infrastructure – Page 5 – Graves On SOHO Technology

Revisiting The Merits Of Battery Backup

According to a FierceTelecom article by Sean Buckley, “Verizon says fewer customers are purchasing battery backup for fiber home voice services.” The article describes how Verizon’s FiOS FTTH customers are tending to rely upon their mobile phones to stay on touch during a power outage.

This assertion comes right as the FCC is concerned about CPE remaining powered during an outage, something that cannot be done over fiber as it was over copper. Since customers were not buying traditional battery backup units Verizon has come up with its own solution called PowerReserve.

Marking The 20th Internet Independence Day: April 30, 2015

An email from Daniel Berninger recently pointed out that Thursday, April 30th 2015 is the 20th anniversary of Internet Independence. According to Dan; The decommissioning of the NSFNET backbone on April 30, 1995 was the final step in the process…

Manuel Kasper Announces The End Of m0n0wall Project

This morning’s email included a message from Manuel Kasper, leader of the m0n0wall project. On the very day that is the 12th anniversary of the project he has announced that he’s bringing it to an end. I’ve used m0n0wall for…

Our Two UPS Have Gone Down

December 30, 2014
Michael Graves
infrastructure

Belkin UPSs We have a pair of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) on the property. Both are somewhat vintage models from Belkin. A 1000 VA model (F6C1000) in my office rack powers our network core. A smaller, 900 VA model (F6C900) in a central closet, powers those network components that live in the house. Both of them have been misbehaved in recent weeks. At this very moment they are basically non-functional.

I’ve long believed that the network core should survive minor power line irregularities. This belief stemmed in part from our migration to IP-based telephones for home & office. Our phone service should survive a power line bump. With both UPS in their fault-riddled state a loss of line power, even just a power line switching bump, caused our entire network to go down. This situation eventually had to be addressed.

The sealed batteries is consumer UPS such as ours have a fixed lifespan. At a certain point they simply cannot retain a charge, and the device throws an error. From that point onward they become nothing more than an overweight outlet strip.

Opus Codec Appears in Broadcast STL System

November 3, 2014
Michael Graves
Audio, infrastructure

Intraplex-IP-Link-100-and-200-angle-transparent Today’s news dump included an article on GatesAir, now a freestanding entity, it was once the transmission division of what was then known as Harris Broadcast. The company makes radio and TV transmitters, as well as related equipment, which includes studio-to-transmitter (aka STL) links. According to the Broadcast Beat article they have sold and installed one of their Intraplex IP STLs to WRLY-LP, a low power radio station in Raleigh, NC.

A broadcaster with a transmitter that is not located right at their main building (not co-sited) needs an extremely reliable means of sending their broadcast signal from the studio to the transmitter location. They also need some way to get some transmitter telemetry back from the remote location so that they can monitor the health of the transmitter. Their on-air presence via the transmitter is, after all, their bread and butter.

A Net Neutrality Infographic

September 25, 2014
Michael Graves
infrastructure, VoIP

VoIP Supply Infographic in Lenovo X-1-Carbon Last week VoIP Supply has posted an interesting and potentially informative infographic that purports to describe “How Does Net Neutrality Affect VoIP?” The artwork is originally from Visual.ly, created by Gryffin.

While the thrust of the thing is useful, there are a few things about it that put me ill at ease. Like so much of the debate about network neutrality, important subtleties are often misconstrued or simply overlooked.