2009/04/08

just trying ping.fm ... what's happening

2009/04/06

Netgear releases ReadyNAS NVX

Netgear's ReadyNAS products are really nice home/office shared network resources. The NV+ has been around for a while, then the PRO came out which increased the bay count to 6 (from 4) offered dual network interfaces and faster processors based on Intel chips.

Netgear have now introduced the NVX which is a four bay design but (I guess) also Intel processors. As well as NFS, CIFS, AFS, FTP, http and other network sharing protocols the NVX now supports iSCSI as well.

Mac users have recently had improvements and a ReadyNAS can act as a Time Machine server for network back-ups and restore directly integrating with the Apple Time Machine client which is integrated into MacOS 10.5.

NetVault is a new service introduced by Netgear where ReadyNAS users can back-up their NAS's over the Internet and pay a monthly fee. The pricing seems to be based on whether the back-up is performed by a home user or business.

Currently in beta is Remote, a client which will allow remote users to natively access a ReadyNAS even if it's behind a firewall etc. It sits on Windows or MacOS and the ReadyNAS appears as a local disk.

Retail pricing is about $1,500 for a ReadyNAS NVX including 2TB of disk.

Today is data logging day

The UK law comes into force today (based on an EU directive) that means ISPs and telcos have to keep records of emails and phone calls for up to a year.

Well telcos have already been keeping records of telephone calls because they have to bill calls and billing records have to be kept for seven years anyway.

The story for ISPs is slightly different (and potentially unworkable). If a customer uses their ISPs mail server to send out Email then the ISP has to record the time, the originator and the recipients of the Email. They don't have to log the contents (which would mean huge storage costs).

If a customer sends out their own Email without going through the ISP mail server, it obviously wont be logged. ISPs can force Email traffic to go through their servers (though this can be circumvented too if the customer tries hard enough).

Since most large ISPs (in the UK) are implementing what was known as Cleanfeed (the system that allows ISPs to block content based on an IWF blacklist), they can also use that system to log web requests.

Logging data can be a huge burden for ISPs as the volumes get very large very quickly.

2009/04/05

iPodRip - Giveaway

iPodRip - Giveaway

iPodRip are giving away some nice iPod prizes.

It's actually a nice program that allows you to get the music off your iPod (i.e. it does the opposite of iTunes).