Worldwide IT spending increases were pretty anemic as IT and telecom services spending were seriously curtailed last year. It seems that things are going better. Telecom services spending, which has been curtailed in the past few years, only grew by a tenth of a point in 2012, to $1.661tr, but Gartner projects spending on mobile data services to grow enough to more than compensate for declines in fixed and mobile voice revenues. Infonetics Research Report sees telecom sector growth outpacing GDP growth. Global capital expenditure (capex) by telecommunications service providers is expected to increase at a compounded rate of 1.5% over the next five years, from $207 billion in 2012 to $223.3 billion in 2017, says a new market report from Insight Research Corp.
Europe’s Telco Giants In Talks To Create Pan-European Network. Europe’s largest mobile network operators are considering pooling their resources to create pan-European network infrastructure, the FT is reporting. Mobile network operators are frustrated by a “disjointed European market” that’s making it harder for them to compete.
“Internet of Things” gets new push. Ten Companies (Including Logitech) Team Up To Create The Internet Of Things Consortium article tell that your Internet-connected devices may be getting more cooperative, thanks to group of startups and established players who have come together to create a new nonprofit group called the Internet of Things Consortium.
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications are more and more used. Machine-to-machine technology made great strides in 2012, and I expect an explosion of applications in 2013. Mobile M2M communication offers developers a basis for countless new applications for all manner of industries. Extreme conditions M2M communication article tells that M2M devices often need to function in extreme conditions. According to market analysts at Berg Insight, the number of communicating machines is set to rise to around 270 million by 2015. The booming M2M market is due to unlimited uses for M2M communications. The more and more areas of life and work will rely on M2M.
Car of the future is M2M-ready and has Ethernet. Ethernet has already been widely accepted by the automotive industry as the preferred interface for on-board-diagnostics (OBD). Many cars already feature also Internet connectivity. Many manufacturers taking an additional step to develop vehicle connectivity. One such example is the European Commission’s emergency eCall system, which is on target for installation in every new car by 2015. There is also aim of Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications and Internet connectivity within vehicles is to detect traffic jams promptly and prevent them from getting any worse.
M2M branches beyond one-to-one links article tells that M2M is no longer a one-to-one connection but has evolved to become a system of networks transmitting data to a growing number of personal devices. Today, sophisticated and wireless M2M data modules boast many features.
The Industrial Internet of Things article tells that one of the biggest stories in automation and control for 2013 could be the continuing emergence of what some have called the Internet of Things, or what GE is now marketing as the Industrial Internet. The big question is whether companies will see the payback on the needed investment. And there are many security issues that needs to be carefully weighted out.
Very high speed 60GHz wireless will be talked a lot in 2013. Standards sultan sanctifies 60GHz wireless LAN tech: IEEE blesses WiGig’s HDMI-over-the-air, publishes 802.11ad. WiFi and WiGig Alliances become one, work to promote 60GHz wireless. Wi-Fi, WiGig Alliances to wed, breed 60GHz progeny. WiGig Alliance’s 60GHz “USB/PCI/HDMI/DisplayPort” technology sits on top of the IEEE radio-based communications spec. WiGig’s everything-over-the-air system is expected to deliver up to 7Gbit of data per second, albeit only over a relatively short distance from the wireless access point. Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use as WiGig routers, docking stations, laptop, and tablet were shown at CES. It’s possible the next wireless router you buy will use the 60GHz frequency as well as the lower ones typically used in Wi-Fi, allowing for incredibly fast performance when you’re within the same room as the router and normal performance when you’re in a different room.
Communications on power line still gets some interest at least inside house. HomePlug and G.hn are tussling it out to emerge as the de-facto powerline standard, but HomePlug has enjoyed a lot of success as the incumbent.
Silicon photonics ushers in 100G networks article tells that a handful of companies are edging closer to silicon photonics, hoping to enable a future generation of 100 Gbit/s networks.
Now that 100G optical units are entering volume deployment, faster speeds are very clearly on the horizon. The push is on for a 400G Ethernet standard. Looking beyond 100G toward 400G standardization article tells that 400G is very clearly on the horizon. The push is now officially “on” for 400-Gigabit Ethernet standard. The industry is trying to avoid the mistakes made with 40G optics, which lacked any industry standards.
Market for free-space optical wireless systems expanding. Such systems are often positioned as an alternative to fiber-optic cables, particularly when laying such cables would be cost-prohibitive or where permitting presents an insurmountable obstacle. DARPA Begins Work On 100Gbps Wireless Tech With 120-mile Range.
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Tomi says:
These Digital Name Badges Are a Data Mining Bonanza
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/conference-badges/
There may not be a lot of business cards swapped today at at Future Stack, a conference in San Francisco organized by analytics company New Relic. Instead, attendees will be bumping together little computerized badges at this the company’s first-ever conference.
They’re being given name badges that include a tiny computer called an Electric Imp, which they can then use to swap contact info and rate sessions.
The badges include a Near Field Communications (NFC) antennae — that’s what swaps the data when two badges are “bumped.” The contact information you collect can then be synced with a conference-specific app for Android and iOS that displays your contacts, along with other statistics. But the real value may be in what New Relic finds out about the conference and its attendees. The company will also use the badges to track attendees positions in real time. Then it hopes to use its own analytics technology to mine the location data it collects to find correlations between session attendance and things like weather or coffee consumption.
“We wanted to see what happens when you put software in something mundane, like a conference badge,” says New Relic developer evangelist Chris Kelly. “What happens when the world is populated with all types of software?”
New Relic isn’t the first company to use electronic badges at its conference.
“We could have done it with an app, but everyone needs a badge for the conference anyway,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM study shows 75% of biz leaders actively investigating IoT
http://semiengineering.com/week-review-system-level-design-2/
ARM released a study, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit, that shows 75% of global business leaders are actively researching opportunities on the Internet of Things. The report says the five barriers for companies increasing the use of the IoT are lack of employee skills, lack of senior management commitment, lack of an obvious tie between products and the IoT, immature standards, and the high cost of investment required for the infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
75 percent of global business leaders are exploring the economic opportunities created by the Internet of Things
http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/75-percent-of-global-business-leaders-are-exploring-the-economic-opportunities-created-by-the.php
29 October 2013
96 percent expect their business to be using IoT in some respect by 2016
More than three in five (61 percent) executives agree that companies that are slow to integrate IoT will fall behind their competition
Collaborative business models, skills development and common standards needed for business to take full advantage of the Internet of Things
ARM CEO Simon Segars says: “The Internet of Things runs on ARM. By connecting the next 30bn devices, the ARM ecosystem is transforming lives by improving the management of our cities, health services, environment and education systems. Our technologies provide the functional building blocks in a huge range of products including cars, heart monitoring systems, washing machines and lighting. Energy efficiency and miniaturisation are essential in these technologies, for example, the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor fits within the width of the average human hair – an essential component if we are to unlock the full business benefits of IoT. With this kind of innovative design, alongside our diverse, dynamic business ecosystem, we can unlock the full business benefits of IoT.”
Who is leading the charge?
European businesses are ahead (see page 7 of report) of their global counterparts on the leader-board, in the research and planning phases of implementing IoT
Manufacturing is leading the way (see page 7 of report) with IoT amongst the industries tracked, driven by the need for real time information to optimise productivity. One in four manufacturing companies already has a live IoT system in place. This sector is followed closely by construction and real estate.
The top five barriers for companies increasing the use of IoT (top responses) are:
Lack of employee skills/knowledge
Lack of senior management knowledge and commitment
Products or services don’t have an obvious IoT element to them
Immaturity of industry standards around IoT
High costs of required investment in IoT infrastructure
“The self-stocking intelligent fridge is a step closer to becoming an everyday reality,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Securing Intelligent Systems from the Ground Up
http://techonline.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/tech-papers/4416265/Securing-Intelligent-Systems-from-the-Ground-Up
If the layered approach—platform security, software protection, data security—is implemented intelligently and adopted widely, it will serve as a potent security framework that transforms today’s insecure Internet of Things into a secured intelligent system that creates and processes data that can be trusted.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chinese operators blast 1-Tbps over 3200 km of singlemode fiber
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/chinese-operators-terabit-smf.html
ZTE Corp. says it has collaborated with China Telecom Corporation Ltd. Beijing Research Institute to send a 1-Tbps signal over a span of 3200 km. The demonstration used a terabit WDM real-time transmission system based on ZTE’s ZXONE 8700 platform.
The optical transmission occurred over G.652 singlemode optical fiber without Raman amplification.
The optical transport system reportedly used Nyquist WDM terabit PM-QPSK optical modulation and optical coherent detection technologies, as well as ultra-high-speed signal processing and soft-decision forward error correction algorithms to achieve spectral efficiency of 4 bit/Hz/s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Made Easy with Texas Instruments’ SimpleLink™ Wi-Fi CC3000 Solutions
http://www.techonline.com/electrical-engineers/education-training/webinars/4422640/IoT-Made-Easy-with-Texas-Instruments–SimpleLink–Wi-Fi-CC3000-Solutions
Are you interested in adding Wi-Fi to your solutions for applications such as home automation, connected appliances, Smart energy, & M2M communication to name a few? The Internet of Things is becoming a part of many products in development now and the future
Texas Instruments’ SimpleLink™ Wi-Fi CC3000 solution will make your IoT product design easy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will NSA revelations lead to the Balkanisation of the internet?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/nsa-revelations-balkanisation-internet
As countries move to protect their citizens’ digital privacy, Ian Brown considers their options and the potential impact
There has been criticism of America’s National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ from Latin American nations, and close allies such as France and Germany, have expressed dismay. The European Union’s internal market commissioner, Michel Barnier, has called for a “European data cloud”, while its justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, has declared Monday’s European parliament vote on new data protection rules to be “Europe’s declaration of independence”.
These countries are pushing strongly for the UN to take a greater role in future internet governance, as India, Russia and China, have already done.
Brazil argues that it is simply protecting its citizens from an out-of-control US surveillance machine, while promoting the development of local internet businesses – a key 21st century industry. Germany’s privacy commissioners have called for a review of whether Europe’s internet traffic can be kept as far as possible within the EU (and by implication, from the UK).
Are these proposals all steps towards a “Balkanised” set of isolated, national internets, as some fear?
US internet giants, such as Facebook and Google, are concerned at the increased costs and complexity of having to set up national data centres – and perhaps even separate regional subsidiaries, credibly insulated from demands for data from the US and its Five Eyes intelligence allies. But users would see little difference day-to-day.
They might see warnings when information was about to be sent to servers vulnerable to the exercise of US legal powers
However, without significant US legal reform, it is difficult to see what other options exist for countries that are not members of the Five Eyes surveillance club. Calls for the EU to cancel its “safe harbour” agreement, which allows companies to send Europeans’ personal data across the Atlantic, are unlikely to succeed due to the potential economic damage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
T-Mobile’s Wacky Plan to Trash the Wireless Business Model
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/164414-t-mobiles-wacky-plan-to-trash-the-wireless-business-model
Legere, chief executive officer of T-Mobile US (TMUS), the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the country, was giving an interview to Bloomberg TV in July to introduce a program that would allow customers to upgrade their phones twice a year.
For the last 10 years, AT&T and Verizon, which together have more than half of the market by number of subscribers, have been the quickest to roll out big, fast wireless networks. Their advertisements have focused more on quality and reach than price; they could assume, correctly, that customers would pay a premium for the largest, fastest network. T-Mobile’s ads claim no such superlatives, though Legere’s network is large enough and just as fast.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Distance-extending SFP sends Ethernet over UTP or coaxial cabling
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/comnet-clsfp.html
ComNet has introduced a small-form-factor pluggable (SFP) device that can extend Ethernet distances over coaxial or unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cabling to 3000 feet. The ComNet CL-SFP can be used in any Ethernet device that uses MSA-compliant SFPs for connectivity, the company explains. 10-Mbit/sec and 100-Mbit/sec models are available.
“We are seeing an increasing demand coming from the market to utilize existing copper media in IP networks.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: 100G port revenue to surpass $6B by 2017
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/100g-port-revenue.html?cmpid=EnlCIMNovember42013
Infonetics Research has released highlights from its latest 1G/10G/40G/100G Networking Ports report, which explores the demand for 1 Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, 40 Gigabit, and 100 Gigabit optical and Ethernet ports
“Overall network port shipments and revenue are on a steady upward path as buyers shift to higher bandwidth, but the real action is in high-speed (10G+) port shipments, which we expect to increase almost ten-fold by 2017,” reveals Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.
According to the new report, spending by service providers and enterprises on 1G, 10G, 40G and 100G network ports grew to $37 billion in 2012, up 4% from the previous year. Infonetics forecasts total network port spending to grow to $52 billion in 2017, driven by growing network traffic and the need to constantly upgrade networks.
Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics and co-author of the report, adds, “For optical ports, 10G will remain the highest-volume speed, but 100G represents the area of the most dramatic growth. Service providers have indicated to us that by 2016, the majority of spending in long-haul networks will be on 100G.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality — And the Internet as We Know It
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/so-the-internets-about-to-lose-its-net-neutrality/
Net neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently — say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes — the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it.
Once upon a time, companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others declared a war on the internet’s foundational principle: that its networks should be “neutral” and users don’t need anyone’s permission to invent, create, communicate, broadcast, or share online. The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.
But today, that freedom won’t survive much longer if a federal court — the second most powerful court in the nation behind the Supreme Court, the DC Circuit — is set to strike down the nation’s net neutrality law, a rule adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010.
Unfortunately, the FCC decision that included the nondiscrimination rule still had major loopholes — especially when it came to mobile networks.
Web and mobile companies will live or die not on the merits of their technology, but on the deals they can strike with AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A use for the Internet of Things: ROBOCOP Neighbourhood Watch
No people required here … bring on the Rise of the Machines
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/bolt_home_automation_file_system/
LADIS 2013 The Internet of Things may be a young field, but researchers are already cooking up a filesystem to simplify how devices share information with one another, which could lead to community-backed services such as an automated neighborhood watch.
One effort involving eggheads from Microsoft Research and the University of Texas at Austin has created the “Bolt” filesystem, which amalgamates and consolidate inputs from various sensors.
The storage system lets numerous wired devices such as heating systems or security cameras stream data into a storage layer, which then replicates the data into a secure off-site storage location, such as a public cloud, for sharing with other sensors in other homes.
The technology is a “stream-based key-value abstraction with support for range queries over time and filtering based on application-specific keys,” according to the paper [PDF] discussing the technology.
One scenario Bolt is envisioned as being used in is if a home security camera reports a black car passing at low speed â not a suspicious thing in itself, but if the data were to be streamed into the consolidated off-site
“You may want to preserve data for evidence purposes, even if [the source] goes offline,” Trinabh Gupta, one of the researchers, said at LADIS.
To avoid data leakage Bolt hashes and encrypts data using a decentralized access system, which also supports application specific policies so administrators can tighten or relax security rules according to usage.
Bolt is structured around key-value streams, which are identified by a HomeID, AppID, StreamID tuple. The location of these streams is configurable (see below) so users can set where it is stored.
As of LADIS, the prototype supports local, Windows Azure, and Amazon S3 storage, and it has been integrated with technologies such as HomeOS, a home automation operating system being developed by Microsoft Research. The researchers have also tested it with other clouds such as Rackspace, Gupta told El Reg, and said the API for Bolt is simple. “Even a simple PUT and GET API should work, he said.
Bolt is still in development
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skype says my application will stop working with Skype in December 2013, why is that?
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12365/what-will-happen-to-my-skype-certified-headset-after-the-desktop-api-has-been-discontinued
You may have recently noticed a message in Skype alerting you to the fact that your headset-related application won’t be supported from December 2013.
That’s because this application uses a technology called the Desktop API to answer and end Skype calls by pressing call-control buttons built-in to your headset or to the cable connecting the headset with your computer.
The Desktop API was created in 2004 and it doesn’t support mobile application development. We have, therefore, decided to retire the Desktop API.
If there are such call-control buttons on your headset, they will no longer work once the Desktop API has been discontinued. However, your headset will continue to work normally. You’ll only need to use the buttons in your Skype application to answer or end the call.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bigger than Google Fiber: LA plans citywide gigabit for homes and businesses
Free broadband for all, and gigabit for those who can afford it.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/bigger-than-google-fiber-la-plans-citywide-gigabit-for-homes-and-businesses/
Los Angeles is about to unleash one of the most ambitious city-led broadband projects to date, with the goal of bringing fiber to all of its 3.5 million residents and all businesses.
Next month, the city plans to issue an RFP (request for proposals) “that would require fiber to be run to every residence, every business, and every government entity within the city limits of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Information Technology Agency GM Steve Reneker told Ars today. The City Council this morning unanimously voted to move forward with drafting the RFP and will vote again in a few weeks to determine whether it’s ready for release, he said.
The RFP would favor companies that can offer not only fiber Internet but also cellular service and data center hosting. That makes AT&T and Verizon possible candidates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
High-Gain Patch Antennas Boost Wi-Fi Capacity In Crowded Lecture Halls
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/11/06/0028232/high-gain-patch-antennas-boost-wi-fi-capacity-in-crowded-lecture-halls
“To boost its Wi-Fi capacity in packed lecture halls, Georgia Institute of Technology gave up trying to cram in more access points with conventional omni-directional antennas, and juggle power settings and channel plans. Instead, it turned to new high-gain directional antennas.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skype tweaks Desktop API plans: Chat still going away, call recording and device compatibility to stay for now
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/11/06/skype-tweaks-desktop-api-plans-chat-still-going-away-call-recording-device-compatibility-stay-now/
Skype today announced a change to its plans regarding the retirement of the Desktop API used by third-party developers to extend Skype functionality. Instead of retiring the Desktop API later this year as it originally announced, Skype is now keeping what it says are the most widely used features: call recording and compatibility with hardware devices. Unfortunately, Chat functionality is still going away.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel creates new business division for connected gadgets
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-intel-connected-idUSBRE9A504I20131106
Intel Corp has set up a business division aimed at making money out of a new technology wave that can link up a host of electronic devices.
“Krzanich is saying, ‘I want a higher level of focus on this to help us grow it and put the level of attention on it that it deserves,’” Davis told Reuters on Tuesday.
The new solutions group combines an existing Intel business focused on chips for commercial and industrial devices with Intel’s Wind River subsidiary, which sells software for commercial and industrial devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WAIT! What’s that sound? It’s Intel stomping into the ‘Internet of Things’
We’re not going to be left behind this time, chief exec vows
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/intel_internet_things_division/
Intel has set up an entire business unit to make sure that it doesn’t miss out on the the whole “internet of things” movement.
The chipmaker wants to make sure that it’s not behind the curve on efforts to create a vast army of network-connected gadgets and sensors – ideally everything from remote-controllable toasters to your nose-hair trimmers. Thus, Chipzilla is building an entire division devoted to making money from the trend.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huge Challenges With Billions Of Things
http://semiengineering.com/huge-challenges-billions/
Advancements in technology are about to open new doors to communications. That’s both good and bad.
Communication is poised in the next couple of years to cross a line between humans and things—things talking directly to other things as well as to people—setting in motion a series of technological, social and legal issues that will take years or decades to resolve.
On one hand, this is made possible by leaps in processing performance and power management in mobile devices. In his keynote speech at ARM TechCon 2013 last week, ARM CEO Simon Segars noted that we are entering the era of mobility where it’s not just about access to the Internet—it’s about access to the mobile Internet.
“There is a growing network where the phone becomes the interacting devices to a network of other things,” Segars said. “But with that the consumption of data is going up. Global data grew 50% this year to 900 petabytes, and Cisco predicts by 2017 mobile data will increase by a factor of 10 to 8 zetabytes. The network today can’t absorb that much data.”
Data overload is just one problem that has to be contended with for the Internet of Things. Across every industry, including semiconductors, the IoT is almost universally recognized as a huge opportunity. It also poses a long list of challenges that crosses all boundaries.
“The IoT is currently an extremely fragmented market, so there is not a “one-size-fits-all” answer,” said James Wu, director of strategic marketing at Synopsys. “We have seen designs implemented in 90nm/55nm embedded flash processes or 40nm/28nm logic processes. It all depends upon which particular sub-segment suppliers are focused on. For example, an MCU for a parking meter or vending machine can be implemented in 90nm or above technologies. These meters are using the 2G Wireless devices to connect to the Internet, which will be designed in 40nm with less than $10 BOM (for the wireless modules). On the other hand, the future intelligent cars with driving assistance or collision avoidance could be designed in 28nm process technology or beyond.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Experts At The Table: What’s Missing In The Internet Of Things
http://semiengineering.com/experts-table-whats-missing-internet/
First of three parts: Understanding the usefulness of data, what to keep and for how long; focusing on solutions rather than just chips; networking issues caused by a flood of data; unexpected uses for data and technology; economic considerations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Atoms, ARMs, ARCs, Andes…And All The Rest
http://semiengineering.com/atoms-arms-arcs-andesand-rest/
The race for the Internet of Things is just getting started. Who ultimately wins is anyone’s guess, but there are some new contenders.
The new market
The Internet of Things adds another dimension to the unique demands placed on processors, and the unit numbers are much higher than for the mobile markets. Each person owns just a few PCs and smart phones, but there are likely to be hundreds or thousands of devices that each person interacts with when we consider the Internet of Things (IoT). These things, many of them intelligent sensors, will be in your clothes, in your car, your home and your appliances. For many of these devices, cost and power are the ultimate design considerations. Cost is critical because they have to be priced at just a few dollars per device, and power is important because they may have to operate on power they scavenge from their environment or have a requirement to operate for several years on a single battery. There are a myriad of other issues that may influence the selection decision, such as configurability, code density, company size, stability and reputation, and the production libraries supported.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open-Source Radio Links Mexican Village
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1320012&
September 27 brought a small but significant milestone for the rural network access needed to connect a significant proportion of the 2 billion people without affordable mobile coverage. The people of Santa Maria Yaviche made the first calls from their tiny, remote village deep in Mexico’s northern Oaxaca mountains, a five-hour drive from Oaxaca City.
The milestone followed advances in open-source RF technologies and considerable work by the Rhizomatica project. For the past two years, Rhizomatica has been working with Mexican communities and the Mexican government to obtain concessions (ordinarily costing operators several hundred million dollars) so approximately 5,000 small, indigenous communities could build their own local mobile networks in the Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Guerrero, and Tlaxcala states of Mexico. The project cost just a few thousand dollars thanks to open-source technologies and low-cost construction materials.
A base station with a built-in PBX ensures no external infrastructure is needed to connect calls.
The network in Yaviche runs with the UmDESK open-source base station, which is built on top of the open-source hardware platform UmTRX. It allows up to 14 concurrent voice connections. When this capacity is exhausted, the system switches settings to nearly double its capacity, making a tradeoff in voice quality.
A flexible RF platform is essential for the service to run effectively and to negate interference from competing networks that may be built in the future. So the base station uses field-programmable RF transceivers, allowing the network to be calibrated across a wide range of frequencies from 0.3 GHz to 3.8 GHz.
Software reliability is also vital. For this, the system runs a variant of the Osmocom open-source software.
Surprisingly, in a village of just 700 people with no mobile coverage, the network immediately detected more than 100 active phones. The phones were used as calculators, alarm clocks, game machines, and more.
“We finally have a low-cost, stable solution that meets the demands of rural deployments and is in line with local budgets,” said Rhizomatica’s head, Peter Bloom.
Rhizomatica
http://rhizomatica.org/
Rhizomatica’s mission is to increase access to mobile telecommunications to the over 2 billion people without affordable coverage and the 700 million with none at all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Creates Internet of Things Group
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320001&
Following in the footsteps of other tech giants such as Cisco Systems, Intel created a new Internet of Things group and named Doug Davis, a long time veteran of Intel embedded groups, as its general manger. Davis reports to the executive office, which includes Intel’s new CEO Brian Krzanich.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tier 1 and Tier 2 testing, troubleshooting and documentation
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-10/features/tier-1-and-tier-2-testing-troubleshooting-and-documentation.html
Familiarity with test standards is critical to ensuring performance in high-speed fiber-optic networks.
Controlling network loss has become increasingly important as loss budgets get smaller and demands on networks increase. High losses and optical network failure are often caused by contaminated, damaged or poorly polished connectors, poor splices, and micro or macrobends introduced in shipping or installation. The best way to keep your network running efficiently? Test and inspect.
Contamination of connector ends is the leading cause of optical network failures, based on this information originating from NTT Advanced Technology.
Before we go on to the reasons for testing fiber networks, the types of testing needed, and how to perform this testing, remember that safety is paramount and keep the following in mind.
Laser eye safety–Do not look directly into lasers on network equipment or test equipment.
Fiber scrap and shards from fiber preparation–These must be handled properly to avoid punctures and cuts.
Ensuring all systems are powered off–Unless specifically testing a live system, all network equipment should be shut off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel on Europe: The Internet of Things could SAVE US ALL
Apply clever tech to lift economic gloom, says chip giant labs chief
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/10/25/intel_smart_cities_and_internet_of_things/
How will Europe lift itself out of current and future economic woes – and help save the planet while it’s about it? According to chip giant Intel, with hi-tech carrots rather than government sticks.
So said the head of Intel’s European R&D operation, Martin Curley, this week at the chip company’s European Research and Innovation Conference – Eric to its friends.
It’s easy to be cynical about such a message, especially given the number of business book buzzwords that were tossed around alongside it – “new innovation paradigm”, “quadruple helix innovation”, “full spectrum innovation” – Intel is very keen on the “i” word, it seems – and the involvement of so many talking-shop Eurocrats.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What is MansOS?
http://mansos.edi.lv/
MansOS is an operating system for wireless sensor networks (WSN) and other resource-constrained embedded systems.
Some of MansOS target platforms are based on MSP430 and Atmega microcontrollers (Nordic MCU support is in development). Popular and supported platform names include Tmote Sky and other Telosb clones, Zolertia Z1, and a few models of Arduino.
MansOS applications use plain C and UNIX-like concepts such as sockets for communication. In this way the OS offers smooth learning curve for a large target audience: those who have some system programming experience but are new to embedded systems.
MansOS has a built-in scripting language (SEAL) suitable for describing common WSN applications in readable and intuitive fashion.
The applications of MansOS include:
SAD – sensor networks for precision agriculture [LV]
LynxNet – wild animal monitoring using sensor networks [LV]
It is also used for educational purposes; in particular, in WSN courses at University of Latvia for teaching WSN OS concepts, and for student projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Internet of Things” Signals Eventual Merger of Cloud and Mobile Management
http://www.centrify.com/blogs/tomkemp/merger_of_cloud_and_mobile_management.asp?ls=304-013-techmemeInternetofThings
I think most of us have heard the expression “Internet of Things” (IoT). To me that expression represents a world of an increasing number of smart devices (i.e. “Things”) talking to an increasing number of cloud-based (i.e. “Internet”) resources and services, and in the middle of this interconnected world are users who are leveraging some of these devices to interact with some of these services.
I believe in this “IoT” world that identity is super important, be it authenticating device-to-device, device-to-cloud, or cloud-to-cloud communication, as well as granularly controlling which users and which devices can access what. An “IoT” world also means a de-perimeterized world, and the value of security solutions that protect the perimeter become devalued as the perimeter dissolves. This makes identity even more important from a security perspective as that becomes the one thing that IT security can in theory control when the organization no longer owns the end user device (e.g. BYOD phone) and/or the backend resource (e.g. a SaaS app).
And within an “IoT” world the concept of identity itself is transforming. For example, before “IoT” identity vis a vis the enterprise was about how to best manage your users’ IDs and passwords and grant them access to systems and applications. Now identity is also about needing to know a user’s location (e.g. don’t allow access if the user’s location is outside where he normally accesses apps from) and their devices (e.g. only allow access for this user from these specific trusted devices that are associated with this user).
Tomi Engdahl says:
focus
Internet of Everything
http://newsroom.cisco.com/internet-of-everything-october2013
WHAT IS IoE?
The Internet of Everything is the networked connection of people, data, process and things as well as the value this increased connectedness creates as “everything” comes online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s the Inter-THREAT of THINGS: Lightbulb ARMY could turn on HUMANITY
CTO calmly illuminates us on the world’s biggest potential botnet
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/06/what_if_the_light_bulbs_turned_on_us/
Fujitsu’s CTO has sketched a nightmare vision of lightbulbs turning on their human masters in massive denial of service attacks if industry doesn’t get a grip on the security of the “internet of things”.
And even if they don’t get that incandescent, the much vaunted internet-connected lightbulb leaves users open to having their homes messed with and broken into by hackers, warned Dr Joseph Reger.
he warned, it was entirely feasible that miscreants could hack into your home illumination system to check usage. This could easily tip them off to when you’re likely to be home, or even whether you’re on holiday – and thus choose the optimum time to break in.
However, as bulbs – and other devices – gain more “intelligence”, far more serious possibilities arise. “There will be some that are more intelligent,” predicted Reger, and therefore could be injected with malicious code and used to mount DDoS attacks, for example.
“You suddenly have an army of attackers…billions of soldiers. And that’s new,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Outdoor small cell backhaul market set to boom
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/infonetics-outdoor-small-cell.html
“Outdoor small cells or, more accurately, low-power cells, are an exciting new expansion of mobile networking, but they come with challenging backhaul issues,” explains Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research. “As a result, deployments of outdoor small cells are modest right now, as mobile operators sort things out and test, trial and select technologies, products and vendors. But that’s about to change, and fast.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Enterprise femtocell adoption growing
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/enterprise-femtocells-infonetics.html
Infonetics Research has released its 2nd quarter 2013 (2Q13) Residential and Enterprise Femtocell Equipment report, which tracks femtocells by market segment, technology, and form factor.
“Sales of 3G femtocells still dominate the market, despite the focus of vendors on 4G,” asserts Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics Research.
According to the report, the global 2G/3G/4G residential and enterprise femtocell equipment market grew 4% sequentially in 1Q13, to $115 million, driven by LTE.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New IEEE specs bring wireless beyond Gig speeds
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-10/features/new-ieee-specs-bring-wireless-beyond-gig-speeds.html
802.11ac will take center stage, and 802.11ad will play a smaller role, in supporting mobile-data growth.
some strategies for handling this rapid growth by building mission-critical WiFi networks and using mobile data handoff to WiFi networks. Another important part of satisfying the growing demand will be the use of emerging IEEE 802.11ac and 802.11ad amendments to the wireless standard to provide for gigabit mobile data. This involves engaging relatively unused spectrum in the 5- and 60-GHz bands.
Commercial WiFi networks, initially designed for casual Internet access, limited guess access and periodic conference room use, will be promoted to a mission-critical role, requiring improved throughput and connection reliability. Part of this improvement in performance will come from architecture and infrastructure improvements as described.
The IEEE 802.11ac amendment is presently in a finalized state with working group approval anticipated later in 2013. The draft specification is far enough along that manufacturers have committed designs to silicon, and there are presently consumer- and commercial-grade 802.11ac products available. There are 802.11ac smart phones currently on the market, such as the Samsung S4 and HTC One. There are rumors that Apple and Intel will come out with 802.11ac-enabled laptops in 2013 also.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIA workshop to explore transition to 5G mobile networks
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/tia-5g-workshop.html
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) announced that it will host an upcoming special workshop focused on the transition to fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. The event will bring together researchers and technologists from industry and leading research universities to discuss the challenges, policy barriers and new business models created by a 5G network.
According to TIA, the workshop’s premise is thus: Network operators and manufacturers are beginning to focus on the next generation of mobile communications, known as 5G — but what 5G will be, and how the network will transition, is still unclear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIA developing bulletin to address noise caused by flexing cables
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/tia-tsb-5008.html
The Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) TR-42.7 Engineering Committee on Telecommunications Copper Cabling Systems recently issued a call for interest as part of its work to develop a Telecommunications Systems Bulletin (TSB) that will address cable impulse noise. TSB-5008 has the working title “Internally Generated Cable Impulse Noise Characterization, Detection and Mitigation.” TR-42.7 is developing the document, TIA explains, “because application developers have noted that certain cabling systems exhibit internally generated impulse noise when flexed.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/11/2354254/netflix-youtube-surpass-50-mark-of-internet-traffic
“Netflix and Youtube are gaining ground not only on the competition, such as Amazon, but also over peer-to-peer file sharing.”
“Traffic from Netflix and Youtube amounted to over 50% of Internet traffic in September. Meanwhile Bittorrent traffic is down slightly”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook hitches skirt, flashes ‘Cisco-slaying’ open network blade
OCP project heralds death of closed, bespoke gear in mega bit barns
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/facebook_cisco_killer_ocp_networking/
Facebook is leading a charge to displace traditional proprietary networking hardware and software in all of its data centers – potentially threatening the livelihood of large incumbents such as Cisco, Juniper, and Brocade in the wider market.
The Open Compute Project Networking scheme was announced by the social network at Interop in May. It involves Facebook banding together various industry participants to create a set of open specifications for networking gear that can be built, sold, and serviced by any company that likes the designs.
“When you go and buy a [networking] appliance you get speeds and feeds and ports that run some protocols and [a command interface] to manage protocols – the best you can do is system integration,” said Najam Ahmad, Facebook’s director of technical operations. “You couldn’t really effect change of the protocol.”
Asking a vendor to adjust networking equipment to suit an application is a lengthy process, he explained, and so Facebook’s scheme is trying to change that by opening up the underlying hardware.
The key way to do this is to sunder the links between networking hardware and software, and eliminate some of the gratuitous differentiation that makes gear from incumbents such as Brocade, Juniper, and Cisco hard to migrate between.
“These closed platforms don’t provide you that visibility or control to do that… that model is breaking, that model needs to break, networking is yet another distributed system,” Ahmad said.
“Any company whose business is solely networking, they typically don’t make money on huge sexy hard problems, they make it on meat of the market problems,” Rivers said. “They do it by creating a real or perceived lock-in to their technology. It might be a certification program. They do that because more often than not they have shareholders they are beholden to.”
Facebook is also skeptical about Cisco’s arguments that networking software needs to be tightly coupled to a Cisco-designed ASIC on a Cisco-designed circuit board to get greater performance.
“I don’t buy that,” Ahmad told
The modularity and choice of suppliers afforded by the OCP scheme should make it easier for people to rightsize their switch, while still having control over it, he said. “Custom is really hard for an established company,” Frankovsky said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphones take lead with 55% of mobile phone sales
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57611723-94/smartphones-take-lead-with-55-of-mobile-phone-sales/
Thanks to the increasing popularity of smartphones, Ericsson believes that mobile traffic originating from the handsets will increase 10 times between 2013 and 2019. Video will make up over 50 percent of all mobile global traffic, according to Ericsson. By 2019, total smartphone traffic will hit 10 exabytes annually.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Likes Broadcom, Intel, Mellanox Switches
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320052&
Broadcom, Intel, and Mellanox have developed competing specifications for datacenter switches, responding to a call from the Facebook-led Open Compute Project.
OCP called earlier this year for open specs for software-agnostic leaf and spine switches to complement its existing specs for streamlined servers. The specs aim to speed innovation in networking hardware, “help software-defined networking continue to evolve and flourish,” and give big datacenter operators more flexibility in how they create cloud computing systems, said Frank Frankovsky, a Facebook datacenter executive and chair of the OCP Foundation in a blog posted Monday.
The project’s goal is to deliver a switch that can be rebooted to handle different jobs as needed. So far the OCP group received more than 30 proposals for systems or components.
Intel posted online a full reference design for its proposal for a 48×4 10/40G switch
Mellanox proposed a switch based on its SwitchX-2 switch and an x86 processor running the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) software from Cumulus Networks
Cumulus submitted to OCP its ONIE software
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s mobile networks in transport to 10-fold during this decade
Mobile Internet covers most of the planet by the end of the decade
The network company Ericsson forecasts that the global smart phone, the number nearly triple by 2019. The Swedish company estimates that the world was at that time already 5.6 billion smartphone subscribers. This year, the penetration is 1.9 billion.
Ericsson predicts fresh in its report of smartphones to triple from the current 5.6 billion units by 2019. According to the forecast of 60 per cent of all handsets would be the case of smart phones.
Already smart phones more than the basic mobile phones. In 2013 the first nine months of the year, 55 per cent of handsets sold were smartphones.
By the year 2019, the incoming data traffic from smartphones is expected to reach 10 billion GB limit. Data stream takes half the video to load, and 10 percent of social media and other online use.
Ericsson believes that the 3G network, the variable end of the decade nearly ubiquitous: the report shows that 90 per cent of the world’s population would live in a 3G coverage area in 2019. With faster 4G-connected, at 65 per cent of the population resided.
Sources:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/ericsson+mobiilinetti+kattaa+lahes+koko+planeetan+vuosikymmenen+loppuun+mennessa/a946542
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/uutisia/maailman+mobiiliverkkojen+liikenne+10kertaistuu+talla+vuosikymmenella/a946433
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphones well on way to OUTNUMBERING HUMANS – Ericsson
Telecoms electronics biz can’t wait to talk about demand for telecoms electronics
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/ericsson_sees_bright_future_for_smartphone_adoption/
The growth in smartphone devices has now overtaken that of conventional handsets, accounting for 55 per cent of new mobile subscriptions in the first nine months of 2013. That’s according to a new study by telecoms hardware maker Ericsson.
Overall globally, the Swedish multinational reckons there were 4.5 billion people subscribed to a mobile plan during the first three quarters of the year – although, for example, one person counts as two subscribers if she has two separate subscription plans, which may explain the high number.
In the third quarter of 2013 alone, Ericsson estimates that 113 million new subscriptions were logged.
Additionally, the company estimates that some 150 million people signed up for a mobile broadband plan this year
Ericsson is painting a rosy picture for mobile high-speed internet as it expects the considerable uptake to continue. The telco supplier predicts that by 2019 some 9.3 billion mobile subscriptions will be active and 5.6 billion of those will be for smartphone handsets. Today, the population of the world is 7.1 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global Internet Phenomena
Your Gateway to the Evolution of Internet Traffic
https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena/
Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report shines a light on fixed, mobile and converged data networks around the world, identifying the facts, fads and future trends that will drive the evolution of network traffic and shape the future of the Internet as we know it.
Sneak peeks of the facts you will uncover include:
Average monthly mobile usage in Asia-Pacific now exceeds 1 gigabyte, driven by video, which accounts for 50% of peak downstream traffic. This is more than double the 443 megabyte monthly average in North America.
In Europe, Netflix, less than two years since launch, now accounts for over 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in the British Isles. It took almost four years for Netflix to achieve 20% of data traffic in the United States.
Instagram and Dropbox are now top-ranked applications in mobile networks in many regions across the globe. Instagram, due to the recent addition of video, is now in Latin America the 7th top ranked downstream application on the mobile network, making it a prime candidate for inclusion in tiered data plans which are popular in the region.
Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks.
P2P Filesharing now accounts for less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America. Five years ago it accounted for over 31%.
Video accounts for less than 6% of traffic in mobile networks in Africa, but is expected to grow faster than in any other region before it. Blackberry use in Africa? Blackberry email and BBM messaging accounts for over 13% of traffic across the continent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s wrong with network monitoring tools? Where do I start…
That red screen? It’s just embarassment
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/13/what_is_wrong_with_network_monitoring_software/
For as long as I can remember I’ve worked in an environment where there’s a screen on the wall showing the status of the company’s systems.
From time to time that information’s been useful. Unfortunately, most of the time we’ve known that there’s a problem because half a dozen users have called to raise tickets – the screens haven’t necessarily updated in time
I’ve seen dozens of monitoring packages, and they’ve all been hideously inadequate.
Dodgy protocols
To be fair to monitoring software vendors, they’re off to a bad start because the tools available to them are simply appalling.
SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol – though frankly there’s nothing simple about it) is unwieldy and clunky to use, but we’re stuck with it because its longevity has made it ubiquitous. Let’s face it, nobody with any sense is about to try to produce an alternative because the barriers to entry into the market are insurmountable.
WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is actually very good, but of course it’s a Microsoft-only concept so you’re stuck with using it only on your Windows estate. Finally you have Syslog… well, you can give a simple priority to each type of alert but the content is largely unstructured and so the usefulness is limited.
Protocol-driven software
The next problem is that many monitoring engines are written by people who understand the protocols but have never really had to monitor anything in real life. So it’s all oriented around comparing CPU usage with thresholds, alerting when a switch interface has gone down, and so on.
“OK, what do you want to be able to do?”
Well, here are my top 10.
1. Wildlife camera feature
When something interesting happens they hit the “Record” button and the last few seconds/minutes are committed to storage.
I want that for my core network ports: when I have a problem, the traffic I care about is what has flowed for the past five, 10, 15 minutes so I want to retain it for a sensible amount of time.
2. Filter by device
If a switch lights up red on the monitoring screen, I want to click on it and pop up the alerts and Syslog entries that relate to it.
3. Muppet detector
4. Which way?
I want to see (visually and legibly) the path used by traffic between two endpoints.
5. Virtually comprehensible
I need my management package to understand the hypervisor layer so that I can do a packet capture on the virtual NIC of a virtual machine and the physical port
6. Sensible discovery
Why are so many auto-discovery functions so bloody awful?
7. Spanning Tree
Draw me a picture (a comprehensible one, please) of my Spanning Tree topology,
8. Idiotproof GUI
But why are so many monitoring screens so unintuitive?
9. Storage should understand storage
10. Application-centricity
The monitoring package must understand the applications. As the infrastructure guy I’m not actually responsible for keeping the infrastructure running; I’m responsible for providing the resources that the apps need in order to run.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of things internet requires a lot of IT work
mart phones, Internet-connected cars and wearable technology to people’s lives. But so far, they cause IT sector still a lot of headaches.
This is what was in San Francisco on Tuesday met online experts. The experts’ view, the next few years can be expected major breakthroughs in mobile technology and the things on the internet.
However, many panel discussion participants said that it is very difficult to predict what the mobile business look ten years from now. Apple’s iPhone market financial results is after all only six years.
Moreover, the new consumer devices associated with the emergence of a lot of hype, which is counter to the customer horizons, Cio.com write .
“Consumer electronics is the ceiling. How many people want to own the device, so that they would fare in ordinary daily routines,”
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/asioiden+internet+vaatii+viela+paljon+tyota/a947025
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things Needs a Lot of Work
Connected devices, homes and cars need a lot of work, a panel of mobile experts said
http://www.cio.com/article/743094/The_Internet_of_Things_Needs_a_Lot_of_Work
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau) — Mobile connected devices may make life easier for consumers in the long run, but today they present a bundle of user headaches, a panel of industry leaders said Tuesday.
Smart homes, Internet-connected cars and wearable devices represent the next generation of mobile gear beyond smartphones. The new systems will coexist with phones for at least the next few years, though given the changes that have occurred since the iPhone’s introduction in 2007, it’s hard to predict what mobile will look like 10 years from now.
But beyond convenience and the cool factor, it’s still often a chore to live with these devices, and it doesn’t get easier as they proliferate, panelists at the Open Mobile Summit said.
“We’re about to hit the ceiling of what people are willing to babysit,” said Mark Rolston, chief creative officer at Frog Design. “How many devices do you want to try and keep alive and awake throughout the day?”
Managing devices is also the biggest worry for Ro McNally, vice president of device technology at Verizon Wireless. It’s a challenge both for systems engineering and for the subscriber’s experience, she said.
Between linking devices, entering passwords, managing home Wi-Fi and dealing with corporate IT departments at work, connected life is already hard for some consumers, Rolston said.
“They are network admins, by accident,” he said. That’s created a business opportunity for someone to take over those tasks as a virtual service, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers Design Battery-Free Wireless Device
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=269520&cid=nl.dn14
Since the onset of television, radio, and WiFi, we have been inundated with a vast array of RF signals, which allow us to listen to music, watch television, and stay connected to one another with our mobile devices.
Recently, Nickolay Lamm and colleague Dr. M. Browning Vogel were able to visualize the various signal patterns that make up WiFi transmissions and illustrate those using rather striking colors. Suffice it to say they are everywhere, covering just about every square foot of space in populated cities, and thanks to some ingenious engineers, can be utilized to provide another service besides communications and artwork. Those engineers, from the University of Washington, have developed a way to harness those signals to power communications devices without the need for batteries or other power sources.
Known as Ambient Backscatter, the device (or any device equipped with the technology) is equipped with an antenna that picks up broadcast signals from TV or cellular sources and converts them into hundreds of microwatts of electrical power.
Other devices outfitted with the technology can then receive the coded messages and respond accordingly, which is necessary if the Internet of Things (IoT) is to become mainstream.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Collaboration Between Controls & IT Is a Growing Priority
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=269526&cid=nl.dn14
It’s ironic that one of the biggest stories in automation and control for the next decade will focus on the collaboration of control engineers, engineering management, and their information technology (IT) counterparts in manufacturing production facilities.
With manufacturing targeted as one of the biggest beneficiaries in the move to the Internet of Things (IoT), this group of stakeholders is in a pivotal position to achieve a new level of connectivity between engineering and enterprise management. With the goal of bringing both the supply chain and even customers closer to the manufacturing process, plants will need new levels of communications access, security, and networking resources (video and remote services) to make it happen.
If we look at the value being placed on the IoT, we can see how both engineering and IT are key players to making a major transformation occur. Targeted areas include asset utilization, employee productivity (with an emphasis on mobility), supply chain and logistics, innovation, and customer experience. Nearly all of these areas will require an infusion of technology into plant operations that spans the skill set and responsibility of both groups.
“The longstanding issue is how to break down the silos and achieve convergence in managing networks more holistically,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here’s How They Did It
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-internet-backbone-has-been-turned-into-a-weapon/
The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks.
According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can “shoot” (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone. It appears that the NSA and GCHQ were the first to turn the internet backbone into a weapon; absent Snowdens of their own, other countries may do the same and then say, “It wasn’t us. And even if it was, you started it.”
Which means the rest of us — and especially any company or individual whose operations are economically or politically significant — are now targets. All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco blame their earnings dropping with spy scandal: “The volume of orders just fell and fell,”
Cisco predicts the company’s net sales to decline in the future, the company said disclosing the fiscal year 2014 first-quarter results. Its net sales were the company’s own as well as analysts’ consensus forecast of what the company explains in emerging markets with weak demand.
Cisco estimates that affect the demand for the NSA spying scandal. The company supplies a large part of the network devices, the flow of traffic through the NSA told spying.
Cisco forecasts that its net sales in the current quarter will fall 8-10 per cent year-on-year, and the trend is expected next year half way. The company also predicted that the operating profit will be lower than analysts’ predictions
Lower than estimated revenue was due to a reduction in orders, particularly in developing countries, the company’s CEO John Chambers says.
According to Cisco’s declining sales figures, the background is weak overall economic situation.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/cisco+syyttaa+tuloksestaan+vakoiluskandaalia+quottilausten+maarat+vain+putosivat+ja+putosivatquot/a947434
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Tips $100 Million IoT Strategy
Apple’s Former Siri Director Developing SAMI
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320045&
The former director of Apple’s Siri is taking Samsung’s version of the artificial intelligence system to the next level. Luc Julia, vice president and innovation fellow at Samsung’s Open Innovation Center in Menlo Park, Calif., demonstrated SAMI (Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions), the Siri-like system central to Samsung’s Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, at the MEMS Executive Congress 2013 in Napa, Calif., Nov. 7-8.
“IoT is all about sensing and collecting the data — and then transporting it [to the cloud]. Once it’s there, it’s about massaging it and sending it back to the user,”
According to Julia, who left Apple last year, there are about 20 billion IoT devices out there today, but he predicts that number will grow to 1.5 trillion by 2020. Driving that growth will be what he calls the “explosion” of the smartphone, whereby the sensors inside it, and dozens more in dedicated IoT devices, explode like shrapnel that becomes embedded into wearable devices around the body.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New FCC chairman tells wireless carriers to unlock cell phones
Act now or we will regulate, Wheeler tells CTIA.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/new-fcc-chairman-tells-wireless-carriers-to-unlock-cell-phones/
In one of his first days on the job, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has asked the CTIA Wireless Association to move quickly toward unlocking phones for consumers.
When a phone is unlocked, it can be used with any wireless carrier. It became illegal for consumers to unlock phones on their own earlier this year because of a ruling by the Librarian of Congress, who is responsible for handing out exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
In practice, carriers are often willing to unlock phones, particularly when the customer has finished paying off his or her contract. But the ban potentially creates problems for customers when they want to travel overseas without paying huge roaming fees or if their carrier refuses to unlock their phone. Wheeler said in his confirmation hearing in June that he wants to end the ban.