Brian Kenny

It’s become increasingly hard to automate backups these days. With many solutions to choose from, you would assume it would be easier.

Look at your infrastructure. Testing as many methods as possible. Make your choice based on your findings.

With a network of over 100 pc based clients, 30 odd servers and a handful of mac users, what is the perfered method of choice ? Servers are ranging from sql 2005/2000, IIS, File Maker and many others (including a G5 Server, the bain of my life). Clients ranging from XP pro to Vista.  Whats the best option ?

Guess my point is, how hard is it to roll all the different variant packages into one ?

I have just recieved a phone call today from Irish Broadband. Must be a new customer service team or something. They are very worried that we might part from their product and will be upgrading our connection. Perhaps there is justice in the world after all…..

I am tired of ranting about our Internet connection in work. Yes, it is my job to provide a stable connection for the business but yet again I am faced with a barrier.

To those of you who want the short version; Irish Broadband are our current provider. Providing a service that is just impossible to work with. To combat the problem, I invoke meetings with Eircom, Smart, Magnet and many others. The battle against each other to be as competitive as possible.

I decide on Smart. Why? In watered down terms, the network operations director came personally to visit me. He took me through the network topology, what smart could offer, how it would fit into the overall business plan and I was impressed. I knew it as a stable, reliable and easily expandable network. Ok, installation.

Installation takes 6-10 weeks. Why?  First week is for the site survey to ensure we can aim a dish at three rock within the distance licensed high gain radio can travel. Four weeks for ComReg to license the equipment. Another 3 weeks aprox for Smart to port out BRA over to there SIP connections.

Too long to wait, I need a stable connection in the office, NOW.

Through negotiations and also through personal experience, I decide on Magnet networks as an interim/backup line solution. 8 meg uncontented broadband. Fibre in the exchange. Happy days. What do I need to do? First I need a PSTN telephone line for the BB. Note: Magnet only have ONE exchange in Sandyford with their fibre piped in. Exchange = SNDD

“Eircom, Hi, I need a standard PSTN coming from the SNDD exchange to our office please.” The say no problem, email me saying it’s all confirmed and proceed with the line order. 2 weeks later, engineer arrives and pops his head into the 3rd floor. (Our floor is completely self contained network wise to the rest of the building). “Hi, Your line is installed”, “Where?”

The Eircom engineer has installed the landline to, THE CAR PARK!. After many minutes of husslin, he’s not going to budge. OK, line resonator. I plug the line resonator into a free set of cables going to our floor. BINGO. Pipe the line through. Done.

Phone rings. Magnet sales rep. “Brian my apologies, but Eircom have completely lied. They have installed the line in the incorrect exchange.”

Je deteste Eircom.

New apartment traceroute to google!:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 87-198-180-1.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.180.1]
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr10.magnet.ie [87.198.154.66]
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr11.magnet.ie [87.198.154.70]
4 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr12.magnet.ie [87.198.154.74]
5 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr13.magnet.ie [87.198.154.78]
6 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr14.magnet.ie [87.198.154.82]
7 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr15.magnet.ie [87.198.154.86]
8 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-beaconc-asr16.magnet.ie [87.198.154.90]
9 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-rte-dist2b.magnet.ie [87.198.154.50]
10 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-rte-core1b.magnet.ie [85.91.2.158]
11 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms d-clon-core1b.magnet.ie [85.91.3.6]
12 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms vl211.lon-telehn-edge1.magnet.ie [85.91.0.169]
13 * 11 ms 11 ms g1-1-255.core01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.243.117]
14 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 72.14.198.37
15 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 72.14.238.244
16 82 ms 82 ms 84 ms 64.233.175.213
17 95 ms 95 ms 96 ms 72.14.233.113
18 100 ms 99 ms 95 ms 66.249.94.90
19 104 ms 104 ms 105 ms 72.14.236.134
20 99 ms 99 ms 99 ms eh-in-f104.google.com [72.14.207.104]

Cisco are having yet another conference, with some talks about the new ASA devices. Enrollment is free and I’m really looking forward to it. Details below:

Address:
Morrison Hotel
Presentation rooms
Ormond Quay Dublin 1
Dublin,

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/sreg2/register/regdetail.pl?SEMINAR_ID=9437&SEMINAR_TYPE=T&LANGUAGE_ID=E

It’s nearly 11PM on Monday and I’ve finally moved all of my things from one apartment to the other. I have to say it is definitely one of my pet hates. Complete stress.

But finally myself and my amazing girlfriend have a happy little home Together with 8meg Magnet broadband,  haha. Great deal, TV, broadband and a telephone line for all of €30. My god to the torrents fly.

Thanks to all for the moving in gifts, ahem….

I finally have a laser card. Happy days. Thanks.

The Irish market is at the level where the home & business users are having to visit their local shrink for a checkup. Yes, I too have become one of the many pawn’s in the telecommunications battle.

Below, in my previous post I ranted as to level of service of our main broadband provider, Irish Broadband. Cutting a long story short, don’t touch them. The next issue arose when trying to move from them. I’m a Magnet customer at home and have always had a create level of service and their customer service is next to none. Let’s change to Magnet in the work place ?

Magnet pipe fibre into one exchange in Sandyford. An exchange that we ARE within reach of. A call is placed to eircom requesting a new line from this exchange.

“I’m sorry, you cannot pick what exchange you are to be located from”

“Why not?”

“There is a certain amount of lines allocated to each exchange.”

“I’ll take any line.”

“Sorry, Sir. I can’t do that.”

Comreg are in a legal battle with Eircom at present, but talk about complete annoyance.

The release of Reason 3.0 has anyone who likes music, dribbling at the mouth. Content for hours that pass like minutes. Get that bad boy demo here, she’s a beaut.

Anyone unfamiliar with Reason - they have now released a quick tutorial demo. It’ll take you through the basics and get you inspired for your first tracks.

For the past few years (bad move number one) we’ve been running with Irish Broadband as our main data provider (bad move number two), and finally we are moving across to another provider. It has been an uphill struggle with IBB for many years now and their service & support is in the minus values.

How hard can it be to ensure a customer gets < 1ms to their tower ? I understand their exceptional growth has caused their business to struggle, but you need to be able to say ‘no’ to new customers. “We cannot process your order until we ensure our current customers have the nessicary service”.

It’s been 7 months since I have taken the post of ensuring our business has the nessicary and reliable connections it needs. Now that the contracts are up - it’s time to move. What would anyone say to:

14 packets transmitted, 14 received, 0% packet loss, time 13012ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 256.977/453.751/644.033/123.085 ms