TNMOC, Bletchley Park and the legacy of Alan Turing

Posted 22 January 2013 | | 2 Comments

We held a sponsored presentation with our vendor partner Allot Communications at Bletchley Park back in September (you can read about it here), and very successful it was too. Our speaker was Dr Matt Farmer, Technical Director for Allot Northern Europe, who has the knack of talking equally comfortably with board-level management, technical architects and administrators. This was lucky, as we were faced with a rather eclectic audi...read more

by Pierre | 22 January 2013

3e-Houses Project: New solutions and unexpected problems

Posted 15 December 2012 | | 0 Comments

For the last two years I have been working with my colleague Dr Alan Holt on a pan-European project to pilot IT and smart metering systems in social housing. Part-funded by the European Commission, the objective of the 3e-Houses project is to help households reduce their energy bills through the deployment of ICT and smart meters.

The project team is made up of organisations from across Europe including Spain, Germany, Bulgaria and of course, us here in the UK. IP Performance are working particularly closely with the UK partners: Bristol City Council, Toshiba Resear...read more

by Paul | 15 December 2012

The Computer Renaissance

Posted 31 May 2012 | | 0 Comments

I am one of those industry professionals raised on the BBC Micro. The BBC Micro was one of a number of micro computers developed in the 1980s. It came in two flavours, model A and model B. The model B had a 4 MHz 6502 processor and 32 Kbytes of main memory. Cassette tape was used for secondary storage, though you could get 5 ¼ inch floppy drives. At the time, it cost £400. Contrast this with what you can get for the same amount of money today.

The huge amount of power that is packed in today's computers means they can run highly sophisticated software – much more s...read more

by Alan | 31 May 2012

Transparent Proxy Redirect with JunOS

Posted 3 May 2012 | | 9 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog article about doing transparent intercept redirection with the Allot NetEnforcer using its 'Traffic Steering' feature. This week, I thought I'd cover off another method of transparent redirect, but this time using some of Juniper's product portfolio, namely the EX switching platform and SRX firewall and, as always, my favourite proxy of choice, a Blue Coat ProxySG.

I've mentioned before, transparent proxy is my preference. With the Blue Coat ProxySG as your proxy,...read more

by Andy | 3 May 2012

Extending Blue Coat's ProxySG Capabilities with the SpamHaus DROP List

Posted 27 April 2012 | | 0 Comments

For some time now, the well regarded SpamHaus global DNS Blacklist system has been helping mail servers to protect against SPAM and other unwanted mail content. It's a mature, autonomous system which allows mail servers to run a Blacklist check against connecting IP addresses to verify their 'trustworthiness' and if found to be untrustworthy (due to previous sending of spam, belonging to a dynamic IP address range which shouldn't' be sending email, etc), the email communication is rejected. Great stuff, 'nuff said. Good work SpamHaus!

There are a large number of othe...read more

by Andy | 27 April 2012

Traffic Steering with Allot Communications NetEnforcer

Posted 19 April 2012 | | 4 Comments

A problem fell onto my desk the other day concerning the use of a particular feature on the Allot AC1400 NetEnforcer, Allot’s AOS-based appliance which is a high capacity bandwidth management device that can help network administrators control, manage and above all give visibility to protocols running over network links.

The feature - ‘Traffic Steering’ - is a delightfully simple, yet very useful capability that allows the NetEnforcer to transparently redirect selected traffic to a ‘Service Port’ or designated link and is available on all AOS (Allot Operating Syste...read more

by Andy | 19 April 2012

Social Media and Marketing: Digital Trends for 2012 - A synopsis of a recent seminar

Posted 11 February 2012 | | 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I spent a very informative morning at a breakfast seminar run by Hotwire (@hotwirepr), 33-Digital (@33Digital) and Skywrite (@skywrite), held in the screening room of the Soho Hotel. It was a presentation of a white paper entitled "Ten Driving Forces in Digital Marketing - A Digital Trends Paper 2012". The audi...read more

by Pierre | 11 February 2012

IP Performance braves a "Telecoms Industry Go Karting Night" at Team Sport Karting in Bristol

Posted 2 February 2012 | | 0 Comments

IP Performance fielded 2 karts in the "Telecoms Industry Go Karting Night" at Team Sport Karting in Bristol last night. Kart number 11 comprised Nigel Morgan, Philippe Roels and Matt Dadd while number 12 was occupied by Andy Foukes, Steve Bellingham and Dan Hunt.

Wednesday 11th January 2012

Qualifying comprised a 15 minute session where all 3 drivers in each kart had to take time out on track. Nigel Morgan set the fastest time in kart 11 giving them 9th on the grid while Dan Hunt set a 36.8 second lap to secure kart 12 the second fastest time ...read more

by Dan | 2 February 2012

Screenings, Director Interviews and Wine Tasting - the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Posted 7 December 2011 | | 3 Comments

Having spent an ungodly amount of time getting there, it was now time to actually meet the organisers of the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, and to attend and participate in the director and producer interviews, screenings and Q&A sessions. Oh, and seeing as the "Semana Audiovisual y Digital de La Rioja" which hosts Renderyard, is in... er, La Rioja, there was a better than fair chance that there may be an opportunity to sample the local produce.

Saturday 26th November 2011, 06:30, Café Bretón, Logroño: Well, I don't quite make my 1pm appointment...read more

by Pierre | 7 December 2011

Trains, Planes and Automobiles - the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Posted 2 December 2011 | | 1 Comments

Due to attend the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, being held in Logroño, La Rioja, in northern Spain, I was grubbing about in the dark early on Friday morning making last-minute preparations for my trip (I was going to say 'flight', but as I was to find out, it was going to heavily involve tubes, taxis, trains, cars, buses and Shank's Pony, too).

I would be there to lend my support to the production team of "Makers | Our Story", a documentary on the UK independent film industry being showcased at the f...read more

by Pierre | 2 December 2011