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Thursday, June 7, 2007

Isn't a single-homed datacentre a contradiction in terms ?
(posted at 10:33PM BST)

I bring this one to you courtesy of The Register:


I would like to go on record that one of the key reasons why I took Spilsby Internet Solutions on as a full-time venture was because I had worked in the industry long enough to see how *not* to do things and one of the places where I worked was Centrinet.

In comparison, Smartbunker appears to have been trading since 2003 and has many millions of capital behind it (I was privy to the original purchase price of their premises when I was still an employee) yet they only have single-provider connectivity, they do not specify the speed of said connectivity on their own website and they make the classic mistake of advertising 100% uptime.

A look at their network diagram shows dual Cisco PIX firewalls at their borders; a single remotely-exploitable flaw in the PIX's operating system would bring down a perfect 100% uptime - all Smartbunker can guarantee is that they have 100% uptime *so far*.

On the other hand, I am operating on an annual five-figure budget for hardware/datacentre/transit fees; I currently have a presence in three datacentres (Redbus Meridian Gate, London; The Planet, Texas; DediPower, Reading) and will soon have a presence in another yet-to-be-announced datacentre a bit nearer to my own base of operations.

My own border routers run on different CPU architectures, a mixture of operating systems and a variety of different routing daemons providing BGP/OSPF routing across the entirety of my network - a monogamy of any kind in your network infrastructure is a big no-no!

In all of these datacenters, I have multiple transit providers and dedicated links (UK to UK is via shared access to a dual SDH ring) between my disparate networks linking them into one - which means I have total datacenter redundancy.

I am not a multi-million pound venture but even with all that redundancy, I wouldn't bet the reputation of my business on a claim for 100% uptime because one day, I would get called out on it even it were for only a fifteen second outage.

Just for laughs, Google runs the largest collection of datacenters in the world as well as the world's most popular website but not even Google claims 100% uptime... and of all the people I would trust to be able to make that claim, it would be Google.

EDIT: I just had a thought - Centrinet are Checkpoint resellers and used to bleat about how absolutely brilliant Checkpoint firewall products are - so why aren't they using them for their own enterprise-level hosting network instead of Cisco PIX boxes ?

It would also appear that Centrinet are no longer a Checkpoint Gold partner and have been downgraded to Checkpoint Bronze... nevertheless, the fact that they don't use the very products that they push to their customers for use as an enterprise-level firewall should say it all.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Stranger things have happened...
(posted at 07:56PM BST)

I was having a typically average day today throwing together some rather arcane RewriteRule lines for a customers' Apache config when up popped an IM message from a guy I haven't spoken to for at least seven years....

Chris Horry (aka Zerbey) took Computer Studies at Boston College but due to the fact that he left before I arrived, I would have never met him if it hadn't been for people commenting that I was 'just like him' - apparently, he used to poke holes in Boston College's Novell Netware network just like I used to.

Anyway, Chris is apparently working for Symantec in Florida now (thankfully, not on the AV side of things - otherwise I would probably owe him a few whacks due to the umpteen TCP/IP stacks I have had to repair due to failed uninstallations of Norton Internet Security) and supporting their enterprise backup proggies.

I would love to get hold of Phil 'Gribz' Snell's e-mail addy just to start throwing 'Feesh!' at him like in the good ol' days... hopefully Chris will provide it to me!

 
slashdot

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CarFax For Used PCs: Hewlett Packard Wants To Give Laptops New Life

Freelancers Using AI Tools Earn 40% More Per Hour Than Peers, Study Says

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Senate GOP Budget Bill Has Little-Noticed Provision That Could Hurt Your Wi-Fi

Apple Weighs Using Anthropic or OpenAI To Power Siri in Major Reversal

VP.net Promises "Cryptographically Verifiable Privacy"

WordPress CEO Regrets 'Belongs to Me' Comment Amid Ongoing WP Engine Legal Battle

In China, Coins and Banknotes Have All But Disappeared

the register

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US shuts down a string of North Korean IT worker scams

Want a job? Just put 'AI skills' on your resume

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Google to buy power from fusion energy startup Commonwealth - if they can ever make it work

British IT worker sentenced to seven months after trashing company network

Norwegian lotto mistakenly told thousands they were filthy rich after math error

Scattered Spider crime spree takes flight as focus turns to aviation sector

Northrop Grumman shows SpaceX doesn't have a monopoly on explosions

Mitch Kapor finally completes MIT master's degree after 45-year detour

VMware must support crucial Dutch govt agency as it migrates off the platform, judge rules

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Microsoft's next Windows 11 update is more 'enablement' than upgrade

Arm muscles into server market – but can't wrestle control from x86 just yet

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Cloud lobby warns EU: Clamp down on water rules and we'll evaporate

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Junior sysadmin’s first lines of code set off alarms. His next lot crashed the company

Don't pay for AI support failures, says Gradient Labs CEO

DoJ clears HPE to buy Juniper if it sells Instant On Wi-Fi and licenses some code

China claims breakthroughs in classical and quantum computers

Canada orders Chinese CCTV biz Hikvision to quit the country ASAP

It's 2025 and almost half of you are still paying ransomware operators

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

Ex-NATO hacker: 'In the cyber world, there's no such thing as a ceasefire'

How to get free software from yesteryear's IT crowd – trick code into thinking it's running on a rival PC

Anthropic chucks chump change at studies on job-killing tech

Crims are posing as insurance companies to steal health records and payment info

Supremes uphold Texas law that forces age-check before viewing adult material

How Broadcom is quietly plotting a takeover of the AI infrastructure market

Uncle Sam wants you – to use memory-safe programming languages

Fed chair Powell says AI is coming for your job

Palantir jumps aboard tech-nuclear bandwagon with software deal

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter learns new trick at the age of 19: ‘very large rolls’

Cisco punts network-security integration as key for agentic AI

Aloha, you’ve been pwned: Hawaiian Airlines discloses ‘cybersecurity event’

US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data

So you CAN turn an entire car into a video game controller

Before the megabit: A trip through vintage datacenter networking

Data spill in aisle 5: Grocery giant Ahold Delhaize says 2.2M affected after cyberattack

There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

The network is indeed trying to become the computer

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Fresh UK postcode tool points out best mobile network in your area

Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!

HPE customers on agentic AI: No, you go first

Starlink helps eight more nations pass 50 percent IPv6 adoption

Australia not banning kids from YouTube – they’ll just have to use mum and dad’s logins

More trouble for authors as Meta wins Llama drama AI scraping case

Back in black: Microsoft Blue Screen of Death is going dark

 

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