Category: Next-generation broadband service

Article – in German language

Breitbandanschlüsse für Königsbrunn – VDSL kommt

My comments and English summary of this article

Now Königsbrunn in Bavaria, Germany is to receive VDSL next-generation broadband Internet service, which means that it is time to make sure that the FritzBox that you plan to use in that town can now work with VDSL2 technology.

Just lately, the “groundbreaking” or “turning the first sod” ceremony took place in that town for the works that were associated with the extension of the network infrastructure for this service.

The work will initially cover the southern side of the town which is the newly-developed industrial zone, with a goal to have the area “wired up” and running by 2012. This infrastructure is expected to pass around 380 subscribers in that neighbournood. The next target will be to cover the north of the city but this will be a difficult assignment with the old established buildings and infrastructure that has existed before.

Money has come to this project from the local government (33000€) and the Bayern (Bavaria) state government (78000€) This is although there is a federal grant to local government of €100000 for next-generation-broadband projects, which is part of the goal to have 3 out of 4 German households to have access to this technology.

This effort was summed up by a comment by the Kónigsbrunn mayor — “To be viable in the future”, which is something to be thought of with the planning of these technologies.

I would say that this applies to neighbourhoods in many ways such as a town attracting larger employers or households also becoming workplaces such as the “teleworking / telecommuting” practices or creation of micro-businesses that benefit from the Internet.

Articles

What You Need To Know About IPv6 – PCWorld

My Comments

There has been a lot of talk about IPv6 as becoming the next major change for the Internet ecosystem.

This talk increased since late 2010 with the fact that the Internet is running out of globally-assignable IPv4 addresses, which are used to identify Internet services to other endpoints on the public Internet. There would then be the requirement to frequently reuse these addresses which can lead to a confused Internet setup.

It has also been augmented by the “World IPv6 Day” taking place on June 8 2011 where most of the popular sites had to run a dual IPv4/IPv6 setup to test whether IPv6 is ready for prime time. This test passed with flying colours for all of these sites and some of them still run with IPv6 compatibility in one form or another,

It is a technology that will be put on the map more so with the arrival of next-generation broadband setups, either as a way of opening up more IP addresses or as a statement to say the these services are all about “next generation Internet”,

What does IPv6 offer?

Greater number of IP addresses

There is a greater number of unique IP addresses available in the IPv6 Internet than there would be for the current-technology IPv4 Internet.

This requires the use of long address strings that may be hard to understand. For example, a typical IPv4 Internet address would be something like 211.234.5.1 whereas the IPv6 Internet address would be something like 2001:0530:ac12:2333:03aa:12f3:fe21:53f2 . This is why some shorthands have been introduced like the one mentioned in the next paragraph.

If an address had four zeros in it like 0000, the shorthand for this would be two colons as in fe80::ac12:2333:03aa:12f3:fe21:53f2 being equivalent to fe80:0000:ac12:2333:03aa:12f3:fe21:53f2 . It is worth noting that any IPv6 address that starts with fe80:: (fe80:0000: in longhand) is a stateless link-local address that would be “worked out” between network devices unless there is an IPv6 router that has a DHCPv6 server handing out the addresses.

Different network addressing setup

In the current IPv4 world, an ISP would allocate each customer’s network an outside IP address like 211.234.5.1 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 . All devices within the network would be allocated a site-local IP address and it would be the job of the router to map through using Network Address Translation a “port number” to an inside device’s address. This has often caused problems for network setup whenever a device had to receive information from the Internet, an activity that is becoming more common with applications like Internet gaming and IP telephony.

An ISP can now issue a network prefix to a subscriber like this: 2001:0530:ac12:2333 and the DHCP server in an IPv6 router can allocate a unique “full” IPv6 address for each of the network devices. There isn’t even the need for netmasks anymore because a network can be singled out by the use of the IPv6 prefixes.

It will also therefore provide for proper direct access to each unique node on an IPv6 network.

Therefore, you will end up with more unique IP addresses for your home or small-business network than the whole of the current-generation IPv4 Internet.

Different take on network security

The fact that each network device in an IPv6 network can be globally accessible requires a rethink of the role that the network-Internet “edge” device provides.

The role of these devices in a small IPv6 network will typically be to work as a security firewall for the logical network that is behind it. It will also be asked to work as a bridge between the IPv4 network, the IPv6 network and Internet services that work purely with IPv4 and IPv6. It will be augmented with Improved designed-in security with IPSec secure-network support.

What is the reality with IPv6

Most of us may think that our small networks in our homes, shops and small offices won’t touch IPv6. But there is a strong likelihood that it will be part of next-generation broadband Internet sometime in the near future.

Compatibility setups

The dual-stack network

The fact is that some of the devices you use for the Internet may be infact ready to work with the IPv6 Internet. They will typically work with the IPv6 Internet in a “dual-stack” form where they can support IPv6 or IPv4 network traffic over the same interface. This means that each device will be known on the network via an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address. It also leads to the fact that the network will work as though it is two different networks – an IPv4 network and an iPv6 network with the same physical infrastructure.

If you establish a network with two or more dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 devices with the IPv6 function enabled, you will end up with a dual-stack network with each device being known by a stateless IPv6 address. This is even though the network has a router that can only support IPv4 network setups and hand out IPv4 IP addresses from its DHCP server.

Inter-protocol tunnelling

As well, most routers that support IPv6 will implement tunnel setups that interlink data between regular IPv4 host systems and IPv6 host systems both within and outside the network. These are typically in the form of ISATAP or 6to4 protocols which manage this process automatically. Here, the routers will set up VPN-like tunnels between IPv4 networks over the IPv6 networks to link the resources that are behind these networks.

Who’s ready and who isn’t

Standard computers, tablets and smartphones

The regular computer and the smartphone will be ready for IPv6. This has been achieved with inherent operating-system support in the newer versions of the popular desktop and smartphone operating systems.

For example, Windows has inherent support from Vista onwards and has a “kludged-in” support arrangement for Windows XP. Macintosh users will have IPv6 support from at least MacOS X Snow Leopard onwards.

The two popular smartphone platforms, iOS (iPhone) and Android have inherent support in their current versions. This is because some of the mobile carriers run IPv6 networks for their wireless-broadband services.

Network-enabled equipment

Most small-business printers that are released by the big names over the past two years are IPv6 ready.This doesn’t hold true for consumer network printers or most consumer network media hardware for that matter. It also holds true for network-capable consumer electronics like the Internet radios that I have reviewed.

A selection of high-end consumer and small-business routers do support IPv6 in some way; usually in a dual-stack method  and/or providing IPv6/IPv4 routing functionality according to one or more common algorithms like 6to4 or ISATAP. It is still worth checking with your router vendor whether there will be IPv6-capable firmware available for your existing equipment or equipment that you plan to buy.

What I will be doing at HomeNetworking01.info is that when I review network-enabled equipment and find that it has IPv6 capability, I will identify it as being IPv6-ready in its connectivity list. This will allow users to know that the equipment they plan to buy or specify can he ready to work in the IPv6 age.

Internet services

At the moment, nearly all residential and small-business Internet services aren’t running IPv6-compliant Internet services. They may run an IPv6 network as part of their backbone or own-office infrastructure bot won’t enable IPv6 with their customer-facing services or the network links that reach their customers.

This situation may change with ISPs that are part of a next-generation broadband service or who provide “geek-friendly” Internet service with the latest and the greatest technology. But I would suspect that most ISPs will provide a dual-stack Internet service when they get around to providing the customer-facing IPv6 service.

Access to and hosting the Web

If you do set up a Web page with a service provider, you may have a different IPv6-readiness issue. Most Web hosts will run IPv6 on their backbone networks and may run IPv6 as a beta-testing service which isn’t all that “polished”; but they won’t have fully-functional IPv6 for their customer-facing Web sites or the sites that they host. This is because, at the moment,  most systems and networks won’t cope properly with “dual-stack” (IPv4 / IPv6) Web-host setups because of the primary reliance on IPv4 infrastructure.

After “World IPv6 Day”, most of the big sites like Google and Facebook had found they could operate as a dual-stack arrangement without "keeling over” or having negative impact on the end-user experience. This is even though most traffic that visits these sites originates from IPv4 networks. Therefore some of the major sites are still running dual-stack or maintaining their test IPv6 site as a separate subdomain.

What will this lead to

It may lead to the ability for many devices to be globally addressed in a small network and this may be of importance if these devices are to be directly accessible from the Internet. This will be of importance with gaming and remote-access applications, and may encompass the ability to have networks addressable through a premises-unique easy-to-remember subdomain.

It could also allow for multi-premises setups to be easier to establish and maintain due to the fact that a logical network can be set up to cover the different locations. This is as long as they work on one service account. It may not hold true of portable devices that are typically serviced by different providers’ accounts.

It may yield some controversies concerning individuals’ privacy and security because of the ability to provide globally-unique addressability for each device. This is along with the arrival of cost-effective network-based monitoring setups that could track every individuals’ movements.

Conclusion

This article is informing you about what is to be expected out of the IPv6 technology that is being highly talked about through this year. It also may be of relevance as we move towards households and small businesses being served by next-generation broadband services such as the many fibre-optic networks.

Article

Australian Communications Consumer Action Network – National Broadband Network: Guide for Consumers

My comments

After reading this article, I have made a few comments in a manner that isn’t intended to “dig at” the National Broadband Network and its operations but intended to provide level-headed service information about this next-generation broadband service. This may also be similar to other deployments where an FTTH next-generation broadband service is intended as an upgrade over an existing-technology communications service.

The connection will be delivered free of charge while the fibre-optic system is being rolled out in your area and you will receive notice of this from your service provider or NBN Co as it rolls out in your area.

The cabling will be similar to what is used for the current telephony cabling in that area. For most cities, this will be underground fibre-optic cabling, but for outer-urban areas, regional and rural areas, this will be overhead fibre-optic runs on existing telegraph poles.

Tenants and Multi-Tenancy Units

An issue that may arise with rental premises and multi-tenancy units (apartment blocks, shopping centres, office blocks) is that you may have to seek permission from your landlord, body-corporate or building manager to have the fibre-optic wiring done in the building. Your telecommunications / Internet service provider or the National Broadband Network Company will have procedures and forms in place for liaising with these people

Multi-Tenancy Unit / Multi-Dwelling Unit Buildings

The National Broadband Network will be a full “fibre-to-the-premises” deployment with a fibre-optic run to each unit (apartment, house, shop, office space) in the building. Here, the NBN may have to install extra equipment in the building’s wiring closet which may be in the basement or an auxiliary passageway of the building.

Post-changeover

For most people, the telephony and Internet service that you will benefit from will be similar to what you are getting for your current service. There may be revisions to the Internet service concerning download allowances as you benefit from bigger download bandwidths.

Customer Premises Equipment

The device illustrated in the article may be a proof-of-concept article, prototype or pre-production sample that wouldn’t be supplied to customers as part of the NBN rollout. As well, there may be variations in the device’s functionality for the final-issue device. It is also worth knowing that the information that is provided is for the average “Joe Six-pack” who would be running just one classic phone service and one broadband Internet service.

The customer premises equipment will be an “optical network terminator” (ONT) which is a fibre-optic modem that has handset connections for 2 phone services, and four Ethernet ports with 1 port for each Internet service. There is no knowledge of the port speed available through these ports but they may be Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Because there is no power transmitted through the fibre-optic cable, the exchange won’t provide the required power for “lifeline” telephony service. Instead, the power supply that comes with this box will have a backup battery that works in a similar way to an alarm system’s backup battery. Here you will be able to place and receive calls for a certain amount of time when the power goes down.

Of course, this device will be managed by NBN Co and end up being seen by them as a demarcation point for service responsibility.

Customers who have wireless and satellite services will have different CPE requirements but they will have a similar form of connectivity.

Connectivity issues

The home network

Of course, you will have to use an Ethernet-WAN broadband router as your Internet-network edge and there will be the high-end units on the market that will have the Gigabit Ethernet connections on the WAN and LAN Ethernet sockets. For Wi-Fi, these units will need to work with full 802.11n wireless and for HomePlug you would have to use HomePlug AV or HomePlug AV2 setups.

IPTV and IP Telephony

There was nothing mentioned about how one should connect IPTV or IP Telephony equipment; whether via the “edge” router or direct to this ONT box? As well, there wasn’t mention about use of other VoIP hardware like IP telephone to provide the voice telephony service that is normally provided to the telephony ports on this box? This will become more interesting as people consider the use of enhanced IP-telephony technology for their regular telephony services.

Three or more phone services

Similarly, the device doesn’t cater for households with 3 or more classic phone lines such as a business operated from home with the need for a fax service or individuals like elderly relatives residing in the house but wanting the responsibility and dignity of their own phone service under their control. As well, a larger house may be split in to two or more smaller residences and let as such as a way of keeping it viable but may be amalgamated to the larger house for use as a “family house”. Here, there should be support for two or more ONTs in these situations.

This may be rectified through the use of IP telephones that are connected in to the home network and associated with one or more of the phone services; and really shouldn’t be of concern when we move towards full IP telephony.

Modem-to-modem communications

As far as I know, the NBN setup should work with G3 fax, all “human-response dial-out” alarm systems, or most modem-driven monitored-alarm systems connected to the telephony sockets but you will need to check with system provider in the case of your security setup. You may have to scale your fax machine’s throughput to lower “G3” speeds like 14400bps for reliable transmission for reliable operation. I have written further on faxing and monitored alarms in the IP Telephony age in a special article which should be read by customers and industry alike as the National Broadband Network nears.

Small businesses

THe four Ethernet ports may be of benefit to the small-business owner like a cafe operator who wants to run a public wireless hotspot as a separate Internet service. Here, one port can serve a dedicated broadband router like a hotspot gateway for the public Internet service while the other port can serve the business’s “line-of-business” network.

For some other businesses like bars where online vending or amusement machines that are managed by third parties are the order of the day, the separate Ethernet ports can be used to provide an Internet service under the control of the machine’s operator.

Conclusion

This is not simply NBN “spin” but issues that may be of concern whenever an imminent conversion to FTTH technology ins in place for established telecommunications networks.