Blockbuster began rescuing upset Netflix customers by launching a limited time, nationwide promotion for all Netflix customers who switch to Blockbuster Total Access™.
Blockbuster Total Access provides benefits Netflix doesn’t offer: availability of many new releases 28 days before Netflix; unlimited in-store exchanges; games for XBOX 360®, Playstation3™, and Nintendo Wii™, and no additional charge for Blu-ray™ movies.
As part of Blockbuster’s ongoing efforts to provide the ultimate in convenience, choice and value, Netflix customers who switch to one of Blockbuster’s two most popular Total Access plans will receive a 30-day free trial. After the free trial, customers will continue to receive Total Access for a new everyday price of only $9.99 per month for “1 Disc” at a time or $14.99 per month for “2 Discs” at a time.
“Blockbuster quickly responded to the cries of Netflix customers,” said Michael Kelly, president of Blockbuster. “Blockbuster Total Access is Netflix ‘without the wait.’ The combination of DVDs by mail and unlimited in-store exchanges provides more than 100 million people living near Blockbuster stores immediate convenience and unparalleled choice.“
Many Netflix customers have voiced their frustration about the Netflix price increase on Twitter by posting “Goodbye Netflix, Hello Blockbuster!”
“We find it shocking that anyone would raise rates as high as 60 percent,” Kelly added. “In contrast, Blockbuster has worked hard over the past few months to deliver value in entertainment to consumers in this economy and has even reduced in-store movie rentals to as low as 49 cents.”
This special offer for Netflix customers is available through Sept. 15, 2011, in participating stores and at Blockbuster’s website (http://ww.blockbuster.com/helloblockbuster) or bring in the tear-off from their Netflix mailer to a participating Blockbuster store.
Blockbuster Plans Netflix Plans
Blockbuster offer 3 different subscription plans with low monthly prices to meet your entertainment needs and your budget:
1-out Unlimited - 5 Free Exchanges – $11.99 per month
2-out Unlimited - 5 Free Exchanges – $16.99 per month
3-out Unlimited – 5 Free Exchanges – $19.99 per month
Selection Includes:
Movies
Games
Purchase pre-owned movies
Rent by Mail without a Subscription
You don’t need a subscription to rent movies and games by mail from Blockbuster.You can order from more than 100,000 titles online or in store.
See available devices
Return rentals in the postage-paid mailer or to a participating store.
Blockbuster doesn’t offer a streaming plan. Its On Demand movies are charged per use, with variable pricing ranging from $1 to $5 per rental.
You can also purchase On Demand movies from Blockbuster, which are then kept in a digital locker from which you can re-stream the movie at any time.
Unlimited Streaming
For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It’s really that easy! (see available devices – my suggestion is Roku Player)
Monthly DVD Rentals via Mail
1 DVD out at-a-time $7.99
2 DVDs out at-a-time $11.99
3 DVDs out at-a-time $15.99
4 DVDs out at-a-time $21.99
5 DVDs out at-a-time $27.99
6 DVDs out at-a-time $32.99
7 DVDs out at-a-time $37.99
8 DVDs out at-a-time $43.99
Monthly Unlimited Streaming Plus DVD Rentals via Mail
Unlimited Streaming + 1 DVD out at-a-time $15.98
Unlimited Streaming + 2 DVDs out at-a-time $19.98
Unlimited Streaming + 3 DVDs out at-a-time $23.98
Unlimited Streaming + 4 DVDs out at-a-time $29.98
Unlimited Streaming + 5 DVDs out at-a-time $35.98
Unlimited Streaming + 6 DVDs out at-a-time $40.98
Unlimited Streaming + 7 DVDs out at-a-time $45.98
Unlimited Streaming + 8 DVDs out at-a-time $51.98
Monthly Limited Plans
1 DVD out at-a-time (limit 2 rentals a month) $4.99
Starz Play Only (no DVDs) $6.99 a month
Blu-ray movies and are adding more as they are released by the studios. You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.
Bottom Line
Netflix is still a better choice with the added feature of Netflix Instant at only $7.99 a month, but, it is not the cheapest. If you have a Blockbuster or another video store nearby just get the Netflix streaming plan for $7.99 a month and rent your movies from your local retailer.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
The Rise & Fall of RIM
Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there’s a different story to be told. It’s a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. We’ve spoken to multiple ex-RIM executives at length about their experiences with the company over the past few years. While most speak highly of RIM and their time in Waterloo, they also each left the company due mainly to RIM’s lack of vision and leadership. Read on for an exclusive inside look at a company teetering on the edge between greatness and collapse.
Lightning in a bottle.
“Lightning in a bottle.” That is how one former executive described Research In Motion in its early days. “This came together at the right time, the right place, with the right technology, and Jim and Mike are extremely brilliant individuals.” Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are two irreplaceable leaders who were largely responsible for RIM’s success, our source continued. But as time progressed, Mike did not listen to the marketplace. This is obvious from the outside view, though the details surrounding why RIM is no longer a market leader — and why RIM will most likely not be able to regain its leadership position in the near future — are most interesting.
Let’s rewind a few years. Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”
There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.
The fact is, that RIM didn’t only miss the boat in terms of product features and device trends as we now know, but the underpinnings of the company’s consumer failure began all the way back in 2005 with bold statements like these, combined with a lack of research and development in numerous key areas.
Mike Lazaridis would say that the most ridiculous idea was to name a phone with a marketing-derived name, like the Motorola RAZR. “BlackBerry will never do that, it will always be a model number,” he said to executives. “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.”
“Here we are, as young, brazen people, and we’re just like, ‘Mike, you’re missing out. There’s a trend here; it’s a social and collaborative scene in certain media circles’,” one former executive said, describing the general feeling among other executives at the company. “Now look at what’s happened 4 or 5 years later — an MP3 player, camera, name, all done reluctantly.”
“When I would work with our major carriers, I would have to go to Mike’s product development team, and ask what are we going to bring to [redacted],” and it was never a cutting edge product, one former executive told me. There wasn’t ever a three-year roadmap. Mike was always focused on small, granular features like how to make the speakerphone in a BlackBerry the best speakerphone on the market. Mike would say that people were going to buy a BlackBerry because of the speakerphone… “because they wouldn’t need a Polycom anymore.”
The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. “One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because
they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,” a former executive said. “There was no three-year plan at RIM.” RIM would be proud of the fact that someone would only use 1MB of data in a month in 2005, and as a result, there wasn’t ever any extensive R&D done within the browser space. Over time, that misstep affected BlackBerry tremendously as competing devices began to deliver desktop-like Web experiences. “Mike Lazaridis couldn’t imagine that consumers would be spending hours watching and streaming video to their devices, he couldn’t understand it,” the former exec continued. This is why we don’t see RIM excelling in spaces like camera technology, or displays — because the company never even attempted to anticipate the smartphone trends we’re seeing today. “RIM is a reactionary company.”
A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.
I remember going to sit with the CMO of one of the largest wireless carriers, and we would deliver features like “increase battery life by 40%” in the next model, and we would get a blank look on the other side of the conference room. The executives would think, ‘so your telling me with this device I am going to sell 40% less car chargers’, there was a blank stare. “They want the flavor of the week, and the carrier’s loyalty is to their customers and what their customers want. Then try and delivery that.”
“Mike is really brilliant, and superior beyond his years, and what he’s doing with Stephen Hawking and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is compelling,” he continued. “There are hundreds of millions he’s put into it, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what RIM’s facing, and what’s in front of them, and the market is asking for them to change their ways.”
“Back a handful of years ago, if someone had a phone at work that wasn’t a BlackBerry they paid for it,” another executive who no longer works at Research In Motion said. “I was at a Fortune 500 organization a few weeks ago, and people were carrying a corporate issued BlackBerry in their left pocket and their own personal iPhone in the right pocket.” He continued, “The fact that people are spending their own money to buy the iPhone, when their company is giving them a ‘free BlackBerry’ sends quite a message to RIM,” says one of our sources.”
The market is asking for them to change their ways.
They were both stunned that someone could have a corporate-issued phone that could handle some consumer needs, but still walk around with two devices. There were and are many paradigms at RIM. In the corporate world, especially at large companies, the senior executives would buy a BlackBerry as soon as it came out. They would then give their old devices to employees beneath them, and these BlackBerry phones would eventually make their way down through the corporation. This isn’t the case anymore, and now those people that used to receive the hand-me-down BlackBerry devices are asking for shiny new phones.
Jim and Mike got along very well, I was told by multiple current and former RIM employees. The interesting thing, however, is that when they have disagreements, Mike wins all of the internal arguments. “Jim, given his background, doesn’t have the pedigree to compete with Mike on an academic level.” As a result, perhaps, I was told that things have slowly deteriorated between the two co-CEOs. Jim and Mike have “titanic” arguments in the halls of RIM headquarters on various subjects, and we’re told it’s quite open. Stories of explosive fights bleeding out into the hallways and even lunch spots in Waterloo have filled Research In Motion. It used to be that only vice presidents or above would get the privilege of listening to Mike and Jim debate — behind closed doors or in the boardroom. Regular employees now hear the arguments as well, and “they aren’t insulated for that. It’s unnerving. It makes for a nervous environment, and many employees are looking to jump ship. Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds [for RIM].”
Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds for RIM.
“When you hear Mike talk about the latest and greatest, it’s been the same thing for ten years: security, battery performance, and network performance. RIM has positioned battery life and network performance for years. People are not concerned with iPhone battery life,” one source told me. Network performance, to Mike, trumps any innovation a device like the iPhone offers. “Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” a different source said. Mike apparently is in disbelief that people can use over 15GB of data on their iPhone and Android devices, and he feels that people will buy smartphones based on network efficiency, even though carriers with tiered data plans in developed markets love customers who use monstrous amounts of data.
While RIM has always viewed carriers as customers rather than end users, carriers have long been trying to find a different partner that doesn’t charge network fees. Since all BlackBerry devices use the BlackBerry NOC, RIM gets a piece of the data plan users pay on their bills each month. And RIM is the only manufacturer whose products are configured in such a way. “Carriers have always tried to negotiate the fees they pay RIM. They try everything to get that dropped or lowered, but that has been the one holy grail of RIM that has not been touched. ”
An ex-executive who had been responsible for a number of carrier partners for RIM recently told me that the data network fees paid to RIM were definitely the number one cause of heartburn from carriers, and a big point of contention.
There was no three- year plan at RIM.
If you look at RIM’s global revenue today, the story it paints isn’t a good one as far as driving new business and revenue channels. “They essentially just channel stuff,” a former exec said. For instance, when RIM wants to sell to a new market, it will go to two or three primary carriers and make those carriers purchase a set amount of devices up front to stock the channel for what is typically the remainder of the calendar year. Then RIM will sell those devices at full margin. It’s a great quick and easy profit from the channel. So RIM has now opened up three new carriers in a new country, let’s say, and it had them each purchase “X” thousand units each. Now, RIM can report to the Street that it shipped 700,000 devices at full market value.
After multiple sequential quarters of opening up new countries, there’s obviously a lot of volume there. Though the consensus of many is that RIM is nearing capacity with this strategy. The company now has to rely on the old school model of growth within these existing channels, and just as we’re seeing in North America with the tide changing now that long-standing BlackBerry customers are moving to other platforms and devices, that will happen in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada that have been stuffed with BlackBerry phones. Growth will slow to a stall in these markets, one source told me, and the problems will be compounded by the fact that a lot of these devices are not being sold through to end users. “They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.”
As far as the PlayBook is concerned, RIM’s initial 500,000 shipments weren’t even sold at full margin. “RIM’s thought process was that they hoped if they put a product in a carrier’s hands that was less than full margin, it would entice the carriers to apply whatever number of discounts against that to bring it to market at an even lower price — a subsidy on the tablet. RIM isn’t making any money on the PlayBook.” To complicate matters, however, Jim Balsillie told the carriers at the 11th hour that the PlayBook wouldn’t have native email and would require the Bridge app in order to receive emails and provide calendar functions. “RIM is notorious for dropping these bombshells at the 11th hour on the carriers, and the PlayBook not having native email was a shock to the carriers.” They were all expecting a BlackBerry with a bigger screen. RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet. Mike Lazaridis looks at it as, why aren’t people buying this tablet when it has the most powerful engine with respect to multitasking, and supports Flash? But consumers have spoken pretty loudly a number of times, and Mike unfortunately leads the product side and continues to miss the mark with the masses, a former RIM executive told me. “I don’t even see anyone in Waterloo walking around with a PlayBook that doesn’t work for RIM,” another former RIM employee said.
Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because it doesn’t have a battery as good as a BlackBerry
“People really think Mike has lost his touch and vision. He’s paranoid. It’s not uncommon to see him walking around campus with bodyguards in tow,” one source told me. “This is a small community of folks in Waterloo. There’s what? 100,000 people and 30,000 of them are students, and it’s an understated place. Sure there are millionaires but no one drives anything fancier than a 5-series BMW. For Mike to be on campus with bodyguards is very peculiar. It’s very Orson Wells-like.” Another former employee I spoke with doesn’t find the fact that Lazaridis has bodyguards to be odd at all due to his stature. RIM’s other Co-CEO, however, is a completely different person.
“Every year, Jim Balsillie and COO Dennis Kavelman would take all the executives to Redtail golf course for a day of R&R with great meals, great VIP service, and every year one executive would not ever go.” Mike could not understand why everyone would go and have a golf day. In fact, he supposedly hated it and he never showed up on purpose, I was told.
“Jim chasing the NHL teams, that caused some separation between Mike and Jim,” one former executive stated. When Jim was in the midst of buying an NHL team, the NHL hired a large group to work on the project, and it had countless former RIM executives called for testimony on what Jim Balsillie was really like — all of the “TMZ dirt,” as one source described it. One executive BGR spoke to refused to talk to the NHL when they reached out, however many others were happy to open up. While this former exec did not have an issue with Jim, it was hypothesized that those with an axe to grind lobbed some dirt at the NHL and it’s most likely one of the reasons they didn’t allow him to proceed with a purchase.
They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.
Multiple former executives also spoke of a notable divide between Mike, an internal product guy, and Jim, who focuses more on external partner relationships, in how they each react to leaks from inside the company. “I remember this one time when we had a new device coming out and it leaked to BGR.” Mike lost his mind for a few weeks. He couldn’t fathom how something like this would happen, and he constantly threatened to fire any employees who leaked any information. “He had this ‘you’re either with us or against us’ attitude, and he went off the rails. Every product is Mike’s baby”. On the other hand, Jim would try and spin things, I was told. He would get everyone excited, “you know, here it comes, he’d roll with it and have the attitude that they’re boosting the hype of the device, they’re pre-selling it for us, and so on. That was the message Jim would take.”
RIM seems to be doing damage control in a bunch of areas right now. One such area is the PlayBook and trying to mitigate the negative response to that product, and I was told the company is even going so far as to selectively block different media and even social networking sites from being accessed by employees. One of my sources said he anticipates RIM always having a niche market in the enterprise and government spaces, but he doesn’t think RIM has the potential to become a true market leader with consumers due to several shortfalls. “You’d honestly think RIM is more than a year or two behind in [the consumer market],” one source told me. “There will most likely be another heavy reduction in the workplace later this year or early next year. I don’t see the stock getting back to where it was. There are no real market impact executives coming into RIM, times have changed since Robin came in from Motorola, that ‘stock’ incentive isn’t there any more.”
Lightning in a bottle.
“Lightning in a bottle.” That is how one former executive described Research In Motion in its early days. “This came together at the right time, the right place, with the right technology, and Jim and Mike are extremely brilliant individuals.” Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are two irreplaceable leaders who were largely responsible for RIM’s success, our source continued. But as time progressed, Mike did not listen to the marketplace. This is obvious from the outside view, though the details surrounding why RIM is no longer a market leader — and why RIM will most likely not be able to regain its leadership position in the near future — are most interesting.
Let’s rewind a few years. Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”
There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.
The fact is, that RIM didn’t only miss the boat in terms of product features and device trends as we now know, but the underpinnings of the company’s consumer failure began all the way back in 2005 with bold statements like these, combined with a lack of research and development in numerous key areas.
Mike Lazaridis would say that the most ridiculous idea was to name a phone with a marketing-derived name, like the Motorola RAZR. “BlackBerry will never do that, it will always be a model number,” he said to executives. “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.”
“Here we are, as young, brazen people, and we’re just like, ‘Mike, you’re missing out. There’s a trend here; it’s a social and collaborative scene in certain media circles’,” one former executive said, describing the general feeling among other executives at the company. “Now look at what’s happened 4 or 5 years later — an MP3 player, camera, name, all done reluctantly.”
“When I would work with our major carriers, I would have to go to Mike’s product development team, and ask what are we going to bring to [redacted],” and it was never a cutting edge product, one former executive told me. There wasn’t ever a three-year roadmap. Mike was always focused on small, granular features like how to make the speakerphone in a BlackBerry the best speakerphone on the market. Mike would say that people were going to buy a BlackBerry because of the speakerphone… “because they wouldn’t need a Polycom anymore.”
The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. “One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because
they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,” a former executive said. “There was no three-year plan at RIM.” RIM would be proud of the fact that someone would only use 1MB of data in a month in 2005, and as a result, there wasn’t ever any extensive R&D done within the browser space. Over time, that misstep affected BlackBerry tremendously as competing devices began to deliver desktop-like Web experiences. “Mike Lazaridis couldn’t imagine that consumers would be spending hours watching and streaming video to their devices, he couldn’t understand it,” the former exec continued. This is why we don’t see RIM excelling in spaces like camera technology, or displays — because the company never even attempted to anticipate the smartphone trends we’re seeing today. “RIM is a reactionary company.”
A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.
I remember going to sit with the CMO of one of the largest wireless carriers, and we would deliver features like “increase battery life by 40%” in the next model, and we would get a blank look on the other side of the conference room. The executives would think, ‘so your telling me with this device I am going to sell 40% less car chargers’, there was a blank stare. “They want the flavor of the week, and the carrier’s loyalty is to their customers and what their customers want. Then try and delivery that.”
“Mike is really brilliant, and superior beyond his years, and what he’s doing with Stephen Hawking and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is compelling,” he continued. “There are hundreds of millions he’s put into it, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what RIM’s facing, and what’s in front of them, and the market is asking for them to change their ways.”
“Back a handful of years ago, if someone had a phone at work that wasn’t a BlackBerry they paid for it,” another executive who no longer works at Research In Motion said. “I was at a Fortune 500 organization a few weeks ago, and people were carrying a corporate issued BlackBerry in their left pocket and their own personal iPhone in the right pocket.” He continued, “The fact that people are spending their own money to buy the iPhone, when their company is giving them a ‘free BlackBerry’ sends quite a message to RIM,” says one of our sources.”
The market is asking for them to change their ways.
They were both stunned that someone could have a corporate-issued phone that could handle some consumer needs, but still walk around with two devices. There were and are many paradigms at RIM. In the corporate world, especially at large companies, the senior executives would buy a BlackBerry as soon as it came out. They would then give their old devices to employees beneath them, and these BlackBerry phones would eventually make their way down through the corporation. This isn’t the case anymore, and now those people that used to receive the hand-me-down BlackBerry devices are asking for shiny new phones.
Jim and Mike got along very well, I was told by multiple current and former RIM employees. The interesting thing, however, is that when they have disagreements, Mike wins all of the internal arguments. “Jim, given his background, doesn’t have the pedigree to compete with Mike on an academic level.” As a result, perhaps, I was told that things have slowly deteriorated between the two co-CEOs. Jim and Mike have “titanic” arguments in the halls of RIM headquarters on various subjects, and we’re told it’s quite open. Stories of explosive fights bleeding out into the hallways and even lunch spots in Waterloo have filled Research In Motion. It used to be that only vice presidents or above would get the privilege of listening to Mike and Jim debate — behind closed doors or in the boardroom. Regular employees now hear the arguments as well, and “they aren’t insulated for that. It’s unnerving. It makes for a nervous environment, and many employees are looking to jump ship. Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds [for RIM].”
Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds for RIM.
“When you hear Mike talk about the latest and greatest, it’s been the same thing for ten years: security, battery performance, and network performance. RIM has positioned battery life and network performance for years. People are not concerned with iPhone battery life,” one source told me. Network performance, to Mike, trumps any innovation a device like the iPhone offers. “Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” a different source said. Mike apparently is in disbelief that people can use over 15GB of data on their iPhone and Android devices, and he feels that people will buy smartphones based on network efficiency, even though carriers with tiered data plans in developed markets love customers who use monstrous amounts of data.
While RIM has always viewed carriers as customers rather than end users, carriers have long been trying to find a different partner that doesn’t charge network fees. Since all BlackBerry devices use the BlackBerry NOC, RIM gets a piece of the data plan users pay on their bills each month. And RIM is the only manufacturer whose products are configured in such a way. “Carriers have always tried to negotiate the fees they pay RIM. They try everything to get that dropped or lowered, but that has been the one holy grail of RIM that has not been touched. ”
An ex-executive who had been responsible for a number of carrier partners for RIM recently told me that the data network fees paid to RIM were definitely the number one cause of heartburn from carriers, and a big point of contention.
There was no three- year plan at RIM.
If you look at RIM’s global revenue today, the story it paints isn’t a good one as far as driving new business and revenue channels. “They essentially just channel stuff,” a former exec said. For instance, when RIM wants to sell to a new market, it will go to two or three primary carriers and make those carriers purchase a set amount of devices up front to stock the channel for what is typically the remainder of the calendar year. Then RIM will sell those devices at full margin. It’s a great quick and easy profit from the channel. So RIM has now opened up three new carriers in a new country, let’s say, and it had them each purchase “X” thousand units each. Now, RIM can report to the Street that it shipped 700,000 devices at full market value.
After multiple sequential quarters of opening up new countries, there’s obviously a lot of volume there. Though the consensus of many is that RIM is nearing capacity with this strategy. The company now has to rely on the old school model of growth within these existing channels, and just as we’re seeing in North America with the tide changing now that long-standing BlackBerry customers are moving to other platforms and devices, that will happen in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada that have been stuffed with BlackBerry phones. Growth will slow to a stall in these markets, one source told me, and the problems will be compounded by the fact that a lot of these devices are not being sold through to end users. “They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.”
As far as the PlayBook is concerned, RIM’s initial 500,000 shipments weren’t even sold at full margin. “RIM’s thought process was that they hoped if they put a product in a carrier’s hands that was less than full margin, it would entice the carriers to apply whatever number of discounts against that to bring it to market at an even lower price — a subsidy on the tablet. RIM isn’t making any money on the PlayBook.” To complicate matters, however, Jim Balsillie told the carriers at the 11th hour that the PlayBook wouldn’t have native email and would require the Bridge app in order to receive emails and provide calendar functions. “RIM is notorious for dropping these bombshells at the 11th hour on the carriers, and the PlayBook not having native email was a shock to the carriers.” They were all expecting a BlackBerry with a bigger screen. RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet. Mike Lazaridis looks at it as, why aren’t people buying this tablet when it has the most powerful engine with respect to multitasking, and supports Flash? But consumers have spoken pretty loudly a number of times, and Mike unfortunately leads the product side and continues to miss the mark with the masses, a former RIM executive told me. “I don’t even see anyone in Waterloo walking around with a PlayBook that doesn’t work for RIM,” another former RIM employee said.
Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because it doesn’t have a battery as good as a BlackBerry
“People really think Mike has lost his touch and vision. He’s paranoid. It’s not uncommon to see him walking around campus with bodyguards in tow,” one source told me. “This is a small community of folks in Waterloo. There’s what? 100,000 people and 30,000 of them are students, and it’s an understated place. Sure there are millionaires but no one drives anything fancier than a 5-series BMW. For Mike to be on campus with bodyguards is very peculiar. It’s very Orson Wells-like.” Another former employee I spoke with doesn’t find the fact that Lazaridis has bodyguards to be odd at all due to his stature. RIM’s other Co-CEO, however, is a completely different person.
“Every year, Jim Balsillie and COO Dennis Kavelman would take all the executives to Redtail golf course for a day of R&R with great meals, great VIP service, and every year one executive would not ever go.” Mike could not understand why everyone would go and have a golf day. In fact, he supposedly hated it and he never showed up on purpose, I was told.
“Jim chasing the NHL teams, that caused some separation between Mike and Jim,” one former executive stated. When Jim was in the midst of buying an NHL team, the NHL hired a large group to work on the project, and it had countless former RIM executives called for testimony on what Jim Balsillie was really like — all of the “TMZ dirt,” as one source described it. One executive BGR spoke to refused to talk to the NHL when they reached out, however many others were happy to open up. While this former exec did not have an issue with Jim, it was hypothesized that those with an axe to grind lobbed some dirt at the NHL and it’s most likely one of the reasons they didn’t allow him to proceed with a purchase.
They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.
Multiple former executives also spoke of a notable divide between Mike, an internal product guy, and Jim, who focuses more on external partner relationships, in how they each react to leaks from inside the company. “I remember this one time when we had a new device coming out and it leaked to BGR.” Mike lost his mind for a few weeks. He couldn’t fathom how something like this would happen, and he constantly threatened to fire any employees who leaked any information. “He had this ‘you’re either with us or against us’ attitude, and he went off the rails. Every product is Mike’s baby”. On the other hand, Jim would try and spin things, I was told. He would get everyone excited, “you know, here it comes, he’d roll with it and have the attitude that they’re boosting the hype of the device, they’re pre-selling it for us, and so on. That was the message Jim would take.”
RIM seems to be doing damage control in a bunch of areas right now. One such area is the PlayBook and trying to mitigate the negative response to that product, and I was told the company is even going so far as to selectively block different media and even social networking sites from being accessed by employees. One of my sources said he anticipates RIM always having a niche market in the enterprise and government spaces, but he doesn’t think RIM has the potential to become a true market leader with consumers due to several shortfalls. “You’d honestly think RIM is more than a year or two behind in [the consumer market],” one source told me. “There will most likely be another heavy reduction in the workplace later this year or early next year. I don’t see the stock getting back to where it was. There are no real market impact executives coming into RIM, times have changed since Robin came in from Motorola, that ‘stock’ incentive isn’t there any more.”
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go
Privacy fears raised as researchers reveal file on iPhone that stores location coordinates and timestamps of owner's movements
Apple’s iPhone saves every detail of your movements to a file on the device. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.
The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.
For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.
Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."
Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said: "This is a worrying discovery. Location is one of the most sensitive elements in anyone's life – just think where people go in the evening. The existence of that data creates a real threat to privacy. The absence of notice to users or any control option can only stem from an ignorance about privacy at the design stage."
Warden and Allan point out that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced: "Apple might have new features in mind that require a history of your location, but that's our specualtion. The fact that [the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate is evidence that the data-gathering isn't accidental." But they said it does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself.
iphone-data-map Map shows location data collected from an iPhone that had been used in the southwest of England
Although mobile networks already record phones' locations, it is only available to the police and other recognised organisations following a court order under the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act. Standard phones do not record location data.
MPs in 2009 criticised the search engine giant Google for its "Latitude" system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts. At the time MPs said that Latitude "could substantially endanger user privacy", but Google pointed out that users had to specifically choose to make their data available.
The iPhone system, by contrast, appears to record the data whether or not the user agrees. Apple declined to comment on why the file is created or whether it can be disabled.
Warden and Allan have set up a web page which answers questions about the file, and created a simple downloadable application to let Apple users check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The Guardian has confirmed that 3G-enabled devices including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner's computer.
If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualisation of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, said: "If the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been." He suggested that Apple might be hoping that it would yield data for future mobile advertising targeted by location, although he added: "I tend to subscribe to cockup rather than conspiracy on things like this – I don't think Apple is really trying to monitor where users are."
iphone data The data inside the file containing the location and time information. This is used to plot the map above
The location file came to light when Warden and Allan were looking for a source of mobile data. "We'd been discussing doing a visualisation of mobile data, and while Alasdair was researching into what was available, he discovered this file. At first we weren't sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualised the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements," Warden said.
They have blogged about their discovery at O'Reilly's Radar site, noting that "why this data is stored and how Apple intends to use it — or not — are important questions that need to be explored."
The pair of data scientists have collaborated on a number of data visualisations, including a map of radiation levels in Japan for The Guardian. They are developing a Data Science Toolkit for dealing with location data.
Davies said that the discovery of the file indicated that Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously.
Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data: near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program, used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".
It says that "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."
Apple’s iPhone saves every detail of your movements to a file on the device. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.
The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.
For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.
"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.
Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."
Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said: "This is a worrying discovery. Location is one of the most sensitive elements in anyone's life – just think where people go in the evening. The existence of that data creates a real threat to privacy. The absence of notice to users or any control option can only stem from an ignorance about privacy at the design stage."
Warden and Allan point out that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced: "Apple might have new features in mind that require a history of your location, but that's our specualtion. The fact that [the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate is evidence that the data-gathering isn't accidental." But they said it does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself.
iphone-data-map Map shows location data collected from an iPhone that had been used in the southwest of England
Although mobile networks already record phones' locations, it is only available to the police and other recognised organisations following a court order under the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act. Standard phones do not record location data.
MPs in 2009 criticised the search engine giant Google for its "Latitude" system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts. At the time MPs said that Latitude "could substantially endanger user privacy", but Google pointed out that users had to specifically choose to make their data available.
The iPhone system, by contrast, appears to record the data whether or not the user agrees. Apple declined to comment on why the file is created or whether it can be disabled.
Warden and Allan have set up a web page which answers questions about the file, and created a simple downloadable application to let Apple users check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The Guardian has confirmed that 3G-enabled devices including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner's computer.
If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualisation of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, said: "If the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been." He suggested that Apple might be hoping that it would yield data for future mobile advertising targeted by location, although he added: "I tend to subscribe to cockup rather than conspiracy on things like this – I don't think Apple is really trying to monitor where users are."
iphone data The data inside the file containing the location and time information. This is used to plot the map above
The location file came to light when Warden and Allan were looking for a source of mobile data. "We'd been discussing doing a visualisation of mobile data, and while Alasdair was researching into what was available, he discovered this file. At first we weren't sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualised the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements," Warden said.
They have blogged about their discovery at O'Reilly's Radar site, noting that "why this data is stored and how Apple intends to use it — or not — are important questions that need to be explored."
The pair of data scientists have collaborated on a number of data visualisations, including a map of radiation levels in Japan for The Guardian. They are developing a Data Science Toolkit for dealing with location data.
Davies said that the discovery of the file indicated that Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously.
Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data: near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program, used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".
It says that "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Get wired performance from your Wi-Fi network
By Becky Waring
Although the Wi-Fi arms race isn't going to let up any time soon, wireless can never be as fast and reliable as wires.
So why fight it? Get the best of both worlds with a hybrid Wi-Fi and powerline network, perfect for streaming high-def video.
Why Wi-Fi doesn't cut it for streaming video
Recently I was asked to redesign a home network for a client who couldn't get reliable wireless Netflix streaming to his home theater. He was also frustrated by the feeble throughput in much of his house, despite investing in four (count 'em, four) 802.11n Wi-Fi routers.
Although his was an extreme case, with a 5,000-square-foot house spread over two wings and a central connector, his network challenges were typical of those upgrading from older Wi-Fi routers: how to get reliable and dropout-free throughput for media streaming as well as faster overall performance for high-bandwidth tasks such as network backup and storage.
You might think dropping U.S. $150 on the latest 300Mbps 802.11n router should do the trick, but in many cases even the fastest Wi-Fi routers can't deliver smooth streaming video where it's needed, and network backups might take hours or even days to complete.
Wireless throughput drops rapidly with distance from the router and is also subject to interference from a myriad of sources — from cordless phones and microwaves to neighboring Wi-Fi nets. Even momentary glitches in a video stream can be enough to ruin the movie-watching experience.
My client's Wi-Fi issues were compounded by the fact that his house is made of bricks, which along with stone, concrete, water tanks and pipes, stucco siding, and ceramic tile are very effective wireless-signal eaters. (Stucco siding has chicken wire inside that creates a Faraday-cage effect, blocking signals going in or out.)
His existing network was a mesh of four routers running in Wireless Distribution System (WDS) mode with three remote routers acting as wireless repeaters, receiving signals from the others within range and rebroadcasting them.
This system was adequate for ordinary Web surfing and e-mail, but it failed entirely when it came to streaming video to the TVs. By the time the Wi-Fi signal had hopped access points to the farthest corners of the house, it was degraded to practically nothing. The only place he could get a solid video stream was in the same room as the main router connected to his cable modem.
Today, with an added investment of about $300, he's got robust video and data everywhere in the house, and I have a happy client. Read on to find out how we brought wired performance to his Wi-Fi network.
The secret sauce: powerline network adapters
The secret to success? I ditched the wireless mesh design and connected each of the routers to the network with four new 500Mbps powerline adapters from Netgear.
By using powerline gear, which turns home electrical wiring into an Ethernet network, we turned a sketchy wireless network backbone into a rock-solid wired one without having to run new Ethernet cabling all over the house.
Although older 75- and 200Mbps powerline gear has been around for years, it has never really broken through to the mainstream due to both cost (about $75 per adapter, far more than Wi-Fi adapters) and the relatively slow throughput compared to Ethernet cabling.
The new 500Mbps standard finally breaks the elusive "Ethernet-equivalent" speed barrier, with real-world transfer rates of 70–80Mbps in one direction and more than 100Mbps in both directions at once, thanks to built-in gigabit Ethernet ports.
Perhaps more to the point, 500Mbps powerline gear can comfortably deliver 40Mbps streaming 1080p video (as from a ripped Blu-ray disc), the current gold standard. And it doesn't suffer the vagaries of wireless reception.
Thus far, only Netgear and TRENDnet are shipping 500Mbps adapters, with Netgear being the best performing, according to a SmallNetBuilder review. But expect many more products soon from other powerline vendors such as D-Link and Cisco Linksys.
The Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit XAVB5001 we used (info page, about $140 retail) consists of two adapters. One plugs into your main router via Ethernet as well as into a wall power outlet, and the other plugs into a power outlet in the remote location where you'd like to deliver an Ethernet port. (See Figure 1.)
Netgear XAVB5001 Kit
Figure 1. The two parts of the Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit
The kit is plug-and-play — no setup is required. You can also buy adapters individually. You can use up to a total of 16 adapters around the house, although you probably need them only in strategic locations such as your home theater or basement office.
In my client's case, I simply connected one powerline adapter to each of the four routers that covered the two wings of his house, then changed the wireless setup in the three remote routers so that each was creating its own Wi-Fi net rather than using WDS. (Each was already set in bridge mode, which turns routers into access points only — you can have only one true router per network.)
By using precisely the same SSID (Wi-Fi network name), password, and encryption type (use WPA2-PSK with AES if you can — it's the most secure) in each router/access point, I created a roaming Wi-Fi net where mobile clients such as laptops and smartphones see only one network. They simply connect to the access point with the strongest signal.
It's easiest to create a seamless roaming network with identical routers because manufacturers have varying encryption and channel-selection options that may not quite match up. However, you should be able to accomplish the same thing I did with most modern routers. I recommend the Cisco Linksys E4200 or E3200, which are the current performance and feature leaders in their price classes. (See Figure 2.)
Cisco Linksys E4200
Figure 2. Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router
Both have simultaneous dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz radios, which give you even more network design flexibility. (The 5GHz band is typically much less noisy and crowded.) They also have gigabit Ethernet switches, QOS (quality of service) support for prioritizing streaming media, and USB ports for shared storage drives. At a $160 list price, the E3200 (info page) is slightly less expensive yet full-featured enough for most users.
The top-of-the-line E4200 (info page; $180) pictured in Figure 2 adds a UPnP media serving capabilities for attached storage (a handy feature that can stream media directly to many set-top boxes) and up to 450Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band (assuming you have a matching 450Mbps-capable client card).
Mixed Wi-Fi/powerline network-design strategies
Although most houses don't need four Wi-Fi access points to get full coverage, using powerline gear gives you the freedom to put your routers/access points in the places they do the most good. You can place them pretty much anywhere you have a power outlet.
In my client's case, we located one of the access points directly behind his home theater. This way, I was able to take advantage of the 4-port Ethernet switch in the back of the router to connect his Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and Wii. This strategy saved the cost of a wireless adapter for the Blu-ray player; it also gave all his streaming devices direct wired connections — and glitch-free video.
A huge side benefit is that no streaming video or Internet gaming traffic is competing for scarce Wi-Fi bandwidth because it never leaves the wired network.
I could also have attached a standard 5- or 8-port Ethernet switch to the powerline adapter to achieve the same result. In fact, Netgear has announced a 500Mbps home-theater powerline kit with a four-port switch built into one of the adapters. It should be shipping any day now.
Note that any devices plugged into one powerline adapter need to share the bandwidth through that port, so you probably wouldn't want to put multiple high-bandwidth devices such as NAS drives on one adapter. In the case of a home theater, only one set-top box should be actively streaming at a time.
A powerline adapter is also a great way to network a printer. Even so-called wireless printers usually have an Ethernet port, too; so if you can't get a good wireless printing connection in your desired location, try powerline.
Finally, conserve your powerline bandwidth by placing network backup drives in the location where your computers reside most of the time. For example, if you spend most of your time in the family room, connect your backup drive or NAS to an access point in that room.
Because they are both connected to the same access point, data will flow straight from computer to NAS, without ever going back down the powerline connection to the main router. As a bonus, you'll have a strong Wi-Fi connection in the room where you need it most.
Using your Powerline gear successfully
Although powerline gear is plug-and-play, that doesn't mean it's infallible. Because it's dependent on your home electrical system, line noise from hair dryers, cell phone chargers, and the cycling of microwaves and refrigerators (as well as certain AFCI breakers) can all affect performance.
In addition, if you have very old wiring (I still have a bunch of knob-and-tube wires in my 100-year-old house) or a mixture of wiring and breaker panels, you could have problems.
So always buy powerline gear from a vendor with a good return policy, and test it immediately after you get it to be sure it works in your particular environment.
Fortunately, the Netgear kits are very easy to test. When you plug them in, the middle powerline light glows green, amber, or red. Green signifies a nominal link rate greater than 80Mbps, amber a link rate between 50–80 Mbps, and red a rate below 50Mbps. You can keep trying outlets until you find the best ones.
In my tests, amber was usable for light Web surfing, printing, and e-mail but not for video or heavy file transfers. Red was simply not satisfactory. On the other hand, green was great — it felt like regular Ethernet.
In my client's house, we ended up with three green locations and one amber. But in one room, the first three outlets we tested were red before we got a green signal. Luckily, the room in which we couldn't do better than amber was not a location for which we needed high throughput.
If you get a lot of amber results, make sure that you are not near sources of noise. Chargers, power supplies, or other devices plugged into nearby outlets can be culprits. If these are interferences for you, move them as far away as possible, or use a filter. Netgear also makes powerline adapters with a filtered outlet for problem devices (info page).
Another thing to remember is that powerline adapters need to be plugged directly into the wall, never into a surge suppressor, which wreaks havoc on the powerline signals.
Also, if you already have older powerline gear, don't mix it up. While 500Mbps powerline gear is backwardly compatible with the 200Mbps standard, you'll get greatly reduced performance. With powerline, it's best to stick with one vendor and one speed to avoid the inevitable finger-pointing when things go wrong.
Finally, if you live in an apartment building or other location where you may share electrical circuits with someone else, use the buttons on the side of the Netgear adapters to change the encryption key from the default so that no one can snoop on your powerline network. Press the encryption buttons on your adapters within two minutes of one another, and they will pair up.
Although the Wi-Fi arms race isn't going to let up any time soon, wireless can never be as fast and reliable as wires.
So why fight it? Get the best of both worlds with a hybrid Wi-Fi and powerline network, perfect for streaming high-def video.
Why Wi-Fi doesn't cut it for streaming video
Recently I was asked to redesign a home network for a client who couldn't get reliable wireless Netflix streaming to his home theater. He was also frustrated by the feeble throughput in much of his house, despite investing in four (count 'em, four) 802.11n Wi-Fi routers.
Although his was an extreme case, with a 5,000-square-foot house spread over two wings and a central connector, his network challenges were typical of those upgrading from older Wi-Fi routers: how to get reliable and dropout-free throughput for media streaming as well as faster overall performance for high-bandwidth tasks such as network backup and storage.
You might think dropping U.S. $150 on the latest 300Mbps 802.11n router should do the trick, but in many cases even the fastest Wi-Fi routers can't deliver smooth streaming video where it's needed, and network backups might take hours or even days to complete.
Wireless throughput drops rapidly with distance from the router and is also subject to interference from a myriad of sources — from cordless phones and microwaves to neighboring Wi-Fi nets. Even momentary glitches in a video stream can be enough to ruin the movie-watching experience.
My client's Wi-Fi issues were compounded by the fact that his house is made of bricks, which along with stone, concrete, water tanks and pipes, stucco siding, and ceramic tile are very effective wireless-signal eaters. (Stucco siding has chicken wire inside that creates a Faraday-cage effect, blocking signals going in or out.)
His existing network was a mesh of four routers running in Wireless Distribution System (WDS) mode with three remote routers acting as wireless repeaters, receiving signals from the others within range and rebroadcasting them.
This system was adequate for ordinary Web surfing and e-mail, but it failed entirely when it came to streaming video to the TVs. By the time the Wi-Fi signal had hopped access points to the farthest corners of the house, it was degraded to practically nothing. The only place he could get a solid video stream was in the same room as the main router connected to his cable modem.
Today, with an added investment of about $300, he's got robust video and data everywhere in the house, and I have a happy client. Read on to find out how we brought wired performance to his Wi-Fi network.
The secret sauce: powerline network adapters
The secret to success? I ditched the wireless mesh design and connected each of the routers to the network with four new 500Mbps powerline adapters from Netgear.
By using powerline gear, which turns home electrical wiring into an Ethernet network, we turned a sketchy wireless network backbone into a rock-solid wired one without having to run new Ethernet cabling all over the house.
Although older 75- and 200Mbps powerline gear has been around for years, it has never really broken through to the mainstream due to both cost (about $75 per adapter, far more than Wi-Fi adapters) and the relatively slow throughput compared to Ethernet cabling.
The new 500Mbps standard finally breaks the elusive "Ethernet-equivalent" speed barrier, with real-world transfer rates of 70–80Mbps in one direction and more than 100Mbps in both directions at once, thanks to built-in gigabit Ethernet ports.
Perhaps more to the point, 500Mbps powerline gear can comfortably deliver 40Mbps streaming 1080p video (as from a ripped Blu-ray disc), the current gold standard. And it doesn't suffer the vagaries of wireless reception.
Thus far, only Netgear and TRENDnet are shipping 500Mbps adapters, with Netgear being the best performing, according to a SmallNetBuilder review. But expect many more products soon from other powerline vendors such as D-Link and Cisco Linksys.
The Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit XAVB5001 we used (info page, about $140 retail) consists of two adapters. One plugs into your main router via Ethernet as well as into a wall power outlet, and the other plugs into a power outlet in the remote location where you'd like to deliver an Ethernet port. (See Figure 1.)
Netgear XAVB5001 Kit
Figure 1. The two parts of the Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit
The kit is plug-and-play — no setup is required. You can also buy adapters individually. You can use up to a total of 16 adapters around the house, although you probably need them only in strategic locations such as your home theater or basement office.
In my client's case, I simply connected one powerline adapter to each of the four routers that covered the two wings of his house, then changed the wireless setup in the three remote routers so that each was creating its own Wi-Fi net rather than using WDS. (Each was already set in bridge mode, which turns routers into access points only — you can have only one true router per network.)
By using precisely the same SSID (Wi-Fi network name), password, and encryption type (use WPA2-PSK with AES if you can — it's the most secure) in each router/access point, I created a roaming Wi-Fi net where mobile clients such as laptops and smartphones see only one network. They simply connect to the access point with the strongest signal.
It's easiest to create a seamless roaming network with identical routers because manufacturers have varying encryption and channel-selection options that may not quite match up. However, you should be able to accomplish the same thing I did with most modern routers. I recommend the Cisco Linksys E4200 or E3200, which are the current performance and feature leaders in their price classes. (See Figure 2.)
Cisco Linksys E4200
Figure 2. Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router
Both have simultaneous dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz radios, which give you even more network design flexibility. (The 5GHz band is typically much less noisy and crowded.) They also have gigabit Ethernet switches, QOS (quality of service) support for prioritizing streaming media, and USB ports for shared storage drives. At a $160 list price, the E3200 (info page) is slightly less expensive yet full-featured enough for most users.
The top-of-the-line E4200 (info page; $180) pictured in Figure 2 adds a UPnP media serving capabilities for attached storage (a handy feature that can stream media directly to many set-top boxes) and up to 450Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band (assuming you have a matching 450Mbps-capable client card).
Mixed Wi-Fi/powerline network-design strategies
Although most houses don't need four Wi-Fi access points to get full coverage, using powerline gear gives you the freedom to put your routers/access points in the places they do the most good. You can place them pretty much anywhere you have a power outlet.
In my client's case, we located one of the access points directly behind his home theater. This way, I was able to take advantage of the 4-port Ethernet switch in the back of the router to connect his Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and Wii. This strategy saved the cost of a wireless adapter for the Blu-ray player; it also gave all his streaming devices direct wired connections — and glitch-free video.
A huge side benefit is that no streaming video or Internet gaming traffic is competing for scarce Wi-Fi bandwidth because it never leaves the wired network.
I could also have attached a standard 5- or 8-port Ethernet switch to the powerline adapter to achieve the same result. In fact, Netgear has announced a 500Mbps home-theater powerline kit with a four-port switch built into one of the adapters. It should be shipping any day now.
Note that any devices plugged into one powerline adapter need to share the bandwidth through that port, so you probably wouldn't want to put multiple high-bandwidth devices such as NAS drives on one adapter. In the case of a home theater, only one set-top box should be actively streaming at a time.
A powerline adapter is also a great way to network a printer. Even so-called wireless printers usually have an Ethernet port, too; so if you can't get a good wireless printing connection in your desired location, try powerline.
Finally, conserve your powerline bandwidth by placing network backup drives in the location where your computers reside most of the time. For example, if you spend most of your time in the family room, connect your backup drive or NAS to an access point in that room.
Because they are both connected to the same access point, data will flow straight from computer to NAS, without ever going back down the powerline connection to the main router. As a bonus, you'll have a strong Wi-Fi connection in the room where you need it most.
Using your Powerline gear successfully
Although powerline gear is plug-and-play, that doesn't mean it's infallible. Because it's dependent on your home electrical system, line noise from hair dryers, cell phone chargers, and the cycling of microwaves and refrigerators (as well as certain AFCI breakers) can all affect performance.
In addition, if you have very old wiring (I still have a bunch of knob-and-tube wires in my 100-year-old house) or a mixture of wiring and breaker panels, you could have problems.
So always buy powerline gear from a vendor with a good return policy, and test it immediately after you get it to be sure it works in your particular environment.
Fortunately, the Netgear kits are very easy to test. When you plug them in, the middle powerline light glows green, amber, or red. Green signifies a nominal link rate greater than 80Mbps, amber a link rate between 50–80 Mbps, and red a rate below 50Mbps. You can keep trying outlets until you find the best ones.
In my tests, amber was usable for light Web surfing, printing, and e-mail but not for video or heavy file transfers. Red was simply not satisfactory. On the other hand, green was great — it felt like regular Ethernet.
In my client's house, we ended up with three green locations and one amber. But in one room, the first three outlets we tested were red before we got a green signal. Luckily, the room in which we couldn't do better than amber was not a location for which we needed high throughput.
If you get a lot of amber results, make sure that you are not near sources of noise. Chargers, power supplies, or other devices plugged into nearby outlets can be culprits. If these are interferences for you, move them as far away as possible, or use a filter. Netgear also makes powerline adapters with a filtered outlet for problem devices (info page).
Another thing to remember is that powerline adapters need to be plugged directly into the wall, never into a surge suppressor, which wreaks havoc on the powerline signals.
Also, if you already have older powerline gear, don't mix it up. While 500Mbps powerline gear is backwardly compatible with the 200Mbps standard, you'll get greatly reduced performance. With powerline, it's best to stick with one vendor and one speed to avoid the inevitable finger-pointing when things go wrong.
Finally, if you live in an apartment building or other location where you may share electrical circuits with someone else, use the buttons on the side of the Netgear adapters to change the encryption key from the default so that no one can snoop on your powerline network. Press the encryption buttons on your adapters within two minutes of one another, and they will pair up.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Cord Cutters Survival Stories
Cord Cutters Survival Stories: Middle of the Road
By Beau Bredow Mar. 26, 2011
What’s it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What’s working, what’s missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job of replacing the cable box? In our weekly Survival Story series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. This week’s featured cord cutter is Beau Bredow, who will save close to $1000 this year thanks to ditching cable.
About six months ago, I started messing around with what it would take for my family to cut the cord on cable and save about $80 a month.
I started researching what channels come through clear via DTV and how to watch shows we normally would DVR or watch on cable. At first, it didn’t look good. I couldn’t figure out what antenna would work, and [there was] no ESPN or sports in general, which was a big letdown.
Just before Christmas, we took the plunge. Here are the devices and the process we took to make it happen:
1. Cut the cable. Our cable lines worked perfectly to provide all the over-the-air digital channels for us. We have two LCD televisions with digital tuners built in.
2. Kept Internet service. Went middle-of-the-road, at about $50 a month.
3. Use Clicker.com to queue up all shows online for easy access. Not all the shows we watch are on Clicker, so we still have to go to some of the websites to watch some shows. We bookmarked them for easy access.
4. Bought 35 ft. VGA 3.5mm cable to play Internet TV shows on my TV. I tried other servers and wireless options, but nothing beat the hard wire as far as keeping picture quality.
5. Bought WD TV Media Player Live Plus. We use this to play movies from our DVDs we’ve ripped, and for quick access to home videos and pictures.
6. Bought a 2 TB hard drive and placed all movies on it, as well as pictures, home videos and music.
7. Bought a wireless router with USB port to network hard drive for easy access and playing through WD TV.
8. Installed apps on my Android phone to use it as a remote and control my laptop and WD TV.
All in all, [it's] well worth the $80 [a month] we’re saving. It would be nice to do some other things, but I haven’t found the right solutions for it yet:
* Instead of using Clicker, I’d like to queue TV shows from network websites to the WD TV and play them. (Flingo might be going in this direction.)
* RSS feed to see when new shows are available from TV network websites.
* ESPN could be nice, as well as an option to replay Sports Center.
* Wii could use some upgrades to act as a media player.
I bought all my hardware for the cost of two months of cable, and so far, [it] works great. I don’t like the idea of renting movies, so I typically buy used ones on eBay, Half.com or yard sales. I want the rights to what I pay for.
Beau Bredow works as a minister in Lakeland, Fla. The views expressed in this guest column are entirely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of GigaOM. His story should not be understood as a how-to.
By Beau Bredow Mar. 26, 2011
What’s it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What’s working, what’s missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job of replacing the cable box? In our weekly Survival Story series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. This week’s featured cord cutter is Beau Bredow, who will save close to $1000 this year thanks to ditching cable.
About six months ago, I started messing around with what it would take for my family to cut the cord on cable and save about $80 a month.
I started researching what channels come through clear via DTV and how to watch shows we normally would DVR or watch on cable. At first, it didn’t look good. I couldn’t figure out what antenna would work, and [there was] no ESPN or sports in general, which was a big letdown.
Just before Christmas, we took the plunge. Here are the devices and the process we took to make it happen:
1. Cut the cable. Our cable lines worked perfectly to provide all the over-the-air digital channels for us. We have two LCD televisions with digital tuners built in.
2. Kept Internet service. Went middle-of-the-road, at about $50 a month.
3. Use Clicker.com to queue up all shows online for easy access. Not all the shows we watch are on Clicker, so we still have to go to some of the websites to watch some shows. We bookmarked them for easy access.
4. Bought 35 ft. VGA 3.5mm cable to play Internet TV shows on my TV. I tried other servers and wireless options, but nothing beat the hard wire as far as keeping picture quality.
5. Bought WD TV Media Player Live Plus. We use this to play movies from our DVDs we’ve ripped, and for quick access to home videos and pictures.
6. Bought a 2 TB hard drive and placed all movies on it, as well as pictures, home videos and music.
7. Bought a wireless router with USB port to network hard drive for easy access and playing through WD TV.
8. Installed apps on my Android phone to use it as a remote and control my laptop and WD TV.
All in all, [it's] well worth the $80 [a month] we’re saving. It would be nice to do some other things, but I haven’t found the right solutions for it yet:
* Instead of using Clicker, I’d like to queue TV shows from network websites to the WD TV and play them. (Flingo might be going in this direction.)
* RSS feed to see when new shows are available from TV network websites.
* ESPN could be nice, as well as an option to replay Sports Center.
* Wii could use some upgrades to act as a media player.
I bought all my hardware for the cost of two months of cable, and so far, [it] works great. I don’t like the idea of renting movies, so I typically buy used ones on eBay, Half.com or yard sales. I want the rights to what I pay for.
Beau Bredow works as a minister in Lakeland, Fla. The views expressed in this guest column are entirely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of GigaOM. His story should not be understood as a how-to.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Should Netflix Offer a Way for Users To Control Streaming Bandwidth?
With broadband providers capping bandwidth and schools limiting it, should Netflix offer an easy way for customers to easily control the amount of data streaming uses? From the comments Tom points out the Netflix Canada enables users to control bandwith:
Netflix Canada has an option to use lower quality streams to reduce bandwidth, it'd be nice if net admins could contact them and get that flag turned on for anyone using their network. I suggest they call and see what can be done.
There are some "secret" controls for streaming, like CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M on Silverlight streaming that enables you to view player info and control the buffering rate, but should Netflix make it easy and a standard way across devices?
Comments
Jeff
The Roku has had a "secret" bitrate setting for a long time. From the home screen, press Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward [that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds (<<<), 2 FastForwards (>>>)] to bring up the screen to manually select the bitrate you want.
Posted by: Jeff | March 22, 2011 at 03:52 AM
rjejr
CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M
Do people even watch NF on their PC's anymore?
Wii, Xbox360, PS3, Roku, iPad, internet ready tvs and blu-ray players
I'll admit I still have a PC hooked up to my tv for the occasional Hulu viewing but can't even remember the last time I used it (still searching for V).
Netflix Canada has an option to use lower quality streams to reduce bandwidth, it'd be nice if net admins could contact them and get that flag turned on for anyone using their network. I suggest they call and see what can be done.
There are some "secret" controls for streaming, like CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M on Silverlight streaming that enables you to view player info and control the buffering rate, but should Netflix make it easy and a standard way across devices?
Comments
Jeff
The Roku has had a "secret" bitrate setting for a long time. From the home screen, press Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward [that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds (<<<), 2 FastForwards (>>>)] to bring up the screen to manually select the bitrate you want.
Posted by: Jeff | March 22, 2011 at 03:52 AM
rjejr
CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M
Do people even watch NF on their PC's anymore?
Wii, Xbox360, PS3, Roku, iPad, internet ready tvs and blu-ray players
I'll admit I still have a PC hooked up to my tv for the occasional Hulu viewing but can't even remember the last time I used it (still searching for V).
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Bumps in the road to IPv6
By Woody Leonhard
Although the consequences aren't as dire as it sounds, the Internet ran out of IP addresses (roughly analogous to telephone numbers) last month.
While the Web won't come crashing down anytime soon, you're going to be affected by the new numbering scheme — and some details may catch you unawares.
Last October, Fred Langa talked in his LangaList Plus column about the changes under way. Simply put, the Internet has run out of IP addresses under the old IPv4 scheme.
This is no namby-pamby upgrade. The current 32-bit IPv4 scheme can handle just under 4.3 billion different Internet addresses. And we've used them up. (That represents an astounding number of networked devices potentially in use.) The new, 128-bit, IPv6 numbering method can accommodate 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. It's, ahem, unlikely that we'll need that many addresses anytime soon.
But IPv6 incorporates much more than added addresses. There's a complex scheme of layering, protocols, security, and communication enhancements buried in the standard. For the most part, you won't have to worry about the details. But there are a few areas where you can help — and where you can be taken in. Caveat surfor! (Web-surfer, beware!)
Moving to a new format for IP addresses
An IP address identifies a specific piece of hardware on a network — one device, one unique IP address. And the Internet has grown into a mighty big network — with far more devices attached to it than anyone could have imagined back in 1977, when IPv4 was invented.
IPv4 addresses are expressed in four groups of numbers between 0 and 255. For example, 74.208.121.252 or 192.168.1.0. No doubt you've struggled with them at some point.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns IPv4 addresses in blocks of 16 million addresses to each of five Regional Internet Registries. There are RIRs for Africa, the U.S. and Canada, Australasia, Latin America, and Europe/Middle East/Central Asia. Each RIR in turn assigns blocks of addresses to Internet Service Providers and other organizations. On Feb. 1, IANA gave out the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to its five RIRs.
That does not mean we're facing an imminent crisis. It'll take years for all RIRs to allocate all numbers, and there are tricks that can shuffle numbers around (prompting worries of a possible black market in IP addresses). But the writing's clearly on the wall — we're running out of the Internet's phone numbers.
(IP addresses should not be confused with MAC addresses. IPs are issued to networked devices by the Internet service provider. In most home networks, the IP address is dynamic — it can change when you connect to an ISP. Mac addresses are assigned by the device manufacturer and are essentially a unique, fixed identifier for the device's network interface — and thus for the device.)
To handle the vast number of computers and other devices now connecting to the Internet, the IANA and ISPs are in the process of rolling out IPv6. The new IPv6 addresses appear as a group of eight numbers, each with four hexadecimal digits, such as:
2001:cdba:9abc:5678:ffff:ffff:face:b00c
Clearly, we aren't going to wake up one morning to find the Internet working with IPv6. Instead, there will be a period of years — probably many years — where IPv4 and IPv6 need to peacefully coexist.
And that's where the so-called dual stack comes into play.
Testing for dual-stack compatibility
Running IPv6 on Windows is a piece of cake: IPv6 has been built into Windows since XP Service Pack 2. If you are using HomeGroup on Windows 7, you already have IPv6 up and working between your homegrouped PCs. Similarly, all modern versions of Linux and Mac OS speak IPv6, as do most smartphone operating systems.
The problem isn't on your desktop, laptop, or phone. The problem lies in all of the gear between you and your destination. You may or may not be able to get through on an IPv6 connection because your router or your ISP's equipment can't handle it. That's why, for the foreseeable future, most major websites will be running dual stacks, which allow you to get into the site on either an IPv4 or IPv6 connection.
If you're running only IPv4, you'll be just fine for the foreseeable future; your equipment speaks IPv4, and the Internet location you're connected to still speaks IPv4 (and IPv6 with a dual stack).
A problem arises, though, if your router or your ISP's equipment thinks it can handle IPv6 and really can't. Your PC tries to connect via IPv6 but something gets lost in the communication. You might experience delays of a minute or more while your PC battles with the site's IPv6 stack, can't get through because of intermediary problems, gives up after a while, and finally falls back to IPv4.
For that reason, the international Internet Society (ISOC) is throwing a World IPv6 Day on June 8 — 24 hours for website owners, ISPs, and network users (that's us) to take an IPv6 test flight. ISOC has arranged for Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and a hundred other sites to turn on their IPv6 stacks. Two of the biggest Internet plumbing organizations, Akamai and Limelight Networks, will also enable IPv6 on that day. The idea is to test all the intermediaries — ISPs and other network operators, plus router hardware manufacturers — to see which of them will fall over when dual stacks become commonplace.
On a Facebook blog, Donn Lee put it this way:
"Testing IPv6 is important because recent studies indicate about 0.05% of Internet users (1 in 2,000) can't reliably connect to websites that enable both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (known as "dual-stacked" websites). This has resulted in a classic chicken-and-egg puzzle right now: websites don't want to enable IPv6 because a small number of their users may have trouble connecting."
As June 8 rolls around, you might want to let your friends and colleagues know that they're going to be part of a huge test. Have them go to one of the test sites and see whether the connection goes through. If it fails, have them complain — loudly — to their Internet Service Provider.
You don't have to wait for June 8, though. ISOC has a website set up to perform a one-off test of your current configuration. Go there now, and you'll receive a report like the one in Figure 1.
IPv6 Test Resulrts
Figure 1. ISOC's test page tells you in advance whether you're going to have trouble on June 8.
Make sure you buy IPv6-capable routers
Incredibly, some router manufacturers are peddling goods that aren't yet IPv6-compatible. If your ISP provided the router you're using now, you don't need to worry about it — sooner or later, they'll have to ensure it runs IPv6 and the swap-out shouldn't cost you anything. (Not directly, anyway.)
But if you're buying your own router, be very aware of the fact that most consumer routers don't run IPv6. Julie Bort at InfoWorld reported that, as of a month ago, none of Cisco's consumer Linksys routers runs IPv6. For a follow-up story, Cisco stated that "Linksys routers being launched this spring will have IPv6 support" and that the "Linksys E4200 router we launched in January will have an [IPv6] firmware upgrade planned for April." But there's still no word about which, if any, of the zillions of legacy Linksys routers will run IPv6.
If you're thinking about buying a router and want to make sure it'll run IPv6, you can look on the box to see whether it's certified by the IPv6 Forum. If you want the full details, though, check whether the router is listed on the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Broadband CPE analysis site. Bet you'll be a little bit surprised — and not pleasantly.
Although the consequences aren't as dire as it sounds, the Internet ran out of IP addresses (roughly analogous to telephone numbers) last month.
While the Web won't come crashing down anytime soon, you're going to be affected by the new numbering scheme — and some details may catch you unawares.
Last October, Fred Langa talked in his LangaList Plus column about the changes under way. Simply put, the Internet has run out of IP addresses under the old IPv4 scheme.
This is no namby-pamby upgrade. The current 32-bit IPv4 scheme can handle just under 4.3 billion different Internet addresses. And we've used them up. (That represents an astounding number of networked devices potentially in use.) The new, 128-bit, IPv6 numbering method can accommodate 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. It's, ahem, unlikely that we'll need that many addresses anytime soon.
But IPv6 incorporates much more than added addresses. There's a complex scheme of layering, protocols, security, and communication enhancements buried in the standard. For the most part, you won't have to worry about the details. But there are a few areas where you can help — and where you can be taken in. Caveat surfor! (Web-surfer, beware!)
Moving to a new format for IP addresses
An IP address identifies a specific piece of hardware on a network — one device, one unique IP address. And the Internet has grown into a mighty big network — with far more devices attached to it than anyone could have imagined back in 1977, when IPv4 was invented.
IPv4 addresses are expressed in four groups of numbers between 0 and 255. For example, 74.208.121.252 or 192.168.1.0. No doubt you've struggled with them at some point.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns IPv4 addresses in blocks of 16 million addresses to each of five Regional Internet Registries. There are RIRs for Africa, the U.S. and Canada, Australasia, Latin America, and Europe/Middle East/Central Asia. Each RIR in turn assigns blocks of addresses to Internet Service Providers and other organizations. On Feb. 1, IANA gave out the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to its five RIRs.
That does not mean we're facing an imminent crisis. It'll take years for all RIRs to allocate all numbers, and there are tricks that can shuffle numbers around (prompting worries of a possible black market in IP addresses). But the writing's clearly on the wall — we're running out of the Internet's phone numbers.
(IP addresses should not be confused with MAC addresses. IPs are issued to networked devices by the Internet service provider. In most home networks, the IP address is dynamic — it can change when you connect to an ISP. Mac addresses are assigned by the device manufacturer and are essentially a unique, fixed identifier for the device's network interface — and thus for the device.)
To handle the vast number of computers and other devices now connecting to the Internet, the IANA and ISPs are in the process of rolling out IPv6. The new IPv6 addresses appear as a group of eight numbers, each with four hexadecimal digits, such as:
2001:cdba:9abc:5678:ffff:ffff:face:b00c
Clearly, we aren't going to wake up one morning to find the Internet working with IPv6. Instead, there will be a period of years — probably many years — where IPv4 and IPv6 need to peacefully coexist.
And that's where the so-called dual stack comes into play.
Testing for dual-stack compatibility
Running IPv6 on Windows is a piece of cake: IPv6 has been built into Windows since XP Service Pack 2. If you are using HomeGroup on Windows 7, you already have IPv6 up and working between your homegrouped PCs. Similarly, all modern versions of Linux and Mac OS speak IPv6, as do most smartphone operating systems.
The problem isn't on your desktop, laptop, or phone. The problem lies in all of the gear between you and your destination. You may or may not be able to get through on an IPv6 connection because your router or your ISP's equipment can't handle it. That's why, for the foreseeable future, most major websites will be running dual stacks, which allow you to get into the site on either an IPv4 or IPv6 connection.
If you're running only IPv4, you'll be just fine for the foreseeable future; your equipment speaks IPv4, and the Internet location you're connected to still speaks IPv4 (and IPv6 with a dual stack).
A problem arises, though, if your router or your ISP's equipment thinks it can handle IPv6 and really can't. Your PC tries to connect via IPv6 but something gets lost in the communication. You might experience delays of a minute or more while your PC battles with the site's IPv6 stack, can't get through because of intermediary problems, gives up after a while, and finally falls back to IPv4.
For that reason, the international Internet Society (ISOC) is throwing a World IPv6 Day on June 8 — 24 hours for website owners, ISPs, and network users (that's us) to take an IPv6 test flight. ISOC has arranged for Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and a hundred other sites to turn on their IPv6 stacks. Two of the biggest Internet plumbing organizations, Akamai and Limelight Networks, will also enable IPv6 on that day. The idea is to test all the intermediaries — ISPs and other network operators, plus router hardware manufacturers — to see which of them will fall over when dual stacks become commonplace.
On a Facebook blog, Donn Lee put it this way:
"Testing IPv6 is important because recent studies indicate about 0.05% of Internet users (1 in 2,000) can't reliably connect to websites that enable both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (known as "dual-stacked" websites). This has resulted in a classic chicken-and-egg puzzle right now: websites don't want to enable IPv6 because a small number of their users may have trouble connecting."
As June 8 rolls around, you might want to let your friends and colleagues know that they're going to be part of a huge test. Have them go to one of the test sites and see whether the connection goes through. If it fails, have them complain — loudly — to their Internet Service Provider.
You don't have to wait for June 8, though. ISOC has a website set up to perform a one-off test of your current configuration. Go there now, and you'll receive a report like the one in Figure 1.
IPv6 Test Resulrts
Figure 1. ISOC's test page tells you in advance whether you're going to have trouble on June 8.
Make sure you buy IPv6-capable routers
Incredibly, some router manufacturers are peddling goods that aren't yet IPv6-compatible. If your ISP provided the router you're using now, you don't need to worry about it — sooner or later, they'll have to ensure it runs IPv6 and the swap-out shouldn't cost you anything. (Not directly, anyway.)
But if you're buying your own router, be very aware of the fact that most consumer routers don't run IPv6. Julie Bort at InfoWorld reported that, as of a month ago, none of Cisco's consumer Linksys routers runs IPv6. For a follow-up story, Cisco stated that "Linksys routers being launched this spring will have IPv6 support" and that the "Linksys E4200 router we launched in January will have an [IPv6] firmware upgrade planned for April." But there's still no word about which, if any, of the zillions of legacy Linksys routers will run IPv6.
If you're thinking about buying a router and want to make sure it'll run IPv6, you can look on the box to see whether it's certified by the IPv6 Forum. If you want the full details, though, check whether the router is listed on the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Broadband CPE analysis site. Bet you'll be a little bit surprised — and not pleasantly.
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