Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Best deal to buy original Samsung Galaxy Tab in Malaysia

Samsung Galaxy Tab is a 7" tablet computer, smaller than the 9" Apple iPad and larger than the 5" Dell Streak,  with full phone feature and dual camera.


It was first officially introduced to Malaysia by Maxis with the following data plan commitment packages:
  • 12 month: RM1,849
  • 24 month: RM1,749
However, right now Maxis has already removed Samsung Galaxy Tab from their range of bundled smart phone packages.

Beside Maxis, Digi is selling it with the following data plan commitment packages:
  • 12 month: RM1,849
  • 24 month: RM1,599
And before 28 January 2011, Celcom is selling it with the following data plan commitment packages:
  • 12 month: RM1,738
  • 18 month: RM1,668
After 28 January 2011, now Celcom has reduced its price to:
  • 12 month: RM1,568
  • 18 month: RM1,498
SenQ is also selling Samsung Galaxy Tab. Although the price is slightly higher, you don't need to tie up with any data plan, and you can use your credit card to pay by installment. There is also extended warranty period up to 3 years. The current price:
  • Non-Citibank member: RM2,199 (free RM50 Chinese New Year voucher)
  • Citibank credit card: RM2,099
Therefore, right now the best deal to buy original Samsung Galaxy Tab in Malaysia seems to be:
  • RM1,498 with Celcom Exec 50 + mBasic 1GB data plan (18 month contract period)
  • RM2,099 in SenQ, pay by Citibank credit card (no need data plan commitment, 3 years warranty, 36 months installment period)
Recently, Celcom and Digi has signed a partnership to share their telco infrastructure. Therefore, we can expect that either you are with Celcom or with Digi, the 2G/2.5G/3G data service quality and availability will be the same after this sharing of telco infrastructure.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Asia Trader & Investor Convention (ATIC) @ KL 2011

The annual Asia's largest trader and investor event, Asia Trader & Investor Convention (ATIC) 2011 is coming.


Date: 2-3 April 2011
Time: 9.00am - 6.00pm
Venue: Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, KLCC, Malaysia
Fees: RM28 for 2 days entry ticket

ATIC has travelled to 7 Asian Cities, i.e., Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai, Shenzhen and Tokyo. With participation by over 300 financial services companies, including securities exchanges, retail and consumer banks, securities brokerage firms, asset/fund management firms, listed companies and other financial services providers, the events have attracted over 100,000 active traders and serious investors across Asia.
ATIC Kuala Lumpur 2011 is targetted to feature more than 40 seminars conducted by international and local gurus and experts.

I noticed that the ATIC ticket price keeps on increasing every year. In 2009, it is free. Last year, there was an early bird price of RM18. This year, no news about early bird price yet.

Click here for more information about ATIC at KL 2011.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

IPv4 will be used up really soon. Are we ready for IPv6?

The IP address in the format of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (i.e. IPv4) which is the basic identification of every device connected to the Internet is predicted to be fully allocated (used up) on the estimated date of 2 February 2011. Take a look at the ticking counter of IPv4 exhaustion here.

The current IPv4 address space is a 32 bit field, possible for 4,294,967,296 (4.29 billion) allocations. It is used by all network devices connected using the TCP/IP protocol, including computers, mobile devices, network devices, certain telecommunication devices, certain electrical appliances, and everything connected to the Internet with TCP/IP.

IPv4 started around 1980. By that time, only a handfull of computers, mostly in military and academic institutions (i.e. universities) are connected to the Internet and linked up with TCP/IP. The allocation of IPv4 accelerated in the 1990's when the whole world are connected to the Internet. Its exhaustion rate spurred further in the 2000's when not only computers and network devices are connected to the Internet, but also many other electrical and electronic devices, especially the mobile phones.

As a result, now we are very close to the end. All the 4.29 billion IP addresses will be fully used, and will not be sufficient for every devices that need to connect to the Internet anymore.

Various measures have been taken to slow down the exhaustion, such as special allocation for private IP address blocks (10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x, and 172.16.x.x – 172.31.x.x) so that devices not directly connected to the Internet can make use of these private IP addresses, and they can share a same Internet IP address with NAT translation at the gateway/router.

The exhaustion of IPv4 has already taken into account for these kind of measures. It should have come even earlier if without private IP address and NAT in place nowadays.

In fact, the Internet authorities have thought about this issue long time ago, and have planned for the migration to the next generation of IP address system, namely IPv6. In fact, one of my project assignment during university studies in mid-1990's is about IPv6. Therefore, you should know that the research on IPv6 has been around for more than 10 years.

IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, whereas IPv4 uses only 32 bits. The new address space supports unlimited address allocation (3.4 x 10^38). With this much amount of IP addresses available, it also eliminates the need for NAT, and every devices can have their Internet IP address, just like the scenario for IPv4 before the introduction of NAT.

The IPv6 format will look like this: XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:YYYY:YYYY:YYYY:YYYY, where the first 4 groups (XXXX part) is a 64-bit network prefix, and the last 4 groups (YYYY part) is a 64-bit host address. All the digits are in hexadecimal.

It is reported that big Internet players including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai, Limelight Networks, etc. will have a 24-hour test run on IPv6 during the World IPv6 Day on 8 June 2011. Click here to read more about World IPv6 Day.

We have to move on. Are we ready for IPv6? (Especially service providers, device manufacturers, software developers, network engineers, ...)

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.