Internet

October 19th, 2014

Bringing back Network of Networks to ISP model

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A little project I am doing in China :-)

English subtitle is available (click on the “cc” icon on the player)

August 27th, 2014

中国离互联网精神还差很远

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从上个世纪末,互联网已经成为我们的生活方式。

对一个互联网工程师来说,互联网的最大魅力,不在于它可以让我和远国外的亲人只隔着一个屏幕那么远,不在于我可以随时知晓埃博拉的传播动态,也不在于我可以将我电脑中的电影推送到好友家中的NAS上。互联网的振奋人心之处,在于上世纪70年代创立互联网的那群极客的政治理想:端到端,去中心化,分布式,平等、开放,所带来的创新性。

互联网精神是共产主义的美好信念。它讲究无产阶级,人人公平,共建共享和开放奉献。TCP/IP协议是自愿遵循的,接入的同时意味着索取和奉献,我们获取信息,也生产内容;但互联网不是一个单一的主张:它不是狂热口号下人性穿上统一的衣裳。互联网没有统一的政治理想,哈耶克还是马克思,女性自由或者男权至上,全球变暖是不争的事实还是政治手段,都可以辩论。互联网拒绝理所当然,欢迎异见分子。

在互联网精神的核心下我们有了一张巨大创新能力的网。 有开源的Linux,免费的邮箱(SMTP),也有了腾讯,阿里巴巴与百度这些伟大的互联网企业。

然而,在过去的40年间,互联网精神在中国步履蹒跚。08年起,我开始在中国定居,从事互联网创业和互联网项目的投资。很快我发现,中国互联网与国际互联网差异巨大。

举例说明。92年起,我开始做互联网,也多年在亚洲与欧美国家为互联网事业走动,对于全球很多国家的互联网状况都不陌生。然而来到中国后,我第一次听到“南北互通”这个名词,在此之前,我在任何国家都未听过不同的网络需要解决互联互通的问题。我记得当时问我的下属:“不能互联互通的网还是互联网吗?”

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April 19th, 2011

Asia Internet Kingdoms

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May 23rd, 2008

Evening with Vint

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I was asked to introduce and moderate this evening session with Vint Cerf in Singapore jointly organized by The Digital Movement and IDA.

I didn’t take much notes but I managed to twitter a bit here and there during the session.

Vint Cerf is a great speaker and therefore really needs very little moderating nor prompting. On the other hand, I find myself fumbling quite a bit…looks like I am getting rusty at public speaking and presentation. But hey, the star of the show is Vint and he definitely took it!

Okay enough fun for the evening and time to pack my stuff. I am going sailing for the next couple of days to Tioman, hopefully coming back alive. Wish me luck!

January 1st, 2007

IPv4 Address Usage

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Happy New Year

As we start on a new year, lets look at the 2006 IPv4 Address Use Report

The current (jan 1st, 2007) figure for 2005 is 175.52 million addresses. Together with adjustments for earlier years, this brings the total addresses available to almost exactly 1.3 billion, down from 1468.61 million a year ago. This is out of 3706.65 million usable IPv4 addresses, so 2407.11 million addresses are currently given out to either end-users or Internet Service Providers.

Lets also put a stop the myth that “MIT has more IP addresses of whole of China”, something that is no longer true for a couple of years. Yet sadly, some still chant it, as recently as a couple of weeks ago by a NUS lecturer that I immediately put a stop to.

China is the 4th largest IP holder now after US, JP and EU.

September 28th, 2006

FCC to take on Net Neutrality

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Just learn that FCC is going to issue a Notice of Inquire on Network Neutrality from (via Kevin Werbach). Went digging around at FCC site but couldnt find any yet and definitely not on the FCC open forum.

Kevin said, “I actually think the FCC would be the better place to address Net Neutrality issues, but I’m skeptical this proceeding will go anywhere with the current FCC leadership.”

Like Kevin, I am skeptical with the current FCC leadership under Kevin Martin. I am also not certain Congress will do a better job either especially Congressional Election is a few weeks away.

It would be an interesting excerise to dig through the congressional electrion donations and see which companies have donated to who however.

September 14th, 2006

Youtube Clone

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I just found a Youtube clone in in China called 6rooms. It is so damn close that I thought it is Youtube the first time I saw it on Chinese blog until I saw the URL. In fact, after using it for a while, I think it is even better than Youtube!

Love what they did using AJAX on the site! It has all the Web 2.0 elements, AJAX, tags, Blog friendly, etc etc. Very cool!

I am going to have fun surfing the sites looking for Chinese clips.

Check out this movie preview made by a batch of 14 years olds. The power of creativity and technology :-)

August 11th, 2006

The players in Net Neutrality

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Believe in Net Neutrality
Do not believe in Net Neutrality
Believe in Regulation
Fair Market Thinkers
Believe there is a market failure and that government should step in to ensure fair and level playing field
Bell-Heads
Want a Two-Tier Internet
Do not believe in Regulation
Net-Heads
Want Net Neutrality but do not want government to regulate the Internet
Free Market Thinkers
Believe companies should be allowed to do whatever they want without government intervention

So who are you in this debate? ^_^

July 22nd, 2006

Senator Ted Stevens & Net Neutrality

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Remember the Senator Ted Stevens’ speech about the “Internet is a tube“? The joke is going around including a techno tube rap :-)

Even Jon Stewart chipped in :-)

“You don’t know jack *bleep* about computers or the Internet. Hey, that’s OK. You’re just the guy in charge of regulating it.” – Jon Stewart.

How sad and how true :-(

And oh, a wonderful follow up :-)

April 30th, 2006

After Internet2

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Guess whats the event after Internet2?

cruise-missile.JPG

Okay, Cruise Missile is definitely out of my league :)

Anyway, this Internet2 trip for me is all about routing: How network A connect to network B when there are multiple paths, one shorter latency and another bigger pipe and unfortunately not both at the same time, and how applications deal with it. Most just give up and say MPLS which is okay but in a longer term, how do we build a network that can route packets based on different application requirements.

Of course, lets not ignore the politics of it. For example, SingAREN has multiple possible paths to APAN-JP, one direct 155mbps, another indirect 622mbps via TEIN2-SG POP, and yet another 622mbps to Taiwan then 622mbps to 622mbps to APAN-JP. Logically, the preference route would be direct, then 622mbps via TEIN2 and lastly via Taiwan. Yet somehow, we end up preferring Taiwan as a secondary route over TEIN2-SG POP.