- Joined
- 2 July 2008
- Posts
- 7,102
- Reactions
- 6
Why is it that both the Coalition and Labor put idiots in the Communications portfolio?:dunno:
Why is it that both the Coalition and Labor put idiots in the Communications portfolio?:dunno:
Interesting piece on the rollout in Tasmania.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/29/2968068.htm
There was also an interview on the ABC24's Afternoon Live program today regarding the NBN. In it there was some interesting financial discussion. For example, the return of 6% on $43bn required an 80% takeup rate.From the article above:
"The Premier David Bartlett has now indicated people could be forced to have fibre optic cable installed on their properties even if they don't want to use the National Broadband Network."
Unbelievable.
Why The Filter Won’t Work, A Technical Story
The proposed filtering technique is based on exact HTTP URLs, not IP addresses nor domain names. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are the full address that you might type into your web browser’s address bar. For example: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/
This URL can be broken down into sections thus:
http <- the protocol for accessing the online resource. 'http' is but one way to access online resources. Others you may have seen include "https" (for secure web sites) and "ftp" (for file transfer), but there are many more.
www.gizmodo.com.au <- the name of the web server. (See below for how this is transformed into an IP address.)
:80 <- implied if not specified, 'port 80' is the default doorway through which you can access this content on this web server. There are many alternate ports through which a web server can choose to share content.
The remaining /2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/ <- is the specific path to your file; and invisible but again implied is a default file name (probably 'index.html' or similar ).
Why this is important is that the government's proposed URL filter only targets the entire URL, not its constituent parts. So if you (as a content publisher) change the protocol, or the name of the web server, or the port it runs on, or the path to the file, or the specific name of the file, or even exploit features of how URLs are accessed, then that URL will no longer match in the 'blocked' list, and a user will be able to access it.
For a simple example for users, try adding a question mark at the end of the URL thus:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/?
This ‘new’ URL would not match the entry on the blocked list, allowing users to see it.
The government might then choose to add both URLs to avoid this, but then you could add a dummy value to create another URL: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/?mydog=hasnonose
Now this is a different URL which passes a nonsense value to the web page (which will be ignored by the Gizmodo web server), again allowing the user to see the web page. There are far too many permutations available to the user for a blacklist of 10,000 URLs to capture them all – and this is for one specific web page!
As a content distributor, if you became aware that your URL was blocked but you wanted to help your users access that content, you could easily change the path name or file name on your web server and relink that from your front page in under five minutes. (to say, ‘2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy_2/‘ )
And all this is without users even having to consider non-HTTP traffic options or the use of proxies and VPNs.
So if URL filtering won’t work, what about IP address filtering? While it’s not the government’s proposal at this time, it’s still worth knowing why that option won’t work either:
What is the difference between IP addresses and domain names?
An IP address is simply a string of numbers. You can think of it as analogous to a telephone number, only the number is longer (and frankly, that number may only get you to ‘reception’).
Now human beings aren’t terribly accurate when it comes to remembering very long numbers, so the Domain Name System (DNS) came about so we could remember words instead. To continue with the telephone analogy, DNS is like having directory assistance. You could ask a DNS server for the IP address of ‘gizmodo.com.au‘ and it will respond with something like ‘114.141.196.60‘.
How easy is it to change a site’s IP address?
Incredibly easy.
Since most people don’t type ‘114.141.196.60‘ into their web browsers to see your site, but instead type ‘http://gizmodo.com.au/‘, so long as you or your web hosting partner keep your DNS entry up to date (i.e. keep your directory entry up to date), you can change the IP address incredibly often and it would be surprising if anybody noticed.
The only thing that stops you changing your IP address too often is it may take time for your change to propagate to all relevant DNS servers on the planet. The usual maximum time that sysadmins quote is around 72 hours (because of caching – it makes responses faster but updates slower). But even 72 hours is orders of magnitude quicker than governmental processing of complaints could ever be.
Why a blacklist based on IP addresses is a problem?
Apart from the ease with which you can change your IP address, it is actually not that common that only one web site runs on one server:
Firstly, many sites can co-exist on the same IP address and often do, particularly when a company purchases web hosting space from an external provider. That IP address may only get you to the ‘front gate’ so to speak. So if you blacklist by IP address, you are likely to block many innocent sites when you choose to block one bad apple.
Secondly, some sites are ‘load balanced’ across multiple servers on multiple IP addresses.
If you wanted to look at SBS television’s World Cup coverage on their website, I am pretty sure you wouldn’t be alone at the moment. To handle so many requests at once, and to allow for redundancy in case one server fails, SBS would share that load across multiple servers on many IP addresses. So if a complaint was upheld and the decision was made to block SBS by IP address (because that person so despises the sound of the vuvuzela), they would fail to block the site as more than one IP address can respond. (And conversely, if SBS are aware that, say, Senator Conroy’s filter is using an IP address based filter and they didn’t want anybody to block their coverage, they could simply change that IP address and presto, the filter would no longer work. )
But the reality of video streaming is that many companies choose to delegate that work to external specialists like Akamai. Akamai is a company that assists companies like SBS Television to stream data such as that for the video on the SBS Tour De France website (see http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/media_delivery.html). The general gist of it is that Akamai’s servers are distributed in many locations and with many IP addresses, so any given video feed could be coming to you from a large selection of IP addresses – addresses that will be recycled constantly. So to block such a load-balanced site by IP address not only fails to block the content as it will be available on other IP addresses, but it will block subsequent clients’ content on that same reused IP address.
So this is a fairly lengthy list of reasons why it can’t work, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. There are many more issues and many more workarounds available to both users and content providers. (And that is without even exploring non-technical issues such as censorship and freedom of speech). Even Enex Labs’ commissioned report on this issue to the government listed 37 different methods by which such a filter could be bypassed.
Industry experts (such as SAGE-AU members) are all saying the same thing: that legislating to force ISPs to perform such filtering is a costly exercise in futility.
Andy Leyden serves on the national executive of the System Administrators Guild of Australia. A programmer and system administrator, he works in and around the web every day, seeing the medium as an opportunity – not as a threat.
For the government and the NBN, the more that opt out now to be forced to pay later, the less the upfront cost is.Phone line phase out
It has now been revealed that those people who don't sign up now for connection to the NBN could end up paying to do so.
Most businesses and householders will need the infrastructure before 2018.
The Federal Minister for Broadband, Senator Stephen Conroy, says that is when copper phone lines will be phased out as part of an $11 billion deal between Telstra, the Federal Government and NBN.
"Ultimately with the agreement we've reached with Telstra we will be disconnecting the copper. The only fixed line connection, the only way to make a fixed line phone call will be on the National Broadband Network," Senator Conroy said.
Those Tasmanians who do not take up the free Federal Government offer for the fibre link could now end up paying between $300 and $800 to have one installed later on.
The ABC understands that after the phase out of copper, up to 90 per cent of Tasmanians will rely on optic fibre to make phone calls.
The remaining 10 per cent, those in rural or remote areas who will not have optic fibre, will most likely have to rely on wireless or satellite.
In many ways it's basically a 21st Century repeat of the way in which state-run electricity replaced the various local supplies once provided by the Hobart Gas Co, Launceston City Council, Mount Lyell M&R Co and many others.Probably cheaper to do it now and later when people want to use it then it would be more convenient. A bit like the gas rollout here. Early adopters had free signup. As the copper will be decomissioned and connections will cost later I hope it is an education issue why they didn't have the fibre to their property connected. They don't have to use it and not pay line access fees until they have a valid service.
I don't doubt for a moment that the NBN is a massive gamble in exactly the same manner as the establishment of electricity supply was not without massive risk. But the internet now is much like electricity or the motor car a century ago - in limited use already but set to dominate the future absolutely. Those who worried about transmission lines and highways whilst advocating the benefits of gas lighting were at most delaying the inevitable, a point Telstra seems to have understood very well in this century with its' progressive running down of the copper network.
A gamble certainly. But if we're going to throw money around anyway then it beats using it to buy plasma TV's and dodgy insulation as far as I'm concerned.
In many ways it's basically a 21st Century repeat of the way in which state-run electricity replaced the various local supplies once provided by the Hobart Gas Co, Launceston City Council, Mount Lyell M&R Co and many others.
Many didn't connect at first and there were widespread predictions, including from the Australian Government, of financial and/or technical disaster with the then revolutionary idea of a state-wide electricity system.
Fast forward a few years and electricity and industries which depend heavily on it had became the dominant economic, and eventually political, force in Tasmania. They still dominate the state's overseas exports to this day.
But now in 2010, the state faces much the same dilemma it faced a century earilier. That of heavy reliance on low-value service and primary production industry that has historically not worked well economically. But this time there is no sustainable opportunity to gain an advantage from technology no matter what the Premier might say. It just won't take the other states 40 years to compete for business as they did with electricity. At best, the advantage will last a year or two. But at least it beats being left behind.
I don't doubt for a moment that the NBN is a massive gamble in exactly the same manner as the establishment of electricity supply was not without massive risk. But the internet now is much like electricity or the motor car a century ago - in limited use already but set to dominate the future absolutely. Those who worried about transmission lines and highways whilst advocating the benefits of gas lighting were at most delaying the inevitable, a point Telstra seems to have understood very well in this century with its' progressive running down of the copper network.
A gamble certainly. But if we're going to throw money around anyway then it beats using it to buy plasma TV's and dodgy insulation as far as I'm concerned.
Listen to a tech head the other day who spoke about the fiber uses beyond PC's logging on to higher speed which seem to dominate most the debate I have seen so far.
He talked about how the main uses would actually be devices that would plug straight into the fiber for absolutely mind boggling applications.
Iinet's NBN5 (down/up speed: 50/4 Mbps), (peak + offpeak quota: 50GB + 50GB) is $100pm. To use the line for voice calls, iiTalkpack is also required ($10pm). Total cost $110pm.Opt out? Currently it is an opt in system.
Internode and some others have released plans for internet. Various speeds including fixed price with speed crippling (like many ADSL plans.)
I haven't read of any phone only annoucements but the ISPs offering VoIP have support for it. The initial rollout areas had the line rental set at $0 which I assume is to reduce prices for ISPs to retail to drive uptake.
It appears the retailer factors in line rental like the ISPs that handle your voice needs.
From memory iiNet, Internode and one other offer something.
http://www.internode.on.net/news/2010/06/184.php has some information although note it is a trial as it lists next year when the wholesaler looks set to price how it expects to operate.
iiNet have some information at http://www.iinet.net.au/nbn/faq.html
Ummmmmm why are we laying more cable in the ground when wifi is the answer? Telstra has the 3G network capabilty right now. We have HDMI capability NOW.
Can someone please explain the advantage of fibre optic cable?
Has anyone considered that the problem with technology today is it is obsolete in 12 months time?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?