Topic: =/\= NASA'S first look at "Vesta" asteroid, talk to dolphins, bandwidth cap app!

[stoneyface]

first up today is the new photo's by NASA of the giant asteroid (really a proto planet almost) "vesta". NASA plans to rendezvous with the asteroid soon in a mission to discover it's secrets. in reality, it is the second largest object in the asteroid belt so this is no small potato ( refence to last asteroid rendezvous mission). it is 330+ miles in diameter! NASA will be using a small craft called "dawn" to match vesta's path and record photos and follow the asteroid for a long time to get as much data as possible and will actually orbit the asteroid for nearly a year. read the really interesting details here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110511.html

next up is a story about scientists trying to establish a dolphin vocabulary, record it and try to start "talking" to dolphins in real time. i hope this works, i want to hear if they really are thanking us for all the fish read the details here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028115.400-talk-with-a-dolphin-via-underwater-translation-machine.html

researchers at georgia tech have developed an app called "kermitapp" which will hopefully keep ISP's honest about their retarded and neanderthal-like bandwidth caps. as you may have heard the stories about multiple ISP's flat out lying to customers about it's cap and other limits, this app could be a great god-send to consumers to take back their rights and their rightfully paid for services! yes, i am very passionate about this issue as bandwidth caps are an inhibitor to process and when companies as large as youtube and netflix are affected by it, something is very very wrong. basically it is the ISP's being greedy imho. read about the KermitApp here: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/051111-kermit-isps-gatech-bandwidth.html

[Lono]

Three awesome links today - thanks for the heads up!

 

[stoneyface]

thanks for the thanks! glad to be of service!

[Bonk]

I read the kermit paper, and it is a home use tool, it can only tell the user what they are using, not what exactly the ISP routers are doing.
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~marshini/files/kermit.pdf

It is also important to distinguish a speed cap from a usage cap.

And it seems they have a convoluted method - a router flashed with DD-WRT for firmware and then using a packet flow plugin.

Why re-invent the wheel? Badly.

Nah, what we need is for the ISPs to open up the customer-side SNMP ports on the DOCSIS 2 and 3 modems. (Motorola Surfboards ideally). Then we can watch it all ourselves locally. The monitoring and control apps would proliferate quickly.

The new modems already have all of this built-in. No need to use a custom router firmware, run a local server with MySQL, php and a flash front-end webapp... just have the ISPs open certain portions of the SNMP monitoring and modem controls to the customer side. Some business accounts already do this, though most ISP techs are not familiar with these "advanced" concepts. (old, 90s stuff, been on the hardware for years, only starting to get used now...)

My quick and dirty solution for minimal control is wintc.

SNMP is on all the DOCSIS2+ modems, and QoS in all the OS network stacks now... so... why would one need anything else? A single app and peer negotiation on the lan would cover it all.

No need for kermit. It's not easy being green. Besides, kermit, as I recall it was an old network service right? Kermit, Gopher...  Bad name to pick for a new network application.

[stoneyface]

there are simpler solutions out there. the problem is that ISP's are not co-operating at ALL! nothing ziltch nada! right now the isps are desperately trying to cram the genie back into the bottle after many years of users expecting as much bandwidth as they can use and now the isps want to go back to metered service. unfortunately once people realize they are being scammed and already know what "unlimited" internet is, they want it back. the isps are not playing fair and are not only withholding information but won't even tell customers when they have reached bw limits other than the overage fee on the next bill. many isp's are throttling bw as well. the reason kermit exists is because we the consumer must fight back on our own. if we don't fight back, we will lose the internet "as we know it". i for one, think it is disgusting how these people operate. information and internet should be a right and high bandwidth is the internet these days.