Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Ordered two new books

January 24th, 2013

I have ordered two books, for personal interest:

"Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the dawn of the Virtual Revolution" by Jim Blascovich. I was made aware through this book by visiting Stanford Universities Virtual Human Interaction Lab website.
"Designing Virtual Reality Systems: The Structured Approach" by Gerard Kim. This I picked randomly, I hope it's a good book it has a hefty pricetag.

In another world I was Pi the Druid. This world was called Northern Crossroads MUDD (a multiple user dungeons and dragons game). This game still exists today but I grew out of it. If you're interested you can visit it by going to the MUDD's webpage. I view this game as a forerunner to virtual reality. It is socket based and based off Diku MUDD which was created at a Danish University by their CS department. Everything in the game is ascii based and actions are described by text. I shortly programmed on my own Diku MUDD and it was a lot of fun, so I'm hoping to pick up with virtual reality as the next bridging gap.

Yes well. Virtual reality. It interests me a lot. It scares my mom somewhat as she's worried on mental damage (more of what there is now). But I'm fairly careful I think and one thing that doesn't interest me is horror or anything that would put anxiety on a user of VR. I'm more interested in healing and discovering myself, to explore my own soul from within so to speak and I've done a bit of thinking about the topic. So far I still lack haptic glove and Head mounted display but I'm hoping to get something affordable in the next little while. I have an idea of coupling IOS apps with network communication and virtual reality, I hope to see it through given time.

This reports a little more out of my imagination and my dreams and hopes.

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Date correction

January 20th, 2013

I use a script to provide me with a template, to write my articles. I didn't upgrade this script on January 1st so the date erroneously still said 2012. That's fixed now.

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This years traffic from Uranus (computer)

January 20th, 2013

Last year I had a snapshot of the yearly traffic of Uranus, this years was all screwed up due to my move to my parents house brought about by the fire in my ex apartment building.

In August you can see the traffic reversed. That's due to the interface not facing the DSL anymore but being behind another router.

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Let me explain how the Internet works...

January 19th, 2013

...and how I can work in Canada from Germany.

In order to get Internet to the home we purchase a DSL or Cable link. Sometimes when we're lucky we can even get a Fibre Optic connection directly to the home. Pretend we pay 20 euros a month for this. Where does the money go?

The money goes to the ISP who has to purchase routers and switches, and internal infrastructure and most importantly a link to the outside. There is two types of links that an ISP can connect to. A peering link is one where the ISP usually pays just the connect fees to a peering hub and any traffic flowing between peers on that hub is free at cost. The second link is a transit link where the ISP purchases bandwidth from another ISP. That other ISP then transits the flow of internet packets to another ISP and an internetwork of networks is created. Because the ISP requires great bandwidths the transit traffic is usually pretty cheap.

So pretend you get your email from gmail (google). Google has cleverly situated themselves so that they are available for peering at major peering points so when I traceroute to gmail.com I actaully traceroute to munich at INXS (an exchange point). When I traceroute from my vps the route goes to paris, via DECIX. My ISP probably pays very little for that mail to be checked, but google on the other hand has to foot the bill for email servers and the network from DECIX to Paris. Anyhow this is an example how some services are cheaper than others. If I were to pop my mail from an ISP in Canada it would follow a route over transit providers and it's a bit more than just going over peering points.

Yet there isn't all too many teleworkers like me so the ISP's make a profit on 95% of the population and 5% telework and create costs. Fortunately that includes me. I'm able to use the network here and in Canada because it's all TCP/IP and part of the Internet. The flat fee works because not everyone has to cross the atlantic ocean to get their email, web and facebook. However there is a catch of course. I'm making money in Canada and I have to pay taxes in Germany from the money made, so I'm importing money into the german economy. Or said differently I'm exporting services overseas. Again not many can claim that.

All in all the order of the Internet is pretty fair. Yes fees for the end users could go down but there'll always be peering points and transit providers to upkeep this harmony in the 'net. Remember if a transatlantic cable breaks, there has to be ships ready to sail to repair it. This costs money too. Even though you use only european networks you're paying for those ships that wait until a cable breaks (all indirectly). May not be fair to you but it's fair for the collective, and when you want to use american services you can without creating cost on yourself. It works fabulously IMO.

Fibre Optics in the Canadian North

January 11th, 2013

These days the winter is pretty mild in Germany. But pretend you live in Nunavut, Canada. It must be freezing, it's the Arctic. I have a friend who lives there. I believe his Internet he gets through a satellite uplink, which is pretty cool. But imagine this arcticfibre.com, this would really fix their Internet up there. And it would fix mine as well. Look at this route from Germany to my VPS in Hong Kong:

 4  f-ed6-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.15.2)  55.820 ms  53.301 ms  59.920 ms
 5  ffm-b12-link.telia.net (213.248.103.169)  51.417 ms  51.289 ms ffm-b12-link.
telia.net (213.248.79.201)  50.974 ms
 6  ffm-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.210)  52.657 ms ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (
213.155.135.8)  137.400 ms ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.132.208)  56.959 ms
 7  nyk-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.135.63)  143.458 ms  216.887 ms nyk-bb2-link
.telia.net (213.155.131.151)  146.343 ms
 8  sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.245.96)  221.688 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (80
.91.254.177)  215.269 ms  216.198 ms
 9  hnk-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.190)  331.143 ms  329.440 ms  329.417 ms
10  hostvirtual-ic-300085-hnk-b2.c.telia.net (213.248.66.102)  331.984 ms  333.2
87 ms  333.618 ms
11  moon-a.virgostar.net (103.6.85.219)  379.59 ms  378.726 ms  377.172 ms

Now if this route isn't faked it goes through the following cities:

frankfurt (ffm) in hop 6
New York (nyk) in hop 7 (100 ms latency added)
San Jose, California (sjo) in hop 8 (70 ms latency added)
Hong Kong (hnk) in hop 9 (115 ms latency added)

Now they say the distance between London and Tokyo in arctic fibre is gonna be 15600 kilometers. As light travels through fibre optic wikipedia says that the speed of light through optical fibre is roughly 200,000 kilometers per second, so it would take 78 ms so then we do a couple of soundings, from my house to London:

$ ping www.linx.net
PING ivory.linx.net (195.66.232.53): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=70.111 ms
c64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=64.192 ms
c64 bytes from 195.66.232.53: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=65.072 ms
--- ivory.linx.net ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 64.192/66.458/70.111/2.616 ms

and from my hong kong vps to Tokyo:

PING www.mfeed.ad.jp (210.173.160.18): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=0 ttl=246 time=58.423 ms
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=1 ttl=246 time=58.494 ms
64 bytes from 210.173.160.18: icmp_seq=2 ttl=246 time=58.065 ms

--- www.mfeed.ad.jp ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 58.065/58.327/58.494/0.188 ms

Add them up and we get 66 + 58 + (2 * 78) = 280 ms. Compare this with the current 379 ms that I'm getting now, a lot of latency added due to routing through the continental USA from New York to San Jose. Why I'd rather be routed through arctic fibre, which is speedy and secure. My friend in Nunavut would like being on arctic fibre as well and when I emailed him about this he mentioned that they are watching development of this very closely. You can find his blog btw linked from this blog called "Higher Latitudes". I think arctic fibre makes a lot of sense.

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Got a new book on WLAN's

January 10th, 2013

In fact it's my first book that describes wireless LANS and it's protocols. It seems to be a good book at first glance. The books name is "Wireless LANs" by Jörg Rech and is written in german.

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How a base on Phobos could look like

January 7th, 2013

In this article, I let you know a little how a trip to Mars could look like. See this picture which is a moon-base on the moon Phobos that orbits Mars where a tracked centrifuge module exists that spins and creates artificial gravity (sideways) for the astronauts. There is many rockets for the habitat, gravity centrifuge and rocket home as well as sat uplinks and dishes for the communications back to earth.

Just a bit out of my imagination trunk...

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Got a new monitor

January 7th, 2013

Because I'm building a stand-up station for my work I needed another monitor. I got it today, a 27" monitor. It's an ACER the same as my Netbook. I also got a new office chair because the old one was uncleanable after the fire.

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Happy New Year 2013

December 31st, 2012

This may just be the last post of 2012 and the first post of 2013 worldwide. Happy New Year! Thanks for stopping by my blog. When I'm fully moved in to my new apartment and everything is connected I'll have a backlog of releasing to do for wildcarddnsd and perhaps natally, and fire irc (these are programs I develop).

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Looking for love in all the wrong places

December 28th, 2012

I just signed up for a love-matchmaker again. It's the same story, you gotta pay to read messages from others, so it's really worthless. I'd pay but the contract automatically renews itself unless I FAX them to stop doing so. I hate doing that. I want to pay for a limited amount of time to unlock all features and not have to worry that something is eating on my savings after. Anyone know any good matchmakers? That do what I want?

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