The recent furore over the $14K phone bill of a SingTel subscriber shows how much our phone usage patterns have changed in the last decade. Originally used for making voice calls, then moving on to SMS text messages, many of us are nowadays predominantly using our phones for mobile data communications. More specifically, we’re using our phones for mobile access to the Internet. It’s the communication tools and services that’s on the Internet that we care about, not so much…
We have for some time wanted to conduct an event styled like Sun Tech Days or Microsoft Tech Days. The sort of conference or workshop that would cover a variety of techie topics. No sales, no marketing, just technology. Of course, considering our resources and our target audience, ours would be just a baby version of what the big companies are doing. It would still be interesting and unique, here in my school, because there aren’t quite other workshops like…
The recent uproar over location tracking in iOS devices seem to be overblown. Did anyone not realize that their iPhones or iPads could track their location? You can be tracked so many ways. Your favourite iOS device is just one of those many ways of being tracked. Location tracking is so everywhere in the technology of today.
If you’re a network techie like me, you will probably be very interested to know how Singapore’s OpenNet fibre-to-the-home network works. What is the technology that runs the fibre-to-the-home network? How is it related to the fibre optic networks that are already common place in enterprise and campus environments? There isn’t much engineering information you can easily find, at least not from IDA and OpenNet themselves. However, with help from Google search, I’ve managed to find a variety of information…
Cisco recently made available an interesting simulation game called myPlanNet. If you’ve played SimCity, as I’m sure most people are familiar with, you’d find some of the concepts similar. In myPlanNet, you are the CEO of a service provider, and what you do is to manage your business as it evolves through the different eras from primitive dial-up, through broadband and mobile connectivity, into the futuristic (although certainly not farfetched) medianet age.
The 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) standard was ratified in 2002, but we finally only got around to installing our first 10GE interface last year. This year, we have another big bunch of 10GE links interconnecting a big bunch of our switches. 10GE still costs a bomb. The Cisco 16-port 10GE line card lists for something like S$80K. Yes, that’s a big sum of money, particularly since the line card on its own is not very useful: You still need a…
Last weekend, a Linksys WRT610N became the latest addition to the networking gear I have at home. It replaces my trusty old WRT54G which was starting to go bonkus after serving for many years. I have been thinking about upgrading my wireless broadband router for some time. In fact, I was considering StarHub’s free Apple Time Capsule promotion last year. It does 802.11N wireless, Gigabit Ethernet wired ports, includes 500GB or 1TB of storage and printer connection sharing.
We’re starting to recruit student helpers again. They will help us with our network and data centre operations. This is like an internship, a program that we’ve run for one semester already. It is a really exciting opportunity for students as they will get hands-on learning experience working with production enterprise networks and data centres.
Software upgrades are usually not terribly complicated things. Of course, the newly upgraded software many introduce new problems, such as incompatibilities or interoperability issues with other software or systems. The same is not too different for firmware upgrades of network switches. They are not trivial (that’s why you need network engineers…), but they are documented procedures that can be and are routinely carried out by network operators and providers.
We’re still looking to hire more staff to support our Network, Data Centre and IT Security operations. It is the same super engineers kind of work I blogged previously, but this a technologist position targeted at polytechnic graduates. Our priority for this position is in Network, Data Centre and IT Security operations, in decreasing order. Let me know if you’re interested.
