Dorian In the World

When selling bandwidth from an ISP like my company MetroBridge, or a data centre such as Peer1 or 1&1 a common measure for billing is called 95th percentile.

For those unfamiliar with 95th percentile billing here is as simple an explanation I can deliver. If you a using bandwidth for a month and your peak download OR upload rate is say 20Mbps your 95th of that might be 15Mbps for instance. The concept in itself involves dropping the top 5% of use to account for infrequent high bursts (in this example to 20Mbps).

Why is 95th an important billing method? It allows the supplier to account for peak demand and actually bill and make money off that peak level. If the supplier is relied upon to deliver to the end user at such a peak rate at ANY time, why shouldn't that peak rate be the billed amount since the supplier actually had to build infrastructure to accomodate for it? Of course there is oversell but in reality there is similar pattern of use between most end customers, requiring that expense asset expenditure to accomodate for peak levels of each and every end user.

Why aren't so many other things billed via this method? Cell phones, electricity, municipal water...etc.

Continue reading "Peak Usage" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I can't take it any longer. What is up with these (crazy) cities all over the planet spearheading municipal WiFi projects?!? I have said for almost a year that if I was a tax payer in Philadelphia or countless other wreckless cities I would sue the local government for misuse of my tax dollars. I predict a class action lawsuit or the like against a US city within a year. I do understand that taxpayer money is not funding the rollouts...but who is funding the city employee's time working on these projects?

What is going through a politicians mind when they 'come up with the idea' that their city should have ubiquitous WiFi coverage for the masses? Maybe ubiquitious housing, education or medical aid is a more likely target?!? I'm telling you it makes me crazy. Why don't they start dealing in electricity, cable TV or countless other commercial services?!? Does WiFi makes their citizens smarter or something? I haven't seen such a study.

Continue reading "Muni WiFi - Stop the Insanity - You are Making Me (more) Insane" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Four months ago I purchased a Slingbox from Amazon (we did not yet have them available in Canadian retail stores). Turns out it is a fascinating piece of technology, yet a remarkably simple concept.

The small box takes input from your analog or digital cable box, compresses the stream as it is received and then makes it available via the internet via your home broadband connection. Even even has IR emitters for controlling hundreds of types of cable boxes, allowing you to change channels, etc.

Continue reading "Slingbox Rocks!" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes it -is- out there and it is called Sonos.

I have owned my two zone Sonos system plus controller for just over one year so I figured it was time to tell the internet world about how this amazing music system has completely 180'd how I own, manage and listen to music.

Sonos is made up of Zone Players that you place in each room where you would like to distribute music. Only one unit must be connected (somehow) to your LAN for access to wherever you store your MP3's. The storage area can literally be any drive map(s) or hard drive visible on the network. I started off story my MP3's on my PC but my collection quickly outgrew the hard drive space and I later migrated to a network hard drive (essentially a hard drive in a case with an ethernet port).

Continue reading "The Most Amazing Music System on the Planet" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The OECD has released a lengthy report on the state of WiMAX (PDF).

It was interesting to see a close to comprehensive comparison between countries on various metrics regarding WiMAX. Clearly at odds with most of the other countries in the report was the United States.

I have been deploying last mile microwave since 2000 and last fall began deploying what WiLAN termed 'pre-WiMAX' equipment (recently WiLAN announced their exit from the hardware game to focus on their WiMAX patent portfolio).

Continue reading "Report on WiMAX" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I have owned a Blackberry since 2000 I believe. I had the old 957 model which now looking back upon the weight, size and functionality kind of reminds me of those old grey Motorola 'brick' phones (of which I have a new one sitting on my desk).

Over the past two years I have strongly asserted to anyone who asks whether my blackberry (since the 957 a 7280, 7290 and now an 8700) is useful or not, I strongly proclaim that my company, MetroBridge Networks, would be atleast 30% smaller in both sales, number of employees and number of customers with Blackberry.

Continue reading "Blackberry and Corporate Growth" »

Posted by Dorian Banks at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)