Providing Reliability In Home Networks

1. Providing Reliability In Home Networks Peter Kriens CEO aQute Technical Director OSGi OSGi Fellow

2. Contents • What’s wrong? • Why is it wrong? • What can we do about it?

3. What?

4. XSRW SurfBoard Dockable Camera and microphone Speakers The Future of the Past • Jetsons (sixties) • Sunny Future, all Jetson had to do at the Spacely Sprockets factory was pushing a button • The 21st Century (1967) • By Walter Cronkite. Predicting the technologies of the year 2001 • A Space Odysee 2001 • A truly intelligent computer, HAL • Marvin (1997) • A Personal Assistant Project for Ericsson Research • Smart Homes (2000)

5. The Future of Today • My father recently bought a Personal Video Recorder • He spent 4 days trying to get it connected • It was connected .. • But he never used it until I visited him • It turned out that the PVR could not control the satellite decoder • Decoders were mentioned in the manual though • Making the PVR virtually useless for him • Then he also bought DVD-R instead of DVD+R discs …

6. The Future of Today • Connecting a home Cinema system is magic today • Digital Audio, S-Video, RCA plugs, 5.1, Dolby, THS, and all configurable • We have 6 remote controls • Have been able to reduce this to 3! After 3 days hard work • My family is puzzled why they can not watch another channel on the second TV • A satellite receiver can only handle a single channel • I have given up on synchronizing my Bluetooth phone • Too much work, too painful

7. The Future of Today • My Router • About twice a day it looses the external connection • My Printer • > 20 pages fail to print • My GoVideo Networked Music player often can not find the music server • And it only find one of the 3 “standard” UPnP servers on my network • My PC internal network card fails • Replaced twice, spent countless hours on support calls • Use a USB key now • Switched several PCs to fixed IP number • The automatic number assignment was too unreliable

8. Why?

9. Jetsons Revisited

10. Stupidity of Computers • Y2K “bug” • Too silly to even talk about • Viruses • Attack is often to simplistic to fool even a 3 year old • Blindly repeating the same mistake • Preventing user mistakes only with a lot of hard work • It is not the user, it is our fault … • Computers have no common sense

11. Human Nature • Users have very little patience to setup computers • Their primary motivation lies elsewhere • Lots people think computers are intelligent, • Which does not reflect well on their IQ • Eliza, Weizenbaum • Marketing does not help • People tend to blame themselves • Abstractions Impedance Mismatch • For most people, abstractions are very complex • For us, they are our bread and butter

12. Stupid Computers/Humans • "On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."-- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

13. Configuration and Setup • Too much flexibility • Requires too many choices • Huge gap between the developer and the user • And marketing: check lists • Security makes it beyond silly • 10 letter non mnemonic passwords • Change them every month • It took the telephone industry 120 years to invent covers!!

14. Too Much Functionality • Systems are being made too complex. • Look at Telephony … • The functionality offered is as simple as it gets • Connect one number to another number • 10-18 keys is all you need • 2 pages explanation • Still the system complexity is horrendous • Simple products have manuals that run into the hundreds of pages … • Feature Interaction • Usability

15. Stupidity of Programmers • Software quality is, on average, abominable • Bad design • Bad structure • Bad Coding • Very redundant • Most programmers think they can program better than the average programmer • Programmers are often very pedantic • Very few established best practices • Mixing too many different technologies • Testing is too often a tool to create quality, not to verify its presence • Too often going for new (and exciting) technologies • Too little knowledge of existing solutions • Ignoring lessons of the past • Coupling • Cohesion

16. Programming is Inhumane • On June 4, 1996 an unmanned Ariane 5 of $500 million exploded after lift-off. A 64 bit floating point number was converted to a 16 bit signed integer, and it was larger than 32,768 • if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))retval = -EINVAL;

17. How?

18. Simplicity • Reduce functionality • Resist feature creep • Do not add a function because it is easy • Make it work well (and safe) in all cases • Reduce setup and configuration • Make it work out of the box • Make the life of the user easy, not yours

19. Keep It Simple

20. Reliability • We are trying to get away with cheap solutions • Reliability is not as important as price • But we pay for support and the consequences of the problems • We have the solutions, why don’t we use them • Redundant hardware • Distributed Transactions • Proven Solutions • Inspections and Reviews • Root cause analysis

21. Learn, Learn, Learn

22. But …

23. Common Sense • With the current model, programmers will not be able to keep up with the complexities raised by • the application domains • the development process • Home networks and computers in general will not work until we understand “common sense”. • The Artificial Intelligence debacle of the sixties is still holding us back but breakthroughs must happen in the coming years • We need more research in this area, much more

25. Peter Kriens Mob +33633746480 Tel +33467542167 Tel +15123514821 9C, Avenue St. Drézéry, 34160 Beaulieu, France AOL,Yahoo, Skype pkriens, ICQ 255570717 Email: Peter.Kriens@aQute.biz www.aQute.biz