Going wire less

denverpilot said:
Distributed file servers and updating 20 million devices is child's play for a real sysadmin/engineering team. AT&T & VZ don't want to pay for Apple's infrastructure however, so it'd be up to Apple to plunk down some of those billions in cash they're sitting on.

I'm not going to give them a pass on something they could deploy with a thousand or two Linux boxes and rsync. Seriously.
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The servers ain't the problem. :no: The problem is the 3G bandwidth from the carriers. There just ain't enough of it.

Mass distribution is child's play for production level sysadmins, really. If Apple can stream on-demand TV to my house over wireline, they can obviously build the servers to handle iOS distribution.
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Again - The servers aren't the problem. Apple already handles the glut of day-1 updaters pretty well, over traditional internet connections. Having a ton of over-the-air updaters, though, would not work well. AKA "Poor user experience" and that is something Apple doesn't ever want to do. They'd rather leave that box unchecked than have the box checked and have it be a poor experience.

They just have to move it much much closer to the end-user, and that means getting the carriers to play ball. That's the hard part, not the bandwidth.
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I do not think that the wireless portion of the networks would be able to handle it.

Proper QoS style service design in the OS could be set up to only do such downloading when a particular cell site is not at max-capacity serving customer content, too. That'd require the carriers to integrate the servers properly. "Live" data first, update data goes to the back of the school bus, priority-wise. Simple.
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But when the user clicks "Update" and their update hasn't finished several days later, they're ****ed. Not at AT&T or VZW, but at "This crappy iPhone that won't update." Apple is smart to not allow that to happen.

Agreed that Tom has better options. That was my point. I felt your post made it seem like iPad was a good option. I disagreed. The iPad alone would make an awful "one device" customer experience without Apple leaning on the wireline carriers for bandwidth.
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I don't think it would be an "awful" experience, especially given that Tom's situation is temporary. It'd be easier to set up than anything else (really, nothing to it at all).

The economic reality is, Apple likes the mobile devices to leverage people to stop by the stores to consider buying a Mac.
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Huh? If that were the case, then why can you buy iPads at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc? You can very easily own an iPad and never go to an Apple Store. Now if it's your ONLY device, and you want the latest greatest OS all the time, then you'll need to go to the store. But, that type of persion is also highly unlikely to buy a Mac.

Technology-wise though, the problem is a very simple one to tackle. Put the servers out as close as possible to the "last-mile" and build them to be remotely bare-metal recoverable so a CO tech can simply swap parts.
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Thing is, it's the last mile that's the problem, and you can't skip the last mile for over-the-air wireless updates.

I know! They're probably just waiting for the 19" rack mount kits and -48 VDC power supplies for the Mac Mini's. ;)
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Hah! :rofl: Well, I guess they'll have to wait, since they (stupidly, IMO) killed off the XServe. :incazzato:
 
Everskyward said:
Standing on my roof I could just barely see the wireless tower over the hill. The signal was probably being blocked by blades of grass. Being that you live in the PNW with lots of trees I can see wireless being a problem unless the tower is pretty close.
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Most Wireless ISPs have only one person or two on staff who ever payed attention in Physics class. ;)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_zone

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation

It's faster and cheaper to hire "point and pray" techs.

Especially in an "industry" that utilizes only $100 worth of radio gear at each house.

Which WISP was it out there out East?

The folks West of town had some heavy-hitter experienced RF people who worked pretty hard making cheap gear perform to the maximum possible (Trango Wireless gear), and the folks up northwest made up for lack of RF knowledge by buying fancier/more expensive gear (Motorola Canopy), but the Eastern plains were full of "gold rush" WISPs who thought it was all "easy".

My dad got lucky... He can "see" one of the hop sites of whoever's serving the Elizabeth, CO area, which I assume is your WISP out your way, too. Their throughput and latency is pretty awful, but he thinks anything over dial-up is "fast". ;)
 
SCCutler said:
Edit: Lance is right, they will require that a solid mount be available for Satellite TV install; usually, either the side of a solid-built structure, or a steel pole set in concrete in the ground. Installers must be licensed, as they are installing a transmitting dish.
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You are mixing up satellite TV and satellite internet.

Satellite TV has no such requirement. Get a dish. Point a dish. Done. No permanent mount required. I had Directv at the hangar, as did my neighbors. We put the dish on a tool stand. Aimed the dish with the stand setting on some alignment marks that put it (the stand) on a north-south axis. Dish aimed at 186 degrees azimuth, and i cant remember the elevation.

You can do the same with an RV and a portable dish too - and aim it yourself or pay a few grand for a self aiming dish (including those that slew while the vehicle is in motion).
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Thing is, it's the last mile that's the problem, and you can't skip the last mile for over-the-air wireless updates.
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I beg to differ, only 'cause I've seen the traffic graphs.

But it's my last week in telco carrier service, and I'll officially disavow any knowledge of the network on Monday morning. ;)

There's plenty of hours in a normal day where cell sites sit relatively idle. The bandwidth on the back-hauls is low too.

Kinda like controllers falling asleep in Towers at night... ;)

Plus, if the networks couldn't handle the bandwidth even during peak times, we'd all push "update" on the App Store screen, and a pop-up would say our Apps would update later... When there was a break in traffic.

I'm up to about six or seven App updates per every other day or so, aren't you?

That App Store update traffic has to pass through the entire network back to Apple's servers. That's the most inefficient network design path, and it works. There's no "overload".

The "scarcity" of bandwidth is quite false if the network were designed to be fully-utilized.

Ramping up specific groups of iDevices in a rotation to grab OS updates after 22:00 local to multiple local servers inside the carrier's "cloud" is avoided for political and cost reasons, not technological ones.

You should see audioconferencing. The "wave" of traffic for U.S. Carrier's gear starts when Europe wakes up, peaks at 09:00-10:00 Eastern, and again around 13:00 Eastern and then plummets after 20:00 Eastern. Each site charging only $0.01/minute per line, makes roughly $400K an hour.

Certain carriers are still running gear installed in the 1970s for "featureless" conferencing. Think they've fully depreciated that gear yet? Cash registers. Cha-Ching! The more feature-rich gear gets the big Corporation's traffic. A friendly 200-400 person earnings release conference call is only a "free" 800 number call away! Fun to watch those come in... Gotta have independent DSPs for line-status control on those. The initial ramp-up is insane, since folks call in generally "on-time". When I started in 1991/1992, the gear really struggled with that. But we also charged $0.50/min per line. Not today!

My maintenance window in telco was always 23:00 Eastern to 02:00 Eastern for every carrier in the U.S., and if possible on Friday nights.

The entire U.S. Telephony system bottoms out while everyone's out eating and drinking on Friday nights with friends. Thus why I could rarely make Friday night "Safety Meetings" at Perfect Landing restaurant. ;)

The date NOTHING could EVER be touched (known as a moratorium) in any U.S. Carrier's network?

Mother's Day.

Everything had to be fully operational the week before and it was considered Emergency maintenance if something failed on that day.

In the last five years or so, an additional moratorium date for Mexico's Mother's Day was added.

New Year's Eve was third place.

One carrier outside the U.S. issues a "Threat Ticket" for ALL maintenance. They "get it" that human error causes more outages in telco than the equipment does now.

I'm so glad I'm getting out of telco.

He who dies with the most erlangs, wins! ;)

There's plenty of bits available to do iOS updates. Trust me. "They" just don't WANT to do it. With varying values of "they". :D
 
Apple could push the updates over the air to select phones at a time. No need to do them all at once. That is how the Android phones are done.

The problem is that isn't how Apple likes to play. They want everyone to get it all at once to have a big "launch" of the update.
 
PilotAlan said:
Spoken like a true geek!

We need to go flying some time.
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Yes! We do!

Right now I have two friends and a passel of kids (if they all show up it'll have to be two flights) scheduled to go up for "first airplane rides" on Sunday. One adult and one youngster confirmed tonight, the other adult and two youngsters I won't hear until the last-minute, I don't think.

Will do my best to dole out the aviation addiction to their kids so they'll be cursing me in a few years when they're paying for ERAU or UND or something. LOL. (One of the adults is a former Metro State alum who's an inactive PP-ASEL so he fully understands the addiction!)

Also have a soon-to-be-former co-worker who never finished his PPASEL in the Boston area before he moved here to play Active Directory expert (shudder), or maybe he finished and then stopped flying... He wants to take his dad up for a bit of sightseeing but they haven't confirmed yet. I'll check with him tomorrow.

So basically Sunday is blocked out as "somebody's gettin' a ride" day, maybe even a whole bunch of somebody's. My own mini Young and Old Eagles event, I suppose. ;)

Now I wait to see if the Spring Colorado weather cooperates.

Current forecast is sayin' 53F, WNW at 7, and mostly Sunny after more (frakking) wind and rain on Saturday.

If it's bumpy it'll be quick runs around the pattern to hopefully avoid finding out how well my mini-wet/dry vac works. If it's nice, we'll wander a little further afield. ;)

If you're bored you could wander over to APA on Sunday and play the role of "Airplane #2" in this circus troupe.
 
jesse said:
The problem is that isn't how Apple likes to play. They want everyone to get it all at once to have a big "launch" of the update.
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Apple's users want it... I believe the default in iTunes is to only check for an iOS update once a week, but when people hear it's out, they go get it.
 
denverpilot said:
I'm up to about six or seven App updates per every other day or so, aren't you?
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No... I average probably less than one a day. :dunno:

But the app updates are generally small - I only have a couple of apps (okay, X-Plane is the only one I can think of right offhand, there might be one or two more) that are over the 20MB limit for over-the-air downloading.

I think the last OS update was on the order of 350MB, though. That's a lot of data to be pulling through the cell network... And come to think of it, I wonder if there's not something in the Apple/AT&T contract that prevents this, too - After all, with a 20MB limit for anything else...

That App Store update traffic has to pass through the entire network back to Apple's servers. That's the most inefficient network design path, and it works. There's no "overload".
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Nope. Apple runs their high-bandwidth stuff through Akamai.

Thus why I could rarely make Friday night "Safety Meetings" at Perfect Landing restaurant. ;)
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Is that that awesome restaurant at KAPA with the piano that has the built-in bar?
 
Doggtyred said:
You are mixing up satellite TV and satellite internet.

Satellite TV has no such requirement. Get a dish. Point a dish. Done. No permanent mount required. I had Directv at the hangar, as did my neighbors. We put the dish on a tool stand. Aimed the dish with the stand setting on some alignment marks that put it (the stand) on a north-south axis. Dish aimed at 186 degrees azimuth, and i cant remember the elevation.

You can do the same with an RV and a portable dish too - and aim it yourself or pay a few grand for a self aiming dish (including those that slew while the vehicle is in motion).
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You are correct - I mis-typed, meant to type Internet where it says TV. The difference is that the Sat Internet has a microwave transmitter, hence the licensure requirement.

Point is, Satellite TV is almost trivial to do; satellite Internet, not so.
 
denverpilot said:
If you're bored you could wander over to APA on Sunday and play the role of "Airplane #2" in this circus troupe.
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I'm flying out to Dallas on Sat AM for business. It'll have to be another week. But I really want to get a ride in a 182 and scope out the interior space.
 
I talked to the Dish sales today, they say they are great at imternet service, but it sounded like I was talking to India. I also talked to the sales persom at Camper World who was our Cable installer and he says Don't expect any faster down loads than a dial up...... yuck. but the moble HDD dish is the way to go for TV,

And the AT&T cell service and a 4G device is the way to go internet. but the cost is high.
 
Everskyward said:
It was called Airwave Access which then changed to Mesa Networks. This was back in 2006 and I only tried it for less than a year.
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Ahh. Mesa is the "northwest" group. They bought up everyone else. One of the companies they bought, I helped a friend beat qmail into submission on their first mail server. (While I tried to talk him out of running qmail, but it worked out okay.)

If they've swapped the gear out there for Motorola Canopy it might work a lot better now.

I could ring up their head RF techie dude and see if they have better stuff out there now if you want.

Their inbound call center is outsourced so they can be somewhat clueless. They'll just schedule a site survey if you're not in the boundaries Mesa defines as "solid" coverage on a map.

They run pretty lean and mean, but they're sharp. Some of the installers ... Ummm. I'll be nice.

If you want, fire me off a lat/long and I bet the techies could make a determination if things are "better" than they were in '06 out that-a-way.
 
denverpilot said:
I helped a friend beat qmail into submission on their first mail server. (While I tried to talk him out of running qmail, but it worked out okay.)
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Oh man. I DO NOT MISS qmail. Migrating the 20,000 box install to postfix/dovecot was the best thing I ever did.
 
denverpilot said:
I could ring up their head RF techie dude and see if they have better stuff out there now if you want.
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Thanks, but I'm OK with the DSL that finally made its way out there. It isn't the fastest but it's better than that wireless ever was. I wasn't too fond of that large tripod on my small roof either. I kept thinking it looked like a space alien standing there. :crazy:
 
denverpilot said:
qmail was wicked fast but lord it was a pain.
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qmail could have been decent but Bernstein ruined it with his ridiculous license. That meant that nobody could easily add the features that people needed as time went on, which meant that it was never easily packaged into distributions and you had to build from source and deal with the mess that was tons of random patches from different folks.

Dovecot and Postfix turned out to be just as fast, just as flexible, with configs that make way more sense and no need to build from source. All the features needed were built in and no patches required. Also more stable not needing a service to start it automatically everytime it crashed like Bernstein's solution required.
 
Yup. djb's odd principals killed his overall "product."

Early postfix was a mess until a couple of HP engineers fixed major speed issues since it was choking internally at HP. Nice of 'em to do that. ;)

Exim was really good back then but had that "supposedly hard to configure" reputation that was mostly undeserved. It was the documentation that sucked, not the configuration itself. Never got popular, though.

UW-IMAP wasn't bad either, but fell to it's annoying licensing too. Courier-IMAP was wonky but also kinda worked okay.

Postfix and Dovecot seem to be the outcome of various lessons learned with all that came before them and they pretty much got it right.

The mess today and for some time is the awkward layers of crap that has to be added to deal with spam. I finally got annoyed enough with it that I moved various domains over to hosted service at fastmail.fm and let their full-time mail folks deal with it. Then later decided to move personal stuff to Apple's me.com stuff.

With Apple buying the Domain name iCloud.com I still hold out a little hope that I could someday host the domains on their servers, but not holding my breath just yet.

Got an e-mail today that Google Apps/Hosted Domains has decided to limit new domain accounts to ten e-mail users unless ya pay up, so that is drying up... but mine is grandfathered with unlimited users.

I laughed when I started setting up some stuff for MHF in the Amazon cloud -- much of their infrastructure broke down the next week. Nice.

I may just have to go back to hosting my own stuff... Sigh.
 
denverpilot said:
The mess today and for some time is the awkward layers of crap that has to be added to deal with spam. I finally got annoyed enough with it that I moved various domains over to hosted service at fastmail.fm and let their full-time mail folks deal with it. Then later decided to move personal stuff to Apple's me.com stuff.
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I have a cluster of five or six servers running postfix/amavisd/spamassassin and various plugins (Razor, Pyzor, DCC) and rbl lists. It's fronted by a spam quarantine and spam report system/interface that I wrote that our clients use. I also built an API that our other developers can tap into to integrate with other products. Authenticates with the OpenLDAP cluster and custom schema that I built that the entire e-mail system is built off of.

All of that to just filter spam. Cheaper than the commercial products though. Previously we were using Barracuda but I was an idiot and forgot to budget for the support/update renewal. So I built the above in a matter of a few weeks and never looked back.
 
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