Loopback Filter with Truman Boyes

I am very happy that I signed up for this run and dedicated some time to preparing for it; this is my second 5k race and I feel pretty good about my performance. I pushed myself hard and there were more hills and changes of terrain than a prior run that I had in New Jersey. The Run Melbourne 5k was organized well, there were some good warm-ups in Federation Square – doing aerobics to Grease Lightening – “go grease lightening your burning up your motor now .. “ – and I was pumped to start in the “under 30 mins” section; the second wave just behind the under 25mins section. It was a chilly morning, wearing shorts and a new Adidas Techfit top, my Vibram Five Fingers, and the morning wind cut between the buildings and channeled a cool spell across the runners in Fed Square. In any case I was ready for the run and when the second wave started I started moving pretty quickly to work myself up through the crowd, breaking through a few sections and uphill through the Botanical Gardens. It started off uphill and since this was the first 2km’s I found myself cruising pretty decently. There were plenty of motivators on the sidelines, a band playing some rock about 1km in to the run, some african drummers along the path, and some ladies holding up signs that read, “men in tights are hot!”. Funny.

I kept moving at about the 5min/1km pace, and when I had a downhill section I really picked it up and started taking large leaps to keep my speed up. At about the 4km mark I started to slow a bit on the uphill of the bridge near Rod Laver Arena. I felt winded from exerting myself downhill but once I took enough calming breaths I was ready to pick up the pace – plus the terrain had leveled off. The final 5k was over the bridge and down into the Birrarung Marr (city side of the Yarra near Fed Square). I am still waiting for the results which will be published in The Age on Tuesday, but I expect it to be around 26 minutes. The clock said 28, but we were the second wave that started about 2 minutes after the 1st wave. In any case, I am feeling pretty pleased with my results.

My next big run is coming up in November  (likely were will be another one I can fit it in Sept). November’s run will be a 12km relay triathlon in Phuket, Thailand with some friends from work. Team Suspicious if you are interested. How fitting.

My eeePC 1000HA mini-laptop has been sitting idle for the longest because I bought it with the intention of doing small linux projects on it, and yet it really has proved to be less than ideal to travel with 2 laptops, all the time taking them out at the x-ray machines, packing them back up as TSA employees shout things like, “take out your laptops, take off your belt, your shoes, take your money out of your wallet and give it to us, etc, etc”. I tried the method below, but it didn’t seem to work. I then tried UNetbootin from windows on a cheap 1GB flash drive.

[tboyes @ sa-nc-apg-36.static.jnpr.net : ~/Downloads]>ls -alh eb4-b1.iso                                          [21:46:07 on 10-07-12 : s001]
-rw-r–r–  1 tboyes  tboyes   789M 27 May 03:08 eb4-b1.iso

[tboyes @ sa-nc-apg-36.static.jnpr.net : ~/Downloads]>diskutil list                                               [21:46:10 on 10-07-12 : s001]
/dev/disk0
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *200.0 GB   disk0
1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            199.7 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:        CD_partition_scheme                        *158.1 MB   disk1
1:     Apple_partition_scheme                         137.6 MB   disk1s0
2:        Apple_partition_map                         1.0 KB     disk1s0s1
3:                  Apple_HFS 3MobileBroadband        23.8 MB    disk1s0s2
/dev/disk2
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:                                                   *1.0 GB     disk2

[tboyes @ sa-nc-apg-36.static.jnpr.net : ~/Downloads]>sudo bash                                                   [21:46:25 on 10-07-12 : s001]
Password:
[%{%}%n%{%} @ %M : %~]>umount /dev/disk2
umount: /dev/disk2: not currently mounted
[%{%}%n%{%} @ %M : %~]>dd if=eb4-b1.iso of=/dev/disk2

<wait>…

1615644+0 records in
1615644+0 records out
827209728 bytes transferred in 307.475770 secs (2690325 bytes/sec)

I then grabbed a 2GB Sandisk Cruiser usb flash drive and began to install the ISO file via UNetbootin. EB4 (Aurora) booted up fine after I defined the USB as the primary boot device inside the BIOS. Ran GParted to partition the hard drive appropriately with an Extended Partition on what was previously the D: drive (~60GB), and then built the logical ext4 fs partition and a 5GB swap logical partition. So far so good. I know there are better ways to make a linux system perform better – ie. swap on the outer cylinders – and having multiple mount points such as /, /usr, /var, /home, etc, etc. But frankly, I just don’t care. It’s a netboot. I don’t care about making it perfect. It’s a tool that I want to use for various things.

Ok, the installation looked like it was working fine, but it failed while installed grub. After closer inspection I think I know why: the software is installed into /dev/sdX, however the grub loader was attempting to write to /dev/hda0. I changed this in the advanced settings and restarted the install. Hopefully this works and I can dual boot this little laptop.

Update: The install worked great and I have a dual-booting working. Wifi works great even to an AD-HOC network that I created from the MBP. Overall I am pleased with the setup and would highly recommend eeebuntu for netbooks and mini-laptops.

In Melbourne International Airport about to fly to Wellington; I brought my USB 3G adapter (from three.com.au), which is handy especially in the airport where wifi services are at a premium.

My trip to Wellington is just for the weekend. Going to get the apartment over there ready for some new tenants, and I will pack a bunch of our belongings and send them up to Hong Kong.

My travel this year has been considerable, but somehow I have yet to requalify for AAdvantage Gold. I am about 5k miles away; even though I had so many flights, a large percentage of them were so discounted that they had no mileage accrual.

I had an interesting conversation with a mate recently about Skype supernodes. The question that came up is certainly not new, but it does resurface from time to time: can supernodes in Skype p2p networks create some type of man-in-the-middle attack which may include eavesdropping on transit sessions. This brought me to look at the Skype protocol analysis which was performed by some folks at Colombia University in Sept, 2004. The full paper is here. Now, I am not sure if the protocol has evolved considerably from the time of the paper, or if supernodes are now a commonality in Skype p2p networks. From what I understand, and what the paper describes, if a node is behind NAT or a FW it will not become a supernode. However, there are plenty of network connection methods that will provide a public IP address to a computer. Take some mobile networks for example that do assign from a public pool to nodes. It seems that nodes that have been available for a long period of time, and are therefore deemed as being reliable would be candidates to become a supernode. This is interesting in the mobile Internet model; think about a 1xRTT/2.5G/3G bridge inside a taxi/truck/etc. It could be a mobile supernode that routes calls and messages.

It would be interesting to see a more recent protocol analysis of Skype to see if there are areas that have been further engineered. Since the service now sells commercial calling capabilities, I would imagine that quality of service functions (even if rudimentary) would be developed.

Updating my Juniper SSL VPN (IVE OS) to version 7.0 beta. This should support some cool new features, but most importantly it will keep my network connect (NC) build in sync with the versions used at Juniper. The benefit: I don’t need to upgrade and downgrade when switching between corporate and personal SSL connections. Why use SSL VPNs instead of just secure protocols (ie. TLS wrapped mail, etc)? Well when I use VoIP applications from my laptop or iPhone, I really want to keep the connection secure until it hits the SIP proxy, which for me happens to be on the same LAN as my SSL VPN.

Looking for read “The Black Swan”. Been doing Lesson 1 of Rosetta Stone Mandarin Version 3. So far I love the lesson plan and the way the program teaches. So far I am learning Traditional Chinese characters and spoken Mandarin in small phrases. In any case, there are a lot of times that I start to realize the meaning of a sentence  after hearing a few similar sentences and the visual elements that go along with them. Rosetta will not really explain the reasons or the literal translation of the text, but with this approach I am able to understand the reason within the context.

The trip to China and Hong Kong was quick but a lot was accomplished. The trip to South Korea was canceled as the meetings were not finalized. In any case this worked out well, stayed an extra day in Beijing with a friend, and got to see a local perspective on eats and checked the local area. It was a good trip to China.

I presented some ideas on large DC designs, primarily discussing some ideas around linking large IDCs together. MPLS VPNs (L3VPNs and L2VPNS) are usually the most straight-forward. You get the things you want on costly transit links such as QoS, Traffic Engineering, Load Balancing (ECMP, etc), and you also have the ability to handle overlapping address spaces in the event that you want to use the same addresses on machines in the production and staging areas of the provider network. Now what if there is only Internet connectivity between the DCs in either a primary or backup sense, is there still a way to deploy MPLS to link the DCs? Yes, it is quite feasible to use MPLS over GRE, and if you really needed encryption, you could even have MPLS over GRE, over IPSEC. The overhead is not nice, but it works.

It is worth pointing out that QoS and Traffic Engineering are not really feasible in an end-to-end approach when the tunnel is over GRE tunnels since the traffic will pass over a pure IP network that works in a best-effort basis.

We also discussed the use of Hadoop as a means to perform distributed computing on a large scale. All the big boys use Hadoop including Baidu, AWS, Alibaba, AOL, etc. The ideas that Hadoop presents are quite impressive. Take for example that they wrote a filesystem (HDFS) that is fully distributed across hundreds or even thousands of nodes, and uses the stock standard disks inside each machine because the IOPS are much higher than using a SAN. The idea is that it is easier to move the computation than it is to move data. I couldn’t agree more.

Up in Shenzhen now. Headed up here via train from Hong Kong; showed my passport to depart Hong Kong, then walked across the long hallway to China, where I then present my passport to enter China. My hotel was within walking distance of the train station so I navigated my way over to the Sheraton Fourpoints. A nice hotel as you would expect from the Starwood group. Taking the train back to HKG today, then flying up to Beijing for a meeting.

Shenzhen is a major developing city, and the place is buzzing with excitement in various markets. I forgot to pack my Apple MBP DVI-to-VGA adaptor for this trip, so I visited a local electronics bazaar. It was truly amazing to see the types of electrical components that are sold wholesale and retail. LEDs in all possible colours, diodes, capacitors, chips, ethernet PHYs, you name it. I picked up the adaptor for 7RMB. I bought two.

Next week I will likely be in Seoul, S. Korea before heading back to NJ. Then a trip over to Australia, then back to NJ for August, and then back to Hong Kong after that. Time to rack up some miles in the sky. That will pay off when we want to take some trips next year, or to help the family get some tickets with points.

This morning my son decided that my iPhone should take a nice sub-orbital trip around the office and consequently the re-entry and landing was not as smooth as Houston would have wanted it; the phone landed on the office tile floor and the glass screen was smashed in about 20 places. Interestingly enough the phone still worked and the touchscreen managed to work while the glass was shattered.

I called around to various cell phone shops but most of them are simply dealers that push a particular carrier’s phones. One problem I found is that since AT&T is the only official carrier of the iPhone in the USA at this time, there really are not that many places that service iPhones. Most of the small shops that push T-Mobile phones (HTCs, etc) don’t officially have any iPhone repair capabilities.

I found a great shop in East Brunswick, New Jersey ( http://www.iphonebandaid.com/ ) that I really need to give a good plug for; these guys rock! It’s a small shop off Route 18 South that has some tech wizards that understand a lot about repairing the iPhone. My repair was performed in under an hour (I was told about 1 1/2 hrs, but they had it done sooner), and the price is perfect: screen repair is $50. You really can’t beat it. AT&T will have the phone repaired for about $200 and you need to mail it in to a service center. iphonebandaid.com will do the repair on the spot. I chatted with the owners and they really knew the details of their trade; I was amazed that they also service phones that have been soaked in water. One of the tricks to getting all moisture out of the phone is to open it up and put it in a bowl of dry rice. Seriously. They showed me how they open the phones, the parts inside, and I was really impressed with how genuinely interested the company was in their business. If you are in NJ or NY and you need an iPhone or HTC repair, I highly recommend these guys.

Tomorrow I catch a flight to Hong Kong.

My trip to China is finally booked, well most of it anyway. Some parts of the travel are going to be left until the last minute when I actually know where I need to be; it appears to be in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Beijing. I am flying out of JFK airport in NYC, and the toss up on which airport to fly out of  (I would have preferred closer EWR) really came down to the Airline, Frequent Flyer Programme, and the total travel time. Cathay Pacific is a really good airline from my experience in traveling around Asia, and better yet they are part of OneWorld so on these long flights I am able to get some more miles to use on personal trips.

Today I ran my first 5k race. I have been into running purely as a hobby now for a few years, but over the last year I have started to run more frequently and for longer runs. I firmly believe that the key is to enjoy yourself on the run, but also to track your runs in terms of distance and times even if you change the path each time. It helps to understand how you are doing, and it really helped me in preparing for my first 5k.

I use an application on my iPhone that provides GPS mapping, a stop watch, and the ability to keep history on each run and course. It was a cheap application that is actually getting a lot of use these days. One the week of the 5k I ran a quick 3km, then a nice paced 4.5km through some woods with various elevations, and on the day before the race I took a rest day. Food consumed: granola bar, fried egg on wheat bread, and a nice chug of water. That’s about it for the 5k, I really didn’t want to have anything liquid slushing around.

I finished the race at 26mins, which was pretty good for me and I felt like I could keep going for another few more k’s provided the elevation was moderate. I am pumped and ready for more runs soon.

I should mention that this was also my trial of the Vibram Five Finger running shoes for a race; (I have been running with them around the neighborhood for about a year now), and they were great. My legs are a little sore, but I really think the shoes were a help to my balance, posture, and they kept me going forward instead of running in more of an ‘up-and-down’ motion that would occur with a heavy running shoe.

On hold calling my travel agent in New Zealand over VoIP. Scratchy connection, but then I realized that the call is being transcoded on Asterisk. G.729 to Ulaw. There is plenty of bandwidth on FiOS so I should spend the time to tweak it back to using Ulaw on the local handset. Here I am burning up voice minutes to a 021 NZ mobile that has been call forwarded to a PBX.

Finally they pickup and the call seems like it is lost in the New Zealand rainforests, taking every turn around thousands of ferns while thousands of kiwi birds peck at my voip packets in the dark until there is barely an audible sound that echoes through our Internet connected telephone conversation. Alexander Bell would still have been proud; I imagine that our conversation from NJ to NZ sounded probably similar to some of the early transatlantic calls. Crackly, delayed, and some of the reasons that knowing the phonetic alphabet would be of use. We recited lots of Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot back and forth until somehow my last name was spelled out. This is when email is more powerful than spoken language; rarely would I say this,  but it truly is when language is delayed and full of errors.

Teliax is a good provider that I have had very little to complain about in the past. They are my SIP upstream peer and most of the time their network is solid, but that is when I call US destinations. When I ring New Zealand directly I am pretty sure they route my call through some very cheap gateways that basically make the call take some less than ideal paths over some less than ideal networks. Put it this way, I have another SIP peer in Australia that provides excellent quality calls even though they are about 250+ms away geographically from my PBX, but they have excellent calling services within Australia and New Zealand. I even have an 03 Melbourne DID number that rings right to my ATA in the house and it sounds excellent.

Today I took a drive into NYC with my son to visit the Chinese Consulate as I needed to obtain a Chinese visa for some upcoming travel. I paid for the rush service which provided turn around time roughly a day and a half; taking my son also helped to preempt a large portion of the line. I can’t complain there at all. It was a very hot day in the urban jungle, 94F. After getting a surprising multi-entry visa that is valid for a year we walked over to the piers on the westside highway right near the circle line ferry, ate lunch that we picked up from a deli on 10th ave, and then headed back through the Lincoln Tunnel. While driving back Alicia Keys came on with her “New York”. How fitting.