Telx Minimizes Latency WIth Colocation Near Carriers

If latency is important to your applications, you want to be as close as possible to your service providers. Why? Because no matter how fast your equipment runs, the lower limit to latency is the propagation of the the signal itself. In a vacuum, that’s a millisecond per 186 miles. Through copper or fiber, it just gets longer. Add-in a collection of routers and switchers and it gets a lot, lot longer. Think about being right next to your service provider with nothing but a short link in-between. How can you do that? Think Telx.

Telx is a colocation and interconnection company. They specialize in putting customers and service providers in close proximity. It starts with having colocation centers in 9 states with 15 sites. These are strategically located in key locations near media hubs, cable landings, fiber paths and exchanges. There are 4 locations in the New York Metro Area, two in Chicago, two in Dallas, three in California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara, and others in Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix and Charlotte.

Telx prides itself on having a network-neutral environment that supports over 750 telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content, cloud and SaaS (Software as a Service) providers. They already have over 28,000 direct connections. What this does is put your business in close proximity to the services you seek. Latency is certainly minimized by all being in the same facility or at least on the same backbone network, but cost is also minimized. With so many services just a patch cord away, you can get excellent prices on bandwidth and other IT services.

If your needs are critical and your demands high, you may well benefit from getting colo rack space in a Telx facility. They are all set up to support your rack, cabinet or cage with highly reliable power and cooling. Most facilities can provide you with 120v 2089v, 480v AC and -48v DC power.

In addition to space, power, HVAC and security, Telx has technicians available to support installations, turn up and provisioning of network equipment and circuits, right down to server reboots. They also have something called a “Virtual Xchange” that offers circuit multiplexing and demultiplexing, protocol conversions, law conversions and other grooming solutions. Their carrier hotel Meet Me Room encompasses the entire colocation center, with a passive and secure area called a Meet Me Area for customer interconnections via cross connects.

Network services are available that go way beyond mere bandwidth connections. There is video exchange, Internet exchange, managed security services and cloud computing as network enabled services.

Are your network and computing needs critical enough that minimizing latency offers a significant performance advantage, or are you just looking at colocation services as an opportunity to get better deals on bandwidth and minimize support operations at your own facility? If so, you could benefit by getting competitive quotes for server colocation services.

Economics has a go at copyright

Is copyright a good or a bad thing? Even if it’s worth keeping, is there any point in turning up the heat on illegal file-sharers? Such questions have attracted a fair amount of ideological dogma and rhetoric recently but wouldn’t it be nice if we could answer them scientifically? Can economics help guide copyright policy?

The Strategic Advisory Board for IP Policy (SABIP) has recently published a report on the economics of copyright and digitization. Christian Handke’s report reviews the literature and empirical studies on the economics of copyright and makes recommendations for further research with the objective of informing UK government policy. The report considers a plethora of interesting issues, finds a shortage of empirical research and ultimately suggests two questions to get the ball rolling:

1. How does digital copying affect the supply of copyright works?
2. Does the copyright system entail obstacles to desirable aspects of technological transition?

There appear to be at least three major hurdles in turning economics into copyright law: determining what should be counted as the benefits and costs of copyright and infringement, and deciding their relative weight; getting good data about such a complex and rapidly changing range of human activity and agreeing on how to interpret the data; deciding what policy should follow.

Some of this is down to science; but some of it must surely always be a matter of opinion or taste. For example, some say copyright’s limits on using old material is a cost – you could say it is a benefit (it drives people on to seek original expression). Are mash-ups a wonderful upsurge of grass-roots creativity or a tedious waste of time?

Economic research appears to be sorely needed but may not make uncertainty, risk, judgment and strategy things of the past.

Uncertainty and judgment

Almost all of the empirical studies to date on the economics of copyright have been about the impact of illegal file-sharing on the music industry. They generally show a negative effect, but to varying degrees, some showing no loss of sales – the sort of conclusion that spurs on the sceptics and stokes the debate.

Many of these studies have focussed on falling CD sales, but they would probably have declined over the last decade anyway. However, isn’t it more likely that illegal file-sharing, rather than eating away at CD sales, deprived the music business of potential profits in the burgeoning online music market? Without illegal file-sharing, the music business could plausibly have expected to see unprecedented profits over the last decade. Some of those profits could have been used to seek out new talent, not just tread water. Might consumers have sparked a renaissance, rather than recycling old material?

How to quantify something that might have been? We will now be able to monitor online sales in countries that have introduced tougher anti-piracy laws (e.g. UK, France, Sweden, Taiwan and South Korea): if unauthorized copying is reduced, do legal transactions increase or are they unaffected? According to IFPI statistics, digital music sales in Sweden in 2009 were double those of 2008 and in South Korea digital music sales grew by 53% in the first nine months of 2009.

But (and there is always a ‘but’) online music sales probably would have risen to some degree even if there had not been new laws. Arriving at figures that everyone will agree with seems impossible. But science, after all, never was more than our best guess.

Risk and strategy

Perhaps the trickiest question is what the policy implications of any reliable research results would be. The UK can’t unilaterally abolish copyright or even change its basic rules, which are fixed at European level. Handke says economic studies are unlikely to be much use for fine-tuning policy.

So what’s left? Making it more or less easy to enforce IP rights? Generally the cost of enforcement is borne by copyright right owners – even under the Digital Economy Act they will continue to bear the lion’s share of this cost. So how much money is spent enforcing copyright is ultimately a cost-benefit analysis that is decided by individual businesses. They will make that decision in relation to their own business, not total social welfare. Some companies may remain unenthusiastic about spending their profits in this way.

Gambling money on chasing pirates on the high seas and hoping it will shift public attitudes is not so much the science of money as the art of war.

Armenia proposes to get tough with infringers

If you're thinking of a safe haven from which to practise the non-so-subtle arts of copyright infringement and have been checking the prices of luxury apartments in Armenia, think again. A news item from Eastern Europe and Caucasus-focused IP practice Petosevic, "Bill Tightening Penalties for Copyright Violation Introduced in Armenian Parliament", warns that things are only likely to get tougher for infringers there.

Right: Armenian prisons to welcome copyright infringers?

A bill aimed at increasing the penalties for copyright violation was introduced in the Armenian Parliament in late April. Its objective is to protect the rights of authors, to which end it calls for mandatory marking of audio and video information carriers with hologram labels.

The bill provides for a penalty to the value of US$ 2,500 (EUR 2,030) for a first offence [this is more than twice Armenia's gross per capita annual consumption], with a prison sentence of up to 12 months for second and subsequent offenders. The most recent BSA survey showed Armenia among the top nations for software piracy, where 93% of computer programs are reported to be illegal.

For prison conditions in Armenia click here

Dark Fiber Network Expansion Underway

If there is any doubt that we are a bandwidth addicted society, it should be removed with the announcement that a major dark fiber network project has been launched by Allied Fiber. When finished, it will circle the US perimeter with 548 dark fibers and 300 tower sites.

Fiber optic communications is coming into its own, and this time it’s likely here to stay. Back in the 1990’s, thousands of miles of fiber optic cable were buried in anticipation of a telecommunications revolution that fizzled along with the technology sector in general. There is still lots of unlit fiber laying quietly in the ground, but it’s probably going to get lit sooner rather than later. That telecom revolution looks to be on again.

The original fiber optic cables were installed to support telephone calls. Voice services are the least of the demand for bandwidth anymore. Data is on the rise and rising, but video is the killer app. By that, I mean the app that will kill your network bandwidth faster than anything. Video has morphed from NTSC analog television to HDTV, with 3D starting to gain a foothold. It’s not just television, either. Video means YouTube, Netflix, Telepresence, and mobile. The proliferation of all types of video services have necessitated special content delivery networks that offload the Internet up until the last mile service provider.

The traditional T1 lines that backhaul cellular towers are just about out of capability, now that every smartphone has a data service and everyone wants to download apps on the fly and watch video content while on the go. The next generation of phones will have 2 cameras, one facing out for taking pictures and recording video clips and the other facing the user for 2-way video conferencing. There’s a new bandwidth demand that far exceeds the traditional voice conversation. It’s just as expensive to bury new copper to meet the demand as it is to bury fiber optic cables, so new backhaul will be over fiber.

Independent service providers, content delivery networks, major corporations, medical center networks and scientific research labs are among those users who find that leasing or owning dark fiber assets give them the bandwidth they need, when they need it. Dark fiber is just what it sounds like. It’s glass fiber strands within a cable bundle that haven’t been “lit” or connected to terminal equipment yet. Without a laser light shining through their core, they are truly “dark.” But those who have access to dark fiber, can choose what equipment to connect for the bandwidth and protocols they want to support. If you need more bandwidth down the road, you can use the same fiber by simply upgrading modules in your terminal equipment.

Do you need the flexibility of being able to completely manage your wide area network down to the very terminal equipment at each end? If so, you may want to take a closer look at dark fiber as the most flexible way to connect between locations. Prices are lower than they’ve ever been. You might be surprised by how affordable dark fiber is in special circumstances. Let our Telarus bandwidth consultants consider your applications and offer you an array of solutions that include dark fiber network services.

A New Edge On Private IP Networks

So many companies have multiple business locations today, that IP network options have become cheaper and more available than ever before. A major player in this space is New Edge Networks, headquartered in Vancouver, Washington. New Edge specialized in private IP-based WANs (Wide Area Networks) that don’t use the public Internet. That gives them the edge on quality and performance in linking multiple business locations.

Why not the Internet? The largest network in the word certainly has proliferated over the last few decades. It connects just about everyone, everywhere on Earth at reasonable connection costs. That’s its advantage as a general purpose communications network and its limitation as a serious business network. Anyone and everyone can and do send just about anything and everything there is through the Internet. With network neutrality mandated, your critical transaction data gets exactly the same treatment as somebody on the other side of the globe Tweeting what they had for lunch.

The need for dependable performance, security and availability is what makes private networks attractive. Private networks are just that. They are privately owned and operated. There is no public access. Being a private entity, they are free to establish classes of service to guarantee that latency sensitive applications like voice and video conferencing have the priority to ensure low jitter and latency for optimum performance. New Edge, for instance offers six classes of service (CoS) on their network with service level agreements for each.

Strict control of network parameters makes possible the long desired goal of network convergence. Convergence merges separate data, voice and video networks into one single network that supports them all. Enterprise VoIP offers productivity features and cost savings, especially on a converged network. But voice is fragile, and your telephone calls can quickly turn to garbled mush on a “best effort” network like the Internet. Video conferencing, including telepresence services, also has great productivity and cost saving value. Like voice, real-time two-way video is fragile and breaks up with the slightest provocation. You need a solid network to support these high performance communication tools.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching private networks, a specialty of New Edge Networks, give your business the opportunity to connect multiple locations on one fully meshed private network. Each location only needs an access network connection to the MPLS “cloud” network. New Edge offers a variety of connection options that include T1 lines, Ethernet, wireless, and even DSL.

Since most small and midsize businesses don’t have large full-time IT staffs to manage wide area network services, New Edge Networks offers full network management services, including the critical LAN/WAN interconnection. This lets companies concentrate on their core business activities while knowing that their wide area network is being well taken care of.

Does your company have more than a couple of business locations? If so, private IP networks may work to your advantage. Find out how you can improve performance and perhaps save money at the same time with high value MPLS network services from New Edge and other top tier service providers.

Ofcom issues first consultation on three strikes implementation

Ofcom, the UK body which exercises supervision of the nation's communications sector, has now published Online Infringement of Copyright and the Digital Economy Act 2010: Draft Initial Obligations Code. The full print version of this document is a formidable 74 pages in length (you can read it here) and is only the first step in a consultation dialogue which will end with all interested parties having a say in what sort of rope internet service providers (ISPs) are expected to hang online copyright infringers with.

The Act itself requires ISPs to notify their subscribers if their internet protocol addresses are reported by copyright owners, in a copyright infringement report (CIR), as being used for the purpose of infringing copyright. ISPs will also have to furnish copyright owners with anonymised copyright infringement lists concerning subscribers whose CIRs exceed the threshold of illicit permissibility. Initially Ofcom's code is proposed to cover only the seven fixed-line ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers (BT, Talk Talk, Virgin Media, Sky, Orange, O2 and -- perhaps a surprise for some readers -- the Post Office).

Ofcom proposes that notifications be sent to subscribers on receipt of the first CIR, on receipt of a second CIR a month or more later, then on receipt of a third CIR received a month or more after the second (the 'three strikes'). Any subscriber would be included in a CIL if he or she receives three notifications within a year and the copyright owner requesting the CIL has sent at least one CIR relating to that subscriber within that year. Any subscriber facing cut-off will be able to appeal to an independent body, which Ofcom is required to establish, and which must adopt "specific measures to protect subscribers during the hearing of appeals, including a right to anonymity".

According to the draft code's Executive Summary, what Ofcom proposes is

"a system of quality assurance reporting to ensure that where allegations are made against subscribers they are based upon credible evidence, gathered in a robust manner".

The code has to be up and running by 8 January 2011 unless the Secretary of State extends the timetable [or the Act is subject to a new Statutory Scrappage scheme?]. Variable factors such as the need to pass subordinate legislation, notification of the code to the European Commission and Parliamentary approval may slow things down.

Two further consultation exercises are planned. These will cover (i) enforcement of the code and the handling of industry disputes, which is expected next month, and (ii) tariff setting – i.e. sharing costs - from implementing and fulfilling requirements in the code (possibly as early as September, depending on the progress of the government's cost-sharing plans).

Responses to this consultation are invited by 30 July 2010. To respond, click here. To see if anyone else has responded yet, click here.

Journalists running start-ups face tall odds

Fed up with furloughs and down-sizing – or forced involuntarily out of their jobs – journalists across the land are taking matters into their own hands by starting their own news sites. While I applaud these brave and commendable efforts, I fear a good many journalistic entrepreneurs are doomed to fail because they are not objectively confronting the steep odds they face – or putting nearly