Sunday, April 12, 2009

How Does 900MHz Spectrum Re-farming Impact the Femtocell Business Case?

I have not heard a lot of chatter on how the various 900MHz spectrum re-farming proposals impact the femtocell business case. The thought crossed my mind when I was reading the update tmnet streamyx packages the UMTS900 Global Status Information Paper published by the GSA, the Global mobile Suppliers Association. This paper reports on network deployments, launches,

I'm sure you've all noticed that when you buy a new PC it works like a dream and that over time, the performance degrades and it gets slower and slower. I have a cynical viewpoint that I have to reinstall my PC every 6 to 8 months to make it run better. Whilst that's not entirely true, there are some maintenance tasks that holiday malaysia be conducted on a regular basis and tools that can be used to help improve a PC's performance.

Here are some of the tasks and tools you can use:

1. Internet Accelerator

Many windows settings work in harmony in order to get the best out of an available internet connection. Unfortunately, the factory design of these settings means that they are often not optimized for a particular connection type, or they are adjusted by a newly installed software product unasked. As a result, the computer can't get the best out of your internet connection. As a user, this means you have to wait longer until web pages have loaded in your browser or until internet downloads are finished. A slow internet connection costs time and gets on your nerves. For this reason, taking the time to optimize the settings can have some major benefits.

I have been testing the Ashampoo Internet Accelerator 2 on my kuala lampur hotels Broadband connection and it have noticed an improvement. The program allows a fully automatic setting of the most important parameters. To use the program, you will need to know your connection type:

  • Analogue modem
  • ISDN
  • DSL via LAN cable or cable modem
  • DSL via wireless LAN
  • Other LAN connections (no DSL)

This system means that the program gets the very last drop of performance out of the internet connection. When using a modem and an ISDL connection, the improvements in performance are particularly noticeable - a reason for celebration. With a DSL connection, the tuning result isn't quite as impressive, as there are fewer things which need adjusting in order to provide an optimization. Nonetheless, it is still the case here that every percentage of extra performance means better internet surfing.

AShampoo Internet Accelerator is available free. You can download it and use it for 10 days, after that you will need to register for free and receive an activation code to convert the licence to a full version.

2. Startup Tuner

Lots of programs saved in your computer do exactly as they please. Many applications consider themselves to be so important that they trigger an auto-start command in the system without being requested. That means that every time the computer is booted up, they are started together with Windows, which isn't always the user's streamyx set As a result of this, the start sequence becomes considerably longer - and manually shutting down most of the unwanted windows immediately afterwards because they simply aren't needed, certainly isn't fun.

AShampoo StartUp Tuner 2 shah alam malaysia all auto-start best broadband deal and allows them to be individually deleted or to be deactivated. Exercise caution and at least deactivates all of the unnecessary entries, then they will be able to enjoy a clearly faster start to Windows.

Ashampoo StartUp Tuner 2 also designates all Windows services by name - to allow their subsequent activation or deactivation with the click of the mouse. The Ashampoo StartUp Tuner 2 displays all installed Windows programs but builds its lists clearly and more quickly than the control panel software module. Here, it is possible to uninstall programs that are no longer required so that they can be removed from the computer without 'leaving behind tracks' as it were.

IT specialists know that the acronym BHO stands for 'Browser Helper streamyx international BHOs concern plugins for the internet explorer. These plugins rapidly cluster in alarmingly large numbers on the user's computer. Some of them are useful, but others are superfluous to requirements - or downright dangerous. The Ashampoo StartUp Tuner 2 lists all of them, and allows them to be individually deleted or deactivated if they are no longer needed.

Ashampoo StartUp Tuner 2 also automatically installs a backup of the changes that have been carried out, which means it is possible to reverse the changes that have been made at any time. This is extremely important!

AShampoo Internet Accelerator is available free. You can download it and use it for 10 days, after that you will need to register for free and receive an activation code to convert the licence to a full version.

3. Clean Up Your Hard Drive

The performance of your PC is affected by files being scattered over your hard drive, caused by installing, moving or deleting files. It helps to defragment your hard drive. To do this, on your Start Menu go to:

Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.

To fix location errors, right click on your hard drive icon, select Properties and, select the Tools menu. From the Tools menu, click Check Now, make sure 'Automatically fix file system errors' is checked, then click Start.

4. Use a Download Manager

With the distribution of software online become more and more prevalent, use of a download manager is becoming a must.

I personally use Free Download Manager, which as the name suggests, is FREE. In my experience, I can download files that are 300 MBytes in about 25% of the time a normal download would take.

You can get Free Download Manager from freedownloadmanager.org

Other download managers are:

Download Acclerator Plus - speedbit.com

SoftAtlas Download Accelerator - soft-atlas.com

GetRight - getright.com

Try the techniques in this article and you will be amazed!

About the Author

Charly Leetham has worked for over 20 years in the IT industry, specifically in the area of data communications and local area networking.

Charly is a qualifed "tech", holding an Associate Diploma in Electronics Engineering. Her experience with Personal Computers ranges from building computers to providing 2nd level user support.

Charly also holds a Masters of Business Admin (MBA), specialising in Internet Marketing.

Her Blog can be seen at:
http://thekeys2internetmarketing.com

Credit card has many advantages

Credit card has many advantages as streamyx aztech means of payment. The most practical benefit of this magical card is broadband internet provider webbit cardholders dont need to carry cash. Yet, with all its benefits, having a credit card involves some risks. One is the cardholders tendency to spend more money than he or she should, or can

Every business needs bandwidth solutions of some sort. For many businesses that require large amounts of bandwidth finding just the right solution....from a cost and application standpoint....can be a confusing process. It doesn't have to be if you understand what to base your decision on.

Like anything in information technology, it really depends on how you will utilize this infrastructure. It certainly doesn't make sense to provision high capacity transport links if you will use them for a small fraction of the day or the traffic doesn't warrant it.

I think one of the hardest things about this arena is that many times the people requesting the bandwidth are confused about what bandwidth really is. There's a misnomer that bandwidth automatically equals speed. "Well my application is slow, I need more bandwidth". Many times if a study is done on exactly what your needs are, it turns out to be a very different story from the initial conversation.

With a plethora of technologies out there for WAN and Metro services, wired or wireless customers can choose to subscribe to always on, dedicated access methods or go for a most cost effective model with somewhat "shared" topologies like Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The idea here is that you have options and each solution can satisfy any number of requirements. There's never been a better time in the industry for choices.

The best option is the cheapest one that works. Dark Fiber and Metro Ethernet, if an option, should usually be looked at first to establish a price for negotiating. I think you should focus on negotiating techniques that work to bring these bandwidths within affordable reach.

No matter how much bandwidth you are using, you will get a better deal for it at a major Network Access Point (NAP) where you have more bidders for your business, and from which you can easily shift carriers, set up failovers and redundancy, etc.. Every high end user needs their own boxes to shape traffic at the NAP, and they need them in two different racks connected to two different carriers. Accept the hit of that and you'll quickly see that the ten to thirty thousand dollars a typical urban company requires to get two boxes into a NAP (admittedly on a single dark fiber route) pays for itself in bandwidth charges in pretty much a single year. Even just to PLAN to do it and show your spreadsheet to your carrier, a project that might cost five grand to do right, will result in more than that much per year off your bill.

Think of it like any other high end purchase. You demonstrate that you're not a pushover, that you have options, that you understand the options and how to increase the number of options, and you bargain based on the bottom line of the cheapest solution you can find. When they tell you it will "cost too much to have your own boxes and dark fiber to the NAP", you snap back the lowest number you can justify, call it "insurance", and rule it out as a cost factor. When they tell you "we can monitor boxes far better than you can", leverage that into quality of service guarantees in the contract with real dollar penalties for failures or slowdowns. When they tell you "our facility is state of the art", GO THERE and count up the number of non-bulletproof windows and visible insecure perches that someone can shoot the servers from, grab the corded phone and walk over to the rack, pulling it right out of the wall and looking astonished: "how am I supposed to give someone instructions over the phone? They can't even walk to the bangsar malaysia You expect them to scribble it down while cradling the phone in their neck and then go over to the box and do what I said?!?!?!?"

Basically, you must point out every deficiency in their facility or service and refuse to acknowledge that your own home-built solution would have any inadequacies, or that the competitors all have the same problems. In a high end negotiation, you must have NO mercy.

By the way, once you've got a contract with your carrier, you must be very nice to them, in total contrast to the way you leveraged like mad in the first negotiation. Don't nickel-and-dime them after you've agreed on terms, don't let your bandwidth payments get late. These people hold your crown jewels. As mean as you are to the salespeople, be that nice to the geeks.

Technologically, you should consider Storage Area Networks (SAN) if you have multiple locations in the same city, and the use of SAN links over IP which is increasingly common. Basically, the entire city becomes a vast RAID hard drive. You should also understand some of the good business reasons to adopt very high bandwidth such as reducing the number of over-the-Internet transactions which slow things down and may compromise security in favour of internal intranet transactions. Also, having as few layers of software as possible between the hard drive and the user is a major plus.

Also consider the price difference between Sonet equipment versus Ethernet. These days layer-3 ethernet switches are more and more capable for usage as a router. While Sonet traditionally is quite expensive vs Ethernet (especialy for the hardware).... dark fiber and ethernet solutions from carriers are getting broad industry support. Although I do favor Sonet for its better debuging capablities, error counters, alarms etc. Ethernet in wide area environments seems to do the jobs as well. Ethernet would save you the need to buy a decent router able to terminate Sonet and give you the choice to go with a decent layer-3 switch. Another option is 10GigE WAN PHY.....it still has all the advantages of Sonet combined with Ethernet, gives you the ability to use cheaper layer-3 switches, looks for the malaysia post as a normal Sonet service and works over long distances.

To look at the tradeoffs, you'll have to start by finding out what is available at your end user location. Within North America, the alternatives include ATM OC-3/12/48, SONET (and Next Generation SONET) probably more likely OC-12/48/192, and Metro Ethernet at 100 Mbps (a little slower than OC-3), 1 Gbps (about OC-24) and 10 Gbps (OC-192). Things that aren't available need not be considered.

What are the availability requirements? If you are thinking of SONET, find out if it will come to your premises as a star or ring or dual ring. Metro Ethernet might be faster but not necessarily physically diverse. Sometimes, you can be creative and use a short free-space link to get access to a physically diverse medium.

For more background and insights I suggest reading "WAN Survival Guide" and "Building Service Provider Networks" by Howard Berkowitz. Both are excellent resources.

I have worked with many customers to design infrastructure solutions that incorporate high-end DWDM or CWDM connections between datacenters. Now, this is a business solution and the common user would never dream of having a connection such as this, available to them. Other customers that I work with will incorporate leased lined anywhere from a T1 to OC3. Those connections are very much sized for purpose with a percentage of growth factored in.

The practice that I go through is to evaluate need. What are you trying to accomplish? Is it transactional based or are you replicating dial up internet for DR? Are you simply connecting two or more remote offices for the purpose of a Citrix solution? Each of these questions will result in different answers when all is said and done.

Remeber that redundancy is ALWAYS a factor in business oriented solutions. Especially as it pertains to data replication and DR/HA failover to "hot" datacenters. We are starting to see more and more of this type of configuration. I have a few customers that are fortunate enough to have multi-ring DWDM infrastructures to make their valuable data available in the unfortunate event of a disaster.

As corny as it sounds, I have to say that your ultimate solution depends on the intended usage of that bandwidth. I would also say that there really is no generalized "ideal" bandwidth solution. It all comes down to intent and budget. With today's technology in WAN (TCP/IP/FC/FCIP/IFCP) acceleration (Juniper, Riverbed, Cisco), you can transfer vast amounts of data in a smaller pipe. It really is cool technology but still requires cost justification to implement.

Whatever you decide....do your homework....be prepared....negotiate....then install and enjoy.

Michael is the owner of streamyx combo Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses