
2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.
3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
5. You hear your favorite song on an elevator.
6. You watch the Weather Channel.
7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of hook up and Break up.
8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.
9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."
10. You're the one calling the police because those damn Kids next door won't turn down the stereo.
11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
12. You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.
13. Your car insurance goes down and your payments go up.
14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonalds leftovers.
15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.
16. You no longer take naps from noon to 6 PM.
17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.
18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset, rather than settle your stomach.
19. You go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.
20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good stuff."
21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.
22. "I just can't drink the way I used to," replaces, "I'm never going to drink that much again."
23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.
25. You read this entire list looking desperately for one Sign that doesn't apply to you and can't find one to save your sorry old ass.
Jim on 07.19.04 @ 11:13 AM PST [link]

a little slice of paradise

The question keeps coming in, so in response, yes, I am in Hawaii now. (This is the first post on the first morning from my new locale.) "Can I work for your company from my home in Hawaii?" has been an effective counter measure to the twice-per-week inbound from various corporate recruiting types.

I found this morning's Dilbert to be particularily amusing.

Eating breakfast with the boy, just like we used to..
Jim on 07.18.04 @ 12:00 PM PST [link]

In partibus infidelium

Latin that best describes Spokane. Course, the residents of Spokane think it describes everyplace BUT Spokane.
Jim on 07.14.04 @ 02:42 PM PST [link]

If IT likes it, then FUCK-IT

Doc points to an article by D.C. Stultz titled Is it the age of DIY IT. In the article, D.C. concludes:

They own the network. And they own the servers. You can't do any DIY projects without access to both.

You can't sneak a connection to their network without getting caught. You cannot get the data you need unless you are connected to the network. You can do all of the fancy Excel spreadsheets you want, but you can't do much else. You can't put a Linux computer on your desktop, because they won't allow it. You can't get a specialized software package for your PC unless they bless it. With the managed desktop software they run, you can't do anything without them knowing -- when I save to my C: drive on my work computer, the file actually goes out over the network to the server my PC is connected to and then back to my PC. (Yeah, I know, I think making my PC a fancy VT terminal is dumb too.)

IT is back in total control. They own the network. They own the servers and all of the data. They manage your PC remotely. Do It Yourself is dead in the corporate environment.

And to paraphrase Andy Rooney: "IT likes that."

I think there are two bits of technology that the CIO will not control, no matter how hard she tries: 802.11 and the big-I "Internet"

Its likely that many readers (both of you) have already reached for the "rogue AP" response. IT departments are notorious for their response to 'foreign" 802.11 APs being attached to the corporate network. Some places will metaphoricly slap your knuckles with a ruler, acting out certain repressed fantasies of "Sister Mary Catherine", having themselves been subject to the tender mercy of a large, well-muscled, celibate woman with no wardrobe choices and some fairly serious psycho-sexual issues. Others will just kick your ass to the curb, affording you a fine opportunity to scrub your resume and find new digs.

But what if you didn't attach the AP to the precious (santified) "corporate network"?

What if it just stood there, powered up, spraying its 2.4GHz through the walls, and offering a conduit through which your department members can communicate with each other? This would be a community network for the people you work with, and who amoung us doesn't spend more time at work than at home? Hell people, I found my lovely wife at work.

What if it was, in reality a ... linux machine with a wireless card, and on that linux machine there were (hush now), "applications"? blogs? websites?

"Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy."

Such things are relatively EZ to do. "Linux Journal" published an entire issue on building your own 802.11 networks, and covers the basics of turning your linux box into a fully-compliant 802.11 (AP). These days, a linux-powered AP can do everything than an AP from Cisco or Enterasys can, and more.

If your department is too large for a single AP to provide coverage, either get the the people you don't like fired, (neked photos of the CIO's spouse as their desktop wallpaper are one idea), or mesh two or more APs together to provide a larger network. This too should be relatively straigh-forward, once you've accomplished the above. Heck, even if you want to run Windows, Microsoft has paved the way.

The other thing to note, of course, is that its not necessary to host workgroup (or even enterprise) applications inside the corporate firewall. HTTP seems to be the universal solvent of Internet protocols these days (with perl playing the part of duct tape). Outside of a few "secure" environments, most corporations today find that they have to provide a "web" connection to the desktop, even if browsing is 'filtered' (or watched), and the IP connection is deliberately severed at the firewall. They had to hook you and your computer in, because thats where the customers and suppliers are.

This being the case, get yerself a hosted server, or buy space on one. Don't know how to run Apache, buy a book, or just ask around on any of the uncountable web forums. I've seen prices for hosted space as low as $9.99/mo for access to web server with all the bells and whistles. If your content is about work, and your work isn't making or researching pornography, or promoting "terrorism", then its unlikely to be something that a hostiing provider would refuse to deal with.

To me, DIY-IT isn't about the corporate MIS shoppe saving costs by running linux or deploying applications before the second coming. The MIS/IT/IS goolag will shit itself without SLAs and their attendent ability to shift blame. Sarbanes-Oxley is a tool that MIS will use to reject anything they can't molest into bigger budgets.

DIY-IT is about finding new ways of exploiting technology to overcome enslavement at the hands of the corporate IT nitwits. Gibson said it best, "the street finds its own use for things."

Your MIS department probably couldn't find its ass in the dark with both hands and a flashlight.
Jim on 07.14.04 @ 02:25 AM PST [link]

What are you going to do when its free everywhere?

I once asked the assembled board at Wayport this question, mere months before they installed Dave Vucina as CEO, back in the summer of Y2K. I doubt my query and rhetoric had anything to do with the transfer of power back then.

Glenn reports that Continental bucks the for-fee airport/airline trend and offers free Wi-Fi in all of its U.S. Presidents Clubs.

Consider this a trend, and not only in just the clubs. In most airports, the airlines lease the gatehold areas from the airport authority. It won't be long until the airlines install free WiFi for their passengers who are waiting to deplane, as well as those waiting in the clubs. Most airlines of any size already operate a data network for their operations. Extending this (via a couple VLANs on a switch for transport), using the now-popular "Multiple-ESSID" read the patent application option found in several products, will be straight-forward for all but the lamest of IT departments.

The natural price of WiFi is free. There is no barrier to entry, (the FCC has ensured this now) Its too easy and too inexpensive to install, and despite fears, uses little bandwidth. Just as many of the hotspot providers and other who attemtped to provide subscriber aggregation (or aggrivation) predicted customers would seek-out those business that had installed WiFi, in the second wave, usage will occur most often in those places that don't charge for access. When Starbucks finds that its bottom line is suffering because people don't want to pay.

If you're in the business of providing hotspots or aggregating subscribers its time (perhaps even too late) for you to begin to look for a new business model, one that doesn't count on revenue directly from the subscriber.

Wayport seems to have figured this out (nearly four years after I queried). Its going to have its roaming partners pay, per location.

This means that Wayport could charge a hotel chain for access at only its hotels, or across the entire network, probably in order for the hotel's "guest rewards" program to provide "free" connectivity as a "gift" for people who stay in their hotels a minimum number of nights per month or year. Carriers such as SBC, ATT and Verizon will likely pay for access to the entire plant, and the carriers can, in-turn, provide WiFi for free to their subscriber base, or on a flat-fee basis.

To the subscriber, this access appears free, or nearly so. The friction evaporates, and usage mushrooms. Metcalf's Law takes over.

Metcalf's law states that the value of a network scales as 2n, where n is the number of persons connected. Consider AOL as an example. In the fourth quarter of 1996 AOL instituted flat rate pricing. This led to dramatic growth in use. From that time until the second quarter of 1997, average daily use grew at an annual rate of approximately 400%. After six months, the growth settled down to an annualized rate of about 26%.

The same thing is about to happen to "free Wifi", or Waypor't new model, (where WiFi appears to be free), or some combination of the two. If the Community Wireless movement wants any part in this, it had better figure out inter-network "roaming", fast.
Jim on 07.12.04 @ 11:34 PM PST [link]

The roaches have no king

Except for bacteria and viruses, roaches are the single most stable, unconquerable, unkillable species on earth.

They neither have, or need a leader.

It is possible that their resiliance derives from their independence. Or perhaps the song gets it right:

La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana que fumar


Jim on 07.12.04 @ 07:28 AM PST [link]

FCC killing broadcast TV (redux)

Dave Farber's Interesting People list is a fantastic place to hang out online, if you can deal with the volume.

There was a post this morning titled "FCC decency rules already chilling content", part of which predicts the demise of broadcast TV via the broadcasters new-found inability to say "fuck", and various other four-letter invectives, along with, presumably, no more bare nipples on women.

The poster, Barry Ritholtz states, in part:

This will make difficult (if not impossible) for Broadcast stations to compete with Cable and Satellite channels.

But I already said that here.
Jim on 07.12.04 @ 06:34 AM PST [link]

Papers that you can read (see previous)

Chari (from Tropos) in posts links to three papers. The problem is that you have to be an ACM member in order to read the first two papers. Most of the work can be found in summary here.
Jim on 07.12.04 @ 06:18 AM PST [link]

Meshblogs, part 33

Sasha responds to my premise that we don't need lower power limits in 2.4GHz (under part 15) via his posting on Glenn's site:

As regards the 500mW limit I propose as a proactive solution in my manuscript, it is important to remember that one can today legally transmit at up to 1W; and with a exemption (which is pretty much a rubber-stamp process) and an amplifier, one can go up to 10W. The problem is not what power level one can transmit at with today’s wireless card technology;

47CFR Part 15.247 (the rules by which all WiFi and WiMax devices would need to run in 2.4GHz) contains no method by which this could be true. Nor does 47 CFR Part 15.407, which governs the U-NII band(s).

He continues

The problem is not what power level one can transmit at with today’s wireless card technology; but what will be rolled out in the future. I’m especially concerned about the WiMax technologies being proposed that allow for higher transmit powers within the same frequencies as today’s Wi-Fi systems — see this link.

with a pointer to this Which is a posting by him. Quoting again:

WiMax also "has been designed to scale from one up to 100's of users
within one RF channel". The White Paper points out that 802.16 utilizes
OFDM while 802.11 uses CDMA -- what worries me is that OFDM is built to be
usable at higher power -- thus, 802.16 could be deployed to "drown out"
802.11 transmissions. I don't know about OFDM versus CDMA, anyone want to
weigh in here?


First there are many 802.11 PHY standards. 802.11a and (most of) 802.11g do, indeed use OFDM as a modulation technique, not unlike 802.16 (WiMax). The paper Sascha points us to gets it right, but Sascha appears confused.

Second, 802.11b doesn't "use CDMA". The paper goes only so far as to call 802.11b "a basic CDMA approach", probably because 802.11b uses something like a spreading code, though to call CCK (the modulation used in 802.11b) a "spread spectrum protocol" is to do gross injustice to spread spectrum. In the 1997 standards, there were spread-specturm PHYs for both the DSSS and FHSS flavors of the now nearly-forgotten early days of 802.11, but the similarity ends here.

Third, OFDM is not "built to be useable at higher power". If anything, the design of OFDM makes building a higher-power unit more difficult, due to the Peak to Average Power Radio (PAPR) problem indemic to OFDM. This is a well-researched subject, familiar to anyone who has approached RF design with OFDM. If anything, 802.16s PHY(s) will have a worse time than will 802.11s PHYs, since they potentially use many more carriers, and the DSSS PHY (used in 802.11b) doesn't have much trouble at all. (He says, inches away from a 24-25dBm 802.11b bridge that will soon run OLSR.)

Perhaps Sasha meant that 802.11 runs CSMA (/CA)? The WiMax paper goes to great lengths to point out the superiority of the 802.16 MAC compared with 802.11's CSMA-based one. This may or may not be true, but it won't be a factor, since 802.16 is doomed, at least in unlicensed spectrum. And if Sasha did, then he seems very confused.

Sasha also states:
"A-HSLS will scale to thousands of nodes arranged in a truly non-hierarchical fashion — it’s the difference between two protocols that are most useful by major telecoms, and one that is useful for community wireless networks. A-HSLS is more useful for Community Wireless Networking purposes, while TBRPF and OLSR are more useful for major telecoms."

Yes, routing overhead is a factor in every routing protocol. But Sasha will find, with operational experience (which Chari seems to posess), that getting the data off the wireless network, and onto a wired network will ALWAYS provide the best performance.

In summary, I don't think that Sasha knows what he's talking about when it comes to RF and modulation (and hell, I barely make a dent compared to a lot of people I know). A-HSLS may be the worlds best ah-hoc routing protocol, but I doubt it. I certainly wish him well.

Me? I'll be here.
Jim on 07.12.04 @ 05:45 AM PST [link]

Geek Conferences in Iraq

Doc Searls is recommending a "new" kind of IT conference:

So I'm thinking about what a DIY-IT event might be like. This much I'm sure of: It wouldn't be vendor-centric or vendor-oriented. It would be mostly about what IT shops are doing on their own, with or without the help of vendors. But what else? Let's see...

Here's a short list:

A collegial setting — not necessarily a hotel, but certainly convenient to inexpensive and comfortable accomodations. A university, perhaps?


Sessions and panels that are based around subjects more than around personalities. In other words, foster conversation among colleagues, not the usual lecturing to an "audience."


Hacking would be involved. Techies would get together with other techies to solve common problems. I've seen these at JabberCon (whatever happened to that event?) and ApacheCon, among other places, and think they're useful in countless ways.


The quality of a retreat, rather than yet another Professional Event.

While I haven't been to one lately (not since 1992, in fact), USENIX used to be a lot like what Doc describes, especially the BOFs, and except for the hotel part. (Gotta stay somewhere.) Hotel management can be rapacious, (I know for a fact that USENIX will never return to Nashville after what happened there), but asking a university to play host to several hundred new folks seems questionable.

I dunno, maybe DEFCON, but even thats in a hotel. Or perhaps better, the Geek Cruises, but this probably violates the Cluetrain-conversation/sharing part above.

The part that bothers me about what Doc proposes is that it seems to view vendors as evil. Potentially necessary, but lets route around that. The thing is, someone put together the machines, racks, Ethernet switches, NIC cards, disks, tape drives, power strips, etc. Without vendors, it would be pretty difficult to have any kind of IT.

Now, I'm not all that fond of packaged solutions. In my view they're often more precipitate thant solution. I build most of my own software (Hey, I can make that claim, I run Gentoo on most of the computers, and due to the nature of the vendor that I am, I even build the software that runs on most of my devices), but I will run closed software (I'm typing this on a PowerBook.) In fact, I like the PowerBook mostly because of its packaging.

Back when I was CTO @ Wayport, we wrote our own billing system (ran on linux), our own captive portal (ran on linux), ran our own routers (ran on linux, and were named NMDs for entirely arcane reasons). We even produced our own Ethernet switches.

Even with all that, there was a time when the CEO wouldn't allow us to say "linux" in front of a customer. Funny thing is, this same CEO had an absolute shit-fit when I tried to introduce him to Cluetrain. Brett thought I was using it to take-over the company. (I'm not kidding, and no, I wasn't trying.)

My interest in building open-source (natch, GPLed!) networking platforms stems from this experience, and my frustration at being able to buy, at a reasonable price, the things I needed to make Wayport go, plus my days at Smallworks, building firewall, VPN, and DHCP technology, most of which was source-available.

It also allows our customers to create the products they want, rather than what we can get to. It avoids the whole "tell me how much you'll spend" pretext to the customization of a product. By giving others access to the source, our customer can understand our product to a level of depth that no manual will ever supply, change and extend it to perform as they wish, and even go elsewhere for support, should we fail to provide same, or go out of business.

That said, I spend an incredible amount of time on the phone with customers, troubleshooting problems that are presented to be problems with what we sell, but which instead are elsewhere. Today's examples include:

Customer in east Texas with three HS3000s all nicely bridged together via WDS. The first problem was basically that they had managed to create a hidden-terminal problem for themselves, and after that was solved (via enabling RTS/CTS), it became evident that their little Linksys gateway was misbehaving quite badly.


Customer in France who is upgrading his AP100s from their as-shipped brick-like state, but needed help with Window's Hyperterminal and tftp.

I could go on. I friend of mine, Erik Fair once said in the comments of a program called Agent Orange

"Networking is the Vietnam of computing. Something can nuke you from behind, and it's gone when you turn around. It's impossible to win a guerrilla war against a highly distributed enemy." - Mike Smith

Jim on 07.08.04 @ 03:30 PM PST [link]

What could have been

Back just after I left Sun, Larry McVoy was circulating The Sourceware Operating System Proposal. Sun delayed, linux happened, and now Sun is fighting against HP and IBM, both armed with linux.

Imagine the world if Sun had instead found it in its heart to open source what was then SunOS 4.1, which already ran on SPARC, x86, MIPS and Motorola platforms. Linux would probably be 5 years ahead of where it is now, Sun would still be selling tons of hardware, and SCO would have shut the doors back in the .com boom.

equilibrium,
balance of body and mind
holding quicksilver.

Owning technology can be a lot like quicksilver, to hold it you have to open your hands. Attempt to control by tightening your grip and it escapes.


Jim on 07.07.04 @ 06:53 PM PST [link]

Ukraine's Snickers Bar

"Young girl, come and try my tasty salo, it's super salo." link

But its not the first time I've run across Chocolate Meat

The question becomes... is it Atkins-friendly?

And another question for all of you Atkins devotees, are you an honest-to-cripes Atkins dieter with the little urine test strips and the blood analysis and the better living through diabetes rhetoric, or are you just some wannabe who hates salads?

Jim on 07.07.04 @ 04:44 PM PST [link]

Even Microsoft does Mesh

Microsoft Research appears to have gotten on the Community Wireless train.


Researchers in Microsoft Research Redmond, Cambridge, and Silicon Valley are working to create wireless technologies that allow neighbors to connect their home networks together. There are many advantages to enabling such connectivity and forming a community mesh network. For example, when enough neighbors cooperate and forward each others packets, they do not need to individually install an Internet "tap" (gateway) but instead can share faster, cost-effective Internet access via gateways that are distributed in their neighborhood. Packets dynamically find a route, hopping from one neighbor's node to another to reach the Internet through one of these gateways. Another advantage is that neighbors can cooperatively deploy backup technology and never have to worry about losing information due to a catastrophic disk failure. A third advantage is that this technology allows bits created locally to be used locally without having to go through a service provider and the Internet. Neighborhood community networks allow faster and easier dissemination of cached information that is relevant to the local community.


Source and binaries to their implementation are also available.

Microsoft Research has implemented ad-hoc routing and link quality measurement in a module that they call the Mesh Connectivity Layer (MCL). Architecturally, MCL is a loadable Microsoft Windows driver. It implements a virtual network adapter, so that to the rest of the system the ad-hoc network appears as an additional (virtual) network link. MCL routes using a modified version of DSR (which they claim as an IETF protocol, though it isn't) that they call Link Quality Source Routing (LQSR).

Their MCL driver implements an interposition layer between layer 2 (the link layer) and layer 3 (the network layer). To higher layer software, MCL appears to be just another Ethernet link, albeit a virtual link. To lower layer software, MCL appears to be just another protocol running over the physical link. It has several other interesting features as well, including support for a proposed improvement to ETX that they call ETT (Expected Transmission Time).

More interesting, given yesterday's discussion, is that Microsoft has already published results on using multiple radios.

Victor Bahl has also published a proposal to allow co-ordinated channel hopping called Slotted Seeded Channel Hopping (SSCH) that requires no leader election or other centralization. This isn't 802.11s Frequency Hopping, but rather a method to allow multiple 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11a radios to change channels in a co-ordinated manner in order to increase capacity. The paper shows that this can acheive results comparible to using several radios, while the cost and complexity of the resulting solution will be much lower.

There are other interesting papers on the page as well. here they show that ETX is a near-optimal routing metric when all the nodes are stationary (as they would be in a neighborhood mesh network). Presumably they then discovered an improvement (ETT, above).

There is even a paper co-authored by Jim Kujiya on building a low-cost steerable array using dielectric phase shifters. I met Jim Kujiya back in 1991-1993 when Jamie was acting as the Electronic Theatre chair for SIGGRAPH 93. Kujiya is probably best known for his work on the Evans & Sutherland frame buffer, so its good to see him doing things outside of computer graphics.

So if you're a VC who has funded a mesh-based product company, you might want to ask a few questions at your next board meeting. Questions such as, "Why didn't you tell me that Microsoft is doing mesh?" and "Why did you (use my money to) pay to license TBFPR?" And then ask yourself how you're going to make your investment back from a company who's only competence seems to be in using other people's hardware with other people's software?





Jim on 07.07.04 @ 04:26 PM PST [link]

Do Mesh Networks Scale? Another (biased) View

Glenn reports that Francis daCosta of Mesh Dynamics says that mesh networks won't scale, at least, not without using multiple radios (on multiple channels).

Francis makes several statements, lets analyze:

1- Radio is a shared medium and forces everyone to stay silent while one person holds the stage. Wired networks, on the other hand, can and do hold multiple simultaneous conversations.

Nothing about radio forces everyone (presumably all stations) to stay silent while one "person" (station?) holds the stage. This is a property of several MAC protocols used in radio-based networks, including CSMA/CA (used in 802.11), but is not a fundamental property of radio networks.

(Further, "interference" is a receiver artifact, but we won't go into that now.)

These aren't even new results. Gupta, Gray and Kumar published an empirical paper several years ago named An experimental scaling law for ad hoc networks that showed this in a real world experiment.  Their results were that 802.11 ad-hoc networks scale at c/n^1.68, where 'c' is capacity and 'n' is the number of nodes in the network. The problem is indemic to the 802.11 MAC protocol, which is not adaptive, and requires that all stations be able to hear each other.

2- In a single radio ad hoc mesh network, the best you can do is (1/2)^^n at each hop. So in a multi hop mesh network, the Max available bandwidth available to you degrades at the rate of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. By the time you are 4 hops away the max you can get is 1/16 of the total available bandwidth.

Agreed (for 802.11 in ad-hoc), but this was shown in the Gupta, Gray and Kumar paper cited above. Old news.

But this is not true once you are willing to throw out the 802.11 MAC protocol.

Tim Shepard's 1995 thesis "Decentralized Channel Management in Scalable Multihop Spread-Spectrum Packet Radio Networks" (and the more concise paper based on it) - which demonstrates that one can build a practical network whose capacity increases the more stations you add.

The rate of increase is square root of N, for N stations, and this contrasts sharply with daCosta's viewpoint. Of course, as I've already stated, daCosta is speaking about 802.11 without naming it.

The key ideas of Dr. Shepard's thesis are to build a network of cooperative repeaters, use no more power than necessary, and to schedule the transmissions from each node. He even proposes a novel method of scheduling the stations in a completely distributed fashion.

Many have noted that I am a fan of the chipsets from Atheros, but few have ever queried 'Why'. (Nigel Ballard did once, at a PTP meeting where I spoke the day after leaving Vivato.)

The reason 'Why' is that the Atheros chipsets do not implement the 802.11 MAC protocol. It is straight-forward to implement your own MAC layer on top of the Atheros design, and the madwifi driver proves it. While there are other chipsets with a similar architecture today.

You connect the dots.

3- That does not sound too bad when you are putting together a wireless sensor network with limited bandwidth and latency considerations. It is DISASTROUS if you wish to provide the level of latency/throughput people are accustomed to with their wired networks. Consider the case of just 10 client stations at each node of a 4 hop mesh network. The clients at the last rung will receive -at best- 1/(16,0000) of the total bandwidth at the root.

Unfortunately, this point fails as well. Tim's thesis quite clearly shows that it can work in a 1,000 node network. There are still limits, especially in the area of latency (read the thesis!), but work proceeds on asyncronous radio relays

4- Why has this not been noticed as yet? Because first there are not a lot of mesh networks around and second, they have not been tested under high usage situations. Browsing and email don’t count. Try video - where both latency and bandwidth matter - or VOIP where the bandwidth is a measly 64Kbps but where latency matters. Even in a simple 4 hop ad hoc mesh network with 10 clients, VOIP phones wont work well beyond the first or second hop – the latency and jitter caused by CSMA/CA contention windows (how wireless systems avoid collisions) will be unbearable.

Fortunately these effects are very easy to model in a simulation environment. Most of the IETF work on mobile ah-hoc routing shows results based on the simulation environments "ns", "glomosim" and the commercial "opnet". Some of these packages contain (or have access to) quite accurate models of the wireless channel, and even the 802.11 MAC and PHYs

daCosta is going to propose multiple radios as a solution to the problems he shows. (See, I can predict the future too!)

Obligory disclosure: Francis and I have known each other for a few years now, and we may develop some hardware for him if things work out. Its early in the relationship, and given my personal/professional history over the last 5 years, I'm far less willing to enter into partnerships than I was. There are problems with this "multi-channel" approach, but it might provide some benefit. Its also likely that my mention here will scorch the relationship when/if Francis ever reads thsi.

The real solution, however is to not use a MAC protocol that was designed for something very different.

Coverage on a few more points:

I think many of the ideas in this are wrong-headed.

It promulgates the "spectrum as property" lie, when the real solution is to treat spectrum as a commons.

It proposes a 500mW (27dBm) power limit for unlicensed operation, but this is only 3dBm lower than the highest current limits in all of the ISM and U-NII bands, and it can be quite challenging to find (or design) a Wi-Fi card that will generate more than 200mW (23dBm). Some solutions exist. I do agree with Sascha that the transmit power should be adjustable, (and therefore, I've enabled it on this unit.) I don't have the "full-auto" stuff working yet though. Natch.

It provokes conspiracy theories about the demise of CoMeta and its investor's motives. The simple truth is that it was a group of old-farts with a pile of money looking to cash in on the WiFi craze. So they went off tilting at windmills following the Don Quixote de la Mancha of this modern age, Dr. Brilliant.

There is an old addage known as Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Intel, ATT and IBM all had different agendas. AT&T thought it would get to sell a lot of leased lines and DSL. IBM Global Services was to provide all the logistics. It was a money grab by extremely dumb players, pure and simple. What makes it worse is that Larry Brilliant had failed before at exactly the same game when Aerzone went thud, followed by the rest of Softnet.

It views WCA and the "wireless industry" as the enemy, insisting that they have deliberately slowed innovation, and this, dear reader, is some serious tilting at windmils:

Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where 30 or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

Sascha may not be familiar with The Inventors Dilemma. It is an excellent book written by Clayton Christensen (in 1997) about how successful businesses decline and fail. The basic hypothesis is simple: Successful businesses grow and eventually dominate their target market. When they fail, it is usually because a newer company with different technology eats their lunch.

But, according to Christensen, this happens because the newer technology is "disruptive". It doesn't compete head-to-head with the incumbent giant, but initially gains its success in an adjacent market before taking the incumbent head-on. The interesting part of this is that the incumbent always takes decisions, which are in themselves rational, sensible and defensible in respect of its primary market and this naturally leads to its demise. It can never get into the position of being able to compete directly with the "disruptive" technology.

Finally, I'm of the opinion that Sascha is chasing rabbits with his advocacy of A-HSLS. He may have read this presentation (warning, its PowerPoint, PDF is here), and then failed to notice that TBRPF and OLSR are only mentioned in passing.

TBRPF is the 'mesh' protocol used by many people who are attempting to market "mesh" equipment. It has an advantage in being an IETF standard, but as far as I know, no open or free implementations exist.

I think OLSR (which is also an IETF RFC standard) is a better protocol, if only because several implementations exist, all of them free (as in speech) software.

Of course, the router heads at Cisco have proposed manet extentions to OSPF. If you've followed this far, you may find this presentation by Fred Baker of Cisco to be good reading.

I do, however agree that ETX is a good choice for a routing metric for wireless networks. I just happen to know someone who is implementing ETX in OLSR.

Community wireless" or free networks will happen, and they will grow in a 'bottom up' fashion. They will not, however, be a purely "wireless cloud" covering the skyline. There is far too much utility in getting the data off the wireless network and onto a wired network.


OK, so to review:

1) 802.11 won't scale. Mesh based networks based on 802.11's MAC won't scale. I agree.

There are commodity "Wi-Fi" chipsets that allow one to completely bypass the 802.11 MAC, however.

2) Mesh can scale.

There are information-theoretic proofs that it will. These go far beyond both daCosta's and Meinrath's presented analysis.

3) Community wireless networks will happen, and there is nothing that the carriers or telcos can do that will stop it.

p.s. this article may be full of hints about what I'm working on at 2am. It may also be the case that I am full of crap.
Jim on 07.07.04 @ 02:03 AM PST [link]

Fahrenheit 9/11

OK, so I went to see it. I'm a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and I own a copy of "Bowling for Columbine" too. Both films "go too far", but then, both films are theatre. They have a right to exagerate in the name of message.

I think the critics are upset because Moore has found a way to leverage his access to the media to
promulgate his messages to an ever-increasing audience.

The film does a good job of stretching the facts.

Take, for instance all the time devoted to the Carlyle Group blender of Bushes, Bin Ladens, Jim Baker, John Major and various other fun fellahs. Back at Wayport (while we were trying to close the year-old/falling market march-of-death round) Vucina and I got an appointment with Carlyle. I took a look around the room at the "tombstones" (Lucite markers inscribed with the names of the fund's companies who had raised funds, or subsequently gone public) and silently hoped that they wouldn't be that interested. Lots of "black" and semi-black companies. True death-mongers over there.

Fortunately, I got my wish (and we still closed the round).

Why wouldn't Shrub and the rest of his family want a part in that?

But I'm left to wonder why Moore didn't mention BCCI *once*? You remember BCCI, the bank that defrauded depositors of $10 billion during the ‘80s, while providing a money laundry conduit for the Medellin drug cartel, Asia’s major heroin cartel, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein?

Here's what the WSJ had to say:

The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.”


Or even the president. (Ahem).

Nor does Moore mention that Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

And in case you didn't think the whole BCCI connection was interesting enough, when Salem bin Laden died in 1988, Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. James Bath (Moore spent significant time on him) ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank. Its been widely reported (and debunked) that bin Mahfouz has a sister who is married to Osama bin Laden. At least Moore didn't go there.

And why is it that nobody discusses Shrub's cokehead daze anymore?

OK, don't get me started. There is a ton of this kind of thing. I'm happy enough to have not voted for him the first time he ran (and anyone who knows me well can explain how conservative I can be.)

If Moore had been interested in really slapping Shrub around, he would have certanily mentioned this. Perhaps he did, but it got left on the cutting room floor. The audience might find it all tiresome, people wouldn't buy tickets and books, and Michael would still be as poor as he makes out to be. (Love the shots from Flint, MI dude. Can we see your house now?)

Moore isn't a conspiracy nut, or if he's trying to be, he's not as good at is as Alex Jones, he's a filmmaker who's stock in trade is infuriating people into buying his product. He's a polemicist, not a journalist. A master provocateur and self-promotion artist.

All that said, the last half of the movie is gripping, and disturbing. Tellingly, Moore is all but absent from the second hour of the film, and the movie is better for it. In fact, if there is a reason for going, it is to see the sceens of the war and the results on the homefront. I don't know where he got those sequences, but its gripping, and serves as a marker to what we're really up against in Iraq, and what Iraq is up against with us there, and now, unfortunately, its too late to pull out.

Occupation is a nearly impossible task. In recent memory only the U.S. occupation of Japan, post-WWII was successful. Vietnam, Palestine, Somalia all failed. The British failed to quell the revolution that fueled the start of the U.S.A. Short of genocide, its really tough to control a crowd the size of a nation using force.

Jim says, "Go see it anyway, just to know what's happening in Iraq, and grok the buddha-nature of Wolfowitz as he combs his hair."

Yuk.







Jim on 07.06.04 @ 01:41 AM PST [link]

Ride my Llamma

Remember the Alamo
When help was on the way
It's better here and now,
I feel that good today.

Now that I'm out of Spokane, I oft wonder if Spokane defeated me, or if the fight wasn't worth my time. Spokane is a wasteland of people who never leave. One recent night, in one bar in Austin was enough to remind me of the goodness that I'd left behind, and the utter lack of anything resembling diversity or tollerance in eastern Washington.

See the losers in the best bars
Meet the winners in the dives
Where the people are the real stars
All the rest of their lives.

People in Spokane seem trapped by the impluse to stay close to extended families, or otherwise unable to cope with a world where people are different.

By way of illustration, the most-offered query in relation to our decision to move to Hawaii is an astonished, "Why?" Some have been more clear on their intent. "Why would you move to someplace where you'll be a minority?" Yes, I was asked this, and more than once. Spokane is 94% White, and probably 85% Catholic, and most people in-town don't find this outrageous, but I do.

The people of Spokane take active, if unthinking measures to enforce this human tragedy. It is, as I've described to others, the biggest small town in these United States. Everyone knows everyone. Some make the mistake of moving to Spokane (or even returning after a successful escape) in order to raise their children in a misguided attempt to soak the kids in the mystique of small-town America. In many ways it works, but only if you're successful (or dogged) enough to be able to enroll your child in St. George's (which I highly endorse), or perhaps Gonzaga Prep. Overall the Spokane public school system is a disaster, and raises mean little punks who grow to become mean, isolated adults.

Success at raising a daughter in Spokane is "keeping her off the pole"; as long as your little girl doesn't grow up to be a stripper, you have succeeded. By the same logic, if your son doesn't turn out to be a sex offender, (back in Spokane after his incarceration, because for a variety of reasons, Spokane attracts sex offenders like shit attracts flies), you are a good parent.

The people of Spokane have inbred themselves into a kind of grey goo. They all have the same, slow attitude. Meeting anyone with initiative, or even hope, is rare. Its almost impossilbe to deal with the living dead and not become a zombie yourself. [link]

Its Apalachia, with extreme weather and trees instead of coal.

Even Las Vegas, (my hometown and present locale), with its vernier-thin culture, and population of burned-out addicts, gamblers and whores, is an improvement.


I'm gonna ride my llama
From Peru to Texarkana
I wanna ride him good
In my old neighborhood
I'm gonna ride him good
In my old neighborhood.

Jim on 07.04.04 @ 03:11 AM PST [link]

Worth what you paid for it, or more

The price of being a sheep is BOREDOM. The price of being a wolf is loneliness.

Choose one or the other with great care.

From Gaping Void
Jim on 07.03.04 @ 11:06 PM PST [link]