:: Comcast Donation
The local Comcast facility donated a half dozen 8' high racks which hold
all sorts of electronic gear. Dale drove his pickup truck and trailer to
the site. Mike, Forest, Goose, myself and two Comcast techs pulled the
racks out of a storage building and lashed them onto Dale's trailer. We
didn't do a very good job of lashing the racks. On the way to the
warehouse, Dale and Goose stopped to get fuel and tie down the racks a
second time.
Thursday night, Goose, Dale and I will clear out space along one wall in
the "server" room at the warehouse and put the racks there. Right now,
the racks scattered between two rooms.
:: Comcast Facility Tour
The chief technician, a FOG (friend of Goose), gave us the full $1.00
tour of the master head office. There were way more technical details
than I can remember or repeat regarding racks and racks of equipment.
The ambient noise level in the facility is 70dB so you must talk just
below a shout to be heard more than a few inches away.
Here are some highlights:
- Right now the network can handle over 100,000 IP addresses.
- The wired network is fiber-optic to within several hundred feet of end
users.
- After the next upgrade, Comcast can broadcast 20,000 digital channels.
The 20,000 channels will be two-way communications: Your digital ready
TV tells Comcast what channel or movie you want to watch, and the head
office streams it to you.
- Each show/movie "router" has 128 terabytes of RAM. They are
upgradeable to 512 terabytes. The most popular movies and cable shows
are cached.
- In 2010 Indiana will have one state-wide franchise authority. Local
communities will no longer sign franchise (monopoly) agreements with
cable providers, nor will communities receive franchise fees. The local
Comcast network franchise fees are about $500,000 per year. All the
money will go to the State of Indiana.
- The electrical supply draws about 285 Amps.
- The acid in the backup batteries weighs 1000 lbs.
- The backup batteries keep the entire network up for 6 minutes. There
is a diesel generator outside.
- The electrical system can survive the loss of one phase.
- If there is a fire, you have 30 seconds to leave the building. The
fire suppression system drives out all oxygen from the building in about
15 seconds. You stay. You die.
- The FBI can obtain use logs and hook into the network to record
activity at any time.
- The Comcast fiber network will be a national routed network soon.
- Comcast is a registered tier 1 telecommunications company like AT&T,
Verizon, etc. It is licensed to carry voice and data. Currently, Comcast
voice relies on the public telephone/data network. When the company's
national fiber network is operational, Comcast voice and data will be
carried solely on their private network.
- Comcast plans to operate their own satellite uplinks in South Bend and
elsewhere.
- Notre Dame leases a channel on the network to broadcast their own
content to subscribers.
- When the state-wide franchise authority goes into effect in 2010,
there may not be public access or universal cable service any longer.
:: Puppy Progress
Mike has been using Puppy exclusively for his Internet work and
entertainment. The supported PCI modems work well, and the list of
supported modems is growing. The supported USB modems work less well
than the PCI modems, but are good enough for Internet sessions of about
20 minutes.
Mike will post links to his Puppy netboot research findings to the list.
I will read the links he posts so two of us are working on the project.
Mike thinks PxeLinux is the most fruitful netboot method so he will try
it this week on his server at home. I will also try it.
Dale will take some Puppy-level systems home each Thursday night and
install Puppy on them.
:: Vector Progress
Goose will bring the new server to the warehouse on Thursday and begin
the conversion to Vector Linux based LTSP. I will continue to install
Vector on FreeBoxes, both at home and at the warehouse on Thursdays.
:: FreeBox Distribution
Laban has lined up one distribution channel with a man who works with
at-risk children. I will contact Hardy Blake re setting up a channel on
the far west side of South Bend. Hardy is a minister and businessman
with strong ties to the west side. He supports computer reuse/recycling
and spoke to us last year.
Two outlets are probably all we should attempt to supply for several
reasons. Certainly, we can't begin to supply anyone until we can netboot
both Puppy and Vector at the lab and train recipients.
I can see the light at the end of the FreeBox tunnel.
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