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News of the Day

AT&T & Netflix sign deal for faster service to AT&T customers
http://mashable.com/2014/07/29/netflix-att-peering-deal/

Comcast Fiber to the Home News
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Expanding-Small-Fiber-to-the-Home-Deployments-129850

CVALINK to deploy TVWS
http://www.wispa.org/news/2014/07/24/cvalink-broadband-partnered-to-deploy-ars2-tvws-in-rural-areas-of-louisa-county-va

Categories
Tower

Osha Tightens Tower Rules

http://insidetowers.com/osha-tightens-rules/

https://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/Directive_pdf/CPL_02-01-056.pdf

Executive Summary
This instruction provides general enforcement guidance and procedures for use by compliance  officers during inspections involving hazards associated with using a hoist to take employees to  or from workstations on communication towers. This directive applies to all work activities on communication towers that involve the use of a personnel hoist.

Significant Changes
This directive replaces CPL 02-01-36, dated March 26, 2002. The previous directive provided  compliance guidance for hoisting personnel to or from their workstations during new tower erection only. This directive covers all hoisting of personnel to or from workstations on communication towers

Categories
Networking

IPv6 Test Sites

http://test-ipv6.chi.vr.org/

http://www.subnetonline.com/pages/ipv6-network-tools/online-ipv6-ping.php
IPV6 Ping tool

http://www.subnetonline.com/pages/subnet-calculators/ipv6-subnet-calculator.php
I
PV6 Subnet Calculator

Categories
Uncategorized

Current Connectivity and Co-Location Services

MTIN now offers CO-Location and Connectivity services in the following Cities

-Chicago, Illinois
-Fort Wayne, Indiana
-Indianapolis, Indiana
-South Bend, Indiana

Contact MTIN for your needs today!

Categories
Mikrotik

Mikrotik 6.16 and 6.17 Released

From the ChangeLogs

What's new in 6.17 (2014-Jul-18 15:14):

*) CCR1009 - fixed crash, only affects CCR1009;
 
What's new in 6.16 (2014-Jul-17 13:12):

*) 802.11ac support added in wireless-fp package for QCA9880/9882 rev2 (-BR4A) chips;
*) ip cloud now allows to set which IP to use - detected (public) or local (private);
*) l2tp, pptp, pppoe - fixed possible packet corruption when encryption was enabled;
*) ovpn - fixed ethernet mode;
*) certificates - use SHA256 for fingerprinting;
*) ipsec - fix AH proposal and problem when sometimes policy was not generated;
*) snmp - support AES encryption (rfc3826);
*) l2tp server: added option to enable IPsec automatically;
*) poe-out: added power-cycle-ping and power-cycle-interval settings;
*) gps - increased retry duration to 30 seconds;
*) time - on routerboards, current time is saved in configuration on reboot
    and on clock adjustment, and is used to set initial time after reboot;
*) sntp - disabling/enabling client was causing dynamic-servers to be ignored
    (bug introduced in 6.14);
*) CCR - fixed rare file system corruption when none
   of configuration could be changed or some of it disappeared;
*) ipsec - allow multiple encryption algorithms per peer;
*) email - support tls only connections;
*) smb - fixed usb share issues after reboot
*) snmp - fix v3 protocol time window checks;
*) updated timezone information;
*) quickset - added VPN settings for HomeAP mode;
*) latency improvements on CCR devices;
Categories
Networking Site News

MTIN announces IPv6 peering in Indianapolis, Indiana

MTIN is happy to announce free ipV6 peering in Indianapolis.  If you are a provider with a presence at 733 Henry Street Indianapolis, Indiana we will peer on the IPv6 backbone with you for free.  All you have to do is make it to us via a cross connect.  If you want to peer on IPv4, and are not already, we might be able to assume the cost of that cross-connect.

Contact MTIN for details.

Categories
Mikrotik Site News xISP

Most Popular Services

I was recently asked what some of our most popular services we offer to clients are.  The following are the top ones that come to mind

1.Converting bridged networks to routed
2.Remote Monitoring from our Data Centers. This allows a client to be notified in case they lose connectivity to the outside world.
3.Backend automation.  Implementing radius, monitoring links, and other things to give the ISP more information
4.Data Center services such as DNS hosting, circuit termination, and bandwidth.
5.Mikrotik configuration and support

Categories
xISP

WISPA Call To Action 5725-5850 band

From Rick Harnish

Purpose: Call To Action to support WISPA’s Petition for Reconsideration

Subject: FCC First Report and Order in the Matter of Revision of Part 15 of the Commission’s Rules to Permit Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII_ Devices in the 5 GHz Band (ET Docket No. 13-49)

ATTENTION: ALL WISPS THAT USE THE 5725-5850 MHz BAND

This email is a request to all WISPs and other entities that use the 5725-5850 MHz band.  On March 31st, the FCC adopted new rules for the 5 GHz bands.  While WISPA petitioned successfully to retain unlimited gain antennas, the FCC adopted more stringent out-of-band emission limits by eliminating Section 15.247 rules and placing all new equipment under Section 15.407.  Currently, most 5.725-5.850 MHz equipment operates under Section 15.247 rules. In two years, Section 15.247 equipment will no longer be legal to manufacture. Requiring all new equipment to be certified under Section 15.407  has SEVERE ramifications for the WISP Industry. Section 15.407 equipment will be much more expensive (will need expensive additional filters) and will operate on fewer channels (will have to stay away from the band edges). That’s why WISPA is putting out a CALL TO ACTION, to encourage all WISPs and others who use this band to file FCC comments supporting the Petitions of Reconsideration filed by WISPA, Cambium Networks, Mimosa Networks and JAB Wireless.  Below are links to the First Report and Order and all of the Petitions for Reconsideration. Please review the seven points that are listed below the links and choose the point (or points) that you feel are the most significant and that have the most impact your WISP operation. Discuss those points in your FCC Comments.

FCC First Report and Order in the Matter of Revision of Part 15 of the Commission’s Rules to Permit Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII_ Devices in the 5 GHz Band (ET Docket No. 13-49)

Wireless Internet Service Providers Association Petition for Reconsideration
Cambium Networks, LTD. Petition for Reconsideration
Mimosa Networks, Inc. Petition for Reconsideration
JAB Wireless, Inc.

On July 21st, Steve Coran, telecommunications counsel for WISPA and Rick Harnish, Executive Director of WISPA met with key staff people for Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, O’Reilly and Chairman Wheeler.  We stressed the importance of reconsidering this change in the rules.  We followed these meetings with a meeting with the staff of the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET).  We emphasized the following points:

1.      We thanked the Commission for preserving unlimited gain antennas in this band
2.      We explained how the new restrictions on out-of-band emissions (Section 15.407) would cause severe consequences for the WISP Industry and for many other industries, including Oil/Gas, School Systems, Aggregate Processors, Food Processors, County Governments and many more.
3.      We explained how many rural communities only source of Broadband is fed by this “Workhorse” band and would possibly go dark and/or service levels (capacity) would be compromised by the this change in rules, which would affect link distance, useable frequencies and capacity.

4.      We also explained how the new rules would cause manufacturers to add filtering to the radios, which would not only cost much more to produce, but would decrease the available spectrum from 125 MHz to 45 MHz due to a 40 MHz filter needed on both ends of the band.
5.      We explained that this decrease in useable spectrum would limit the ability for Wisps to use more than two sectors for Point to Multi-Point use and would cause a decrease in potential capacity to the consumers.
6.      We explained that the lower power/smaller antenna option to comply with the rules would cause some consumers to entirely lose their service due to distance limitations.  We also explained that consumers who have had service for many years, would not understand why they would either lose service or would now have to pay for a new installation (new more expensive radio) which would have less capacity and speed.
7.      We explained that many rural communities are fed by long distance PTP links in this band, which would not be possible with these new rules or would cause operators to have to build more towers at approximately $50,000 per tower, in order to retain service to these communities.  This would cause undue hardship on the operators and the consumers served by these links.  In some cases, the demographics of the communities would prevent the operator from investing in more towers and radios in order to retain service to these communities.

 We now encourage everyone to file comments supporting all of the above petitions for reconsideration.  The FCC and OET encouraged Steve and I to have operators file commentsexplaining the economic impact of these rule changes, examples of long distance links which would be impossible to make,given the rules changes, and other hardships the new rule will impose upon your business.  Please put your comments on your company letterhead.  Below are links to file your documents or comments.  You can read previous comments at http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/paginate?pageSize=100

Categories
Mikrotik

Router OS 6.15 Released

Big bug fix if you are upgrading from V5.x

What's new in 6.15 (2014-Jun-12 12:25):

*) fixed upgrade from v5 - on first boot all the optional packages were disabled;
*) fixed problem where sntp server could not be specified in winbox & webfig;
*) metarouter - make openwrt work on ppc metarouter again;

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Router OS 6.14 Released

We have made some interesting new features, including the new “ip cloud” menu, and general release of CAPsMAN:

What’s new in 6.14 (2014-Jun-06 15:34):
Quote:

*) sntp – ‘mode’ now is a read-only property, it is set to broadcast if no server ip address is specified;
*) smb – fixed some SMB1 errors;
*) wireless-fp package is now included in routeros one (disabled by default);
*) webfig – fixed quickset, it didn’t work with disabled wireless pacakge;
*) sstp – fixed problem where session was closed every 2min;
*) pptp,l2tp,pppoe – fixed problem where some of the static bindings become dynamic interfaces;
*) eoip – lowered default MTU to avoid IP packet fragmentation;
*) eoip – added clamp-tcp-mss setting with default=yes for new tunnels to avoid IP packet fragmentation;
*) fixed – bridge could sometimes get added without ~running~ flag;
*) fixed – simple queues could sometimes crash router;
*) fixed – simple queue stats freeze (empty winbox queue window);
*) ssh server – allow none cipher;
*) proxy – added ‘anonymous’ option which will skip adding X-* and Via headers;
*) dhcp server – added option use-framed-as-classless and added support for DHCP-Classless-Static-Route RADIUS attribute;
*) quickset – fixed problem where address mode selection did not work in bridge mode;
*) ipv6 address – fixed problem where changing advertise lost ipv6 connected route;

If you already run some RouterOS v6.x version, simply click “Check for updates” in QuickSet, Webfig or Winbox packages menu.

Others: http://www.mikrotik.com/download