Mega overloads

Written By: - Date published: 6:15 pm, January 20th, 2013 - 72 comments
Categories: internet, john key, Minister for International Embarrassment - Tags:

In the continuing saga of Kim Dotcom against the forces of blind, silly, and technically illiterate conservatism, amongst whom John Key (our Minister of International Embarrassment) fits pretty well. Kim Dotcom has launched a new file storage service. Although that is not strictly correct – rather people associated with him did1.

It is the “Mega” and is accessible at present only using the https://mega.co.nz. It launched exactly a year after those embarrassing scenes as police raided Dotcom’s house in response to a legally dubious request from the US.

The site runs on HTML5 and offers a good example of the type of nice, clean, simple and fast1 interface that should be the norm for HTML5 (but I’ll bet that we won’t see many as clean as this design).

It has been interesting watching the traffic load up today. That probably has something to do with the 50GB of encrypted cloud storage given away free when you sign up. The system has been rather overloaded today, as Chris Keall points out at the NBR.

Kim Dotcom’s colleague and co-accused Finn Batato told NBR ONLINE shortly before 11am, “We are literally overwhelmed by the popularity of the new Mega. Our tech team is sorting everything out. No major issues, just the usual challenges when you launch a big service like ours. Currently approximately 1200 users are signing up per minute. It is a huge load.”

Who knew the FBI has so many agents?

Indeed… The service is pretty popular today.

This morning I was able to queue files to go up and they moved pretty fast given the limits on a ADSL uplink. This evening files just sit waiting to depart.

The problem with a web interface is that once queued you can’t shut the webpage. In time I’d guess that we will see a better balancing. Even more importantly, we’ll probably see a API similar to that on dropbox and other services to allow this type of work to be done by services and batch scripts.

Chris has also pointed out the explanation about why the services haven’t been hosted inside NZ. Which is also the reason that this site is no longer hosted inside NZ – the bandwidth prices are too variable and frigging expensive…

But the cost of bandwidth on the Southern Cross Cable prohibited a local hosting deal.

Dotcom says a Southern Cross wholesaler wanted to charge him $28 per megabit of capacity a month, or 30 times what he was quoted for international connectivity in various overseas locations. He was also irked that various ISPs approached for quotes wanted to charge $2 per megabit of capacity a month for domestic traffic. In Europe, peering (network interconnection) agreements meant there were no domestic bandwith charges, Dotcom said. Cogent is supplying at least 10 gigabit capacity for an undisclosed price – although it apparently still wasn’t enough. Around 8.30am this morning Mega.co.nz was not loading. On Twitter Kim said the site was overloaded due to “massive demand.”

Pacific Fibre alumnus Lance Wiggs told NBR those prices sounded broadly (although he is not closest to the market now”. The best deals are gained by dealing with Southern Cross directly, but only one or two local customers have the scale to deal with the cable operator directly (Dotcom went through a wholesaler). ” It’s not acceptable for any NZ business,” Wiggs says.

What I was primarily interested in were the prices of the paid service.

Mega prices

Pro I ~= $16 NZ per month
Pro II ~= $32 NZ
Pro III ~= $48 NZ

Ummm.. I could do with some storage. That Pro III won’t fit the whole of my workstation, but it would take all of the volatile stuff. It is a pity that my local ISP limits me to a mere 200Gb per month and it really does trickle it on the uplink. Having had to shunt a few digital copies of my partners film to festivals world wide, I can testify to how slow it is….

Ideally I’d shift to fibre. However it appears that the moron ministers (like Steven Joyce) in this government rolled out fibre to the home without considering how to get it into multi-occupancy buildings like apartment blocks.

But that is life in this country run by a technically illiterate government..

 

1. Chris Keall3 has a interesting breakdown of the ownership.
2. At least it was on my Kubuntu 13.04 workstation and Ubuntu 12.04 laptop both running the recent Chrome browsers. I couldn’t be bothered firing up windows to find out that it has problems on Internet Explorer. Lets just take that a given… 😈
3. Is there anyone else apart from Chris writing on this in NZ or even overseas? Most of what shows on the net appears to be repeats of what he is saying 🙂

72 comments on “Mega overloads ”

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  1. Draco T Bastard 1
    20 January 2013 at 6:25 pm

    Ideally I’d shift to fibre. However it appears that the moron ministers (like Steven Joyce) in this government rolled out fibre to the home without considering how to get it into multi-occupancy buildings like apartment blocks.

    And it’s truly pathetic over what it should be. The more that comes out about the FttH roll out the more it becomes obvious just how much damage that selling off of Telecom has really done NZ.

    • Erentz 1.1
      21 January 2013 at 11:36 am

      While the telecom sale may be regrettable it has little to do with the UFB situation. The UFB is essentially a new network, there is little need to reuse existing telecom assets. Naturally they wanted you to think there was. Also naturally this government creating a funding model that had zero focus on actually connecting houses and making bandwidth available. It essentially has been a big low cost, zero risk loan to some companies to run fibre past premises (rather than incentivizing actual connections).

      Unfortunately MED, Joyce an his cohorts, many people in the media and industry all couldn’t quite seem to grasp this as a problem at the time an now it will have to be corrected down track. Much better to have provided a simple subsidy per home connected. But that assumes you actually want access to be ubiquitous. Even better was to have just built the bloody thing yourself since you were taking all the financial risk anyway.

      • Draco T Bastard 1.1.1
        21 January 2013 at 12:55 pm

        While the telecom sale may be regrettable it has little to do with the UFB situation.

        It has a huge amount to do with it. First, if it hadn’t been sold all that ~$17b dollars in profit over the last 20+ years would have been re-invested back into the network meaning that we wouldn’t have to be paying out tax money for the FttH roll out and secondly we wouldn’t have to be paying for secondary and tertiary networks (Vodafone, 2degrees, etc). In other words, we’d already have fibre out to most of the country with decent bandwidth to go with it.

        Even better was to have just built the bloody thing yourself since you were taking all the financial risk anyway.

        Yep, a state monopoly is most definitely the best option. It’s cheaper (no dead weight loss of profit), more reliable and actually gets done without the government having to step in pay out even more.

        • erentz 1.1.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 5:32 pm

          It has a huge amount to do with it. First, if it hadn’t been sold all that ~$17b dollars in profit over the last 20+ years …

          I hear you, but that ship sailed. As for the cost, it’s still a new network, the majority of cost going into the outside plant. There’s little in the way of reusable assets when you transition to FTTH, you can reuse some of the access nodes and switches, but these are a tiny portion of the overall cost, and it’s arguable that you’ll achieve a simpler transition keeping the new and old separate. So the decision would still have needed to have been made at a political level to replace copper with fibre. That is, if the Government owned Telecom, they’d have to decide to decide to forgo the dividends from Telecom for Telecom to build the UFB.

          I disagree wrt your assertions on Vodafone and 2degrees though. I don’t believe mobile communications are a natural monopoly, as obviously exhibited by Vodafone and 2degrees being so successful. It would mean that in order to not be “paying for secondary and tertiary networks” such as those two, you would have had to instruct Telecom to act anti-competitively to keep them out of the market, or deny them permission to operate networks. Which is silly. Obviously illegal in this country. And against international agreements regarding telecommunications regulations.

          You could on the other hand make an argument that a Government owned Telecom would’ve ensured the likes of Clear’s, later Telstra’s, and more recently FX’s investments in backbone infrastructure may not have been needed, as they would’ve all had fairly priced access to Telecom’s backbone infrastructure. (Assuming here the Govt wanted Telecom to act in that manner.) But overall this isn’t actually a huge cost, as FX has shown.

          In summary, while the sale of Telecom was unwise from an investment standpoint (as obviously selling dams would be an equally stupid decision today), it has little bearing on the successful deployment of FTTH. That’s down to current Government policy and competence.

          • Rich 1.1.1.1.1
            21 January 2013 at 6:22 pm

            I’d favour a situation where the telecom networks were owned as a co-operative between the users (the people of NZ) and the workers in the telcos. With any profits belonging to the customers and workers it would become a matter of democratic decision whether to go for cheap basic service, maximum coverage or state-of-the-art technology.

          • Draco T Bastard 1.1.1.1.2
            22 January 2013 at 2:21 pm

            I don’t believe mobile communications are a natural monopoly,

            Infrastructure happens to be a natural monopoly as having multiple instances of it inevitably costs more.

            It would mean that in order to not be “paying for secondary and tertiary networks” such as those two, you would have had to instruct Telecom to act anti-competitively to keep them out of the market, or deny them permission to operate networks.

            Which is actually how it used to be. Deregulation happened in 1987.

            But overall this isn’t actually a huge cost, as FX has shown

            But it does happen to be an added cost that we didn’t need.

            …it has little bearing on the successful deployment of FTTH.

            The sale of Telecom didn’t suddenly have it making huge profits – it had it suddenly giving out huge dividends. Prior to the sale all of Telecoms income went back into the network. That’s how we were able to lay down the original fibre in the mid 1980s (yes, we were transiting to fibre that early) and if that had continued, which it would have, then we would have already have FttH in most of the country. Hell, in the early 2000s Telecom was taking fibre out and replacing it with copper so that ADSL could be run from the exchange rather than putting in place better cabinets. Part of what Chorus is doing now and what Telecom started was to put in place the more advanced cabinets.

            • erentz 1.1.1.1.2.1
              22 January 2013 at 8:11 pm

              Infrastructure happens to be a natural monopoly as having multiple instances of it inevitably costs more.

              I understand what you’re saying, in a classical sense, two mobile networks are not going to be quite as cost-efficient as one mobile network. But your theory ignores the potential organizational issues that also create costs, or create a failure to meet a demand. It’s often these costs and failures that are exploited by the new providers to provide better service, at lower cost. If Telecom had been operating at optimal efficiency while also meeting all of its customers needs then the competitors wouldn’t have been able to successfully enter the market. Is your counter to this that if Telecom were Government owned it would’ve been optimal? I don’t subscribe to the theories of some that private enterprise automatically is more efficient that public, but I’m also not naive enough to believe that public organizations are always efficient either. Bad management abounds everywhere.

              For a moment, let’s imagine going back to a world where the government regulates this kind of activity and prevents competition. If I have an emerging need that requires, for example, dark fiber between two buildings and GovTelco cannot provide it to me, then I should not be denied some ability to fulfill that need for myself. Maybe GovTelco can’t do it because it’s too much of a corner case, and it’s inefficient to manage these corner cases when it is trying to meet the 95% of other cases that are almost all the same and do so in the most cost effective way for them. Maybe it’s just a big bureaucratic organization full of dead wood whose brains have plasticized and are unable to accept new ideas anymore. It doesn’t matter. I should not be denied the right to get a license and run my own fiber. The rest is simply an extension of that. I’m now a competitor to GovTelco with one customer of myself. If I happen to have other people in my buildings and I can offer them a service over that infrastructure I’ve built, and they want it because GovTelco can’t offer it and my service is better, then I’ve become a competitor with more customers. If you tell me I can’t do that, and GovTelco doesn’t offer it, what recourse do I have? That’s hardly a good situation to be in. You might say GovTelco must offer everything everyone ever wants, but that’s simply impractical too, and not necessarily the best outcome for what you want of your GovTelco, which is to focus on meeting the needs of the vast majority in the most economic way possible.

              Maybe we’re at philosophical odds here. I don’t believe there is a one size fits all in society, and I don’t believe we should artificially force one on everyone. So I’m with you that it would’ve been better for New Zealand if Telecom were kept in Government ownership. But have to disagree that New Zealand would be better off if Clear, Telstra, Bellsouth/Vodafone, and 2degrees, and little outfits like CityLink, TeamTalk, that University ISP that provided the wireless Internet connection to my high school, and so on, had been denied the right to exist in order to enforce an artificial monopoly. And I would have to disagree that people shouldn’t be allowed to compete with the mandate of the UFB (if it were Government owned).

              • Colonial Viper …
                22 January 2013 at 8:25 pm

                If I have an emerging need that requires, for example, dark fiber between two buildings and GovTelco cannot provide it to me

                No problem, the dark fibre between your two buildings is not essential to the functioning of the wider sovereign economy, so a small private provider could indeed run it, not the Government.

                The Southern Cross Cable on the other hand…

                If Telecom had been operating at optimal efficiency while also meeting all of its customers needs

                You can’t run at “optimal efficiency” and also meet ALL customer needs. To meet ALL customer needs you need to build FAT and REDUNDANCY into the system. Fat and redundancy in the system in the current economic orthodoxy is considered inefficient.

                • erentz …
                  23 January 2013 at 2:50 pm

                  Yes. SCC is a good example of a natural monopoly. But even more than the issue of whether the Government should own a cable or not, there’s also a major national security (hate using that term, what’s a better one?) issue of ensuring we continue to have connectivity in event of a catastrophic incident. The Government should definitely build, or help build a new cable (one with suitable diversity from the existing cable mind you, otherwise they’re wasting money).

              • McFlock …
                22 January 2013 at 10:33 pm

                There’s a bit of a slide between government providing infrastructure (which is smart), and government banning competitors.

                If the private sector can provide an acceptable product more efficiently than the government organisation, no problem. It gets more customers, and the govt org has to lift its game or the minister is held responsible.

                But the private sector all to often drops the ball in providing infrastructure. Which is why govt needs to get involved.

                • erentz …
                  23 January 2013 at 2:44 pm

                  Thanks. That’s the thrust of my argument. It’s not wise to ban competition as Draco has implied he’s in favor of. I can only think of a few special examples where it might be wise, certainly telecommunications is not one, something like ACC might be one.

                  • McFlock …
                    23 January 2013 at 2:55 pm

                    I didn’t get that from dtb’s comments – owning something that private enterprise might find uneconomic to compete with is not the same as banning competition.

                    I’d rather the govt owned the natural monopoly, rather than any of our beknighted crooks.

  2. karol 2
    20 January 2013 at 6:28 pm

    I have registered, just to see what it’s like – only just, as I couldn’t access the site until 20 minutes ago, and then the password I registered (or thought I registered) kept giving me a “bad password” message. I’m not sure what I would use the storage capacity for though.

    • lprent 2.1
      20 January 2013 at 7:40 pm

      Yep. The http site is completely saturated. The https is hard to access. And I got the same “bad password” on my first attempt as well.

      But it isn’t all that unusual for new sites in demand. It is very hard to test infrastructure under load until after the load is available. I’d expect it to clean up pretty fast.

  3. kiwicommie 3
    20 January 2013 at 6:40 pm

    I have noticed the difference between US Internet speeds and New Zealand, as well as the affordability of Internet plans. New Zealand is still in the dark ages, and John Key plans to do nothing about New Zealand internet. Maybe when the NZ cable packs up at last, people can use carrier pigeons?

  5. felixviper 5
    20 January 2013 at 8:08 pm

    I don’t understand all this stuff about uplinks and ADSLs and fibres and ISPs.

    I just thought John Key was going to fix the internet so I could download a movie in 30 seconds.

    The fuck happened to that?

  6. karol 6
    20 January 2013 at 8:15 pm

    Mega launch out west (or is it north of Auckland?) at Dotcom’s place – live on ustream

  7. xtasy 7
    21 January 2013 at 12:11 am

    “Ideally I’d shift to fibre. However it appears that the moron ministers (like Steven Joyce) in this government rolled out fibre to the home without considering how to get it into multi-occupancy buildings like apartment blocks.”

    Although I still treat Kim Dotcom with a sound level of caution and suspicion, this country, if the government, or hopefully soon a better government, would have any ideas and common sense, would turn NZ into the web hosting paradise.

    Dotcom has realised the potential of the internet, and of cloud computing, and he has delivered an interesting service with ‘Mega’. It seems to be highly popular, and he is a smart operator and marketer.

    Why is NZ not realising the huge potential, in becoming a domain friendly country, where you upgrade from the South Pacific Cable hardware, get more services, more capacities, more service providers, and offer the practical and legal framework to get companies started here, that can provide for thousands of well-paid jobs, that bring innovation, a safe base for great services, and that will compete with other countries that are at present more onto it.

    It could become the “Silicon Valley” of internet innovation and services.

    The US will not like it, Hollywood will not like some of it, and Mainland China and Russia, same as some Middle Eastern countries, and certainly a range of dictatorships, will hate it.

    This is a business area where NZ can really take off, and if Dotcom can get the US FBI and so off his back, then he can perhaps bring some innovation and huge success stories to NZ after all, that will put NZ on the world map, not just for tourism and fake “clean green” lifestyle and products.

    • burt 7.1
      21 January 2013 at 2:50 am

      Is it overloaded or is Dotcom taking the piss and making it really slow in NZ…

    • tc 7.2
      21 January 2013 at 7:16 am

      yup the better another gov’t comes in and dismantles Joyce taxpayer subsidy of Chorus, gets a proper high speed rollout going and a second cable into NZ we can maybe join the rest of the global information superhighway.

      We’ll always be a cobbled lane under the NACT, they like a captive profit gouged audience.

      • burt 7.2.1
        21 January 2013 at 8:20 pm

        Yes we need Labour for the new knowledge wave fix up the net in NZ initiative.

        • Colonial Viper 7.2.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 8:52 pm

          And the only reason we need that is because Joyce decided to set up another corporate monopoly with tax payer funds.

          • burt 7.2.1.1.1
            21 January 2013 at 10:09 pm

            ACC, KiwiRail they are good monopolies setup with tax payer funds – right ?

            Is it simply the flag colour of the government that established them that determines if monopoly corporations are good or bad or do you give it more thought than that ?

    • karol 7.3
      21 January 2013 at 7:45 am

      Yes, to some degree I hold back on the praise for Mr Dotcom. He is a very smart businessman, with a lot of charm and an engaging sense of fun. But he is also a mega-capitalist.

      I watched the mega launch on USTream last night. Dotcom certainly knows how to throw a party. It started with a cool performance by Tiki Taane. Before the point where that vid starts, there was a big moo face on the screen, and the sound of a shell horn. And after that there was a mock re-enactment of the raid on Dotcom’s place, with a voice loudly saying, “This is a crime scene” – it was great stuff!

      The selection of local hip-hop star Tiki Taane as lead act also cast doubt on Mr Dotcom’s denial the site was “revenge”, as some media saw it.

      Taane made headlines after singing “F*** The Police” while officers were in a club hosting his performance in 2011.

      Mr Dotcom launched the site with a re-creation of the raid that saw him and three colleagues arrested.

      A low-flying helicopter marked as an FBI chopper circled the mansion while fake armed police officers abseiled from the roofs and pretended to raid the stage accompanied by fireworks and explosions.

      But also I think, part of what seemed like a major flattering of NZ, it’s people and potential. It’s like Dotcom is out to show Key, Banks et al, how innovative IT start-ups can be done in NZ. And also to keep NZers on his side in his battle with the US authorities.

      I also was thinking the same question that an RNZ journo asked in the Qu & A that made up the last part of the launch: where did Dotcom get the money to do this start-up? Answer was some generous backers/investors.

      Mega seems like a great innovation, that has been well executed. But I am a little cautious about Dotcom, because he seems like a very likable salesman, without being such an obviously slick and slippery character as our PM.

    • David H 7.4
      21 January 2013 at 1:04 pm

      “It could become the “Silicon Valley” of internet innovation and services”

      But with Key and Joyce in charge then we will become the, Silly C*&^s Valley. Of Internet stifling and innovation killing.

    • Dot Kimcom 7.5
      21 January 2013 at 9:55 pm

      “Why is NZ not realising the huge potential, in becoming a domain friendly country,” – xtasy.

      For one thing you’d need a huge investment in international links – fool-proof failover available rather than having all your straws in one cable. For a second thing, large chunks of the world, such as Asia and Europe, can only access New Zealand via links through intermediary states who could – oops, sorry – cut us off without a second thought if it suited them – ie the US and Australia.

      For a third thing NZ would need a whole raft of legislation guaranteeing the Dot Coms of this world “Internet Freedom” which would not go down at all well with most of our trading partners.

  8. phil 8
    21 January 2013 at 8:22 am

    When wondering “why” NZ lacks a better service or updated wasnames, maybe Xtasy has provided the answer above;

    The US will not like it, Hollywood will not like some of it, and Mainland China and Russia, same as some Middle Eastern countries, and certainly a range of dictatorships, will hate it.

    NZ, under Key, is a lapdog to the corporates and corporate states. Nuff said.

  9. Colonial Weka 9
    21 January 2013 at 9:32 am

    What is different about Mega? Is the use of encryption new? Or it’s a more secure form of encryption? Or the fact that the client holds the encryption key, so Mega can’t be forced by law to hand over files? Can the CIA or whoever still hack it?

    • karol 9.1
      21 January 2013 at 9:40 am

      I think what is new is the automatic encryption used on a cloud storage site. This means that the mega company can claim they have no knowledge of what is stored on their sites.

      As I understood from the Qu & A last night, there is always a possibility of the law requiring files to be handed over. One of the mega team said they will respond to “take down” notices/requests in certain circumstances. He said that had an excellent mechanism for responding to take down notices.

      I don’t know how the “law” or anyone else will know what’s in the files to legally request hand over or take down, if only the client knows for sure what’s there.

      • Tiresias 9.1.1
        21 January 2013 at 10:02 pm

        The same thought occured to me when I heard that comment. Mega would comply with requests to take a file off if it was asked to – but they say they’d have no way to decrypt the file so would have no way to find out whether it was what was claimed.

        So someone – anyone – asks them to take your site down and – poof, it’s gone and there would appear to be nothing you could do about it.

        No thank you. I use Dropbox and SpiderOak for cloud storage, using Cloudfogger to encrypt it before it leaves my machine and decrypt it when I need it back. .

        • McFlock 9.1.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 10:28 pm

          Well, if they randomly took stuff down that would open them damages or kill their business pretty quick.

          What the movie industry would have to do is get a key to a file, download it themselves, and verify contents. My guess is after several incidents, the user would be banned.

          But of course we’re talking users who might or might not be identifiable, so all they have to do is register another account.

          I find it interesting that the entire site is HTTPS from the front page onward. Nice touch.

          Development of APIs are also a nice way of blurring the IP issues.

          • Colonial Viper 9.1.1.1.1
            21 January 2013 at 10:34 pm

            Might as well start prosecuting manufacturers of blank DVDs and USB storage keys.

    • DH 9.2
      21 January 2013 at 10:40 am

      The difference is encryption on the fly, existing option is to manually encrypt your files before uploading which is a bit painful. Too many people have been running towards cloud computing like lemmings, not giving any thought to the security of their data or their privacy.

      Encryption stops the host from accessing or using your data in any way. They can’t, for example, extract patterns from your files in order to target advertising at you. If the host’s security was breached your data would still be safe.

      IMO it’s a good scheme, will be very popular although I’d think most users will go for the free 50GB so I doubt it will be anywhere near as profitable as Megaupload.

      • karol 9.2.1
        21 January 2013 at 10:44 am

        In the long term they are aiming for clients agreeing to targeted advertising in exchange for free downloads of music etc. I think the aim is to make money from advertising in the long term from their planned music box system.

        • DH 9.2.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 12:38 pm

          He’s certainly drawing a big line in the sand. Big brother doesn’t like encryption and hijacking Google ads won’t help the blood pressure of certain people. He’s making a lot of powerful enemies.

          I find the whole Dotcom affair an interesting lesson in how ethereal morality can be. On one plane the man is just an opportunistic shyster but on another he’s a paragon of virtue when compared against his adversaries.

      • Colonial Viper 9.2.2
        21 January 2013 at 1:41 pm

        IMO it’s a good scheme, will be very popular although I’d think most users will go for the free 50GB so I doubt it will be anywhere near as profitable as Megaupload.

        Profit is going to come from corporate clients, at a guess.

    • lprent 9.3
      21 January 2013 at 12:25 pm

      There is very little that is unique about the Mega site. You can find each of the components in other sites. The 50GB free is bigger than most, but you can get cheap terabytes at Amazon. There are sites using the client side encryption like the swiss site wuala with it’s 5GB free (that I have used). There are sites that use HTML4 and Flash interfaces, and I’d even expect that someone has a HTML5 interface to a similar site (although I don’t know of one).

      What is interesting to me about this site is that Dotcom is doing it, that they have pulled a lot of components together, and that the IP is being done from NZ.

      • DH 9.3.1
        21 January 2013 at 1:02 pm

        I doubt we’ll ever see anything totally unique on the ‘net now, it’s all been done before in one form or another.

        Dotcom has the advantage of the old saying about no pubilicity being bad publicity, as his site traffic stats will no doubt show. I expect he’s also still got the email addys of all the Megaupload users so he should get the site up to scale pretty quick which is really what differentiates him from all the other boutique sites who offer a similar service. He wants to be a global player and chances are he will be too.

        • lprent 9.3.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 1:19 pm

          I expect he’s also still got the email addys of all the Megaupload users so he should get the site up to scale pretty quick which is really what differentiates him from all the other boutique sites who offer a similar service.

          Good point and one that I hadn’t considered. I was wondering how there was such a response on the first day even with the media titillation. But a e-mail dump to previous customers would do it. I wasn’t a previous customer so I’d not have seen it.

      • Tiresias 9.3.2
        21 January 2013 at 10:06 pm

        ” the IP is being done from NZ.”

        Could be forwarded to anywhere – the same anywhere you’d get from mega.co.au or mega.co.uk etc.

        • lprent 9.3.2.1
          22 January 2013 at 12:31 am

          Intellectual property rather than Internet protocol. The latter is a commodity with a steadily dropping cost/value. The former is an export industry with a very low transport cost.

  10. infused 10
    21 January 2013 at 10:58 am

    His site still isn’t ‘headless’ meaning that it can still be taken down easily, but, well, shutting down the head.

    It seems digiweb are a NZ reseller. I think I’ll be moving my name servers next week.

    Also Lprent, there are many html only sites. This is the first big one that supports the filestream api, which isn’t actually supported by many browsers other than chrome. It’s hardly new and clean I’m sorry.

    [lprent: Where did I say that this html service was unique? There are many sites using HTML4. What I said was that it was the first I’d seen using the HTML5 to cleanly do the task. Sure it only runs on Chrome and buggy IE10, and it will tell you if you try it (I tried safari on a mac). But that wasn’t what I was talking about – I was talking about the interface design. ]

    Encryption based storage like this has been available for ages. It’s just you’ve never heard about it because they didn’t get arrested and get world wide attention.

    [lprent: where did I say that this service was unique? I will give you a quick hint because you evidently are incapable of reading the post. I didn’t. If you want to make shit up then don’t do it about me. ]

    He bitches at $28 per megabit, which you back up, but it was $400 per megabit only 2-3 years ago. See how fast the prices are falling?

    [lprent: So? He was comparing it with overseas prices, not past NZ prices. Who cares what prices used to be like when you’re looking at a business being set up for today. Obviously a distinction you are clearly too stupid to actually read before trying to put a diversion spin on it. ]

    [lprent: You really are acting like a complete dickhead. If you want to criticize then at least read what the frigging post first before you start jerking off in comments.

    And don’t try and make up what I said. I tend to get irritated… ]

    • infused 10.1
      21 January 2013 at 12:41 pm

      My point is, for the size/location of NZ, the price is pretty good. The only thing that’s off is NZ peering. NZ shouldn’t be counting towards data useage, or charging for peered traffic.

      Also, just found out his free service is capped at 50kb/s for free users.

      • Colonial Viper 10.1.1
        21 January 2013 at 1:42 pm

        My point is, for the size/location of NZ, the price is pretty good.

        Its the monopoly which is the problem, not the size/location of NZ.

        • infused 10.1.1.1
          21 January 2013 at 3:14 pm

          Keep telling yourself that. If it was profitable, a second cable would be built. International bandwidth is hitting the floor, the only thing that makes the cable possible.

          • Colonial Viper 10.1.1.1.1
            21 January 2013 at 3:29 pm

            LOL you clearly don’t understand the dynamics of monopoly infrastructure, nor the powerful leverage monopoly behaviour confers.

            • McFlock 10.1.1.1.1.1
              21 January 2013 at 3:40 pm

              Indeed. Competing with a monopoly is one of the more difficult things to accomplish.

              But besides that, there’s a public good involved (the nation not being fucked by a monopoly) which the private sector ignores. Maybe government should step in…

        • Mark 10.1.1.2
          21 January 2013 at 9:35 pm

          Hang on, wasn’t Telecom (or The Post Office) a monopoly?.. is it ok when they are a State Monopoly?
          I think the concept is great, if not new, but knowing our bandwidth constraint somewhat dishonest to portray it as something that will revitalise NZ. Cynically I see it as more of a ploy to gain greater political/public support here, he tried to buy favours off Banks, but that didn’t work.
          Also interesting how he is suddenly the darling of the Left, when most of his actions, possessions & lifestyle would be cause for hate & ridicule here if displayed by Kiwi Man .
          Just sayin…

          • Colonial Viper 10.1.1.2.1
            21 January 2013 at 9:47 pm

            Critical core infrastructure must be run as a monopoly by the state. Profits made are then returned to the nation, not exported to foreign shareholders.

      • lprent 10.1.2
        21 January 2013 at 3:18 pm

        He still has to run a business and since the bulk of his traffic will presumably be not revenue delivering (ie the free service), then any costs need to be parred to the bone.

        …his free service is capped at 50kb/s for free users.

        I’d have been very surprised if a free service was not speed capped and rationed. See my previous paragraph.

        • infused 10.1.2.1
          21 January 2013 at 3:28 pm

          Kinda of makes the 50gb free useless though doesn’t it?

          • lprent 10.1.2.1.1
            21 January 2013 at 4:13 pm

            Depends on what you’re doing with it. In my case right now I’m mostly looking at cloud storage sites for putting backup copies into. Low volumes with incremental and quite a lot of time to do it in in batch processes. I already batch the client side encrypts. I’d be likely to throttle the speeds on large transfers anyway on servers – that bandwidth is used for more important things than bandwidth backups. Having limits on target size tends to be more of an issue.

            I seldom sit and watch transfers even between servers near the backbones. The idea about of watching uploads from my home ADSL….. urrgh. And I usually don’t seem to be able get much more than an effective 70 kB/sec on a ADSL uplink at the best of times.

            I really do need fibre – my film-maker partner occasionally likes shipping 5GB files at a moments notice when the couriers fail. And that prime dildo Joyce managed to forget to provide mechanisms to bring fibre into apartment blocks. Fortunately she doesn’t have a film active at present so I can wait a bit until they do sort the cock-up out.

            But anyway, I’d be likely to buy rather than use a free version anyway. I presume those aren’t rate limited.

  11. Maui 11
    21 January 2013 at 11:03 am

    Should this not be titled

    “Mega Overlords” ?

    .. or have I been watching too much Tolkien ?

  12. end o times viper shorts 12
    21 January 2013 at 12:36 pm

    I’m no irony policeman but is it ironic that mega is optimised (best) with Google’s Chrome while Dotcom’s next venture MegaBox seeks to compete with Google for ad revenue

    I think so, also quite bemusing

    I wish him well – mega worked fine for me on IE (which I prefer at home – I don’t know why), only bugbear was the constant download chrome popup

  13. Sanctuary 13
    21 January 2013 at 12:49 pm

    The likes of Google and Facebook routinely comply with warrantless requests for access to user data from an increasingly wide array of US government agencies and for an increasingly wide number of reasons; I am sure our government will be following suit – if it hasn’t illegally done so already. So on one hand, I welcome the fact that my data stored in the mega-cloud is now completely secure.

    But on the other I am troubled with the knowledge that so is the data of every paedophile and criminal organisation. And of course, because of this ability to securely encrypt the right to remain silent and the right not to self-incriminate yourself is already under attack because of the need for state enforcement agencies to know your encryption key before they can access your data. How long before refusing to disclose your key to the police will earn you ten years in the slammer?

    • infused 13.1
      21 January 2013 at 12:58 pm

      Well it’s not completely secure. It needs to be hashed first. Big files with 2048 bit encryption take time. There will be a period where it’s not encrypted. It can also be broken, just takes years. Although, computers are getting faster at breaking it.

      Nothing is ever safe.

    • McFlock 13.2
      21 January 2013 at 1:28 pm

      Already happening in the States.
      Although in this case the feds managed to decrypt the hard drive themselves, rendering the contempt of court thing redundant.

      • McFlock 13.2.1
        21 January 2013 at 3:33 pm

        although I seem to recall that trucrypt has a “duress” encryption option: you have your real data encrypted by one password, but you can also have another password that you can save less sensitive documents into. As long as the data you put in the discoverable directory is plausible, they won’t be able to suspect that there is other data involved.

    • Colonial Viper 13.3
      21 January 2013 at 1:39 pm

      The likes of Google and Facebook routinely comply with warrantless requests for access to user data from an increasingly wide array of US government agencies and for an increasingly wide number of reasons

      Sorta. In some cases I believe that Google and FB have provided US Government agencies with APIs which allow them to look at and store pretty much anything they want out of your user accounts, in bulk.

  14. Fortran 14
    21 January 2013 at 1:37 pm

    Should put Dotcom in charge of our Internet Services – he will soon get things sorted, although the NZ US cable cannot be increased, and a second one has just been dumped as uneconomic.
    Minister of Internet – yea !!!

  15. The Al1en 15
    21 January 2013 at 4:16 pm

    Did have a soft spot for Kim, even if his political ‘take downs’ seem like a revenge thing for being left to fend off the Yankee hounds by himself, and for being excluded from the rich prick club he was ingratiating himself into.
    But not so much now.