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

Checking out our investment - the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Posted 23 November 2011 | | 1 Comments

I'm about to travel to the 7th Renderyard Short Film Festival, being held in Logroño, La Rioja, in northern Spain, and thought I'd write some blog articles about the experience, and IP Performance's representation there.

The Renderyard Short Film Festival is an annual event showcasing a rich selection of work from around the world, including documentaries, animations, online series, independent films and new music videos. The festival has actually already started as I write this, but the full seven day itinerary was a little bit much to justify to "The Management", ...read more

by Pierre | 23 November 2011

Smart Energy Metering: The Coexistence of ZigBee and WiFi

Posted 16 September 2011 | | 1 Comments

3e-Houses is an EU-sponsored smart energy metering research project being carried out by a consortium of organisations (including IP Performance - see news item here) from Spain, Germany, The UK and Bulgaria. The aim of the project is to integrate established ICT technologies in social housing in order to give residents the ability to manage their energy consumption. Real time monitoring of energy usage is central to 3e-Houses projec...read more

by Alan | 16 September 2011

Quality of Service - Part 2: A Taxonomy of Traffic Management Policies

Posted 8 September 2011 | | 0 Comments

Within the IT industry it has become customary to use the term quality-of-service to mean the management of traffic rather than the some measure of the service level. This has merely become the adopted convention. In this article I drop the established convention “quality-of-service” term in favour of traffic management. Traffic management is applied at the router/switch attempts to optimise network resources. In this article, we identify four categories of traffic management policy which we will examine in turn:

• Forwarding policy
• Scheduling policy
<...read more

by Alan | 8 September 2011

Absolute CAD... certainly not rotters when it comes to cabling

Posted 6 September 2011 | | 0 Comments

Absolute CAD are a small, specialist cabling design and installation firm offering bespoke solutions to the broadcast and post production industries.

They specialise in intricately-engineered audio-visual cable looms and generic shielded and unshielded structured cabling installations, custom-designed and -built broadcast communication racks and cabinets, and broadcast system integration. Their engineering design and project management departments are geared to design and deliver projects of any size, from simple standalone editing rooms to full facility installatio...read more

by Pierre | 6 September 2011

Virtualisation Fundamentals - Part 1

Posted 30 August 2011 | | 1 Comments

What's this virtualisation stuff all about? In the first of a series of blogs, I will be investigating what virtualisation is and why people are doing it. In subsequent parts, we will look at the how of it, the danger zones, and then get more specific.

Some history: Virtualisation was invented many moons ago by IBM. However, it came to the fore with the rise of client server computing and the x86 platform.

As companies started implementing multi-tiered applications, they found that each tier needed to be hosted on its own server. This led to ...read more

by Paul | 30 August 2011

Quality of Service - Part 1: Clinging on to Net Neutrality

Posted 7 August 2011 | | 0 Comments

In the beginning the Internet was designed to transmit packets on a best-effort basis. While the network makes a sincere attempt to transmit packets, there are no guarantees. The network does not allocate resources in advance to ensure reliable or timely delivery. As a result, packets may be delayed or even dropped. It is left to higher layer protocols (such as TCP) to ensure reliable data transfer.

Memory buffers are used to avoid collisions when two (or more) packets arrive at a communications link at the same time. A packet must wait until all the packets...read more

by Alan | 7 August 2011

Regulation of 5GHz WLAN Frequency Bands in the UK

Posted 21 June 2011 | | 0 Comments

This article discusses the regulation of wireless local area network (WLANs) operating in the 5 GHz spectrum range in the UK. This spectrum range is divided into three bands, namely A, B and C.

Bands A and B cover the spectrum range 5.150 to 5.725 GHz. Equipment must conform to ERC Decision 99(23) and IR 2006 in order to operate in these bands in the UK. Bands A and B have been granted licence-exempt status for public and private users.

Band C is a licensed band in the range 5.725 to 5.850 GHz. Band C is intended for fixed wireless access (FWA) services bet...read more

by Alan | 21 June 2011

Calling time on the wired access switch - or on the WLAN itself?

Posted 31 May 2011 | | 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Meru Networks announcing an "End-of-Life Notification for Edge Switching", and a warning that my users had "announced the end of the wiring closet". Bold claims indeed. On closer inspection, it was an invitation to attend a webinar on Meru's Mobile Edge, the latest iteration of their 4th generation WLAN architecture. I was intrigued, sceptical and slightly concerned, as apart from Meru's product portfolio, IP Performanc...read more

by Pierre | 31 May 2011