$1200 bucks! Are they made out of gold!? I heard that from my buddy Earl once or twice. You know, the guy with bolts in his neck, two teeth, and tin ear. The one you warn your friends about. Yeah, that guy.

Earl told me about his cables: they have fifty-nines pure solid core copper electro-cryo-servo-cooked on his time machine. Everyone says they’re the bee’s knees. Oh… you’ve heard that one before? So have I.

So what possibly could I have to say about these KCI Silkworm Plusses? Jeez! Ladies, be patient and let me take you on a bit of a journey! Close your eyes… OK, open them because if you don’t you can’t read my review. Your speakers are in the other room, people! Let’s be visual for a second and do some reading.

Let’s just say I have been around the block with cables. No really, I’ve probably had enough 1 meter interconnects and speaker cables to go all the way around the block. Twice.

Here are a few I’ve had in my system:

Cardas (golden reference ICs, golden cross speaker cables)
Transparent (super, ultra, reference mm2 in my system – through opus on other systems)
Tara Labs (The ONE),
Goertz (Boa MI-3, Tourmaline ICs)
Audioquest
Virtual Dynamics (Master, revelation, and Genesis),
Morrow Audio (MA3, MA4)
Speltz Anti-cables
Nordost (Valhalla)
KCI Silkworm+

The pile of green needed to pay for some of these cables is pretty mountainous. Some are more expensive than others obviously. All of them, however, are over priced. Don’t get me started about Transparent and their turtle cables.

So yes, all over priced. Except for one: The KCI Silkworm+. If I told you about the construction of any of the other cables you would understand what I mean, markup on some of those cables is ridiculous. Again, call me if you want to know more.

So finally WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THESE EFFIN SILKWORMS?

I am not easily impressed with cables. I’ve used a lot of them. Some do things better than others. Ultimately it’s which cable does more of what is better. My reference has been Tara labs because they were extended and neutral, I didn’t feel like I was listening to the cable. They have excellent bass control, a wide/deep soundstage that is clear, solid and easily intelligible. Details are present and natural without roll-off. They WERE basically what a cable should be, and they did what a cable should do: get out of the freakin way! The Tara Labs were $3500 cables. Let me be frank: The KCIs are my new benchmark for interconnect performance.

The KCIs are the most beautiful-sounding cables I have ever listened to. John calls them warm, but I generally correlate warm cables with rolled-off highs. Highs are present, natural and beautifully articulate. The cable is fast without being forward. The soundstage is huge and breathes with uncompressed freedom. They have ebb and flow that is both engaging, relaxing, hefty, and emotionally involving. I have never, with all of the cables that I have listened to, been so emotionally charged by listening to my system. A cable has never made me smile, cry, or laugh quite like this relatively trivial upgrade has made me do. They are extremely lively, and capture the richness and vast harmonic structure of music unlike any other component I’ve had the privilege of listening to. They are clearer than my Tara Labs, and have a sound that I can only describe as “real”.

The Tara Labs may have a slightly deeper soundstage. But what is amazing is that I don’t feel like I am missing anything with the KCIs. Just getting more music.

I should probably make a comment about build quality. While I’m sure some of you will prefer Earl’s cables for their amazingness. I made that word up. It was needed to describe Earl’s cables. Good word. Anyways… The Silkworm+ build quality is superb. They come vacuum packed and in a nice set of overkill packaging. The cables themselves use the glorious Xhadow connectors, which in and of themselves are a work of audio art. The cables are solid and well built, not flimsy like Morrow cables. I was recommended not to move them once plugged in, as the solid 24karat gold tends to be finicky and hyper sensitive in terms of being moved.

John Prator, the genius behind the KCI curtain — or rather lackthereof — is a great guy, truly a good human being. He impressed me greatly with his kind heart and excellent service. When I purchased these cables he shipped them out and I got them a day later. He’s passionate and is too nice for his own good. I was offered no deals for writing this review. I was merely enamored by their performance and felt obligated to write something for him.

Any questions feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call. I will gladly describe the other cables I’ve used and give you both a technical and audible comparison of anything I mentioned.

StreetWires ZN610 Audio Interconnect 1 Meter RCA Review

Feature

• Dual Split Banana Pin
• Serpertine Cut Machined Connector
• Sure Grip Machined Body
• Nylon Braid
• Silver Plated Oxygen Free Copper

Overview
StreetWires interconnects are the most sophisticated mobile audio cables in the world. Period. ZN interconnects feature twisted-pair construction for all of the music with none of the noise. The patented ZeroNoise® RCA connectors feature the compact Sure Grip design for easy installation in tight places. The connectors are 24-karat gold plated for maximum signal transfer and corrosion protection, with split-tip RCA center pins for the most secure contact. Even the connector size and shape is designed for true functionality – easy to grip, and easy to install. The best of the best, it’s the most advanced interconnect on the market today – The “Zero Noise 6″. From the Silver-Plated Oxygen-Free Copper to the Serpentine Cut machined connector, the ZN6 is engineered for pure sound, Zero Noise interference, and optimum performance. Pure signal. No distortion. Pin-point sonic accuracy. Exactly what you’d expect from Streetwires! The Zero Noise 6 has it all! 2-Channel. Mfg. #ZN610. Length: 1 m (3.3 ft.) Hyper Twist® twisted pair design PhasePerfect® Teflon® insulation with Crystalflex® jacket Silver-plated UltraGrain® OFC conductors Dual split-pin center contact Serpentine Cut® machined connector with Sure Grip machined body

Oct 29, 2009 23:03:04

Intuitive Leadership is a term that has come into vogue only recently. In fact, tough-minded male executives have confessed to using intuition in their decision-making. Intuitive leadership is more than simply old-style leadership with some intuition added in to guide the corporate decision. It is leadership that takes into account both (a) the executives’ appreciation of their inner resources that are available but often not used and (b) the changes in institutions and society that are accompanying the “awakening” of employees and the public at large. The term “awakening” is used to describe the general phenomenon whereby people are becoming aware that they no longer have to accept their adopted beliefs, beliefs that they developed or accepted throughout most of their lives. These beliefs can include belief in the inderiority of certain ethnic or gender groups, beliefs in the sacrosanctity of economic customs and business practices (even if they are demonstrably not good for people or the planet), belief in powerlessness before the “big system,” or belief in the limited extent of one’s own ability to create what one wants.

In view of these changes, what is sound business for the future? What do these changes mean to business people? Of one thing we can be sure: business life will be replete with challenges. Some of these challenges will stem from the global dilemmas, with growing recognition of the role business has unwittingly played in accelerating modern society’s race towards self-destruction. Some of these challenges will stem from the changing attitudes of employees and the general public—the customers. The new environment for business will emphasize innovation and will be highly competitive. To prosper in such an environment, a business firm will need to attract and hold its most creative people. To do that, businesses will have to provide a work environment that fosters creativity development.

Developing intuitive leadership in the future will not be a luxury or a passing fad; it will be the heart of business. The challenges will be great. It will be necessary to deal effectively with the increasing complexity, interconnectedness, and systematic nature of the economic system. There is both good news and bad news. The bad news is that there will be persistent problems of mediocrity, debt, trade balance, global dilemmas, and worker morale. The good news is that we have inner resources we haven’t been using—untapped resources that are quite capable of dealing with these problems.

Thus “intuition” is not just a new gimmick in management decision making. Intuition is a code word for a necessary transformation of business—indeed, of global society.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

Wah, apa yang terbayang dalam benak Anda setelah membaca judul di atas? Sudah akan muncul lagikah pendatang baru? Hehehe… Mari, langsung saja kita simak rentetan tulisan di bawah ini. Yah, ini hasil dari pencarian dari berbagai sumber juga… kalaupun ada yang mau menambahkan silahkan saja… ^^

microsoft-office-2010-about

office_2010_screenshots1

Microsoft Windows dan Microsoft Office merupakan sistem operasi dan program aplikasi yang sulit dipisahkan. Di mana ada Ms Windows di situ pula ada Ms Office. Saat ini, pemakai komputer sedang menunggu kehadiran Ms Windows 7 yang agaknya menjanjikan berbagai keunggulan. Diharapkan tahun ini, sistem operasi yang dijanjikan dapat berjalan di komputer sederhana tersebut akan dapat menebus kegagalan sistem operasi pendahulunya, yaitu Windows Vista. Bila Vista menuntut hardware yang berlebih, Windows 7 tidak perlu memperbarui komputernya.

Menyusul Windows 7 yang sebentar lagi akan segera lahir, Microsoft sudah menyiapkan aplikasi andalannya, yang diberi nama sementara Ms Office 2010. Aplikasi ini merupakan kelanjutan dari Office 2007 yang khusus dirancang untuk memanfaatkan kelebihan Windows Vista. Namun disayangkan, Office 2007 juga gagal menggeser kepopuleran Office XP atau Office 2003 pendahulunya.

screenshot-of-microsoft-office-14

Nah, apa yang baru?

Setiap versi baru selalu menjanjikan keunggulan baru. Pada Office 2003/XP, dikenalkan intelligent menu, yaitu menu yang dapat menyesuaikan diri dengan kebiasaan penggunanya. Itulah sebabnya menu Office di satu komputer dapat berbeda dengan menu Office di komputer lain, karena sangat dipengaruhi oleh menu yang sering digunakan oleh pemakainya. Menu yang paling sering muncul, akan selalu tampil di layar dan menu yang jarang dipakai, akan disembunyikan. Sudah barang tentu, masih banyak kelebihan lain.

Pada Office 2007 dikenalkan menu bergaya ribbon atau pita. Kebalikan dengan sistem sebelumnya, ikon-ikon justru ditampilkan sebelumnya, agar pemakai tahu perintah apa saja yang dapat dijalankan ketika sedang menggunakan Office. Susunan menu banyak yang berubah, meskipun sebenarnya manfaatnya sama dengan sistem sebelumnya. Itulah sebabnya Office 2007 tidak mampu menggeser Office 2003.

Kini pada Office 2010, Microsoft lebih banyak lagi menampilkan ikon dan menu di setiap aplikasi yang tergabung di dalam Office. Risikonya adalah layar menjadi penuh dengan ikon menu, sehingga daerah kerja menjadi berkurang. Untuk menyiasatinya, Microsoft memanfaatkan kemampuan grafis perangkat komputer zaman sekarang. Karena kemampuan grafis semakin halus dan gambar yang kecil sudah terlihat jelas, maka ukuran ikon diperkecil. Selain itu, bila diperlukan, semua menu akan muncul di semua sisi, baik kiri, kanan, atas dan bawah daerah kerja.

Memang, pada masa kelahiran Office 2010 ini, layar atau monitor  komputer sudah banyak yang berdimensi luas, bahkan hingga 18-22 inci, padahal dulu cuma sekitar 12-14inci. Itupun dengan resolusi gambar yang jauh lebih halus. Sehingga bagi pemakai komputer dengan layar lebar, MS Office 2010 memang akan tampak lebih manis dan lebih pintar. Namun sayang, masa sekarang juga sedang populer komputer kecil bernama netbook dan UMPC, yang layarnya sangat sempit untuk bekerja, sehingga kalau untuk menjalankan Office 2010, akan sedikit merepotkan pemakainya.

Program yang tergabung di dalam Office 2010 juga mengalami penambahan. Selain program yang sudah ada di Office sebelumnya, seperti Acces, Excel, Groove, Info Path, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, dan Word, Microsoft juga mengenalkan Sharepoint Designer, OIS, InterConnect, Word_Consumer, dan Excel_Consumer. Sharepoint ditujukan untuk membuat dokumen yang berkaitan dengan web dan jaringan. InterConnect masih belum jelas untuk apa, karena tadinya aplikasi ini hanya dipasarkan di Jepang, namun tiba-tiba sekarang disebar ke seluruh dunia. OIS adalah Office Information Services dan bagi para pengamat, juga belum jelas apa bedanya dengan InterConnect, karena Microsoft sendiri juga belum menjelaskan secara rinci.

Word Consumer dan Excel Consumer juga menimbulkan tanda tanya besar bagi para pengamat. Jangan-jangan ini adalah versi ringan yang dapat dipakai di berbagai sistem, misalnya di ponsel atau di sistem non-Windows, agar pemakai tetap dapat saling bekerja sama atau bertukar dokumen. Kalau ya, mengapa tidak ada versi yang sama untuk PowerPoint dan InfoPath misalnya. Belum lagi ada kemungkinan berkas antara versi Consumer dan versi Penuh tidak dapat saling bekerja sama.

MS Office 2010 juga tidak begitu rakus seperti pendahulunya yang memaksa pemakainya untuk memakai komputer dengan memori besar dan prosesor berkecepatan tinggi. Seperti juga Windows 7, Office 2010 dapat dijalankan pada prosesor lama, namun tidak jauh dari kelas Intel DualCore. Bisa saja dijalankan di prosesor yang lebih rendah lagi, namun kecepatan akan dikorbankan.

smart-art

Kapan akan diluncurkan?

Dari berbagai berita yang beredar, Office 2010 kabarnya akan resmi beredar pertengahan tahun 2010. Saat ini baru sampai pada tahap Techincal Review, yaitu uji coba oleh para pelaku, khususnya dari sisi teknis. Bila tahap sukses, akan dilanjutkan dengan versi Beta dan kemudian siap diedarkan.

Office 2010 atau kalau menggunakan nomor menjadi Office 14 memang dirancang untuk berjalan pada sistem Windows 7, namun ternyata masih dapat dijalankan pada sistem Windows XP. Ini jelas kabar gembira bagi pecinta XP, karena kebanyakan aplikasi baru yang lahir sekarang, dirancang untuk Vista, meskipun Vista gagal dipasar.

Meski harusnya diedarkan pada kalangan terbatas, tetapi ada saja penguji coba yang menaruhnya di Internet dan bocor, sehingga dapat di unduh oleh para pengintai yang tidak diundang. Beberapa situs sudah diblokir oleh Microsoft, tetapi muncul lagi situs lainnya. Kalau Anda rajin mencarinya, akan ketemu sebanyak 7 file dengan ukuran masing-masing 100 MB, kecuali file terakhir yang hanya 10 MB. Setelah file-file diekstrak dan digabung, barulah dapat diinstal. Selamat berburu Microsoft Office 2010.

PCI Bus Diagram

Computer components are connected through a bus called the Pheripheral Component Interconnect. This allows you to connect all the computers componets (e.g hardware) to the processor.

For more information click - http://computer.howstuffworks.com/pci.htm

Peering or Settlement-free Interconnect (SFI), is a contentious subject as can be seen here and here. Having been involved in a few SFI negotiations and and disputes myself, I thought I’d write my analysis using an existing SFI policy as a vehicle for the analysis.

First, what is SFI? Simply put it is the bilateral exchange of  two service provider (SP)’s customer routes without payment by either side (settlement-free). A more detailed explanation can be found here.

The technical details and various modes of the peering definition could go on for quite some time, but the question at the heart of the matter is: “will provider X interconnect with me on a settlement-free basis?” Network Service Providers want to connect to other networks on a settlement-free basis because it allows them to exchange traffic for free with them, without having to pay an upstream to carry their traffic. The upstream providers do not want to interconnect on a settlement-free basis because they lose revenue.

Geoff Huston has a very good statement of what settlement-free interconnection really means.

The bottom line is that a true peer relationship is based on the supposition that either party can terminate the interconnection relationship and that the other party does not consider such an action a competitively hostile act. If one party has a high reliance on the interconnection arrangement and the other does not, then the most stable business outcome is that this reliance is expressed in terms of a service contract with the other party, and a provider/client relationship is established.

Like taking margin in the retail industry, SFI will only be granted if the benefits of interconnection outweigh the cost. It really is that simple.

With that in mind, let us take a current SFI Policy and analyze the technical aspects. To ground the discussion in reality, I will use the Comcast SFI Policy as of September 2009. It is a good example of a well-written, modern SFI policy. Comcast policy text is in blue.

Applicant must operate a US-wide IP backbone whose links are primarily 10 Gbps or greater.

This is to ensure that the applicant’s network is similar to Comcast in size and has a similar cost basis. Traffic engineering and management are simplified due to similar bandwidth on the interconnecting backbones as traffic flows tend to be of similar size. There have been people who have interconnected at 10G with the backhaul restricted to STM-1/OC-3 links, causing saturation and a poor user experience.

Applicant must meet Comcast at a minimum of four mutually agreeable geographically diverse points in the US. Interconnection points must include at least one city on the US east coast, one in the central region, and one on the US west coast, and must currently be chosen from Comcast peering points in the following list of metropolitan areas: New York City/Newark NJ, Ashburn, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, Palo Alto/San Jose, and Seattle.

This clause ensures that the applicants network is similar to Comcast in scope (and has a similar cost basis) and has the same redundancy, size, and diversity of connection that allows Comcast to easily integrate the interconnection and session management into their traffic engineering and operational procedures.

Applicant’s traffic to/from the Comcast network must be on-net only and must amount to at least 7 Gbps peak in the dominant direction. Interconnection bandwidth must be at least 10 Gbps at each interconnection point.

This requirement ensures that the network is at par with other SFI networks, making traffic engineering and operational management easier.  It should be subject to change regularly based on network evolution. The only thing I would change in the requirement is to substitute average for peak. With peak and 95th percentile a small number of samples dominate the calculation.  With average, that is not the case. Peak and 95th percentile are relatively easy to game, not so with average. Any metric that allows dominance of the outcome by a small set of samples is contraindicated in peering calculations, whereas in customer/provider relationships they are preferred by providers. The former situation is optimized for volume and the latter is optimized for rate.

A network (ASN) that is a customer of a Comcast network for any dedicated IP services may not simultaneously be a settlement-free network peer.

This requirement has caused more confusion than any other clause to my knowledge. Most people interpret this to mean “once a customer, always a customer, with no possibility of getting SFI in the future.”  This is quite incorrect. What it actually means is that if you are a customer, you cannot simultaneously interconnect for free for on-net routes. This comes up when customers want only to pay for “off-net” traffic and is implemented by the provider by setting up multiple interconnections.  Announce customer routes (the on-net traffic) on some interconnections and only announce  peer (or off-net) routes on others. If the provider offers this option there are many ways to game it. This requirement is self-defense and eliminates operational complexity.

Applicant must have a professionally managed 24×7 NOC and agree to repair or otherwise remedy any problems within a reasonable timeframe. Applicant must also agree to actively cooperate to resolve security incidents, denial of service attacks, and other operational problems.

Applicant must maintain responsive abuse contacts for reporting and dealing with UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email), technical contact information for capacity planning and provisioning and administrative contacts for all legal notices.

This requirement ensures that there is a good point of contact that is reachable at any time, considerably simplifying technical and policy coordination between networks.

Applicant must agree to participate in joint capacity reviews at pre-set intervals and work towards timely augments as identified.

Traffic forecasting and pre-planning for capital expenditutures, metro and PoP upgrades is essential as they take time to get deployed in the field.

Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus outbound traffic. The network cost burden for carrying traffic between networks shall be similar to justify SFI.

This  is another very controversial requirement – the so-called ‘Ratio clause.’  The best way to look at it is via the Geoff Huston definition above, any other way of looking at this is doomed to failure. This requirement serves as another way to ensure that the interconnection applicant has a similar scale and scope network as Comcast, with a similar cost basis as measured by the cost of carriage of a bit/mile.

Applicant must abide by the following routing policy:
Applicant must use the same peering AS at each US interconnection point and must announce a consistent set of routes at each point, unless otherwise mutually agreed.

Consistent route announcements are useful to prevent gaming (see ratio requirement mentioned earlier), help in troubleshooting and traffic engineering.

No transit or third party routes are to be announced; all routes exchanged must be Applicant’s and Applicant’s customers’ routes.

If a network starts announcing transit or third party routes, those prefixes will interfere with normal routing and traffic engineering, potentially severely disrupting Internet connectivity for customers. Sending a large amount of transit routes can also potentially double or triple the number of paths in the routers, causing them to run out of resources and crash.

Applicant must filter route announcements from their customers by prefix.

Customer routes are preferred in most networks, and are announced to other SFI networks as the best path to reach that customer. If the customer makes an error such as leaking another providers upstream routes, it can cause significant disruption. For example, by making the customer look like it has the the best route to that upstream provider. The wrong information may be propagated to Comcast and their SFI networks, causing traffic to to be incorrectly routed.

Neither party shall abuse the SFI network peering relationship by engaging in activities such as, but not limited to: pointing a default route at the other or otherwise forwarding traffic for destinations not explicitly advertised, resetting next-hop, selling or giving next-hop to others.
Applicant should be willing to enter into an NDA before formal discussions begin.

The abuse requirement simply says do not try to steal service by pointing a default, or faking next-hops.  The NDA requirement is quite standard when entering into negotiations for something as sensitive as SFI.

Applicant should be advised that the SFI processes will start with a 90 day trial.  On successful completion of that trial, a formal interconnect agreement will be processed.  This agreement will renew annually, subject to the then current SFI Policy.  During the year if there is a violation of the policy, the agreement and interconnections may be terminated upon written notice to the contacts specified in the agreement.
A 90 Day trial to verify that the traffic, ratio and other technical conditions are satisfied is reasonable. It allows for sufficient time to verify the claims for volume and ratio, but is not so long that it starts looking like  a revenue generation mechanism.

Applicant shall not be permitted to offer or sell any IP transit services providing only AS7922.

This particular requirement prevents networks that meet the SFI requirements from selling cheap, direct access to the Comcast network to networks who otherwise do not meet Comcast SFI requirements.  This violates the equivalent cost basis argument for SFI.

Applicant must be financially stable.
Comcast requires that Applicants seeking SFI in the United States agree to provide reciprocal SFI arrangement with Comcast in the Applicant’s home market.

Excellent clauses. Comcast is US centric (for now). If they ever expand out to different geographies, there is a ready-made interconnection system in place.

This is a good, rigorous policy that sets out a fair, even-handed system of evaluation for SFI with Comcast. The requirements are clear, well articulated and make technical sense and that makes a sensible trade-off between of cost of interconnection and the value to the Comcast customer base.

Article was vastly improved thanks to editing and wordsmithing help from Ben Black.

And when it’s like being in an area of hard landscaping in a garden, with paths going in different directions and they mostly look interesting, what would I like to have happen? I’d like to explore the various paths and figure out how they interconnect, get the lie of the land.

What I don’t want to do is take the wrong one. That’s important. The wrong one might be ‘putting a foot wrong’, so that I fell down and injured myself, or it might be going so far down the wrong path that I couldn’t get back.

I want to have freedom of movement until I can see a bit more of the system. At the moment I can see just the first step, or first couple of steps, in each direction. And every personal development methodology worth its salt advises getting the big picture in place to start with: what do I really want, and how will it be when I’ve got it? I’m currently enjoying the idea of Mind Movies – inspiration boards in video format.

A year from now, I’d like to be married, living with Steve in a house we’ve bought together, somewhere in West London. I don’t actually want a ‘four-hour work week’ – I’d like to spend a good proportion of my time in an occupation which I enjoy, which I’m good at, which uses my skills and knowledge, which other people find useful and which I get paid for.

I’d like to bring together some of the strands of what I know and what I can do. It’s a fairly unusual mixture, but it seems to be useful to a lot of people.

The below post is the result of work in identifying the root cause for the mysterious ‘global cache blocks lost’ . An uncommon issue known to significantly cause poor performance. Also, an indication of sub-optimal interconnect configuration.

( Issue,Diagnosis and Solution )———————————————————————————————————–

1) ISSUE: We have large amount of global Cache blocks lost values as shown below( 29 occurrences on node 1 and 287 on node 2),

SELECT
A.VALUE “GC BLOCKS LOST 1″,
B.VALUE “GC BLOCKS CORRUPT 1″,
C.VALUE “GC BLOCKS LOST 2″,
D.VALUE “GC BLOCKS CORRUPT 2″
FROM GV$SYSSTAT A, GV$SYSSTAT B, GV$SYSSTAT C, GV$SYSSTAT D
WHERE A.INST_ID=1 AND A.NAME=’gc blocks lost’
AND B.INST_ID=1 AND B.NAME=’gc blocks corrupt’
AND C.INST_ID=2 AND C.NAME=’gc blocks lost’
AND D.INST_ID=2 AND D.NAME=’gc blocks corrupt’;

2) DIAGNOSIS : The below statements prove that the udp_max_buf. and sq_max_size at OS level are not set to optimized values on both nodes

a)OnNODE 1:netstat did not show up any collisions or errors

$ netstat -I ce0 <–network stats sometime misleads showing the zeroes. Please see below are the kernel statistics (kstat)
Name Mtu Net/Dest Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Collis Queue
ce0 1500 clusternode1-priv-physical1 clusternode1-priv-physical1 1086594021 6 3478599066 0 0 0
$ netstat -I ce1
Name Mtu Net/Dest Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Collis Queue
ce1 1500 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 3010334968 1 162602450 0 0 0

$ kstat -p -s ‘*nocanput*’
ce:0:ce0:rx_nocanput 0
ce:0:ce0:tx_nocanput 0
ce:1:ce1:rx_nocanput 0
ce:1:ce1:tx_nocanput 0
ce:2:ce2:rx_nocanput 0
ce:2:ce2:tx_nocanput 0
ce:3:ce3:rx_nocanput 0
ce:3:ce3:tx_nocanput 0
ce:4:ce4:rx_nocanput 0
ce:4:ce4:tx_nocanput 0
ce:5:ce5:rx_nocanput 21 <—-Indicating the packet losses, small number compared to the below node 2 with 186 on ce0, concurring the highest number of gc blocks lost from the query from db.
ce:5:ce5:tx_nocanput 0

b) On Node 2:netstat did not show up any collisions or errors
$ netstat -I ce1
Name Mtu Net/Dest Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Collis Queue
ce1 1500 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 2018406385 0 3189380678 0 0 0

$ netstat -I ce0
Name Mtu Net/Dest Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Collis Queue
ce0 1500 clusternode2-priv-physical1 clusternode2-priv-physical1 3478616312 8 1086431534 0 0 0

$ kstat -p -s ‘*nocanput*’
ce:0:ce0:rx_nocanput 186 <– High number of packets loss concurring with the highest number of occurrences of blocks lost on node 2
ce:0:ce0:tx_nocanput 0
ce:1:ce1:rx_nocanput 0
ce:1:ce1:tx_nocanput 0
ce:2:ce2:rx_nocanput 0
ce:2:ce2:tx_nocanput 0
ce:3:ce3:rx_nocanput 0
ce:3:ce3:tx_nocanput 0
ce:4:ce4:rx_nocanput 0
ce:4:ce4:tx_nocanput 0
ce:5:ce5:rx_nocanput 10
ce:5:ce5:tx_nocanput 0
3) SOLUTION/ NEXT STEPS : Increase the udp_max_buf and sq_max_size at Solaris OS level.

ITT Interconnect Solutions and Premier Cables have signed a franchise distribution deal covering the UK and Ireland. The deal enables the cable company to deliver flexible power distribution systems using the Powerlock connector brand ITT’s VEAM Powerlock field-installable power distribution connector system provides a high level of safety and reliability and is able to withstand severe operating conditions.

“I am part of all that I have met.” — Alfred Tennyson

Too often, I have lost my way by forgetting that I am part of a community, a society, a world. There were low points in my life when I closed myself off from others and drifted off all alone. Fantasy, rituals and acting out took me not out of myself, but deeper into loneliness. As we all maneuver and make our way through life we make contact with others even if we don’t realize it. Looking, talking, smiling, touching, eating, walking, working, playing – all these activities are likely to bring us into contact with others. And the way we act and react does make a difference. Often, a simple smile can make someone else’s day. A hug breaks the ice of solitude. A kind word strikes a chord and is remembered. Yes, we are all part of the interconnected web of Life; referred to by some as humanity; and we get love and power simply from knowing this. I want to feel part of a strong, healthy and loving community.

Hello again. It’s been a busy time.

Not just with the holiday presents (as you know, Spanish holidays extend to Jan 6th with the feast of the Three Wise Men). We’ve had a happily-resolved, but nevertheless very revolting clash with the worst type of Internet denizen. We’re still digesting the event but there are a couple of things that I believe can be useful for anybody with an interest in safely running online communities.

Everyone knows, at least in the abstract sense, that out there lurk ethically deformed people. Some are sick, some are depraved. The net has given us all a means of contact that makes it even harder to screen them out than face to face. We build some barriers, we avoid some practices. Sadly, “we” is not everyone.

Specifically, there is a very large online community out there where eminently normal people play to their baser callings: exchanging stolen pornography and tips on whorehouses is the fare of the place, addled with some cooler leisure topics that attract a large audience. While doing this, they slum with the kind of people that live in that atmosphere, not just dip in it. For them, hinting at child pornography or rape is not just a game. If it were a bar, it would be downright seedy, and a bit dangerous. But it’s the net, isn’t it, so it’s not real – and so, over one hundred thousand members crowd those forums and many more crawl them.

That forum is the brainchild (to give it a decent name) of a professional freak that poses as a depraved in any media that asks for it. He has apparently been involved with the Justice for sex with underage boys, all rejected after the emergence of tapes in which the minors recorded their consent. Whether that was a ploy for notoriety or an underhand settlement, our lawyers don’t know.

Some months ago, there was a conversation on one community-management list about whether the existence of that kind of online environments was good, bad or irrelevant for paedophiliacs and potential predators. Well, now I’ve seen an example, and I know what happens: they egg each other on, and apparently normal people cheer from the sidelines.

The story

At the start of this year we (the Macuarium team) detected a thread in that forum in which a person who knew our own forums well was trying to stir up a “forum assault”. He lifted pictures of members from our site, including two of minors, wrote extensive abuse about us and very obscene phrases about the minors, and harangued his forum-mates to do to us what they seem to have done several times in the past: shut down the forum by using a deluge of extremely foul trolling and revolting pictures. And when I say “revolting”, I mean gruesome images of real burned, shot or squashed people, rape images and child pornography. I have not seen more than one of the examples we found, and I’ll probably remember it for a long long time; and no, I won’t be linking to their footprints here. They are indeed enough to cause havoc, regardless of many other considerations.

They do that until they have laughed enough at the victim’s defense attempts and cries for mercy. Also, they apparently have done it before with the full collaboration of the forum administration, in secrecy. They have a methodology for it, indeed…

Before having a clear picture of who was behind that place, we started documenting the thread. We tried to contact their administrators and site owners to call for the removal of the thread. We also contacted their ISP and DNS providers. To no avail. We could see the attack preparations gather pace (by that time we were actively monitoring several things) as the scheduled time of attack approached (23.00 in our time zone).

We didn’t raise public alarms as that would most likely only cause confusion and the kind of notoriety evidently enjoyed by the attacker, but we got ready to stop, mop and counter the attack. Sadly most of the details can’t be made public yet, but our team really made me proud.

We went to the police too, of course. But we also had to take down the doctored child pictures, which we did by asking the image hosting service. They complied, and the pervert asnwered by uploading new and extremely gross doctorings of the picture on a different server, one without privacy policy, user registration or visible means of contact.

When we managed to pull that version down too, the denizens of the other forum were quite certain they were being watched, even as they plotted, recruited and started to register themselves in our forums for the attack. Finally, they probed the defenses a bit and gave up, already well into the night.

Next day, an administrator closed the remains of the attack thread (we’d already hunted down all unauthorised sources of images) without removing the abuse. Finally, late yesterday the thread was pulled off.

It’s not finished. We don’t trust them, and we aren’t done with them either.

Surf discreetly and carry a big stick

And we’ve taken a harder eye to pictures and activities of minors on our forum. We always monitor these, and we have always been very fast to block actions that should not be done without parental support. We’re proud to be much more family-friendly than the average TV programme, and a safe environment for online children, but there’s things that would make anybody paranoid.

There’s despicable people out there that allow anything in order to thrive: some ISPs, some site owners. There’s stupid people out there that can’t tell the difference between some slumming and actually hurting themselves or other people. And there’s evil people out there, some sick enough to think that kind of behaviour is somehow “cool”.

There’s also sensible and efficient people who try to protect their community members, adults and children, even in the middle of the night of their Christmas holidays. If you don’t have a team of them around in your online community, you better get some.

I knew about some of the dregs of the internet. I’ve fought off two “forum invasions” previously. But this week’s events (and especially our own investigations of the new foe) made me see much more clearly just how neccesary it is to stand watchful and have a very good team to rely on, and how thin is the line between normality and seeing your child’s picture doctored into pornography and posted visibly on the net.

When setting up a 4-node Oracle 10.2.0.2 RAC on RHEL4, after installing Oracle Clusterware, Oracle RAC binaries and creating a clustered database, I went ahead to open the instance on the first node and and then the second node. The instance on the first node would come up without any problem, but the instance on the second node would take a while to come up. However, on further checking we realized that the first instance was down. It turned out that while the second instance was coming up the first instance would crash. It all seemed weird because one would think both instances were healthy, but just the fact of bringing up an instance would crash the already open instance.

The alert log had the following messages:

Interface type 1 eth0 192.168.10.0 configured from OCR for use as a cluster interconnect
Interface type 1 eth3 192.168.11.0 configured from OCR for use as a cluster interconnect
WARNING 192.168.11.0 could not be translated to a network address error 1
Interface type 1 eth2 1#.1##.145.0 configured from OCR for use as a public interface

I went ahead to check if both interconnects are healthy.

A ping command on the primary interconnect revealed it was fine.

$ping <Primary-NIC>
PING Primary-NIC (192.168.10.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from Primary-NIC (192.168.10.2): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.035 ms
64 bytes from Primary-NIC (192.168.10.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.045 ms

— Primary-NIC ping statistics —
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.035/0.040/0.045/0.005 ms, pipe 2

A ping command on the secondary interconnect indicated there was a problem.

$ping <Secondary-NIC>
PING Secondary-NIC (192.168.11.2) 56(84) bytes of data.

— Secondary-NIC ping statistics —
28 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 27018ms

Once the SysAdmin fixed the secondary interconnect, both instances came up without any issues. This reinforces the importance of a functioning primary and secondary interconnect, if you specify both interconnects during the install – however, this does not provide redundancy or the ability to failover to the good interconnect if one interconnect fails.

The setup did not use NIC bonding, instead it used a primary and secondary interconnect for private interface (secondary interconnect for failover capability). I am positive both NIC cards should have been working during the install as the install pre-requisites were all met. But, it is evident from the alert log messages the second interconnect had some trouble.

Multiple interconnects allow Cache Fusion traffic to be distributed on all interconnects. However, if any one of the interconnects does not function, Oracle will assume the private network is down and will not open in cluster mode. Therefore it is highly recommended to use NIC bonding at the OS level for NIC failover and traffic sharing capability.

Bottom line: this incident clearly indicates the configuration of the interconnect plays a crucial role in RAC. Should I even make this statement?

P.S: for the dirty details of setting up NIC bonding in Linux check out this excellent link by Vivek.