My-Views

This is my first and probably going to be the only blog post talking about a NOG i.e a Network Operator Group. I usually do not talk about that here because NOG is supposed to be facilitating the work of the network operator community and in itself should not be a topic to focus on or talk about. As a matter of fact, I find it a bit irritating when NOGs are presented as the end goal when parties are thrown in just to celebrate certain age of NOG when hours are wasted just telling stories about NOG planning etc.

Over two months passed since anti-farm law protests have started. It’s having a major impact across life in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. This post covers it in detail.

Advanced warning: Very India specific post. Has nothing to do with systems or networks. Do not read if you aren’t interested in Indian farm distress, the way our democracy works and associated issues.

Image source: Firstpost

Background of farming stress

Due to a number of policy decisions, farmers in Punjab and Haryana (and some key areas of UP) got into a vicious cycle of producing wheat & paddy crops in excess. While it was actually a need of the hour when India was in a food crisis decades ago but since the green revolution, it has just continued. A number of expert committees have explored over time to reduce this dependency but lack of political will always come in the way.

A post to dump mind views. Hasgeek folks (who run RootConf conference in Bangalore + some other places around) seem to be in expanding mode. Besides RootConf which is a conference primarily for DevOps community, they are doing events on Fintech etc and now expanding to networks. I have been to and presented at multiple RootConfs on RIPE Atlas probes and BGP routing security. Both of these topics were from networking domain but closely touch the Sysadmins and thus probably made sense.

Attending SANOG 34 in Kolkata and today Champika from ICANN mentioned about how they (LKNOG) is trying to promote local participation by keeping the event free for locals. That is great if they can manage that. As he finished, I went to the microphone and suggested that whether or not such NOG (Network Operator Group) events are free for local operators but they must be kept free for students. I was part of INNOG 2 which happened recently and we kept the event free for the students.

(Warning: Post is about Indian politics and International readers can likely skip the post unless interested in Indian politics)

After the recent announcement of General Elections as well as tensions on relations with Pakistan, the whole environment is getting so political. News channels are full of people screaming about the party, the leader they support while the level of discourse has got to a very low level.

I must admit I was much more excited about elections back in 2014 as compared to now and I feel that is the case with many other people around me.

Last week while travelling to London from Delhi IGI airport I was standing in immigration queue. One of fellow passenger (likely from Bihar as per my guess from his accent) came right behind me. He was bit afraid and asked me in low voice if those (immigration) gates would get him to his flight for Dubai. I smiled and told him that it’s common passage for everyone travelling to just anywhere and explained to him about his gate by looking at his boarding pass. By this time he appeared less worried and stood silently behind me. After few mins as queue proceeded a group of 4 travellers (again of similar profile) proceeded to immigration desk and I heard multiple immigration officers screaming/shouting on them for coming to their desk without boarding pass. I even heard a loud noise.

Saw excellent movie “The Inside Job” on 2008 market crash. It nicely explains that in fine details, people & companies who were involved, how it happened and finally what Govt. did. I was amazed by funny part of story where they let one to insure against things which you they did not own!

Movie Trailer

Have fun!

So last month I had a wonderful trip to Bangladesh for bdNOG. This is bit delayed.  

Some thoughts on infrastructure

1. In terms of infrastructure - roads & traffic, power, quality of builds - it seemed like India in 2000’s.
2. Specifically roads and traffic was bit terrible and even as an Indian (who manages to drive in Indian traffic!) I still got scared out of traffic in Dhaka. Speeds, roughness and overtaking is pretty high.
3. There was no Uber and app based services are still pretty low. It was mostly usual “yellow taxi” which one had to call. (And it was expensive by local standards).
4. There was excessive, just excessive amounts of overhead cabling in Dhaka and most of key city areas. It’s worth noting that there is way more overhead fiber than India. I guess most of it was running “active ethernet” based solutions (not a PON).  Most was just via media converters on both ends.
5. I got 30Mbps speeds in cheap budget hotel in Dhaka which was more higher then what I have ever seen in India! (Speedtest here)
6. Bangladesh currently is connected to outside world via SEA-ME-WE4 (landing at Cox’s Bazaar) and a terrestrial cable route via Kolkata.
7. Overall network connectivity with India is decent since many large Bangladeshi networks buy transit from Tata Communications (AS6453) and Airtel (AS9498). So mostly there’s direct path to India and if not direct then via Singapore which added bit of latency but was not as bad as India-China routes.
8. Bangladesh has a real & functional internet exchange :)

Like last three APRICOTs, I would be attending APRICOT 2015 this time. It’s in Japan and it would be fun as always to meet networking community. :)

Buzz me if any of readers here are attending. Would be great to meet & greet!

And I am back with blog post. It has been almost months since I posted last time. Last few months of life went extremely busy but I loved them. A completely new learning curve.   My today’s post is primarily about India’s BBNL. It’s not the first time I am posting about it but since topic is pretty widely in media these days due to Modi’s Digital India plan.  

So what is BBNL?

Well, BBNL stands for Bharat Broadband Network Limited. It has got quite a few names including NOFN (National Optic Fiber Network), and another old name on Mr Rajiv Gandhi. BBNL website is available here. This is a legacy project taken over by recent NDA Govt. Originally it was introduced by Kapil Sibal during UPA regime. The idea is to lay significant amount of dark fiber till Gram Panchayat level. For this an initial fund of 20,000 crore which is around $4 USD has been budgeted.