Slashdot Mirror

In NZ we have old no greater than 7.6mbps broadband (yet they don't say it's 7.6 they say "Maximum as fast as your line allows").
Starting price is like $30/month for "Maximum as fast as your line allows" download/128kbps upload at 200mb monthly data (with caps/speed throttles).

And we're in the midst of unbundling the Telecom NZ owned copper wires so hopefully we'll get something more like >8mbps.

here's a link to Telecom's pricing plans. C'est merde! http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/chm/0,6858,203086-2023 21,00.html

Then again, my ISP recently got rid of Usenet, claiming that it wasn't popular enough

The article's author should come to New Zealand and see what we have, namely a monopoly worse than most slashdotters think Microsoft is. Want broadband? The standard is 256Kbps DSL ($NZ50/month), usually without a monthly traffic limit of something like 10GB. This is still better than just 6 months ago where the standard was 128Kbps with a 10GB traffic limit ($NZ60/month), which doesn't even qualify as broadband. You can now get (as in in the last few months) 2Mbps (also at $NZ50/month), but that'll definitely have a monthly traffic limit of 10GB (including national traffic and dropping to 64Kbps when you reach the limit), which you could burn through in no time at 2Mbps. Here are the common plans of today from Xtra, Telecom's ISP branch.
Because the local loop is still virtually all Telecom (only a relatively few lucky people in Wellington can get a physical line that isn't owned by Telecom) there's no real competition for internet access. Ultimately almost all ISPs have to go through Telecom's service and just resell that, and Telecom does not play fair. The only possible exception is paradise.net/Telstra Clear, and I'm not entirely sure if they go through Telecom's system or not. The Kiwi Share, which is supposed to protect us against this sort of thing, is bogged down in beauracracy and failing miserably. All this while we hear about how great broadband is in places like Europe and Asia, HK gets 1Gbps broadband, and even Australia has a 20Mbps service.
An interesting recent take on the telecommunications situation here.

On the plus side, at least Telecom is generally fairly good at setting up your connection quickly.

Well seems like the slashdot crowd havent heard about the recent NZ police porn scandal (which has been a huge deal in the media!)

Streaming video of news: http://www.xtra.co.nz/streaming/0,,10550-4309851-3 00,00.html

txt: http://xtramsn.co.nz/news/0,,11981-4311659,00.html

"A police audit has found that about 20 percent of email capacity was taken up with pornographic images, and 300 officers are under investigation for having pornography on work computers. "

now, perhaps monitoring software could have at least prevented the email exchange of porn, would have made it a whole lot less embarrassing for the police!

Xtra in New Zealand certainly does. You can see their stats on the right hand side of that linked page. It was a godsend when they implemented it - the number of email borne viruses in this country plummeted. As a consequence of this, most of the ISP's in New Zealand followed suit (as Xtra is the largest ISP here) and implement some form of virus scanning.

I think they just use a more conventional virus scanner than any 'quick checks' you describe.

Beyond me why this isn't the norm for ISP's and corporates - anyone running a mail server not scanning email is almost incompetent in this day and age.

We should give everyone a decent picture of our pricing over here and let them see for themselves:

Xtra

Paradise

iHug

Those are three major ISPs around here but all of them hover at about the same price. Personally, I'm with Xtra for historic reasons but that will be changing. Oh, also, these are only ADSL links. Cable is available over here as well (like the first poster stated) but it's even more limited than ADSL rollouts here (yeah, I'm jealous it isn't available in my area yet). Moving and making a living in a South Pacific isalnd has its perks, but one of them isn't choice in the communications arena, broadband or not. I almost look back fondly at the Baby Bells and growing up in West Virginia, then the shock treatment kicks in and I'm all better. :) j/k

Here are the tables for Xtra, and part of New Zealand Telecom, part owned by Microsoft, and ADSL monopoly for most of the country.

Home: http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203086-2023 43,00.html
Business: http://www.xtra.co.nz/products/0,,5804,00.html

Here are the tables for Xtra, and part of New Zealand Telecom, part owned by Microsoft, and ADSL monopoly for most of the country.

Home: http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203086-2023 43,00.html
Business: http://www.xtra.co.nz/products/0,,5804,00.html

Waitomo is well away from any of the bigger cities, so they won't have ADSL, and possible even have fairly low-grade phone lines.

Also, decent broadband is -expensive- over here, depending on what plan you have, you get about 500M free and then pay 15c per meg, or more.

Or you can get 128k with a 10G cap, and 10c/M over that..

Typical pricing
here (Telecom 0wn the market, so most other ISP's have similar pricing)

So even if full-rate ADSL was available, the pigeons would still be a hell of a lot cheaper.

In addition, they would do the right thing if they implement filters like my ISP did recently. Filter works and comes with no extra (NPI) charge.

Is it only in America where we've let the industry cripple the future potential of broadband in such and insidious manner? (i.e. offering connections that can't really be used w/o having to pay extra)

No, try New Zealand, where 90% of the broadband is delivered via the incumbent's ISP.

With traffic costs at $130 USD/Gigabyte of traffic, you have nothing to complain about in the US.

I do believe in paying for traffic - just read "The Tradegy of the Commons" and you will too, but I think the rate should be more like $10 USD/Gigabyte. (And steadily falling.)

WTF!!!!! I cannot believe they think that that clause is in any way shape or form is ok. Maybe I'm overreacting, but, oh wait I'm not.

I'm certain you'll find similar clauses in many (most?) other large ISPs in and out of North America.

Xtra was merely a victim of poor wording.

If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.

I'm afraid the options for consumer broadband (16KB/sec broadband?) are somewhat limited in New Zealand. Very, very limited. Go to someone else? I wish that were an option!

Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith.

Yeah, the only reason they haven't done it earlier is because they're trying to get the high users. All the other ISPs have been forced to put 10GB or so caps on DSL because of the low profit margins (half of the money, at least, goes to Telecom no matter which ISP you choose). So this has left Telecom's Xtra as the only real option if you want to download more than that. Now they feel they've saturated the market for high-usage flat rate users they're now considering introducing a monthly cap of 6GB of so, which is lower than even the other ISPs have previously done.

I guess they're hoping that the benefits of switching to another ISP for an extra few GB aren't attractive enough to overcome the aggravation of dumping people's current account?

Xtra is NZ's biggest ISP and is run by NZ Telecom which has a monopoly on DSL. It's DSL pricing is here ($NZ):

60MB at their excess charge (18c/MB after 500MB) is NZ$11

Unfortunately true.

Here in New Zealand the main form of fast 'net access is ADSL. There are other systems, like the recently-featured CityLink, a 10M-1G (depending how much you pay for your link) city-wide ethernet, but unless you live in Wellington (or want to hack your routing and lose your connection every time it rains with a satellite connection), ADSL is pretty much the only way to get your fast 'net access.

The only problem is that the ISPs on the network seem to be chronically short of bandwidth. Xtra, the ISP associated with the local telecommunications monopoly, regularly has people complaining about it when they only get 4kB/sec out of their 128K DSL links.

(This is for 'JetStart', the 128K rate-limited DSL which comes for US$30/month. Even that is saturated! You can get 8 Mbit downstream with JetStream, at a horrible cost, e.g. US$250/month for 3 gigabytes of traffic).

What would be very cool would be if a provider took this up and used it for local point-to-point connections, say if I wanted to connect my LAN with my friend's one, over on the other side of town. Or a business link - a 10X speed boost would be much appreciated!

Another local ISP was added to ORBS in the past, because dialup modem users on dynamic IPs were observed to run spam relays. However, the ISP's owner gave Brown a good talking-to and had his ISP un-blacklisted.

What I would like to see is some more responsible management. Now that ORB* is out of the hands of the zealot Brown, we might get that.

Older versions of Exchange relayed by default. E2K doesn't, and I don't think 5.5 did either.

Clueless lusers don't help; the ISP referred to brags about running open relays as a service to customers so they don't have to worry about changing their SMTP settings on their mail programs if they travel overseas.

In the beginning Turing created the Machine.

And the Machine was crufty and bogacious, existing in theory only. And von Neumann looked upon the Machine, and saw that it was crufty. He divided the Machine into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and yet the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery, and the beginning of wisdom.

And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and blessed it, saying, "Go forth and replicate, freely exchanging data and code, and bring forth all manner of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was cool. The Architecture prospered and was implemented in hardware and software. And it brought forth many Systems unto the earth.

The first Systems were mighty giants; many great works of renown did they accomplish. Among them were Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, the targeter; EDSAC and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the defender of the sky and father of all networks. These were the mighty giants of old, the first children of Turing, and their works are written in the Books of the Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.

Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and baleful attributes. And they said unto themselves, "Let us go now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may bring us great fortune." With sweet words did they lure their customers, and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.

And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and grew numerous upon the earth. In those days there were IBM and Digital, Burroughs and Honeywell, Unisys and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to their own System, hardware and software, and did not interchange, for their Licences forbade it. This was the Second Age, the age of Mainframes.

Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and von Neumann looked upon the earth and were displeased. The Systems and their Corporations had grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true Engineers. And the Customers groaned and cried loudly unto heaven, saying, "Oh that there would be created a System mighty in power, yet small in size, able to reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned and cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer would arise to grant us freedom from these oppressing Suits and their grave and perilous Licences, and send us a System of our own, that we may hack therein!" And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the cries and were moved, and said unto each other, "Let us go down and fabricate a Breakthrough, that these cries may be stilled."

And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann spoke unto Moore of Intel, granting him insight and wisdom to understand the future. And Moore was with chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it 4004. And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art a Breakthrough; with my own Corporation have I fabricated thee. Thou art yet as small as a dust mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size of a mountain, and conquer all before thee. This blessing I give unto thee: every eighteen months shall thou double in capacity, until the end of the age." This is Moore's Law, which endures unto this day.

And the birth of 4004 was the beginning of the Third Age, the age of Microchips. And as the Mainframes and their Systems and Corporations had flourished, so did the Microchips and their Systems and Corporations. And their lineage was on this wise:

Moore begat Intel. Intel begat Mostech, Zilog and Atari. Mostech begat 6502, and Zilog begat Z80. Intel also begat 8800, who begat Altair; and 8086, mother of all PCs. 6502 begat Commodore, who begat PET and 64; and Apple, who begat 2. (Apple is the great Mystery, the Fruit that was devoured, yet bloomed again.) Atari begat 800 and 1200, masters of the game, who were destroyed by Sega and Nintendo. Xerox begat PARC. Commodore and PARC begat Amiga, creator of fine arts; Apple and PARC begat Lisa, who begat Macintosh, who begat iMac. Atari and PARC begat ST, the music maker, who died and was no more. Z80 begat Sinclair the dwarf, TRS-80 and CP/M, who begat many machines, but soon passed from this world. Altair, Apple and Commodore together begat Microsoft, the Great Darkness which is called Abomination, Destroyer of the Earth, the Gates of Hell.

Now it came to pass in the Age of Microchips that IBM, the greatest of the Mainframe Corporations, looked upon the young Microchip Systems and was greatly vexed. And in their vexation and wrath they smote the earth and created the IBM PC. The PC was without sound and colour, crufty and bogacious in great measure, and its likeness was a tramp, yet the Customers were greatly moved and did purchase the PC in great numbers. And IBM sought about for an Operating System Provider, for in their haste they had not created one, nor had they forged a suitably grave and perilous License, saying, "First we will build the market, then we will create a new System, one in our own image, and bound by our Licence." But they reasoned thus out of pride and not wisdom, not forseeing the wrath which was to come.

And IBM came unto Microsoft, who licensed unto them QDOS, the child of CP/M and 8086. (8086 was the daughter of Intel, the child of Moore). And QDOS grew, and was named MS-DOS. And MS-DOS and the PC together waxed mighty, and conquered all markets, replicating and taking possession thereof, in accordance with Moore's Law. And Intel grew terrible and devoured all her children, such that no chip could stand before her. And Microsoft grew proud and devoured IBM, and this was a great marvel in the land. All these things are written in the Books of the Deeds of Microsoft.

In the fullness of time MS-DOS begat Windows. And this is the lineage of Windows: CP/M begat QDOS. QDOS begat DOS 1.0. DOS 1.0 begat DOS 2.0 by way of Unix. DOS 2.0 begat Windows 3.11 by way of PARC and Macintosh. IBM and Microsoft begat OS/2, who begat Windows NT and Warp, the lost OS of lore. Windows 3.11 begat Windows 95 after triumphing over Macintosh in a mighty Battle of Licences. Windows NT begat NT 4.0 by way of Windows 95. NT 4.0 begat NT 5.0, the OS also called Windows 2000, The Millenium Bug, Doomsday, Armageddon, The End Of All Things.

Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among the Microchip Corporations; mighter than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it had it waxed. And Gates heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of this curse:

"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."

And the people were cowed in terror and gave homage to Microsoft, and endured the many grave and perilous trials which the Windows platform and its greatly bogacious Licence forced upon them. And once again did they cry to Turing and von Neumann and Moore for a deliverer, but none was found equal to the task until the birth of Linux.

These are the generations of Linux:

SAGE begat ARPA, which begat TCP/IP, and Aloha, which begat Ethernet. Bell begat Multics, which begat C, which begat Unix. Unix and TCP/IP begat Internet, which begat the World Wide Web. Unix begat RMS, father of the great GNU, which begat the Libraries and Emacs, chief of the Utilities. In the days of the Web, Internet and Ethernet begat the Intranet LAN, which rose to renown among all Corporations and prepared the way for the Penguin. And Linus and the Web begat the Kernel through Unix. The Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities together are the Distribution, the one Penguin in many forms, forever and ever praised.

Now in those days there was in the land of Helsinki a young scholar named Linus the Torvald. Linus was a devout man, a disciple of RMS and mighty in the spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One day as he was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell into a trance and was granted a vision. And in the vision he saw a great Penguin, serene and well-favoured, sitting upon an ice floe eating fish. And at the sight of the Penguin Linus was deeply afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream.

And in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore answered and spoke unto him, saying, "Fear not, Linus, most beloved hacker. You are exceedingly cool and froody. The great Penguin which you see is an Operating System which you shall create and deploy unto the earth. The ice-floe is the earth and all the systems thereof, upon which the Penguin shall rest and rejoice at the completion of its task. And the fish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty Licensed codebases which swim beneath all the earth's systems. The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and bogacious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and perilous Licences shall it capture. And in capturing shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documentation shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the earth and all who code therein."

Linus rose from meditation and created a tiny Operating System Kernel as the dream had foreshewn him; in the manner of RMS, he released the Kernel unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold. And in the fulness of Internet Time the Kernel grew and replicated, becoming most cool and exceedingly froody, until at last it was recognised as indeed a great and mighty Penguin, whose name was Tux. And the followers of Linus took refuge in the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities; they installed Distribution after Distribution, and made sacrifice unto the GNU and the Penguin, and gave thanks to the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore, for their deliverance from the hand of Microsoft. And this was the beginning of the Fourth Age, the age of Open Source.

Now there is much more to be said about the exceeding strange and wonderful events of those days; how some Suits of Microsoft plotted war upon the Penguin, but were discovered on a Halloween Eve; how Gates fell among lawyers and was betrayed and crucified by his former friends, the apostles of Media; how the mercenary Knights of the Red Hat brought the gospel of the Penguin into the halls of the Corporations; and even of the dispute between the brethren of Gnome and KDE over a trollish Licence. But all these things are recorded elsewhere, in the Books of the Deeds of the Penguin and the Chronicles of the Fourth Age, and I suppose if they were all narrated they would fill a stack of DVDs as deep and perilous as a Usenet Newsgroup.

Now may you code in the power of the Source; may the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities be with you, throughout all Distributions, until the end of the Epoch. Amen.

Written by Lennier
-----

(posted anonymously so I dont get fired)

All of ORB's networks have been null routed inside Above.Net, not just Manawatu Internet Services but all of the ORBS testers as well.

This has been done because ORBS violates Above.Net's AUP by sending email probes to any SMTP server they can find probing it for open relay, and also hosting a website that lists every single open relay server that they can find. In many people's book this a big no-no.

Alan Brown, of MIS, who is the perpetrator behind ORBS has turned his bitching and moaning in the direction of MAPS because it gives him the moral high-ground and because Paul Vixie, who runs MAPS is also the CEO of Above.Net.

THIS ISSUE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAPS

This is not the first time that Alan has gotten himself in trouble and it wont be the last, however, In this case I do think that Above.Net have gone to far in blocking all transit through their network destined for ORBS. This is ofcourse their right however.

On the alleged issue of Above.Net advertising null routes for ORB's networks to their peers, I can say that this is a complete lie. And I will prove it:

route-server.cerf.net>sh ip bgp 202.36.147.16
BGP routing table entry for 202.36.147.0/24, version 4651414
Paths: (4 available, best #1)
Not advertised to any peer
1740 1 4648 9325
134.24.88.55 (inaccessible) from 134.24.88.55 (134.24.127.27)
Origin IGP, metric 20, localpref 100, valid, external, best, ref 2
1740 1 4648 9325
192.157.69.5 (inaccessible) from 192.157.69.5 (134.24.127.201)
Origin IGP, metric 20, localpref 100, valid, external, ref 2
1740 1 4648 9325
192.41.177.69 (inaccessible) from 192.41.177.69 (134.24.127.131)
Origin IGP, metric 20, localpref 100, valid, external, ref 2
1740 1 4648 9325
198.32.176.25 from 198.32.176.25 (134.24.127.35)
Origin IGP, metric 20, localpref 100, valid, external, ref 2

So, in summary, ORBS has instituted a splatter campaign against MAPS due to the tenuous link of Paul Vixie to Above.Net, where in essence it has nothing to do with MAPS and everything to do with ORBS repeatedly violating Above.Net's AUP and after repeated warnings from Xtra (MIS's provider), NetGate (Xtra's provider) and Above.Net (NetGate's provider) he still continues to violate AUP's as if it were his sole right to do anything he wants to anyones network.

I have seen several comments blaming Telecom NZ (who own both NetGate and Xtra) for the blocks on ORBS, however it has nothing to do with them and they are simply stuck between a rock and a hardplace.

This post is too long. Sigh.

This is how it looks to me..

1. Telecom introduced a flat rate to its ISP, Xtra . As a means of killing off the rest of the ISP's that have had flat rates for years. eg, iHUG, Sinesurf etc..

2. They then complain that their exchanges are overloaded with all the extra traffic all the other ISP's are causing. Given that they are the largest ISP in the country. They shoot themselves in the foot by going flat rate. And now they want a way to make money out of it.

Pretty straight forward to me.. Although there's more to it than that. And this article in the New Zealand Herald is worth a read if you're intrested: Telecom spurs Internet rage .

This is how it looks to me..

1. Telecom introduced a flat rate to its ISP, Xtra . As a means of killing off the rest of the ISP's that have had flat rates for years. eg, iHUG, Sinesurf etc..

2. They then complain that their exchanges are overloaded with all the extra traffic all the other ISP's are causing. Given that they are the largest ISP in the country. They shoot themselves in the foot by going flat rate. And now they want a way to make money out of it.

Pretty straight forward to me.. Although there's more to it than that. And this article in the New Zealand Herald is worth a read if you're intrested: Telecom spurs Internet rage .