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October, 2012 BTNet update - new options launched this week
BT announced some option changes to its BTNet product set this week. These include:
Alternative PoP selection:
Useful to meet customer specific requests to use alternative serving nodes – a degree of diversity can be achieved as a result. Also useful when site surveys determine the default node is actually out of limits or at capacity and normally service delivery would not be possible.
October, 2012 BT opens up lower bandwidth options on 100Mb Ethernet bearers
BT has just announced that it is lowering the limits on its 100Mb bearer circuits; previously the lowest port speed you could have on this product was 8Mb.
You can now start as low as 2Mb (same as the 10Mb bearer option) and also have 4Mb, 6Mb upwards at the same price as on the 10Mb bearer.
September, 2012 Riverbed tool - the X-Factor estimator
Luckily this has nothing to do with Simon Cowell; Riverbed has launched a new optimisation estimator tool on its website.
It uses global standard latency figures from point to point and uses a Google maps API; the tool will give you a rough estimate of how much the Riverbed solution can improve on international latency between two points.
September, 2012 ADSL Part 2 - Next Generation ADSL
Most of you will have heard of ADSL1, ADSL2, ADSL2+ and possibly other variants, but there may be some confusion about what they actually are. Before we look at the Next Generation products I will try to briefly explain the older ones in a BT product context.
All ADSL variants are now available as rate adaptive (they adjust to the best stable speed available) delivered circuits, ADSL1 supports speeds up to 8Mbps, ADSL2 up to 12Mbps and ADSL2+ up to 24Mbps
August, 2012 BT's core network performance and information portal
For those who haven’t seen it, BT operates a public facing network information/performance stats site http://www.bt.net/
This site shows the current core topology of the BT IP Network and its connectivity.
August, 2012 Riverbed announces end-of-life for some Steelhead products
Riverbed has announced an end to the availability of the Steelhead 550 and 1050 models; effective from the 1st Jan 2013, these models will no longer on sale. The recommended alternatives are the Steelhead CX555/755/1555 and EX560/760/1260 depending on the requirement.
July, 2012 Exchange 2010 archiving and licencing requirements - part 2
When I saw archiving was built into Exchange 2010, I was keen to test it, and finally put a stop to the age old problem of storage.
However there is one significant issue, which most of us will encounter and that is one-off licencing.
July, 2012 Exchange 2010 archiving and licencing requirements - part 1
Having worked with Exchange since 5.5, I was very interested to see that an archiving feature will be included in the latest offering of Exchange 2010.
With previous versions of Exchange we’ve always had a number of archiving options, ranging from enabling a group policy to control and enforce the automation of desktop archiving, using a somewhat crude system clean up policy on the server, to leaving it down to the end users to fend for themselves and archive messages manually.
July, 2012 Things to note with BT's Superfast (FTTC/FTTP) products
As new fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) becomes more widely available across the UK, many people are looking to use these technologies as access circuits for both Internet and private WAN connectivity. Here are a few things to be aware of with both technologies.
Both ADSL and Superfast run on a shared infrastructure so there are no speed or throughput guarantees as such.
As with ADSL the line sync speed shown on the modem/router is not the throughput capacity.
June, 2012 SIP – What can it do for you?
A widely misunderstood and over-hyped technology, SIP - or Session Initiation Protocol to employ its full name – has been around for well over a decade. Indeed if you Google it (use the long form to avoid the S.I.P. Scooter shop and other users of the acronym) you’ll find references going right back to the early days of IP telephony, mostly touting SIP as the preferred protocol for the setting up and tearing down Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone calls.
