Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (codenamed Hardy Heron) was released this week.

The Frogfoot mirrors have been updated and we have created a new Xen server image. You can now order a Grid server running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on our Grid page.

If you have a Frogfoot IP address, you have free access to our mirrors. Your /etc/apt/sources.list should look something like this for Hardy:

deb http://mirror.frogfoot.net/ubuntu hardy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirror.frogfoot.net/ubuntu hardy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirror.frogfoot.net/ubuntu hardy-updates main restricted universe multiverse

Long live Ubuntu!

As you are aware there is a long holiday next week. As always our Contact Center will be operational.

Our support hours will be as follows:

Saturday 26th April    -    8am -> 5pm
Sunday 27th April    -    8am -> 5pm
Monday 28th April    -    8am -> 5pm
Tuesday 29th April    -    6am -> 10pm
Wednesday 30th April    -    6am -> 10pm
Thursday 1st May    -    8am -> 5pm
Friday 2nd May    -    8am -> 5pm
Saturday 3rd May    -    8am -> 5pm
Sunday 4th May    -    8am -> 5pm

Happy holidays!!!

Every Friday we will feature a blockbuster movie that has been produced by Frogfoot Networks. This week we kick off with the Quentin Tadpole-tino festival and the must have movie RESERVOIR FROGS!. It is sure to keep you glued to your seat!

Cast your mind back 20 years — 1988, Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a place on earth” was at the top of the Top 40 and Trevor Manual was in jail. It was a long time ago!

It was also the year that the world was introduced to the fax machine. And for the next 20 years nothing changed. You put a piece of paper in one side and somewhere else another piece of paper magically appeared.

About 19 years ago that technology became redundant but apparently the world was just so impressed by the magical pretty picture machine that nobody thought to suggest we stop using it.

Frogfoot doesn’t like faxes but unfortunately they are still required in order for us to receive pretty pictures with peoples signatures on them. A while back we decided to digitise all our incoming faxes. The purpose of this was twofold. Firstly to save paper which is good for the environment and secondly, to make sure that we never lose any faxes.

Doing this is very easy with a little Linux and a recycled Microcom Deskporte 28.8 modem (circa 1995). We use Open Source software called Hylafax to receive and store the faxes and I wrote a little application that lets our receptionist “file” our faxes into virtual in-trays. This gives any frog web based access to the entire history of our faxes.

We also recently did some cool stuff with automatically filling in our signup forms and giving them to you as pre-populated PDFs. This means that you don’t need to “Fill in the form”, but rather just print it out, sign it and fax or email it back to us. We like making your lives and our lives easier so that we can get back to the hard work of being awesome.

We’d like to give you a quick overview of how the Frogfoot Support Process works. Often clients contact our sales team with support related matters when it would be better to contact our support team directly.

We’d like to share the best way for you, to help us, help you.

Clients have three ways to request support:

1. eMail the Support Team
2. Complete the Website Support Form (the best option)
3. Phone the Support Team: +27 21 689 3867

We use a support ticketing system to make sure all requests get the needed attention. If you email the support team or use the web based support form you will get an email response that contains a ticket number in the subject.

Please keep this ticket number in the subject when you respond and quote it to follow up on the progress of your support request.

The diagram below shows how each contact option enters our support system and how your support ticket flows through the system. This is a simplified overview. There are actually two levels of support: Level 1 and Level 2. Level 2 takes care of more advanced or complex queries.

Note: you can click on the graphic to see a larger version.

Our support team manager is always interested in your feedback and suggestions for improving our support.

Part 3 of our Secret headquarters highlights a section of the data center. Structural engineers and penguin patrols scour the construction for anything that may be out of place, while the the Graffiti Guerilla positions himself for a new onslaught of spray painting. The Frogfoot boardroom has a Wifi Frogspot.

There is so much talk about Broadband these days, but few people know what it actually means.

In technical terms, Broadband refers to a telecommunication medium that provides multiple channels of data of a single communication medium, typically using some form of frequency of wave division multiplexing.

What this means is that Broadband refers to any technology which can densely pack information and thereby allow a higher rate of transfer. This is why Broadband is always touted as the new, faster generation of Internet access services.

This is not the whole truth however. See, this faster technology only refers to the last mile, in other words, the link between you and your ISP’s nearest branch or aggregation point.

While this faster technology provides you with a faster link to the ISP, your ISP still needs to buy expensive national and International bandwidth.

So how does your ISP manage to give you more bang for their buck? Simple! They over subscribe!

Not making sense? How about an analogy.

When you buy insurance, your service provider (in this case the insurance company), takes your money and puts it in a big pool. They know that not all cars get stolen, houses burn down, etc. so they can pay out less than they are collecting from their subscribers even though you could potentially claim more than you’ve actually paid.

Broadband (in this case referring to your over subscribed bandwidth) is essentially the same thing. ISPs buy bandwidth in a big pool, give each of their customers a small pool which collectively adds up to much more than they actually buy themselves, but they know this works because only a small portion of their subscribers will use that bandwidth at any given time.

Let me demonstrate with an example. Remember those Vodacom HSDPA advertisements that claim up to 3.6 mbit/s? Well, that’s not a lie! What they don’t tell you is that the advertised speed is for your connection to the nearest cellular tower. Every single customer connecting to that particular tower shares a single 2 mbit/s connection to the Internet. Let’s say there’s 10 customers connecting to that tower sharing the same connection. Should they browse the Internet simultaneously, they will get 2/(3.6*10) or 5.5% of the advertised bandwidth.

This however is not what the marketing department of your ISP would like you to believe. No, they define Broadband as FAST!!! - with those three exclamation marks, capital letters and bold type face.

Not that this is a complete lie.

Broadband does refer to new faster technologies which promise better speeds, but always keep in mind that your service is over subscribed. The amount of over subscription determines how likely your chances are to actually get the speeds you are promised in that advertisement on television.

Over and above the over subscription of bandwidth, your connection will always be limited by the type of technology used. For ADSL this means the quality of your copper telephone line, for Wireless it means coverage, interference, and a host of other factors.

The cool thing about a blog is that once the info is there, it’s there forever. So, it makes sense to do the work right initially. One of the things we’ve done right is put together a great website with some good articles on our blog. Here’s an example of how I used it recently…

I visited a prospective client in Maitland with Freddie ( new salesfrog ). Our plan was to pitch our ADSL VPN solution ( one of Frogfoot’s many cool products - I’ll write more about this later ). Well, we found that this company had in fact already implemented a similar solution , not nearly as funky and smart as ours, but reasonably good nonetheless ( I’ll tell you why ours is better in that same post ).

One of the questions the IT Manager had was how our mail filtering was done. Ha ! Now I had him ! He walked right into it. I asked him to open his browser, took him to the Frogfoot Homepage and pointed out our recent post explaining our mail filtering system.

Boy was he impressed! He was able to read and understand our methodology as a result of the cool flow diagrams created by our graphic artist Vincent ( a living legend ).

Another example I have is me bumping into an ex-colleague a day or so ago. He asked about the ISP industry, and I pointed him to my post. That opened a can of worms which will lead to more business down the line no doubt

We just finished building a new page for our Grid Servers. Nice graphics to emphasise the USPs (Unique Selling Propositions).

If you have a Frogfoot Xen server, please let us know if we captured all the reasons why you like the service.

We are about to add more Grid (host) servers again as the service is gaining popularity.

Grid Servers start from only R49/Month.

I’ve been involved in IT sales for almost 10 years, and in ISP specifically for the past year. In that year, I have found that despite most businesses using ISP services, very few IT people seem to know much about: how much they’re spending | what they’re paying for | how long their contract runs for.

I reckon it’s a “cloak and dagger industry”, and some of the reasons are that :

• the definition of ‘broadband’ services is vague.
• shaped Vs unshaped bandwidth is a foreign concept to most.
• rate-based Vs volume-based bandwidth and connectivity is even more foreign.
• differences in Upload Vs Download speeds are not known or understood.
• Telkom doesn’t tell us how much contention they have on their ADSL lines.
• customers are unable to confirm the contention ratio they get on their internet links.
• ISPs sell solutions like an “ADSL MPLS network”.
• leased lines are bundled with bandwidth and we think it was “made that way”.
• they have this concept of a “rolling contract” which ties you in till eternity.
• my sales colleagues in this industry seem to be even less knowledgeable than I am.
• IT Manager/Directors believe whatever the ISP sales people are telling them !

“I don’t believe it” you say ?? Well, I could give you a few examples …. Recently I dealt with a JHB company who believed they were being serviced with 1:1 contention on their international bandwidth. The price seemed too good to me, so I encouraged them to do some investigation. Alas, they found that they had in fact been serviced with 1:4, despite what the ISP ( think ‘Golden Arches’ ) contract had stipulated.

So what’s my point ? Well, it’s that you get good at judging people; get good at developing trusting relationships with reputable suppliers. And… when you find a good one, that you stick with them !