[lugm.org] Announcing a Mauritian tech forum

[Ajay R Ramjatan]

Since we're sharing some off topic observations and thoughts, I'll add a
few of my own.


- The local CERT still sends their security bulletins with a PDF
attachment. Emails are unsigned by DKIM and they have no SPF record. I have
talked about this to their officers on three separate occasions now, first
time being at least one year ago but no change has been brought
- My bank and my credit card provider do not offer me two factor
authentication and they're managing my money. Google and Facebook give me
services for free and offer me this.
- I shared my observations of the the banking sector shortcomings with the
audience of the computer security day conference and only got some laughter
of acknowledgement of the situation, no real responses
- I know of no local banks who send DKIM-signed emails or have a SPF record
- .MU is still not DNSSEC-signed
 - IX is for decoration, true story.

End of rant. Thanks for creating that forum. I registered.





On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Keshwarsingh Nadan <
keshwarsingh.nadan at servihoo.net> wrote:

> > * why isn't this IX working?
>
> Simply because it was wrongly setup.
>
>
> > * what can be done to revive it?
>
> Nothing can be done, the IX is run, operated & controlled by MT. I've
> spoken to the guy a few months ago, but they still do not understand the
> concept and principle of peering.
>
>
> > * if the ISPs aren't going to do this themselves, how can we, as civil
> society, organise ourselves to get this done?
>
> This is something i have tried to accomplish a few months ago. I have
> enough space on 1st floor at CT1 (a perfect location since all carriers are
> present there) along with loads of carrier grade equipment. But i have been
> denied IP space (whether free or paid)... I was simply told to get that
> done via private space.. And of course a board member at the RIR influenced
> that decision, after all the doctor knows everything.
>
>
>
> K
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 8:28 PM, selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Dec 18, 2013 1:57 PM, "Nishal Goburdhan" <ndg at ieee.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 17 Dec 2013, at 10:33 PM, selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Ipv6, great stuffs, but why would i change if currently v4 is not
>> much a problem for me. Even as a tech user i just adapt only out of need to
>> keep myself as lazy as possible.
>> >
>> > this appears to largely be a repeat of avinash's question ("what does
>> IPv6 bring"), so i'll try to answer both here *briefly*.
>> >
>> > the short answer is that you live and work in an environment where the
>> basis for your connection (IPv4) is now depleted.  there is *no* other
>> sustainable solution for the future other than IPv6, so if you plan to
>> continue to live and work in this environment, when do you plan to develop
>> the skills to do this?  when you absolutely need it in a pinch, or now (or,
>> 5years ago) so that you're prepared for this transition.
>> >
>>
>> True. But am a coder and sometimes into architecture. Shifting v4 to v6
>> is just a script away. The skills needed, that has always been read the
>> manual read the rfc mix wiv instinct. So shifting does not seem a big deal
>> hence why i believe without the pressure to shift to v6 i wnt :) money
>> talks. Business owners decides that :) and i do only what am paid to do
>> during work time. Yes i do advise, but i will never 'convince'. So isnt
>> there a consortium to convince the world to shift?
>>
>>
>>
>> > you're blindly buffered into believing that NAPT is going to continue
>> to scale, and allow you to run your business in the same manner you do now.
>>   because, you see this (NAPT) working in your small networks now, and
>> equate that similar operation to what a carrier would need to do, at the
>> same level of operation.  that's...quite incorrect!  and it's simple to
>> understand - resources (memory, ports, hash-algorithms) are all finite, and
>> *will* be consumed by ever greedy, ever hungy additional connections.
>> >
>> > i always find that amusing;  particularly, since the blue-chip vendors
>> who are building these large carrier-grade NAT boxes, are the same ones
>> saying:  "um..guys, sure, we're selling you this stuff, and we know it
>> won't scale....(but we still want your money)".
>> >
>> > there are many more reasons why you should go IPv6 :-)   but i promised
>> my answer would be brief.  and there are other people here that probably
>> also want to contribute (you know who you are!)
>> >
>>
>> But some just make things works with just a linux or bsd box. The
>> pressure to shift to v6 is not yet there. Because it doesnot bring any
>> added profit yet. And like i said earlier, shifting now or shifting later
>> is a matter of at most one hour downtime (worst case scenario).
>>
>> > you can get lots more info here:
>> http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/ipv6/all-ipv6-resources/
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Lots of papers not enough convincing of business owners. Can iss fix my
>> latency issue because my isp has bad knowledge of routes or doesnt peer
>> wisely? Can iss convince the mauritian society to shift to v6 to ease my
>> life (yes v6 everywhere wud had eased my life but if it is not every it
>> does not). The answer is probably no, which is why i do not believe there
>> is anything worthwhile in moving now.
>>
>> > > Mauritian hosting easy to say but how do you provide cheap hosting
>> given the crappy connection versus price we have here?
>> >
>> > economists talk about economies of scale that are needed to drive down
>> prices.
>> > how do you *ever* plan to drive down pricing to what you're willing to
>> accept as "decent", if you don't start building scale ?
>> >
>>
>> Economist also killed the barter system so as to allowed those who cant
>> produce to live like bacterias off others.
>>
>> How do you start anything hosting wise even local when you have stupid
>> isps who if u want to ping an adbn box in the same country as you makes
>> your packet travel to london (linx maybe) then back to mauritius. This wud
>> be fighting against the current.
>>
>> > if you continue to invest in the $3 SaaS $colo_provided_vm, you're
>> never going to grow your local business sectors.  well, that is until your
>> regulator realises that, as a country you're spending XX-million hosting
>> outside the country, and in an effort to improve the BoP, they pass a law
>> that says all mauritian content *must* be hosted in-country.   (really, you
>> think i'm dreaming?  think again!!)
>> >
>>
>> If i want to make a business i shud first of all think about filling my
>> pockets, making the country happy is secondary. We are not in a perfect
>> world where you can do this.
>>
>> > today, we have lots of colo centres in ZA;  local hosting is a fraction
>> of what it used to be a decade ago.
>>
>> See my comment about local boxes connecting to each other might reach
>> over 280ms rtt.
>>
>> > it's still more expensive than a VM in SFO, but, there's sufficient
>> realisation that there is true value in keeping content in country.
>>
>> Keeping content in country if it raises your expenses makes customers
>> unhappy and makes  u earn lesser. Every has to eat. I do not make my
>> country happy when i know corruption causes incompetent ppl to work at
>> positions that cud have helped us gain better service. Am not a moron to
>> enrich the country so as ppl steal from it. I prefer to salvage and
>> sabotage it instead so as bacterias and viruses do not see anything to
>> steal and leave it alone *cough* *politicians*
>>
>> > (for a start, it actually *does* make it a lot tougher for the NSA to
>> get to... :-p)
>> > how are you - as the assumed informed crowd - promoting this
>> want/need/desire to keep things in-country?
>> > because - honestly - if you don't sit up and promote these ideas, whom
>> do you expect to?
>> > do you active choose *not* to purchase from a non-local site?
>> > and then *tell* the operator why you're boycotting him?
>> >
>>
>> You cant boycott the isp with the monopoly.
>>
>> > true story:  when i landed in MU in 2009, i needed a bank account.  i
>> thought SBM would be the natural bank to use;  that is, until i saw that
>> their website was hosted in australia.  i wrote to them, to tell them that
>> they had lost a customer.  and *why*.  if more people did that, don't you
>> think that they'd sit up, and take notice?   between then, and 2012, when i
>> left, i convinced 4 other expat staff at our MU office, *not* to use SBM,
>> and in each case to send SBM a letter (we cheated;  they used my template).
>>  you - as a consumer - need to start using your single most important
>> weapon - your wallet - to determine how you make purchasing decisions.
>> >
>>
>> Sbm is still running. And it is still outsourcing it is normal stuffs.
>>
>> > on my last trip to MU (circa May 2013) i spoke to an ISP that had
>> recently put in a direct interconnection, between ZA and MU.
>>
>> That is adbn. Ex nomad. It is not for common users. And i called to get a
>> business line. I called thrice and the sales person was still lunching for
>> 3 hrs.
>> I do not call more than 3 times.
>>
>> > i just checked - it's still in place.  so, right now, that's roughly
>> 60ms between JNB and ebene.
>>
>> 54ms to be exact
>> Try mt to an adbn box now.
>>
>> > right now, both their regular competitors have roughly 400ms back to MU
>> from my home in JNB.
>> > they (progressive ISP) were looking for ideas on how to resell this
>> capacity.
>> > out of curiousity, i asked them for regular pricing;  they were on par
>> 15% cheaper than two other larger ISPs that i know of.
>> > so.  cheaper, and faster.  mm...can you honestly tell me that you can't
>> think of at least seven different business ideas here, none of which
>> involve hosting in MU?
>>
>> Told you i already went through this. Keshwarsing can attest :)
>>
>> > (and really, if you can't, then let me know if you have oodles of
>> venture capital, because i certainly can !!)
>> >
>> > how do you eat an elephant  ?
>> >
>> >
>>
>> With friends. But why share the elephant if you hunted it alone?
>>
>> > > Singapore, some ips go through malaysia some still goes through linx
>> weird peering. That is also why am unable to use my quakelive premium
>> account in singapore any more, latency is a b*tch.
>> >
>> > so, in one sentence, you complain about latency being a b***h,.....but,
>> then collectively, largely don't see a problem with overseas hosting
>> > something smells fishy here :-)
>> >
>> >
>>
>> :) check local inter isp latency :) price wise it is better to go for out
>> of country hosting.
>>
>> > > How would you propose to solve the hosting problem without having to
>> give up all your fortune to MT and still get any profit out of it? Setting
>> up local exchange points and bypassing isp crazy rivalry? Who sponsors the
>> scene?
>> >
>> > i have enough equipment in my home right now, to sponsor you, if you
>> wanted to build an internet exchange point.
>>
>> :) am working on a better alternative to kill isps profit at once :)
>> coders win!
>>
>> > and speaking as someone that currently manages three (3) active IXes, i
>> can tell you that it doesn't take a lot of time and effort to run these.
>>  but why build a new one, when there's already an IX in ebene?  better
>> questions would be:
>>
>> But peerong is decided by the isp not the exchange you cant force isps to
>> share their routes if they do not want.
>>
>> > * why isn't this IX working?
>> > * what can be done to revive it?
>> > * if the ISPs aren't going to do this themselves, how can we, as civil
>> society, organise ourselves to get this done?
>>
>> It is not an isp problem it is more of political order. They are happy
>> enjoying the monopoly.
>>
>> ---_--------------i'll reply the rest later. I need food and i need woman
>> and i need to get high. Reply in some hours.---++++---------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > don't downplay the role of well organised public outcry.  the
>> mybroadband forum that i mentioned earlier, managed to get some amazing
>> stuff done to get transparency from the different broadband operators here.
>>  still not at the point where we'd want, but...better than before.
>> >
>> > there are more operators than MT (yip, true story!).  so start "voting
>> with your wallet" and showing support to the other operators, who would
>> probably be really interesting in looking for new business ideas, as they
>> *need* to eat into MT's market share...
>> > it's still possible to deploy simple services, and virtualise around
>> that - heck it's so much easier to do this now, than it was a decade ago.
>>  if you hope to make money out of selling the simple web-hosting, perhaps
>> you'd better re-think your model.  operators are fast realising that
>> bandwidth, hosting etc are commodities, and the "S" in ISP is what people
>> really want.
>> >
>> > i can say more, but that would require you wave that venture capital
>> cheque at me :-)
>> >
>> >
>> > > :) the problem is not technical it is with the people itself no one
>> can do anything about it because of the society's corruptive nature.
>> >
>> > honestly, selven, that's a defeatist argument, and i know, that you
>> know better.
>> > if what you're saying is true, then no country with a single incumbent
>> could have ever hope to be successful.  and history shows us otherwise.  so
>> instead of throwing your hands up in the air, and crying foul, find ways to
>> work within the system, while getting the system to change to what
>> you/society/industry/blah believe it should be.
>> > where *is* your civil society representation?  what happened to
>> ISOC-MU?   who represents your individual interests in policy making (if
>> this is a concern for you?)   a year or so ago, there was a consultative
>> paper request for the redelegation of .MU, put forth by the ICTA;  i
>> recall, because i posted it here.  did anyone (besides SM) comment on it?
>>  :-)
>> > before this de-reails any more from the original thread, i'd like to
>> echo what i said earlier:  for this (or anything) to succeed, it requires
>> community participation.
>> >
>> >
>> > > Binary.mu might work, i remember when i was still running hackers.muit used to run decently with decent amount of ppl without me actually doing
>> anything to it. Problem is you need lots of patience to keep focus into
>> moderating the place.
>> > > Good luck for binary.mu
>> >
>> >
>> > ....or, you need a plan to make, and keep it sustainable.
>> >
>> > again - i'll remind you - i raised these two issues, because, the
>> "techies" are often looked upon to shape the way things move.  if you're
>> not seeing the value of, and/or need for either IPv6, or local hosting,
>> well, quite frankly, i'd be quite worried about your vision of the future...
>> >
>> > --n.
>> > __________________________________________________________
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>>
>> __________________________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________
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