100Mbit will be reserved for the nerds - for it to reach the mainstream, DRM has to go!

Now that Starhub has given us the wonder of 100Mbit/s download, how many takers will there be.

MANY, but not enough.

Without wading through the complications of bypassing traffic shaping (read `choking') targeting bittorrent protocol packets, without widespread education on peer-to-peer download technologies, and without massive download technologies like Bittorrent getting to the mainstream consciousness because of the perceived `illegality' of these services, most of this country can't really use the 100Mbit/s speed.

Online music is not uncommon. Only that the Digital Rights Management makes even the nerds falter. No standard DRM exists today, nor will it foreseeably exist tomorrow. Apple's boss Steve Jobs is lambasting DRM (just last week). We all know how sucky DRM can be, and that at least there's some complication for you to transfer your Itunes music from one PC to another.

The underground is fiercely `torrenting' terabytes of content every day and night. And this underground is so small compared to the total number of internet users.

Let me again call for the abolition of DRM, which is no use to most people anyway - complicating the life of legal users and totally bypassed by those who choose to bypass it, and ignored by those who, not knowing how DRM works and not knowing how to bypass it online, get their stuff from their friends' thumbdrives or portable hard disk drives.

Let's have the MDA make a scheme where all subscribers to internet services pay an additional 10 bucks or so a month, for the RIGHT to download and distribute whatever they want online, and this money goes to a fund to pay the content providers according to their popularity indexed in P2P indices worldwide.

This blogpost seems cryptic simply because the background knowledge required is difficult, and I don't have the mood to babyfy it. But those who read it and understand it, please consider it and write about it yourself. Because, I REALLY WANT the content providers to survive. The torrenters will always be there, in some form or another. It's the content providers I'm worried about.

Adventures with Stahub's Maxonline MOL Ultimate 100Mbit/s FAT GREEN PIPE!

I got my Starhub Maxonline account for 3 months already, which I contracted with them for an entire year with 30Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up. I KNEW they were going to increase it to 100Mbit/2Mbit and sure enough, they did.

Only problem was that my existing modem, my old DOCSIS 2 Motorola SBV5120 couldn't give me the 100Mbit/2Mbit. I had to get the DOCSIS 3 Motorola SB6100 modem to achieve that kind of bitrate. But my account was already provisioned for 100mbit, and every day which passed was another day I kicked myself for paying full fare for 1/3 of the performance I was entitled to.

This was a great strategy Starhub had for sucker nerds like me, so I set off to prepare to get the SB6100.

Not an easy task though. The SB6100 did not have VOICE capability, and since I was on Starhub's VOIP Digital Voice service, by itself, the SB6100 can't make it. A quick enquiry told me what I had to do - keep the SBV5120 to use it as VOICE only, and buy a new SB6100 for the Internet bandwidth. Easy enough unless you're a sucker nerd like me - I worried about the signal quality, since keeping the SBV5120 would necessitate another split of the cable, with proportional losses.

This was what I planned:

| (from SCV)
|
|
(splitter1)---------(cable modem)
|
|
(splitter2)----------(VOIP for Digital Voice)
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
(6 way to room outlets for video)

Now I set off to buy a top grade splitter and found the Monster splitter. It cost me S$60. Here it is... a little different from mine, but sufficient to illustrate.



• Ultra low-loss, high-performance video signal splitter for TV & satellite
• 5 MHz - 2 GHz bandwidth is digital ready for splitting DSS & TV signals
• Internal impedance-matched network for accurate 75 ohm load to all outputs
• Precision die-case, 24K gold-plated contacts
• 24K gold-plated contacts ensure high conductive, corrosion-free connections

After doing the change from Regal 2-way splitter to Monster 2-way, this is the result:

Signal strength from the single layer Monster 2-way splitter, increase from 82% to 86% (somebody please tell me, why I split the signal, should half, why still get such high number? Is BS izzit? I don't have meter, so I use my HD set top box to test the signal)

Practical differences:

+Highest DL speed from 30 tries increase from 28Mbit/s to slightly higher than 29 Mbit/s (from utilities.starhub.com)
+Before this, I use 3 way splitter, everytime I press START, I only have a 30% chance of the download proceeding to 100% ... most of the time stuck halfway. After my change to Regal 2 way aplitter, I achieved 100% success, but sometimes need 8 steps of the download bar, sometimes need 6 steps. After change to the Monster, maximum steps is 7 steps, sometimes 6, and very rarely 5 steps. PLEASE NOTE HOWEVER THAT STARHUB INCREASED MY THEORETICAL BANDWIDTH FROM 30MBIT/S TO 32MBIT/S. SO ALL MY RESULTS MAY BE INVALID LIAO.
+Signal quality STAY at 99-100%. No difference between Regal and Monster for Signal Quality. Signal Quality got no difference across all my splits, even the 2nd layer split also SQ is about 99-100%.

Result:
1) Technical wise, not worth S$60. The changes are so marginal.
2) Psychological buff of seeing a nice big gold color splitter, priceless. Achieved.

OK so I went ahead and bought the SB6100, when I got it, I relegated the SBV5120 to a 3rd level split - the phone still worked, so ... fine.

After a very very hard day, where I kick the hell outta myself for stupidity, here are the results for my new SB6100 modem:

speedtest.net figures:


Surprising thing is the incredible upload speed. The Ubicom based router I have detects 3030kbit/s uplink speed, which I thought was wrong, until I saw the speedtest figures. This is the happiest thing, because the downlink speed is something like `too much' at this time, and the great upload speed will help achieve more download speed.

Starhub figures:

Connecting to Server ...
Logging on to Server ...
Starting download
Download Successful !!

Download Stats:

Transfer Time: 9782 milliseconds
Total File Size: 83886080 bytes

Top speed attained: 68.44 Mbps

All these tests done with the normal idiotic overconservative WinXP settings for RWIN with no frame multiplier. I can achieve more speed - up to 83Mbit/s with Starhub util and 37Mbit/s for speedtest, but with these my upload speed cannot be consistent.

As for why I was stupid, I hardcode a lot of numbers into my ubicom router instead of autodetect, so for half a day, I worked with a hardcoded 30Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up figures based on my old connection.

Only after I slept a bit then woke up at about now, I thought of it. Sorry starhub for spamming your mailbox and calling you up so many times. I am an utter idiot loh!

After going to www.dslreports.com and optimizing my RWIN and putting a timestamp on all my TCP/IP packets, this is what I got:



Starhub:

Connecting to Server ...
Logging on to Server ...
Starting download
Download Successful !!


Download Stats:

Transfer Time: 8312 milliseconds
Total File Size: 83886080 bytes

Top speed attained: 78.81 Mbps

Real world: It took me like less than 5 seconds to download the 50MB Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0: x86 (KB928416) ... LOL!

This was a successful installation, and it was every bit as I expected. But its effect on me is profound, I find myself thinking of all ways on how to use the connection. It's a real change if downloads don't take any time at all relatively.

Anyway, money well spent!

Google Calendar now supports SMS in Singapore

Google Calendar now supports SMS in Singapore and other countries! This is lovely! SMS notifications of events etc. FREE OF CHARGE.

This has been a long long awaited feature, now I'm investigating how the other Google services can use my cellphone. Stay tuned.

Get More Bandwidth by using a better Cable splitter

Thanks to the thread in here: the threadstarter found that his cable splitter was rusty, and changed it with positive results - more bandwidth.

That got a discussion going. And sent me shopping. Here's what I found.

Most cable splitters have these attributes:

• Frequency: the best are 0-1000Mhz, but what I could easily find was 5-1000MHz.
• dB loss: Signal loss for 1-Split-2 and 1-Split-3 is 3dB, but Signal loss for 1-Split-4 is 7dB.
• Isolation: some of the splitters have electromagnetic noise isolation, ranges from 80-120dB, I bought the 120dB one.

There is also a proper connection method: this post details it well:

To achieve a 4 way split, it is advisable to get a 3 way splitter together with a 2 way splitter, rather than to get a 4 way splitter.

4 way splitter will result in at least a 7dB drop in RF signal stregnth to each of the 4 taps. By using a 3 way spliiter, you at least get 2 taps with a 3.5dB drop. My recommendation is to connect your modem to one of the 3.5dB tap, and connect the 2 way splitter to the other 3.5bB tap, together achieveing a 4 way split.

My results? I'm happier with my optimized connection than before. It's little trouble, so doing it gives you peace of mind and at least a psychological boost.

Starhub Maxonline Blocks Port 80 incoming

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

TVUplayer - Peer to peer streaming playback

Imagine a video player, with the capability to suck streaming video from your peers, connected to all the broadcasters of the world. Broadcasters will not need to have huge fat connections as feeds will, after the initial seed is planted in a peer, be fed peer to peer without needing any more service from the broadcaster itself. Stuff of nerd utopia?

Well, this is now reality. TVUnetworks is offering such a player, in beta, for free. How he handles the legality, I don't know. It seems to be legal. He is open to the world, even his address is available. The World Cup was rebroadcasted to tens of thousands using this technology.

What does this mean? The quality is excellent, with a 100kB/s total feed from 15 peers, we have better than Starhub SD quality. Do cable operators have to move up to HD totally just to escape TVUnetworks and its brethen? Even then, there is no theoretical limit to the delivery capability of peer-to-peer streaming. Even 6Mbit/s HD can be delivered now if the upstream datarate in a region is good. With Docsis 3 bonding, wow, we'll have even less limits.

What is sure, is that Slingbox is dead. TVUplayer does not need any configuration, any hardware, etc. Any broadcaster wanting to go it alone, like Mediacorp's Mobtv.sg better review their business plan, perhaps to work with TUVnetworks, solving all their bandwidth issues.

Incredible stuff. I'll keep you guys posted. Now for HBO on TVUplayer.

Hands Off the Internet

This is an animated cartoon about the future of the Internet:

http://www.internetofthefuture.org/

This site set up obviously by telcos or a group of telcos, hosted at 1and1.com. The summary of it - Telcos who spend lots of cash to put in more bandwidth, want to segment the bandwidth to `premium' bandwidth and `normal' bandwidth, where presumably the premium bandwidth will be more expensive but offer assured service levels. But te US Congress wants `net neutrality' - and if the US Congress gets what it wants, it will be illegal for any company to segment bandwidth this way at least within the US.

This affects us. What is illegal in the US will mean that we don't get the technology to do all this in Asia. And we probably can't depend on Europe.

To me, hey, more power to you, big business. Do what you want. Let the public decide.
Nobody knows the business as well as business. And I believe that free market Competition will suffice to act as a check and balance against overcharging.

Obviously not what the commies at The Register believe ... to hell with questioning the justifications. If Big Business wants to charge more, so be it. Why has our faith in the invisible hand of the free market wavered so far???

Let's put it this way - if government wants to control, they probably gotta pay (unless they put a gun to the telco's head, and I believe the USA has not reached this desperate situation, yet) and if government pays, it's the public money. If the government of the USA decides to pay for it, it might create a dangerous precedent for OUR government. And I'd really rather not pay since I really don't use that much bandwidth. Look, just a thousand or so visitors to this blog (which is in the USA) don't take as much bandwidth as Mr. Brown's 50K visitors! Let Mr. Brown pay!