asiaflux.com Blog

I just spent 4 whole days at the show and I must say that things certainly seem to be looking up for the Communications industry of Asia. The whole event was flooded with Indians, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians and every Asian nationality you could think of (one conspicuous absence were the Thais, I hardly saw any). I have been attending and exhibiting at CommunicAsia for the past 12 years and I must say that this year’s event must rate as one of the most lively in terms of deals and potential deals being discussed.

The hot sector was networking and you could find scores of mobile wireless, Wimax, Wifi and Optical vendors spread amongst the halls. And they were filled with visitors too, busily enquiring and taking stock of the newest innovations on offer.

Motorola, Cisco and Juniper were strangely absent. And LG took the opportunity to hog the limelight with Korean hip-hop dancers (those guys were pretty amazing with their dancing) and stunning women to launch their LG Shine Mobile phone range. Their stand was HOT with 4 LG Shine phones given away daily in lucky draws. I saw some very executive types furiously scribbling away their details on reams of lucky draw coupons that they somehow managed to get hold of. Basically when the show was on every 2 hours or so, the entire area came to a standstill and became a concert hall.

The Singapore pavilion was out in force this year with more exhibitors than I have ever seen in years. They had everything from wireless control solutions to Callback mobile phones to huge LCD screens (86″ I think) to IP video surveillance etc.

On the first day, there was a long queue just to get the Visitor passes even for pre-registered visitors. Some attendees were complaining that they had to queue for more than half an hour just to get in.

As you can imagine, lunch time was a wait and wait affair; wait to get food, wait for an available table, wait for service. The smart ones either had their lunch before 11.30 or waited till after 3.00.

If this is a sign of the resurgence of the communications industry in Singapore, you better make plans for CommunicAsia 2008. You wouldn’t want to miss it!

AsiaFlux Networks has just secured a distributorship for Carbonite Online Backup in Singapore. Star War fans will remember Carbonite as the stuff that Hans Solo was deep frozen in. Carbonite similarly deep freezes your data in its storage servers until you restore or retrieve it.

What are the advantages of Carbonite?

Carboniteâ„¢ is an Internet-based Backup for Everyoneâ„¢.

It is the simplest, least-expensive, and first service to make secure, offsite backup affordable and effortless for the average consumer. Installation takes less than two minutes and Online PCBackup requires little or no ongoing user involvement a truly set and forget service. Integrated with Microsoft Windows® Explorer, Carbonite does not require users to learn a new interface.

Data Backup Features

Unlimited storage capacity
Two-click Setup – nothing new to learn
· Automatically finds all your data files photos, documents, music, emails, everything

· Instantly detects and backs up changed files

· Set and forget – your backup is automatically updated with new and changed files

· Always on whenever and wherever you’re connected to the Internet

· Never slows down your computer or Internet connection

· Strong encryption – all files are encrypted with 1024 bit Blowfish key before they ever leave your computer

· Exclude files you don t want to back up

· Backs up 2GB per day over a typical high-speed (DSL or Cable) Internet connection

· Restore 10-15GB per day

Do you know………?
- 75,000 laptops are stolen annually worldwide

- 63% of people backup less than once a month

- 23% never backup at all

- 79% of computer users rate their data as ‘valuable’

- 40% rate it as ‘priceless’

“Your DATA is your LIFE! Protect it!�

There are four important considerations when deciding how to backup your data:

Time & Hassle — If you have to think about backups, you probably won’t ever get around to doing them. That’s why only 2% of home PCs are backed up regularly. With Carbonite, you download our software, set and forget.

Cost — If you backed up your PC daily to CDs, you’d go through hundreds of dollars worth of CDs a year. Outboard hard drives cost $150 and up. Traditional online backup services cost at least $100 per year and offer only limited capacity. Carbonite offers unlimited storage capacity for just a few dollars per month.

Peace of Mind — Are all of the data you care about protected from theft, fire, flood, and other natural disasters? With Carbonite, you know for sure that data you’ve lost can be recovered. And because Carbonite is always on, continuously detecting new data and changes to existing files on your PC, you never have to worry.

Security — With Carbonite, nothing leaves your PC unless it is encrypted twice – once with your encryption key and again as it travels over the Internet. When you register, you create a user ID and password and only you will be able to unlock the encrypted files stored by Carbonite. You can also rest assured that Carbonite won’t share any information about you or your data with advertisers or other third parties.

A note on CD backups: some people wrongly assume that backing up files to CD offers a permanent solution. However, the nature of chemicals used to manufacture recordable CDs gives them much shorter lifespan than store-bought albums. In fact, even recordable CDs that are stored in dark, temperature-controlled rooms usually won’t last longer than a few years!

Anyone interested in trying out Carbonite can go to www.carbonite.com.sg.

Key in the Offer Code: ehub and you can get a 30 days free trial.

The IPv6 Forum Singapore Chapter is inviting any individuals, corporations, large or small to be members of the Forum.

This is a non-profit organisation with the mission of creating awareness of IPv6 in Singapore, setting out Best Practices Guidelines and possibly also Certification of IPv6 Readiness.

Anyone with interest can contact the Forum at enquiry@ipv6forum.sg

Joost has been rocking the internet world with its free beta service of high quality, TV programs over the internet. No need for TV cards or any special receivers. Just an invitation, broadband and your PC. The ex-founders of Skype (who cashed in for US$2.6 billion to eBay) have seemingly a winner up their sleeves again.

I got an invite 10 days ago, downloaded the beta drivers (only 10.5Mbs), fired it up, and I must say that I am quite impressed.

The programs are not fantastic, though I loved 5th Gear, the Car Review program, but give them time and I am sure that they might even make some of us consider giving up our over-priced Starhub subscriptions. Now, if only they could wrangle in EPL. That would be a real kicker and sleepless nights for all Cable executives out there.

Picture quality is not HD quality but definitely acceptable, it has a very friendly user interface menu which is quick and responsive. I have 3Mbps at home and the video stream is ok but for those of you with higher speeds, you will definitely enjoy the experience more. Needless to say, 1Mbps or less is jerky and sometimes irritating but that is the price you pay.

Examples of programs include Sports Illustrated Swimsuit On Demand, Fight Network, National Geographic, 5th Gear, MTV, The Soccer Channel, Bugeye Music and Alliance Atlantis Sci-Fi.

There are rumors circulating on the net that Joost is in negotiations with Warner Music, CNN, BBC, Indy Car, NBA, WWE, ESPN etc for additional content.

IPv6 Forum is a non-profit organisation comprising internet vendors, subject matter experts, research and education networks, with the mission of advocating IPv6 by improving technology, market, and industry awareness of IPv6. I have news that the IPv6 Forum – Singapore Chapter is in the works of being setup.

Details like website, membership, mission and possibly IPv6 Certification are being worked out.

In fact, anyone interested in either knowing more or joining as a member can leave either their contact details with me or go to the Go6.Net booth 6B4-09 at CommunicAsia 2007 to find out more.

San Jose, CA – Lok Technology announced today that QMax Communications Pte Ltd is deploying its wireless fidelity (WiFi) network management and control appliances to service the west sector of Singapore as part of the government sponsored Wireless@SG initiative.

Wireless@SG is part of the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) masterplan, Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) that will transform the country into an “intelligent nation” and connect businesses, households, government, and roaming users by providing broadband Internet access across the island. For the first three years QMax provides “basic” free Internet access with a minimum of 512 Kbps bandwidth available for users accessing the internet from one of the over 2000 hotspots being deployed in their “West Sector”. QMax subscribers requiring bandwidth above 512 Kbps or other premium access services will be able to sign up for a variety of fee based plans in the QMax coverage area. Once connected, users are able to access all normal Internet-based services (e.g. online gaming, web surfing, instant messaging, VoIP and email).

Providing wireless Internet access requires WiFi radios that deliver to and receive signals from laptops and other IP enabled devices like computers, PDAs, and WiFi phones, be installed in each hotspot or hotzone. Once connected data is passed between the radios and the Internet through LokBox appliances that authenticate subscribers and delivers the right amount of bandwidth to each user depending on their access plan (premium or free). The LokBox also enables location-based advertising to be delivered to subscribers by businesses in or close to the hotspot, or subject sensitive advertising based on user search criteria. Finally the LokBox aggregates bandwidth and creates a load balanced, highly available connection from the QMax Data Centre to the Internet

“The QMax / Lok Technology collaboration is a natural fit. QMax’s business experience, knowledge of Internet service delivery, and commitment to excellence united with Lok’s expertise in management and control of revenue generating networking (RGN) is a powerful combination enabling high-quality Wi-Fi services for our customers,” said Alex Tan, QMax Director. “We selected the LokBox appliances to manage the network because of the highly integrated nature of their appliance, incredible breadth of applications and their reputation for delivering high-speed, high quality products to our specific industry.

Traditionally hotspot service providers and ISP’s build extensive computing, networking and storage infrastructures to deliver Internet services. This requires large capital expenditures, expensive and time consuming integration and legions of technical support personnel to install and support this data center equipment. This drives up the cost of service delivery and makes providing quality service extremely expensive. With the LokBox this mass of disparate equipment is reduced to one appliance to purchase, install, integrate, operate and support.

With LokBox appliances performing such a critical function QMax is able to increase network performance and reduce costs and complexities, improving both the customer experience and the QMax bottom line. Utilizing LokBox technology QMax can centrally manage and both its indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots and hotzones ensuring a high speed and highly available user experience.

“We are absolutely delighted to be part of the Wireless@SG initiative and are especially proud of our relationship with QMax. Their knowledge of the ISP market and their existing service capability made our job easy “, said Keenan Klinger, President of Lok Technology. QMax is a very demanding partner and one that values their customers above all else. This project is very exciting, and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the iN2015 masterplan.

The LokBox shared memory architecture and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry and are essential to effectively running RGNs. Just as disparate routers, firewalls, intrusion protection systems, authentication servers, web cache devices, link bonding switches and bandwidth priority and allocation systems serve as traffic-management systems for wired networks, the LokBox appliances use sophisticated mathematical algorithms and integration techniques to combine these functions into a single appliance for wireless networks. The quality of a Wi-Fi network depends on to the ability of the equipment to aggregate, route and validated traffic intelligently, efficiently and dependably – with as few moving parts as possible.

About Lok Technology, Inc.

Lok Technology is a leading provider of gateways and centralized-authentication appliances designed to manage, provision, and protect revenue-generating networks. LokBox appliances offer customer networks of all sizes a single integrated network-provisioning appliance for cost-effective and scalable network deployments. Lok’s patent-pending shared-memory and out-of-order packet-processing technology are unique in the industry, allowing an unprecedented number of concurrent users to be categorized based upon policy and role-authentication. All of the functions and features required in today’s revenue-generating policy-enforcement networks are bundled in one LokBox appliance. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Lok Technology has a worldwide sales and technical support organization, along with a global network of resellers and integrators. AsiaFlux Networks is a major reseller of Lok Technology products in Asia. Learn more at www.asiaflux.com

About QMax Communications Pte Ltd

QMax is a broadband infrastructure and technology company offering “Anytime, Anywhere” high speed wireless broadband connectivity. In March 2006, it became the first service provider in Singapore to successfully deploy and commercialize a wireless broadband service using the WBA spectrum (or commonly known as WIMAX). With strong support from its major shareholder, Creative Technology Ltd, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products and portable media players, QMax is poised to be one of a new breed of broadband infrastructure and technology companies offering consumers a chance to wirelessly access digital media for communication, entertainment and learning at high speed.

I found this while I was trawling the net for new gadgets and I was blown by the utter coolness of this. Imagine you were in Starbucks, you pull out your SmartPhone or PDA, set up the Zippo-sized keyboard projecter next to it and you proceed to type out on the keyboard images projected on to the table-top or work surface; complete with keyboard click sounds! Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. But it really works! This device projects a laser beam to generate a full-sized keyboard image on a flat surface and works with most Blackberry models, PDAs and Tablets.

Only drawback is the price. About US$180 excluding shipping. If you wish to check out or have loads of spare cash, go to http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/

For the past 2 days, I read the news on the Nets debacle with a growing sense of disbelief. Nets has always been like a national institution in Singapore, used by almost all and sundry for its convenient cashless system. To raise its rates by 300%, and with such short notice, smacks of pure greed arising from its monopolistic position.

CEO Poh Mui Hoon’s rationale is flawed. The 3 shareholder banks themselves account for a big percentage of the debit cards issued. Yes they do earn the banks more money, but the overall transaction volume of these debit cards is peanuts compared with the transactional volume of Nets. Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t bigger volume warrant better rates or prices. In my many years of negotiations for my employers, I have not come across a case which goes against this principle.

I have no issue with Nets being profit oriented. That is what the world is. But such avarice boggles the mind. Granted that it might be time for Nets to raise its rates in line with changes in the business environment, primarily from its competition. But no matter what, Nets will always be the leader in cashless payment (provided they maintain sane merchant rates). There is no necessity to rocket its rates to be in line with those for debit cards. To do so with such a big merchant and terminal penetration rate is to flex its muscles and force its way.

CASE is right to register a complaint to the Competition Commission, but I fear that eventually Nets will have its way, albeit probably with a slight reduction in its proposed rate increase, so as to show some compassion for the consumers who will probably find the additional costs passed to them.

I for one will not use Nets at all for my purchases unless absolutely necessary. Cash is still king when it comes to a situation like this. If enough people feel the same way and act on it, the dropping transactional volume will show such monopolistic entities that sometimes, silly actions might trap yourself in your own net.

We are all flowing with the Digital Tide. Our mobile devices like 2 Megapixel camera-equipped mobile phones, Ipods, ultra-portable notebooks, video-cams all generate tons of data everyday. The PC is the center of all this data deluge. We store photos, videos, MP3s, work related files, school work, thesis, projects, PPTs in our PC. But do we back it up?

Ask your self this question. What would your feelings be if you were to lose all the data in your PC; whether from having it stolen, dropped from your airplane overhead compartment, house got broken into, severe virus attack, HDD decided it had enough of abuse and slipped off into HDD heaven, fire, natural disaster etc etc?

After the stunning discovery of the loss, how much would you pay to be able to retrieve all your files? Those precious family or baby photos, MP3 collection, holiday videos, work files (including the ALL important project that you need to submit to your boss in 2 days time), school research work. After almost every incidence of data loss, the general admission from the victims is that the files were irreplaceable. I should know. It happened to me twice. Yes, twice. Now I know better.
I did a little research and found the following interesting facts:

• 750,000 laptops get stolen worldwide annually
• There are 200 million broadband connected PCs that are not backed up regularly (defined as at least once a week)
• By 2010, that figure would have ballooned to 400 million
• 63% of people back up less than once a month
• 23% of people do not backup at all
• Experts acknowledge that backups onto CDs, DVDs, Tape or External HDDs are not good enough unless the backup media are kept well offsite. A natural disaster like the 2004 Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina or major earthquake would render such backups useless
• More than 60% of people who own External HDDs do not back up their files regularly, either through laziness, forgetfulness or lack of time

There are a variety of ways to backup our valuable data. I’ll write more in the next few days.

It’s been 7 months since Wireless@SG was launched. So far, according to IDA, 2000+ hotspots have been deployed and more than 400,000 subscribers signed up. By the end of this year, barring any unforseen circumstances, we will see the remaining 3000 hotpots up and humming.

I for one have enjoyed the convenience of being able to pull out my notebook, powering up the wireless card and checking my emails practically anywhere in town. Despite the rather slow speed, it has made my work and life digitally convenient. Though Wireless@SG is supposed to be freely available at 512kbps, realities are that download speeds are frequently 256kbps or less. Number of concurrent users, distance from the Access Point, backhaul bandwidth to the internet node are all natural throttlers of bandwidth speed.

One wonders what happens when more people sign up for the service, and get into the habit, nay, culture of lugging around their ultra-portables and powering them up whenever they are in a hotzone? Add to that the increasing prevalence of wifi capabilities in Handphones and it adds up for a potential snail’s race in download speed.

Hopefully the service providers have anticipated this and have made plans for increasing bandwidth backhaul as well as AP density in the hotzones. Otherwise, we could be sitting in a cafe in a hotspot, staring at the screen taking minutes to download a small Youtube video.

Of course we have the option to sign up for Premium plans with its 1Mbps speed but since by the graces of our government, we have been given free access for 3 years, why splurge? BUT that is only my point of view. Premium service would naturally get priority to the limited available bandwidth.

But what about plans to get most if not all Singaporeans connected?  I for one would probably not be so inclined to whip out my notebook if I know that i would be subjected to low, frustrating speeds.

Hello everyone. This is my first attempt at blogging. I have actually wanted to try this for the longest time but couldn’t manage to find the time.

Then yesterday, I told myself that if I keep procrastinating, I might never do it till the day I am silver-haired, or shiny-pated.

So here I am.

What would I possibly write, I asked myself and after some deliberation, I decided that it would be good to write about technology, the trends that people in the industry as well as observers see, how it affects us in our daily lives, as well as how best to deal with the way that technology has transformed our lives, the way we deal with people and problems, the endless deluge of information,  etc. etc. You get the picture.

Please do feel free to comment on anything I write. Please also pardon me if you do find my writing a bit awkward for a start. Its been a long time since I have written down my thoughts. But I think it should get smoother with a little practise.

Thank you for reading.