I fired up the Boston FIoS measurement location today after a couple of days off, and found that suddenly FIoS doesn’t like the BitTorrent.

The line of purple dots all indicate measurements that reported an error code. All of those measurements come from Boston FiOS. See the real-time graph here.

Accident? Design? That I cannot comment on. I simply report on what I see.

This morning, after months of increasing performance issues, and connectivity issues, I have retired the Boston Verizon measurement location. This location hosted 2 measurement agents.

The machines, hosted in my basement, are connected using Verizon FiOS, which has become increasingly flaky over the last couple of months. As well, the machines are 7 year old Pentium IIs, and require a substantial amount of spoon-feeding that I don’t have time for at the moment.

I have re-enabled the Technorati #1 Agent to fill the gap, but this leaves only 4 measurement locations running. I again put out my plea for more volunteers to host GrabPERF measurement locations. I have had one volunteer contact me about this (thanks Henrik!), and this location should be up in about 3 weeks.

If you have a spare linux box and a static IP, have I got a project for you!

PS: The contact page is fixed. It was set to auto-refresh and overwrite your e-mails. Ooooops.

Tags: GrabPERF, Agent, Verizon, Web Performance, measurement, performance measurement

Now that I am back on US soil, I have some tips for surviving your trip to London.

1. GSM Phones. If you are one of the millions in the United States who subscribe to a CDMA service (Verizon, Sprint, etc.), invest a few bucks on eBay and buy a low-end, unlocked, tri-band GSM phone. I have used GSM for years, and the unlocked phones give you an amazing advantage — you buy a pay-as-you-go SIM card once you arrive.

   In the UK, incoming phone calls are free. If you have a half-decent office phone system, you should be able to remotely forward your desk phone to your UK number and voila! You have a local number that folks in the US can always reach you at.

2. OYSTER CARD! If you plan to travel anywhere on the London Public Transit system, buy an Oyster card. Same concept as the pay-as-you-go SIM card. And you’re never fussing with change or daily passes for the tube, DLR or busses.
3. Saline Nasal Spray. This seems like a bit in the “too much information” category, but trust me on this one. London’s atmosphere makes New York seem like an untouched Alpine pasture. After one day there, your sinuses will feel and look like the inside of a pool filter after a dust storm. A simple nasal spray takes of this, and often provides a somewhat scary indication of what man does to the urban environment he lives in.

   If you don’t want to pack one with you, you can buy some truly awesome stuff at any Boots — Sterimar. What makes this stuff uniqe is that it is aresol powered. Unlike the wussy atomisers we use over here, this stuff is freakin’ jet-propelled — if it can’t blast the crap out, it’s likely brains.

4. Look to the right. Yeah, we all know that the Brits drive on the other side of the road, but many an American has been nearly killed in the first twelve hours on the ground by using their instincts and not their brains. I am in this group.

   Thankfully, the Brits provide nice warning labels at most crosswalks; look down, and they will tell you which direction to look in to avoid becoming a hood ornament for a Bentley.

5. Change Wallet. Dear lord; you will need one of these or you will blow out every pocket you have. The Brits still use a lot of cash, and like the rest of the world, the lower denominations of their currency are coins, not bills. A solid change wallet is key.
6. Take the red-eye. You will search online and find a multitude of strategies for dealing with jet-lag. I have a simple one — make sure your flight takes you overnight so that you land at Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted/Dublin/Luton first thing in the morning. For folks on the East Coast or Central Canada, this means flights between 19:00 and 22:00 Eastern. For West Coast folks, it’s a 11-12 hour flight and an eight-hour time change, and Heathrow opens at 07:00, so 11:00-14:00 Pacific is a good range.

These are the top six I can think of rigt now. Comment on your strategies if you have them.

It turns out that my boss had an old Treo 600 lying around the house he wasn’t using. And it turns out that it was a T-Mobile Treo 600, not the Verizon crud that the company provides. And since the company upgraded him to a Verizon Treo 700 (which doesn’t work in Europe, much to their chagrin), he was gracious enough to allow me to use this device.

I say gracious. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I will restrain my comments on it’s appearance to this: I have seen objects that have been dragged down the freeway behind a car that have fewer nicks, dings and blemishes than this Treo 600.

But it works. Well.

I now understand how powerful the PDA|Phone combo can be, and why it’s so addictive.

Technorati Tags: Treo 600, t-mobile

This morning, I was briefly waylaid by a colleague who wanted me to look at a traceroute for her. Her question: “Is it safe to say that alter.net is not Verizon?”

Answer: Nope.

Alter.net begat UU.net begat MCI/Worldcom begat MCI begat Verizon.

And so goes the world…

Technorati Tags: alternet, uunet, worldcom, mci, verizon, backbones, providers

Dan Bricklin writes up a great description of what I am getting next week: Verizon FiOS. [here]

So, now you know. It’s the PPPoE that’s going to kill my static connection to the Internet.

Any of you folks who volunteered to host GrabPERF, now would be a great time to step forward.

Today, by special delivery, I got notice that FIOS is available at my house.

I called Comcast and asked how they were going to match this offer. They offered me $29.95/mo. for 6 months.

Now, because of my unique situation (i.e., requiring a semi-permamnent IP address to allow people to access my servers), I may be stuck with Comcast, because Verizon uses the much smarter random release on DHCP addresses.

But for 97% of the Web-surfing public, FIOS will be the cat’s meow. And that the the flow of customers from Comcast will become a flood. A cable company that continues to think like a cable company in this new world will look like Bethlehem Steel in 3 years…or less.

I have a good friend who is a senior network engineer at Comcast; I hope he is looking for a new job.

Technorati: Comcast, FIOS

IceRocket: Comcast, FIOS

I recently switched all of my phone services back to Verizon. Today, I got a phone call from my former provider, MCI.

I have never experienced telephone slamming before, but “Tiffany Johnson” from MCI exposed me to the seedy side of the telephone market. I know why MCI is slamming departing customers: they need to get their customer count up before the acquisition by Verizon is completed.

I have frozen my telephone provider. And MCI goes on my blacklist.

Technorati: telephone slamming, MCI, Verizon

Tried to set up Verizon DSL last night. Didn’t work; rotating IP addresses; a variety of line related issues. Cancelled the service this morning.

Sorry for any interruptions you may have encountered last night.

After 4.5 years of customer loyalty, I have decided that I have had enough of Comcast’s outrageous prices. I will be switching to Verizon DSL as soon as the install kit arrives.

Due to the way that my DNS is managed, you may encounter issues connecting to the server during the couple of days that it takes for the DNS to migrate and propagate.

Comcast has lost another customer. Does that surprise anyone?