Not-phorm

[Ian Batten]

On 20 Mar 08, at 0952, Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <E48CC642-9489-41B9-B44A-247DBA15E4FB@imaj.es>, James Cox  
> <james@imaj.es> writes
>> i'm just throwing out examples of how phorm doesn't make  sense in  
>> specific scenarios.
>
> If you want some more of those, how about a wifi hotspot (or hotel/ 
> conference[1] networks) that uses landline connectivity [2] from one  
> of the phorm-three?

How about the media centre for a major sporting event?  Time passes,  
and the story can be told as a horrible warning...

For the 2004 British Grand Prix, a company that offers Hotspots  
offered to provide a hotspot for journalists, both in the media centre  
(above garages one through four) and the Photo Centre (located at the  
far end of the pitlane, by the exit).  They attached their kit to a  
few 2M ADSL circuits, sold passes to journalists and waiting for the  
thanks.

All was well until about five seconds after the end of first practice  
on Friday, when everything fell over.  It staggered back into life,  
but then collapsed after second practice.  We had a guy on-site for  
the weekend supporting our kit in the local exchange, and he phoned  
his IT department (us) not because we were involved, but because he's  
a good guy and wondered if there was anything that could be done to  
help.  I happened to be lurking in the office waiting for the traffic  
on the traffic on the M42 to subside, so I picked up the phone.

I rapidly diagnosed the problem: hotspots in hotels run a bit of  
surfing and perhaps the odd VPN connection; the A in ADSL works  
correctly.  But the main use of connectivity at sporting events is the  
upload of photographs, and that was causing the packet drop rate to  
climb to an unusable level.  The people from the hotspot company had  
never seen anything like it.

There were a few ADSL circuits available, so as an instant emergency  
measure we whipped out a few routers and put half a dozen wired  
connections in: a least access is then limited by the physical number  
of points, and a queue formed.  But ~200Kbps isn't a lot of upstream,  
and it was still painfully slow.

So over night, with the agreement of various people on the ground, we  
installed SDSL linecards into the ADSL rack in Silverstone exchange,  
organised backhaul via Northampton and provisioned a couple of SDSL  
routers adjacent to the hotspots, into which the Hotspots were  
hooked.  I think the first phonecall came in at about 6pm Friday and  
we had SDSL up for final qualifying on Saturday.  I ended up sleeping  
in the exchange building for the weekend...

Imagine had that connection been Phorm'd.  Hundreds of journalists and  
photographers, from all over the world, many of them speaking no  
English, attached to a link which suddenly starts asking weird  
questions...

ian