Fixing The Internet, Part 1 – Spiky Noise

The last three months we’ve been focusing 100% on developing our product, building our own firmware for Jensens Air:Link 7000ac that enable logging of key data to our cloud. We were extremely curious as to what we would find, and we have not been disappointed. In fact, we found so much wickedness that we changed our mission to nothing less than fixing the internet...

I’ll share some examples in a series og blog posts, first up one on radio noise.

This happened one early Monday morning late November. Our cloud diagnostics algorithm suddenly started screaming. Our Oulu office router was logging noise data that almost went through the roof. What the heck was going on?

I started diving into the data and found radio noise levels on the 5GHz band up towards -50 db. This is 40 db over the noise floor, or approx 10,000 times the normal noise level. Noise at these levels basically kill the network.

Interesting radio noise

What was really interesting was the pattern. Noise normally establish a new noise floor, but now we saw an unusual spike characteristic. What could be the source of the pollution?

We jumped on call with Oulu and learned that Jukka, our new Linux wizard, had received his new Lenovo laptop that morning. And the router was placed on top of the laptop. So fair assumption was that the laptop was the culprit, but why the spikes?

Some more testing and many creative theories later we nailed it. It was the power supply. But the catch was, it was only polluting when the laptop battery was charging! Good luck figuring that out without reliable diagnostics.

Router on laptop with power supply nearby

Good news is that this type of noise characteristics can be classified and identified using Machine Learning techniques. And typically the noise only cover a narrow frequency band, and pollute only over short distance. So it is easy to fix, that is if you are able to identify the problem.


In the next post we’ll share some super interesting learnings on latency and buffer-bloat. Stay tuned!

New investor - Norwegian Founders Fund

We are delighted to announce our new investor, the Norwegian Founders Fund. It is an early stage tech fund set up by a group of Norwegian tech entrepreneurs, headed by Opera Software’s Jon Tetzchner.  So once again, we are fortunate to get financial backing from a group of individuals that are also fantastic advisers.

We are now heads down in product development. Things are going very well, and the ambition of launching our pilot by end of year seems within reach. The first version will focus on “intelligent wifi” features, essentially a smart wifi router that can learn and adapt on its own. We will be able to offer a radically simplified user experience that provide deep insight and control of the home wifi network.

With Founders Fund backing, we will have a product ready in just a few months. Stay tuned!

The End of Smart Devices

We are quickly moving towards the point where connectivity is not defining a new category of devices. It will just be a value-adding feature to the existing.

Tony Fadell made this point implicitly a few weeks ago, when rejecting the notion of Nest as an Internet-of-Things company. In his mind, they just leverage technology and design to make better thermostats and smoke sensors.

While the number of crowdfunded “smart devices” is growing by the day, they have yet to become relevant to the mass market. Yes, Nest have sold more than a million thermostats, but how many thermostats are there in US? Fact remains that the single breakout success of “smart devices” is still in the low single-digits in terms of market share.

The cost of enabling an appliance with wi-fi and/or Bluetooth Smart is now down to a few dollars. Hardware cost will soon be almost insignificant. Question is, what primary use case will it solve?

We believe the simple answer is service and support. If your fridge connect to the internet, the manufacturer or retailer can diagnose and fix issues from remote. Manufacturers think returns may decrease by 50%. That is huge. And this deep serviceability will drive mass market adoption.

When connectivity is a feature and not a product, the connected home will grow out of its current hype cycle and mature into holistic service-and-support focused platforms. We will no longer have a category called “smart devices”. We will just have devices that are smart. Consumers will engage with device directly over mobile apps, but managed through a “home control panel” that sits on the wi-fi router or on the cloud.

The winning formula will be to integrate existing serviceability channels and value chains into a frictionless and intuitive experience for the end consumer.

Maker Faire Silicon Valley

Spent the afternoon yesterday at Maker Faire Silicon Valley in San Mateo. Was just blown away of all the awesomeness. Some pictures:

Beer Robot - the perfect bro gift

... alternatively, the mind controlled beer machine? Didn't get to test it unfortunately

Classic

Sony MESH project - small cubes with BLE sensors for the home. Very interesting...

Sphero - robot balls starting at $99 per set

Fog Computing by Cisco

Launching a new buzzword is often a cheap attention-grabber in the valley, but Cisco's recent announcement of their "Fog Computing" fabric model for Internet of Things actually makes great sense and is a real innovation. As it happens, it is also a precise description of Domos Labs philosophy and architecture.

"Fog Computing" combines "cloud" and "edge" computing - i.e. leveraging the power of cloud through local service nodes, on the "edge". In practice it means cloud-defined, intelligent networking devices that provide smart interfacing and monitoring of devices connected to the edge. Sounds familiar?



Cisco IOx / Fog Computing architecture (linked to Source)

To facilitate their "Fog" model, Cisco will extend their established network device software stack (IOS) with a parallel Linux stack. In this they will allow partners and device makers to build in their own device interfaces and even host their open applications, on the network device. Again this is exactly parallel to our thinking, allowing vertical apps to host processes in our Linux-driven device middleware.

Cisco only target industrial use cases for IoT. But given the shared vision for this type of computing fabric there could be synergies in collaboration - building joint API/sandbox model for developers and device manufacturers for instance. Many devices and use cases will be similar. Initial dialogue is positive so looking forward to explore this further with the team.

Anyway, kudos to Cisco and their IoT team for coining and nailing this!

Domos Labs website (re)launched

Our website got a well overdue update today, finally communicating the concept and value offering we have iterated to over the last few months - check it out here. Funny how changes happen so gradually that you don't really notice unil taking a step back and seeing how much has changed over the last six months.

The website now communicate the new cloud+device software offering, focusing on our target customers (service providers and OEMs). Also change of logo and name, we will stick with Domos Labs to avoid name confusion and shark fights.

So our new key visual is the Cloud+Device infrastructure below. The added focus on cloud capabilites will enable some super exciting use cases involving predictive analytics and machine learning. Still getting our heads around what could be possible.

We have had great response on this when engaging with prospect customers. Easy to get meetings, and people seem genuinly intrigued by our vision and concept, so we should be able to sign up a few pilot partners before our Demo Day May 1st.

Why Americans don't trust their ISP

Kansas city is one of three areas that are served by Google Fiber, one of very few Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) initiatives in US. Subscribers on average get double bandwidth for the same price. One would think this would be appreciated as a good thing, but the state legislators seems to see things differently. Or rather, their puppeteers do.

I recently spent 7 years in China, and thought I had experienced my share of corrupt government. But the Chinese at least tried to maintain a façade of who were actually calling the shots.

Why does this matter? US is already far behind Europe and Asia in residential broadband, and the gap is widening. Anecdotally, I get better broadband at lower cost in my remote French Alpe village than I do in the heart of Silicon Valley.


Netflix Country Average Bandwidth

In Europe, EU is putting FTTH front and center of their Europe 2020 strategy. In US, residential fiber connections seems not to be on the agenda at all. The industry experts I meet have all but given up hope, saying this is business as usual. The Cable Lobby will routinely stop initiatives through local legislation when necessary.

It is really quite sad to see them wasting their resources on buying politicians instead of investing in better services. Makes me question if the ISP channel strategy we are establishing in Europe really can be replicated in US, or if we need to change approach...

Google Getting in the Game

Nest valuation at more than $3B is huge in itself, but Google cashing it out makes it a landmark. This was the day the big guys joined the game. Really looking forward to what will come out of this, especially keen to see Google Now applied to appliances and sensors.

We're prepping for an outreach to service providers, will be super interesting to learn what effect this acquisition will have on their priorities. We have already been using the potential threat of Google entering this market as a strategic call to action. Now the threat is real.

Google is almost religiously a cloud company. They will do hardware and devices as a source of user interaction and data for the cloud. The Google antidote is cable companies and their industry alliance that build "smart" into the set top box.

Our focus on re-inventing Wi-Fi router puts us somewhere in the middle, and also offer the ISPs a competitive and defendable position versus cloud competitors. Sure feels like we're at the right place at the right time...