So, new iTunes dropped. This is my favourite feature so far. Do Store->Update Genius & it’ll generate you a dozen Genius playlists based on what looks like genres from your library. Neat!

The test was performed over 24 hours at 30 minute intervals.

The data and all graphs are in an excel sheet here.

BT Speed Test 20:36, poor latency

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
Your DSL connection rate: 4960 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is – 4000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was – 2762 kbps

 

BT Speed Test 07:10, good latency

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test:  -provides background information.
Your DSL connection rate: 4960 kbps(DOWN-STREAM),  448 kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP profile for your line is – 4000 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was – 3697 kbps

Quality Of Service

Round Trip Time

Download BPS

Max Pause

Jitter

Traceroute

Note: Packet loss 89% at 10.1.2.165

Being the OCD sort for trying out new stuff, I downloaded & installed Safari 4 for Windows final, even though I found the beta, utter utter rubbish.

And you know what? It isn’t half bad.

Things I like:

• It’s quick. Noticeably so over Firefox & especially IE8. It makes Google Reader & mail a whiz.
• It’s sleek. Typically Apple, the UI is very good, much more visually appealing than other browsers.
• Top Sites. This is a special page that comprises of your most visited sites, presented in a flashy pseudo 3d curve. It makes a nice compromise between having one home page and multiple home pages like FF & IE and means your frequent sites are just 2 clicks away.
• Page Search. Works very well. On finding a match Safari dims the page and highlights where the matches are in white, the current position in the search is yellow. Caret hunting when searching is something that continually frustrates me in FF & IE.
• RSS. Handling is pretty good & better than other in-browser viewers. If you have a small number of subscriptions it would be really good, but for RSS addicts it’s, still no match for Google Reader. I’d go so far as to say it would be worth using for some high priority feeds (that have full text) in addition for using Google reader for the others. No sharing mechanism though.
• Search Results SnapBack. If you Google something (forgetting to open a new tab), follow a link browse around a bit, whacking SnapBack jumps you straight back to your search results page. Neat!
• Installation recognised I was British & the dictionary spells “colour” !
• Cover-Flow. I thought this was a bit of a gimmick, but… Cover-Flow. I thought this was a bit of a gimmick, but… it’s absolutely fantastic for browsing your history, especially when you can’t remember the URL you’re looking for.

“Not so much”:

• No add-ins. On Windows anyway. There are some on Mac, but they’re mostly pay-for, yuck. So no add-block, X-Marks etc ;( Although poking about in the installation folder does reveal a Java plug-ins JAR.
• Password saving, not a handy-dandy one like in FF anyway.
• Search bar. You are limited to google.com, & yahoo.com in the search bar. I heard somewhere before that there were other countries besides the US, but I think it was just a rumour. You can’t  change it to www.google.co.uk, www.google.se or whatever.  You can’t add your own search providers. Steve Jobs uses google.com, so you should use google.com Doing things your own way is not the Apple way. You do things Steve’s way or you are not cool. </sarcasm> Retarded.

For me, it’s very nearly a Firefox-killer. Lack of extra search providers being the main deal-breakers. If you’re not fussed about this it’s well worth a look.

I did find a way of synchronising bookmarks, but it’s a bit of a faff. You have to create a sync folder using either Dropbox or Mesh and also locally sync your Safari bookmarks file with copies in these folders using something like PureSync.

You don’t really want to sync the whole Safari data folder (%appdata%\Apple Computer\Safari) as that will sync your cookies and history too, and I doubt your boss would appreciate your seeing adult sites list It would also trigger Mesh or Dropbox to sync every time a cookie landed or your history changed.

A more robust version control solution is the open source Subversion. Widely used in the Java community it’s also available for use over the Microsoft side of the fence. As well as being very robust, a couple of other features are it’s optimistic Copy-Modify-Merge model and excellent support for distributed teams. All these together make it suitable for use on large projects.

Version control isn’t just for code either. I’ve even heard a few celebrity geeks on TWIT say they use it for a document repository.

SVN Install

Grab the SVN installer for the server & client. You’ll want SVN 1.5 as the latest version isn’t supported by AnkhSVN yet.

Leave both boxes checked so it installs the subversion server and Apache web server.

Choose the path to your repository. Ideally this should be on another machine, but below I’m choosing a folder under My Documents, so it at least gets backed up with the rest of my stuff.

I’d recommend creating a root folder for SVN then a folder for your first repository under that. As you may want more than one repository in the future. Doing this also makes the setup work without having to tweak the Apache configuration.

The next setup screen alters some stuff in the Apache configuration for you. You’ll probably want to change the port away from the default of 80. Now, the repository path isn’t the path you put in above, but the root SVN folder. The location prefix tells Apache to pass any URLs starting in “svn” through to the SVN server.

If you’re on Vista, I’d also recommend installing elsewhere than “C:\Program Files” to avoid UAC pain.

After the installer’ has finished, start the relevant services. (“Apache2.2” and “Subversion Server”).

Then crack open a command prompt and create your repository with

svnadmin create <path to repository>

In this example, the path I gave it was “D:\Users\Brian\Documents\svn\repos”

Badaboom – SVN is all up & running. You can test it by opening a browser and going to http://localhost:81. You should get a page that says “It Works!” – that’s just Apache. To test the SVN server is working & Apache is forwarding requests to it, browse to http://localhost:81/svn/repos/ You’ll get “repos – Revision 0: /”

Apache

This bit’s optional, but you’re better off knowing the relevant bits in the Apache config, just in case you want to change it.

The config is in <Install folder for the subversion software>\httpd\conf\httpd.conf & these are the important bits:

LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so

This tells Apache to load the WebDAV module, so you can access your repository through a web browser.

LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so

This tells Apache to load the Subversion module.

Listen 81

The port Apache is listening for HTTP requests on.

DocumentRoot "E:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server/httpd/htdocs"

The  root folder for the web site served by this Apache instance. You can serve up HTML pages form here if you like. One thing Apache is really good for though is serving up XML schemas & doing nifty things like URL rewriting.

<Location /svn>
   DAV svn
   SVNParentPath D:\Users\Brian\Documents\svn
</Location>

This tells Apache that if it gets any URLS starting in \svn just to pass them onto the SVN module loaded earlier. SVNParentPath is a bit of configuration for the module. It’s the folder above your repositories. This is handy If you want more than one repository. If you’re sure you only want one, then you can change the directive to SVNPath and the argument to point directly to the repository folder itself, instead of the parent.

AnkhSVN

The installer for Ankh is just a click through. So no sweat. You’ll want version 2.0 if you’re using VS 2008.

Adding a Solution

Right click the solution & choose Add Solution to Subversion.

As for where to, you’ll have a couple of choices. If the repository is on your local machine, you can just use the file protocol and give the path to the repository:

file://D:\Users\Brian\Documents\svn\repos\Code

or the Subversion protocol:

svn://localhost/Code/

Alternatively, if it’s on another machine, you can go through the SVN service with the URL:

svn://myotherbox/Code/

or over HTTP:

http://myotherbox:81/svn/repos/Code/

I’d recommend checking the Add a Trunk folder box. To understand why, have a read of the “Version Control with Subversion” pdf book that was installed with SVN. There is a link on your start menu.

Adding the project doesn’t commit the changes straight away, you’ll see the list of changes in the Pending Changes window. It’s fairly obvious how to drive it from here. Check the AnkhSVN site for more details.

Optional – Tortoise SVN

While you’re at it, grab Tortoise SVN, a GUI client for Subversion. You can do everything with the command line tools, but really, why would you? It’ll create and browse repositories, call SVN diff & much more all from a right click in Windows Explorer.

They’re supposed to look like this:

But I get no slice icon…

Dean from second line ran a BT line test which didn’t throw up anything too obvious. He’s raised a case with the senior support team which should get back to me in the next couple of days.

Hopefully they’ll be able to diagnose the problem further & at least come up with a plan to solve my problem. Here’s hoping.

Very nice not to be given the brush off. Thank you Matt & Dean.

Note that these tests reflect the actual throughput of the connection and are not a test of the connections capacity as measured with something like the BT Speed Tester. Please read this if you are unsure of the difference. You will note that the middle of the graph shows the day time, with performance dropping off in the evening (the two ends).

Quality of Service

This is the main reason I am unhappy with my connection. During evening hours (approximately 18:00 – 00:00) the latency on my connection increases dramatically. Pings to our hosted game server (snatch.electricdeath.co.uk) typically increase by 100ms or more to the region of 130-150ms, making on-line gaming a very poor experience. This can also be seen in the more sophisticated test results above.

An explanation of the poor results (quoted from a run at a comparable time) is given in My Connection PC software itself:

From the report (my italics):

4. QoS measure of 35% recorded for this test is poor indicating problems with the data flow going fast-slow-fast-slow during the test. MyConnectionPC measures the data flow as well as the data speed to detect congestion or regulation patterns. If the data flow is not consistent then it will result in a low QoS reading for the test. The most likely cause for this problem is contention caused by congestion. If the speed graph is very erratic i.e. not uniform then this indicates congestion, uniform indicates by design i.e. regulation. One of the causes for a low QoS is a high Max Delay and you should review the Max Delay for this test.

5. Max delay of 228ms was recorded which is very high and indicate data loss problems with the delay being caused by recovery. This will almost certainly cause the QoS to drop. Because MyConnectionPC measures the data flow as well as the data speed it can detect traffic delays. This metric reports the largest delay recorded for the test. The most likely cause for a high max delay value is packet loss because packet loss causes recovery actions to take place. However high latency connections will always cause TCP idle delays which will show in the graph as very regular and repeated delays all about the same value. This is a natural delay that cannot be avoided. The Trip Time value reports the route latency.

Download Speed

As you may expect this also correlates with download speeds achieved at similar times.

Round Trip Time

The increase in latency can also be observed from the round trip time statistics gathered:

Traceroute

Further investigation by using Visual Route indicates that the slow response is the entry point to the O2(Be) network.

During the day this typically drops to the region of 30ms.

The source data and all graphs can be found here.

What the problem is not

The problem is not due to the following factors:

• My router. Both the O2 supplied router and my other router, a Linksys WAG200G behave exactly the same.
• My PC. I have three PCs in my household. The problem is exhibited on all of them, when the others are not connected. Also the problem can be confirmed using the built in ping utility in my Linksys router.
• Game ports. The problem is seen inside games, at the command prompt, in test software and at the router. For the information of O2 first line support, opening game ports will not help latency. Opening a port allows traffic on that port and denies it completely when it is closed.
• Other software on my PC. See above.
• Congestion at the exchange. A number of people in my village share the same exchange, but use different ISPs (Plusnet, BT). They are not seeing the same congestion/ latency issues. The problem is within O2.

Resolution

I was told that O2 would be fine for gaming and that is clearly not the case. Unfortunately I’m over the 30 days money back period. Since investigating this problem, I have found a 91 (yes 91) page thread on the O2 forums with people experiencing similar problems. Out of the 544 respondents to the poll on the thread. 90% are experiencing a problem. There are at least 490 other O2 customers would would not agree that the problem “must be my pc” as the last person I spoke to on O2 support said. There is another message from O2 here that acknowledges the problem. It would be nice if support did the same. However the timeframe for the fix has come and gone and myself and others are still experiencing problems.

In order to resolve this I would like one of the following:

• O2 to resolve my problem, or
• Give a firm date and commitment when the problem will be resolved, or
• Issue me with a MAC code with no further charges or opt out costs. Either now, or should the problem not be fixed when promised. I am prepared to waive the money I have already spent and put the episode down to a bad experience.

I really hope that I can resolve this. However should it prove necessary, I will have no hesitation in escalating in the following manner until I achieve a satisfactory result:

• I will make a formal complaint to O2. If that does not solve the issue, then
• I will seek resolution via the ADR process via Otelo. If that is unsuccessful then
• Ofcom

But I really hope it doesn’t come to that. I’ve had really good service from my O2 phone and would like the issue resolved. Or at least let go without a fight.

First line support went though the usual scripted question set but this wasn’t very useful. When pressed, the best I could get out of them was that I should try “opening some ports” to get better pings in my games. Uh, don’t think so. Port opening is only required for running a game server (i.e. unsolicited connection requests), a closed port doesn’t introduce latency – it blocks traffic, and… I’m also seeing the same latency at the command prompt with good old ICMP ping.

Eventually, they gave up and stonewalled me with the “it must be my PC” line. Quite apart from the fact that I have multiple PCs and see the same problem from each of them with the others not turned on. I also see the problem using the ping utility in my router (Linksys WAG200G). I’d swapped this one back in from the O2 supplied (Thompson) router but seen no difference.

I also know it’s not congestion at the exchange. I’ve been in contact over messaging with people on the same exchange in my village and they’re typically pinging 100ms less than me at the same time I’m experiencing problems.

Here’s an overview from a run of MyConnectionPC:

Pretty bad ;( Detailed reports & graphs for above tests here. The quality of my connection gets very poor indeed. And unless O2 can improve things I certainly won’t be recommending them to anyone. I’ll also seriously consider paying the £100+ get out just to leave them.

From the MyConnectionPC report:

QoS measure of % recorded for this test is very poor indicating severe problems with the data flow going fast-slow-fast-slow during the test.
MyConnectionPC measures the data flow as well as the data speed to detect congestion or regulation patterns. If the data flow is not consistent then it will result in a low QoS reading for the test. The most likely cause for this problem is contention caused by congestion. If the speed graph is very erratic i.e. not uniform then this indicates congestion, uniform indicates by design i.e.regulation. One of the causes for a low QoS is a high Max Delay and you should review the Max Delay for this test.

Also, here’s a traceroute with node info. Note the horrible packet loss en-route.

I’m leaving MyConnectionPC running for 24 hours to get a full picture. Then I’ll give O2 another go…

Porsche…tick

Black…tick

Reg…tick

Just hope he doesn’t get a RROD on his dashboard

I’ve just moved ISP to O2 on account of Nildram’s grandparent company, Tiscali being a bit fubar.

As part of the deal they ship you a free modem which is no surprise these days. What is kind of surprising is that they give you the option of not taking it, whilst also saying that they can’t provide support on your connection if you’re using a third party router. Hailing from the “not thick” section of the population, took the freebie as it would be interesting to see what turned up if nothing else.

The O2 supplied box is a white brick replete with the usual selection of modem blinky lights. The admin pages on the modem are nice, with a few consumer level friendly things like fault diagnosis & various wizards, dynamic DNS & so on. There’s also a very nice set of pages for setting up port forwarding games and other applications, which rather amusingly contains several flavours of bit torrent. Most common games up to a year ago are there, as is Xbox live. There’s no line stats available, so you can’t see your signal to noise ratio etc which is a bit of a shame. A more serious omission is the inability to change DNS servers. I can see why they’ve done this, but it does mean that you can’t start using the very wonderful OpenDNS service.

Not to be deterred a bit of googling turns up that it’s actually a rebadged Thompson TG585, which you helpfully get told when telneting into the box, having found the admin logon. Once you’re in, it’s a snap to change the DNS settings to use OpenDNS and life is good.

Of course, this, me being me, I’ll tell you exactly how to reach domain name service nirvana. Naturally I, no one I know or even my (rather handsome) cat will take responsibility if you brick your router. So proceed at your own risk.

Step One – Login

Open a command prompt & type

telnet o2wirelessbox.lan

The user ID is SuperUser and the password is O2Br0ad64nd.

This should greet you with a nice ASCII art graphic, the router information and an all important admin prompt.

————————————————————————

______  Thomson TG585 v7
___/_____/\
/         /\  7.4.20.4
_____/__       /  \
_/       /\_____/___ \  Copyright (c) 1999-2008, THOMSON
//       /  \       /\ \
_______//_______/    \     / _\/______
/      / \       \    /    / /        /\
__/      /   \       \  /    / /        / _\__
/ /      /     \_______\/    / /        / /   /\
/_/______/___________________/ /________/ /___/  \
\ \      \    ___________    \ \        \ \   \  /
\_\      \  /          /\    \ \        \ \___\/
\      \/          /  \    \ \        \  /
\_____/          /    \    \ \________\/
/__________/      \    \  /
\   _____  \      /_____\/
\ /    /\  \    /___\/
/____/  \  \  /
\    \  /___\/
\____\/

————————————————————————
_{SuperUser}=>

Step Two – Verify Existing DNS

To find out what the existing DNS settings are type

dns server route list

and hit enter. You’ll get a list something like this:

DNS Server Entries:
DNS Server     Source  Label  Metric Intf         State  Domain
D 87.194.255.155                10     O2_ADSL       UP      *
D 87.194.255.154                10     O2_ADSL       UP      *


The IP addresses should match with those you see on the admin pages of the o2 box. The interface (“O2_ADSL”) will change between providers (or also probably between ADSL & ADSL2+). The point is, it may be different for you. Metric is the priority that the DNS entry has where lower number = higher priority. This is important, because if we don’t make our new settings have a higher priority than the ISP’s DNS servers, they’ll just get lost.

Step Three – Change to OpenDNS

At the time of writing, OpenDNS’s servers were 208.67.222.222  and 208.67.220.220. You may want to check this if you’re reading this blog a long time after publication

You’ll need to type the route add commands into the telnet session, specifying the IP addresses you want (OpenDNS),  a higher priority than 10 (5) and the interface from above (for me, O2_ADSL).

Do this after a flush, that will ensure everything is up to date:

dns server route flush
dns server route add dns=208.67.222.222 metric=5 intf=O2_ADSL
dns server route add dns=208.67.220.220 metric=5 intf=O2_ADSL

Step Four – Get The Hell Outta Dodge

OK, before you celebrate, you’ll need to verify that everything’s stuck. List the entries out as you did above & you should see the new IP addresses along with the priority of 5.

Type the following to save & quit:

saveall

exit

Optionally, check the router admin page to verify the DNS settings and go to www.opendns.com – the page should will tell you “(You’re using OpenDNS!)”

Step Five – Sip Champagne & Nibble Nachos

Well deserved Another layer of protection against phishing, viruses & naughty sites.