Few months ago I moved away from Google Chrome to Opera Mobile on my Android device. Google Chrome is pretty loaded and overall slow. Recently I noticed browsing was pretty slow. I noticed that “Off-Road mode” was enabled.
I disabled it and performance was much better. I did heard of it in past and clearly it’s a proxy mode where packets between Opera instance running on cell phone and destination server are routed via an Opera server which uses some special compression technologies and helps in making browsing faster. Carrying with my obsession for looking at ASNs and IP address, I enabled it again and visited bgp.he.net and was surprised to see the result.
I have been to quite a few countries but I must say Japan just stands out in internet connectivity. Overall connectivity is just amazing out here. As I landed on airport in Fukuoka, I noticed open free wifi (just one signup online form to accept TOS and it was up), later I noticed Fukuoka City Wifi project and it’s really visible across streets and very much works. As
I got to hotel, I was given SSID for wifi and it was just up! No crazy proxy, no crazy use of hotel room numbers/last name combinations. I was getting 20Mbps speed on wifi. This was a clear sign that transit was not bottleneck and likely wifi/end point connectivity was the one which was putting it on to 20Mbps (802.11n on a good quality router with 5Ghz). As I connected my laptop on wired LAN, I noticed (which I did expected by now) - connection synced at 100Mbps LAN and that was pretty much internet speed I was getting.
Just thought to put a quick blog post. Right now I am sitting at Shanghai airport (China) and looking at local Internet routing table of this region. As well know - routing between India & China very much sucks and most of packets go via US.
Here’s a trace from China to India to one of servers I manage:
It has been very interesting as well as very busy times in life. There have been lot of developments at my job end where I am spending almost 14-15hrs a day but at the same time I think I should start blog posting again.
Starting with a non-technical topic this time…
Why incompetent leaders are dangerous?
A close friend asked me sometime back and I happen to have interesting experiences with those “incompetent leaders”. The context of this question was that my good friend was offered a job in a good company, good salary, interesting work but under a highly incompetent leader. So should he proceed for it or not? My reply to him was immediate no, while my other friends (since it was group discussion) were in favor of it considering it.
Yesterday I was driving and radio was pretty boring. Next, I connected cell phone to car’s stereo (I use a PT-750 to wirelessly connected my devices to car’s audio system). Next I tuned into Gaana.com app and experience was overall good. The way whole setup was working itself is a wonder - wireless profiles keeping layer 3 link (IP address of device) consistent and handovers happening on layer 1. On top of that a while world of backbone routing across AS9498 backbone the hosting provider’s network of the app.
Now an interesting thing in this setup was the IP allocations. I that IP allocated by Airtel was 100.92.215.253.
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.
Today I came across a nicely written article in Business Standard on NOFN. Article’s title was “NOFN: A distant dream”. I must say it is one of good articles I have seen so far on the topic and most of other articles appeared to be factually incorrect and more like Press Releases of UPA.
Some key points from the Business Standard article:
According to a top official at the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the project was conceptualised without a proper study. “NOFN would connect 2.5 lakh villages from the block level. But, no study was done on the details on optic fibre still the Block level, and how healthy those fibres are.Experts say that the NOFN project does not include service offering. It is just about the laying of optic fibres. For end-to-end services, service providers will have to set up their own infrastructure at the gram panchayat level.While the initial cost was projected at Rs 20,000 crore for the NOFN project, private companies will need to pump in much more than this amount to offer services to end customers.
Today was voting day in many states including Haryana (where I stay) and I just casted vote. This was 2nd time I voted and first time when I voted in a Lok Sabha election (last time being for local Municipal Election).
Sometimes back I came across a very nice lecture by one of Indian scholar, politician, author and lot more Mr Arun Shourie.
Some key points of his lecture
Political situation has degraded significantly and during the time he gave this lecture. Four of politicians including Haryana’s Ex-CM were in jail for some really serious charges.
We are not using rights of freedom for the re-construction of society. Media is one of key institutions which has degraded so much.
We feel proud to say that we are largest democracy though real bitter truth is that most of that is a complete disarray.
No party in current time believes in ideology, idea or ideals. It’s plainly politics to get in power. (I personally disagree to this though).
We have got lot’s of media channels and that make us feel very proud of though most just work in same manner. The pattern as well as the news is almost same on each of them. Diversity & plurality is not there.
There’s a very organized structure of paid media in form of “rate cards” where certain rates are provided in well defined pattern for giving better news coverage.
Indian media is very much into giving excessive coverage to insignificant events while there’s almost no interest in critical issues like state of defence, our position w.r.t. China, our internal security etc.
Indian media has gone so much into “manipulation mode” that they use a lot of “So you mean to say….” kind of statement to make things more exciting while loosing the actual value in discussion.
There’s almost no coverage in mainstream Indian media on scientific developments. New which has potential to impact our life significantly is not given any importance at all.
Elite Indian class considers India to be a “Knowledge Super Power” even though without knowledge, no read and opinion on everything. :)
There’s too much of balanced journalism where idea is to show two sides and end every debate with yes & no kind of situation. There’s no analysis or use of mind - it’s all just like showing a balanced, unquestionable picture of everything. While in real life there’s only side, only one side is right and not two sides.
(Best advise:) Do not waste time in watching TV when it’s showing useless crap news. Just turn it off and watch TED talk or Authors @ Google videos talk on YouTube. :)
There’s a false sense that Indian society has become intolerant. Truth is that it’s all about weak state control.
Lokpal likely won’t help and all we need is three key changes in judiciary - No adjournments at all, Preponderance of probability and punishment not just in form of fine but also a ban from public life.
Sad truth is that over time India is becoming weaker and weaker due to extremely poor governance. India is moreover governed by bureaucracy and not really political leadership.
Some personal thoughts…
I really wish to read his books and infact meet him someday in person. There are lot of things to learn from his experience. As Disinvestment Minister he was one of key persons in VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd) disinvestment during Vajpayee’s Govt. This was time when this precious telecommunications infrastructure got investments from Tata Group which later turned it into Tata Communication after merging assets of VSNL, Tyco Global Network and TeleGlobe.