November 2009 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

FiOS & PONs

by Chuck Anderson

As a followup to a discussion we had after the WLUG meeting, here are some good pages to read about how FiOS works. Verizon is using Passive Optical Networking, either BPON or GPON depending on the CO. The downstream side is shared, since by its very nature a PON's downstream direction is broadcast on a single wavelength--the light goes from the OLT to every customer's ONT on the PON "tree". For privacy each customer's downstream traffic is "encrypted" so only the intended ONT/customer can decrypt it. The upstream side is shared via TDMA since only one customer's ONT can trasmit at a time on the single upstream wavelength "up the tree" towards to root of the PON where the OLT lives...each ONT gets a "time slot" for upstream transmissions. There can be up to 32-128 customers shared on a single PON. http://www.dslreports.com/faq/verizonfios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_Line_Termination

Nov. 20, 2009

REMINDER: WLUG Meeting Wed Nov 18th

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Everybody, Our next WLUG meeting will be on Wednesday, November 18th, at 7:00 PM on the WPI campus. The meeting room is the place where we met the last two meetings, namely, that room next to the Morgan Hall dining area. Next to the dining hall on the right is a door. Enter. A short lit hallway is in front of you. Walk a few steps. A doorway is on the right. Enter. You have arrived. Seat yourself. Chat with friends. Enjoy the meeting. The topic is TBD, which most likely means we'll have a giant round table discussion on any topics of interest. After the meeting, we'll go out for pizza and soda. See ya there! Andy - -- Andy Stewart (KB1OIQ) Founder: Worcester Linux Users' Group Founder: Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group President: PART of Westford, MA (WB1GOF) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFLA2zUOjiraCaOTOoRAo7vAJ4n1kzAYwGT8FKuBGjtKDU68C1JSgCg4fUg UaZVMyRHFNR4gEQ4Owh76UE= =HuXW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Nov. 18, 2009

Open Video Alliance Contest

by Josh Levy

*Want to win a trip to South By Southwest 2010? Or maybe a Flip Mino video camera? Read on...* *Open Video in 60 Seconds* <http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/> The Open Video Alliance is holding a video contest<http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/>. To enter, just make a video spot explaining open video in 60 seconds or less. Then upload it anywhere and tell us the URL. Our judges—including web luminaries like Jimmy Wales and Mitchell Baker—will pick the best and most creative entries. One lucky winner will be headed to Austin on an expenses-paid trip to SXSW 2010 <http://sxsw.com/interactive>*, *and three runners-up will get a Flip Mino handheld video camera. The last day to submit a video is January 31, 2010. Head over to the contest page <http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/> to check out the entries and submit your own video! Complete rules are here<http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/about/> . *Need some inspiration?* We've got you covered. Here are some ideas.<http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/about/#3>For more on open video, check out some open video issues <http://openvideoalliance.org/issues>. *Who are you?* The Open Video Alliance <http://openvideoalliance.org/> is a coalition of organizations and individuals devoted to creating and promoting free and open technologies, policies, and practices in online video.

Nov. 18, 2009

Re: [Wlug] writing at 1GB/s ?

by brad

(sorry list moderator, i initially replied with the wrong email address). Thanks for the reply. > > brad> In the past i was pretty pleased to write 60MB/s under > brad> real-world conditions on my linux systems a few years back. I > brad> just wanted to ping the group about this. Does anyone know if a > brad> hard drive or even memory come close to writing data at this > brad> speed on a linux system? Or, what might the limit for data rates > brad> on a linux PC these days. From my google'ing it appears hard > brad> drives top out at around 100MB/s. > > If you're serious about grabbing all the data and writing it to disk, > then you'll need to setup some sort of RAID, where you spread your > writes across a bunch of controllers and disks. > In the past i've used a RAID style arrangement to capture data at seemly fast data rates (though not quite at 1GB/s). > In this case, if you > get say three high end PCI-express SATA cards with four ports, you > could stripe the data across 12 1Tb disks at 1GB (You said GigaBYTE, > right?) without too much trouble, assuming you have a bunch of PCIe > slots on the board. > Yes, i did say GigaBTYE. Oddly enough, in my initial calculations i was off by an order of 2 -- 500MB/s, and i thought, umm there's a slim chance i can write that fast. Then i re-ran the numbers and got 1GB/s, at which point i thought i'm looking at an impossible task. > <snip> > > BTW, How will this device move the data to your file server? 10Gbit > Ethernet? Direct PCI-E interace? Infiniband? > The data will be moved via SneakerNet. My machines are not connected to any kind of network. > Do you need to actually keep all the data, or can you pre-process it > and compress it or summarize it, etc? Then write those results to > disk? Loading up the system with lots of RAM will give you more > leeway, but you're still going to be hurting to handle this flood. > Good question. All of the data is necessary, pre-processing isn't really an option nor do i have a hook to process data on the instrument. (At the very least i need to show an acceptable amount sensitivity to the instrument's readings to keep the funding dollars coming in, and a job :) ). Currently i use a lot of RAM as a large ring buffer and spool that out to disk when i get a chance, but again, that's only on the order of around 50MB/s. > brad> Note: This piece of instrumentation has onboard memory for > brad> writing, which i'll probably have to use, but if there was a way > brad> to stream the data, it would be preferable. > > You're going to have to invest in a big box with lots of bandwidth to > handle this, along with the disks to hold all this data. > This is why i'm thinking i'll just have to use the instrument's onboard memory. i'm not sure how feasible a 'big box' will be in my lab, dollars are tight and we really need to have some degree of portability. > And I'd > really really really suggest you try to pre-process and summarize and > reduce the data before you try to write it. > yeah, i've looked in to trying to compress the data in a lossless manner, but that ends up taking up more CPU than i can spare since the data is all binary. > Good luck, and let us know what you end up doing! > Thanks, i'll need it! It helps to hear ideas (thanks!) just to see what other people might suggest. I'm still in the early stages. I'll look into the RAID solutions through various hardware interfaces (SATA, SAS). Although in my experience RAID only yields a performance increase by a factor of 2, and it looks like i'm going to need a 10-fold performance boost. I'm probably going to be throttled by the RAM capacity rather than disk capacity, b/c i don't think i'm going to be able to write to disk fast enough, at least with the kind of system Thanks for the response, - brad

Nov. 16, 2009

Re: [Wlug] writing at 1GB/s ?

by John Stoffel

brad> At work, i might be getting a piece of instrumentation in my lab brad> that that is capable of out putting out 1GB of data per brad> second. Fun! You're going to have an interesting time handling data from this device for sure. brad> In the past i was pretty pleased to write 60MB/s under brad> real-world conditions on my linux systems a few years back. I brad> just wanted to ping the group about this. Does anyone know if a brad> hard drive or even memory come close to writing data at this brad> speed on a linux system? Or, what might the limit for data rates brad> on a linux PC these days. From my google'ing it appears hard brad> drives top out at around 100MB/s. If you're serious about grabbing all the data and writing it to disk, then you'll need to setup some sort of RAID, where you spread your writes across a bunch of controllers and disks. In this case, if you get say three high end PCI-express SATA cards with four ports, you could stripe the data across 12 1Tb disks at 1GB (You said GigaBYTE, right?) without too much trouble, assuming you have a bunch of PCIe slots on the board. I'd probably setup RAID 0 (striping) with a stride setup so that every 1 to 16 Megabytes you write to a new disk, so as to take advantage of the cache on the disks. You'll have to do some testing to determine the best numbers. Also, if this data is important, I'd setup mirrored pairs of disks and then stripe across those disks. More controllers and disks and power. BTW, How will this device move the data to your file server? 10Gbit Ethernet? Direct PCI-E interace? Infiniband? Do you need to actually keep all the data, or can you pre-process it and compress it or summarize it, etc? Then write those results to disk? Loading up the system with lots of RAM will give you more leeway, but you're still going to be hurting to handle this flood. brad> Note: This piece of instrumentation has onboard memory for brad> writing, which i'll probably have to use, but if there was a way brad> to stream the data, it would be preferable. You're going to have to invest in a big box with lots of bandwidth to handle this, along with the disks to hold all this data. And I'd really really really suggest you try to pre-process and summarize and reduce the data before you try to write it. Good luck, and let us know what you end up doing! John

Nov. 16, 2009

writing at 1GB/s ?

by brad

WLUG'ers, At work, i might be getting a piece of instrumentation in my lab that that is capable of out putting out 1GB of data per second. In the past i was pretty pleased to write 60MB/s under real-world conditions on my linux systems a few years back. I just wanted to ping the group about this. Does anyone know if a hard drive or even memory come close to writing data at this speed on a linux system? Or, what might the limit for data rates on a linux PC these days. From my google'ing it appears hard drives top out at around 100MB/s. Note: This piece of instrumentation has onboard memory for writing, which i'll probably have to use, but if there was a way to stream the data, it would be preferable. Thanks, -- brad

Nov. 16, 2009

MacBook Pro for sale w/ AppleCare, 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM

by Ryan Pugatch

Hi all, I am looking to sell my MacBook Pro. It was purchased around June 2008. It was the last non-unibody model. Specs: Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz 15" LED backlit display 4GB 667 MHz DDR 2 RAM (2x 2GB DIMMs) 200 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive GeForce 8600M GT Video card (256MB) Webcam Backlit keyboard DVD-R/CD-R drive Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1 I will install a fresh version of Snow Leopard on it. This machine is covered by AppleCare: Telephone Technical Support: Active AppleCare Protection Plan. Expires: March 24, 2011 Repairs and Service Coverage: Active Your product is covered for eligible hardware repairs and service under the AppleCare Protection Plan. Expires: March 24, 2011 It is in overall good condition, no major marks or dents. I am asking $1450 for it, cash only. A comparable new MacBook Pro with AppleCare would cost over $2000. I am located in Ashland. Picture: http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/4286/mbp.jpg Please let me know if you are interested. Thanks, Ryan

Nov. 15, 2009

old thinkpads

by Ryan Pugatch

Hi! Anyone have some older Thinkpads they'd be interesting in getting rid of? Looking for one with a Pentium 4 or newer processor. Also, curious if anyone has an X31 battery they'd like to sell for a few bux. Cheers, Ryan

Nov. 13, 2009

Meey

by kpoisant＠gmail.com

Its thursday night any one interested in grabbing a drink or meeting up? Sent from my iPhone On Nov 10, 2009, at 12:00 PM, wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org wrote: > Send Wlug mailing list submissions to > wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > wlug-owner(a)mail.wlug.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Wlug digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: web hosting? (Theo Van Dinter) > 2. [SPF:fail] Re: web hosting? (Andre Lehovich) > 3. Re: web hosting? (Nick Nassar) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:46:06 -0500 > From: Theo Van Dinter <felicity(a)kluge.net> > Subject: Re: [Wlug] web hosting? > To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug(a)mail.wlug.org> > Message-ID: > <f35e9da80911100746v62cd8540m7641d17159c57589(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 > > Just curious, why do you want it to be local? If it's a random host > out on the Internet, locality probably doesn't matter much unless > latency is an issue for you. > > And what do you mean by local? Are you limiting to just Worcester > area, or Eastern MA, or New England, or Eastern US, or ...? ;) > > You can get a VPS pretty cheap, I seem to recall prices of ~$35/month > for a small instance in NYC w/ 100-200G/month transfer. > > > On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Nick Nassar <nassar(a)alum.wpi.edu> > wrote: >> Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap, relatively >> Apache/MySQL/PHP web and POP/IMAP email host? Preferably someplace >> local. It >> doesn?t have to be too powerful. A few gigabytes of storage space >> and max >> bandwidth in the range of tens of gigabytes per month. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:14:31 -0500 > From: Andre Lehovich <Andre.Lehovich(a)gmx.com> > Subject: [Wlug] [SPF:fail] Re: web hosting? > To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug(a)mail.wlug.org> > Message-ID: <4AF99167.8020907(a)gmx.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > >> You can get a VPS pretty cheap, I seem to recall prices of ~$35/month >> for a small instance in NYC w/ 100-200G/month transfer. > > Linode.com is $20/month for Xen VPS w/ good specs. They get rave > reviews, though I've never used their service. > > I've seen posts on lowendbox.com mentioning VPS deals as low as $3/ > month. > > I'm currently using pairlite.com for shared hosting (FreeBSD). So far > no problems. I'm considering switching to nearlyfreespeech.net, > because > their metered pricing looks to be cheaper for my usage. > > --Andre > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:32:47 -0500 > From: "Nick Nassar" <nassar(a)alum.wpi.edu> > Subject: Re: [Wlug] web hosting? > To: "'Worcester Linux Users Group'" <wlug(a)mail.wlug.org> > Message-ID: <6CCB952F64B34E0D99EF0B68BE34A821(a)WCCATV13.local> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > By "local" I guess I really mean small enough that I can get a real > person if there's an issue, even if it's email support only. I've > had bad luck with large web hosts like Dreamhost and 1and1 in the > past. Most of the time they're excellent, but when there is an issue > tech support is unresponsive and it takes days to get it resolved. > It's been a few years since I've shopped around, and maybe that's > not as much of an issue anymore. > > I'm leaning towards a hosted solution, rather than VPS. Someone else > can worry about keeping up to date with security updates for Linux > and Apache. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] > On Behalf Of Theo Van Dinter > Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:46 AM > To: Worcester Linux Users Group > Subject: Re: [Wlug] web hosting? > > Just curious, why do you want it to be local? If it's a random host > out on the Internet, locality probably doesn't matter much unless > latency is an issue for you. > > And what do you mean by local? Are you limiting to just Worcester > area, or Eastern MA, or New England, or Eastern US, or ...? ;) > > You can get a VPS pretty cheap, I seem to recall prices of ~$35/month > for a small instance in NYC w/ 100-200G/month transfer. > > > On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Nick Nassar <nassar(a)alum.wpi.edu> > wrote: >> Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap, relatively >> Apache/MySQL/PHP web and POP/IMAP email host? Preferably someplace >> local. It >> doesn?t have to be too powerful. A few gigabytes of storage space >> and max >> bandwidth in the range of tens of gigabytes per month. > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > > End of Wlug Digest, Vol 73, Issue 9 > ***********************************

Nov. 12, 2009

Re: [Wlug] [SPF:fail] Re: web hosting?

by Adam Gomes

A friend of mine (also on this mailing list) uses Linode for a VPS and he's very pelased with them. On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Andre Lehovich <Andre.Lehovich(a)gmx.com>wrote: > > You can get a VPS pretty cheap, I seem to recall prices of ~$35/month > > for a small instance in NYC w/ 100-200G/month transfer. > > Linode.com is $20/month for Xen VPS w/ good specs. They get rave > reviews, though I've never used their service. > > I've seen posts on lowendbox.com mentioning VPS deals as low as $3/month. > > I'm currently using pairlite.com for shared hosting (FreeBSD). So far > no problems. I'm considering switching to nearlyfreespeech.net, because > their metered pricing looks to be cheaper for my usage. > > --Andre > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Nov. 10, 2009