Thanks to a new £132 million BT project, which is also partly funded by £53.3m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Previously:
KPN’s Reggefiber JV Gets EUR130M Loan From EIB -Report
Received a loan of around EUR130 million from the European Investment Bank to finance the roll out of high speed fiber optic network in 33 Dutch cities.
http://vrritti.com/2010/08/02/kpns-reggefiber-jv-gets-eur130m-loan-from-eib-report/
VM claims that the new “smart” system has been designed to adapt to network conditions (i.e. heavy peak time network load) and ensure that normal surfing, including video streams from YouTube and BBC iPlayer, remain unaffected by P2P (i.e. Limewire, Gnutella, BitTorrent) and Newsgroup (Usenet) services. In other words, P2P will be slowed.
The system will reserve at least 75% of network resources for time-sensitive traffic, adjusting dynamically to overall network usage to ensure consistent performance for more customers. In compensation Virgin Media has also increased its peak time allowances for data transfer.
Virgin Media Traffic Management Policy
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.html
Most of the big ISPs already restrict traffic to P2P at peak times. However Virgin Media will need to be careful and must make exceptions for applications that use P2P as part of their critical service.
For example, many online games (XBox Live, Steam, World of Warcraft etc.) make use of P2P and any restrictions on these can make those services and platforms unusable. However most P2P restricting UK ISPs do recognise this and make allowances in their filters.
As a side note, customers on Virgin Media’s 50Mbps package will now also find their P2P traffic restricted. In addition, during peak (10am – 3pm and 4pm – 9pm) times, Virgin will slow the new 5Mbps upload speeds down to 1.75Mbps, if your upload usage is particularly high. Sneaky.
Full article: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/09/30/virgin-media-uk-boost-broadband-upload-speed-and-tightens-traffic-management.html
The details of more than 500 of BT’s customers were sent by email in an unencrypted spreadsheet, following a court order obtained by ACS:Law, which alleged that they had been illictly file-sharing copyrighted information. But the documents subsequently leaked online, in the aftermath of an attack on ACS:Law’s website orchestrated by web users protesting at the firm’s actions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/29/bt-unencrypted-customer-data
French authorities have dismantled a cybercrime network and arrested nine people suspected of being involved in the illegal sale of codes used to unlock mobile phones, police said on Monday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100927/wr_nm/us_france_phone_crime_2
Participants include representatives from seven Cabinet-level departments, the White House, law enforcement and intelligence communities, 11 states, 12 international partners and 60 private sector companies.
Today, we’re happy to announce Google Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators — an experimental tool which allows Autonomous System (AS) owners to receive early notifications for malicious content found on their networks.
A single network or ISP can host hundreds or thousands of different websites. Although network administrators may not be responsible for running the websites themselves, they have an interest in the quality of the content being hosted on their networks. We’re hoping that with this additional level of information, administrators can help make the Internet safer by working with webmasters to remove malicious content and fix security vulnerabilities.
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/09/safe-browsing-alerts-for-network.html
We have to understand how much privacy we are willing to give up to help the policy to combat child porn, hacking, and other illegal activities on the Internet
The Las Vegas Sun has a good overview of the counterclaims and defenses. Helping out the EFF is Andrew Bridges, who is known for challenging questionable copyright lawsuits with creative, but solid, defenses — so some of the defenses here shouldn’t be all that surprising.
The UK Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), a not-for-profit group that campaigns for the legitimate use of software, has called on opponents of the controversial Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA) to give the new laws time to “bed in and demonstrate it can work“.
Market regulator Ofcom UK, which recently completed its Net Neutrality (the principal of treating all internet traffic as equal) consultation (here), is expected to tell broadband ISPs that they are free to trample all over the principal, just so long as customers are told about it in a “transparent” way. To most ISPs, transparent = small print, which of course nobody ever reads.
The most recent European Email Deliverability Benchmark Report (2H 2010) from Return Path has revealed that 17.8% of supposedly “legitimate marketing emails” sent to European consumers are not being delivered (up from 11.1% six months ago), with most going missing or finding their way into SPAM (junk folders).
“This is really boring”, Sunde is quoted as saying. “It’s a waste of time. It’s going to be appealed no matter what happens.”
All six Star Wars films will get the 3D treatment
Eric Schmidt likes to say that Google is a fundamentally “open” company, and according to the man himself, this means that Google is the anti-Apple.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/28/schmidt_calls_google_the_inverse_of_apple/
Google boss Eric Schmidt has said that antitrust investigations targeting the company in the EU and Texas are “stimulated” by interested competitors and that — contrary to one of the complaints filed in the EU — the company’s “Universal Search” setup does not unfairly drive traffic to Google services at the expense of rivals.
Computer scientists have developed proof-of-concept malware that evades traditional security defenses by running on a PC’s graphics processor.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/28/gpu_assisted_malware/
Gang blamed for £6m losses in three months
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/29/zeus_cybercrime_arrests/
There is a Minecraft video making its way around the Internet. In it, you see the side of a wall, and hear a man’s voice explaining your position at the bottom of a huge well. Then the camera turns and you see the immense body of the starship Enterprise, created using blocks in Minecraft.
ACS Law specializes in file-sharing “settlement letters,” requesting cash for online infringement but never quite getting around to filing lawsuits. What’s it like on the inside? A huge leak of private e-mails lights up a dark corner of the legal world. Our 6,000 word investigation inside.
BreakingPoint is the standard by which the world’s governments, enterprises, and service providers measure and harden the resiliency of their network and data center infrastructures. BreakingPoint’s patented network processor-driven architecture powers the world’s first and only Cyber Tomography Machine (CTM) to expose previously impossible-to-detect stress fractures within network and data center infrastructure components before they are exploited to compromise customer data, corporate assets, brand reputation, and even national security
http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=492283&Itemid=29
Google Instant search: no porn or violence
Will provide Ku space segment bandwidth and bandwidth management services
