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 Engdahl says:
Broadband analyst: GPON interoperability ‘essential’ for FTTH expansion
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/informa-broadband-gpon-ftt-study.html
An Informa Telecoms & Media study conducted on behalf of the Broadband Forum indicates that a majority of carriers view interoperability and certification of GPON gear will prove essential for fiber to the home (FTTH) technology’s future prospects.
Both Informa and the Broadband Forum expect GPON will become the dominant FTTx access technology in 2016, passing 200 million connections in 2018 to account for three out of five FTTx connections worldwide. However, the study determines that interoperability issues between different vendors’ OLT and ONU equipment has caused an array of problems for many service providers and need to be addressed if GPON is to fulfil its promise, the report suggests.
– Interoperability is the second most important ONU selection criteria behind price (31% versus 41%), with maintenance costs (10%), software features (8%), hardware features (7%), and number of ports (5%) considerably less influential.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hubbell partners with energy-efficient wireless lighting developer Lutron to solve new building code reqs
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/hubbell-lutron-code.html
Hubbell Wiring Device-Kellems, a specialist manufacturer of electrical devices and energy management products, and Lutron Electronics, a provider of energy-saving, wireless lighting and shade control technology, announced that the companies are collaboratively developing new products that they say will enable the electrical industry to better comply with new building code requirements for controlling electrical outlets and their associated plug loads.
Hubbell will embed Lutron’s Clear Connect radio frequency (RF) communication technology directly into Hubbell’s Load:Logic plug-load control products. Hubbell says the partnership expands the interoperability of Clear Connect-enabled devices
The use of automated controls for lighting and HVAC has dramatically increased efficiencies of these systems in modern facilities, note the companies. In contrast, miscellaneous plug loads connected to electrical receptacles have been left uncontrolled and can now approach 50% of a high performance building’s energy footprint, claims Hubbell. To address this, ASHRAE 90.1-2010, California Energy Commission, and LEED v4 require that 50% of power outlets must be controlled in most areas of a building.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA Fallout: Tech Firms Feel a Chill Inside China
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303789604579198370093354680-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwNDExNDQyWj
Big U.S. computer and software companies are reporting a sudden chill in sales to China, and some blame increased government hostility toward the U.S.
In the latest sign, computer-networking-gear maker Cisco Systems Inc. said Wednesday that orders from China in the latest quarter fell 18% from the same period a year earlier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
White spaces anyone? Google opens its spectrum database to developers
http://gigaom.com/2013/11/14/white-spaces-anyone-google-opens-its-spectrum-database-to-developers/
Google is removing the velvet ropes from its white spaces database in the U.S. Any device maker can now search their locales for unused TV frequencies and stake a claim on those airwaves.
All of those unused frequencies that linger between TV channels, called white spaces, are ripe for the taking, and starting today network builders and device makers can start using them, with a little help from Google.
The internet giant was one of a handful of companies approved by the FCC to run a white spaces database, and on Thursday Google is opening up that database to all comers. That will allow would-be networkers to identify unused TV spectrum in their area and stake a claim on the airwaves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Salesforce.com Unveils Salesforce1 Platform
Companies should create their own “Internet of customers,” according to Salesforce.com
http://www.cio.com/article/743351/Salesforce.com_Unveils_Salesforce1_Platform
Salesforce.com aims to establish its image as a full-blown CRM (customer relationship management) development platform built for the world of social media and mobile devices with the launch of Salesforce1, which will be unveiled this week at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.
While Salesforce.com has long offered the Force.com development platform to customers and partners, Salesforce1 is more than just a rebranding of the same technology, according to the company.
In addition, Salesforce1 includes a new mobile application for administrators that allows them to take actions such as remotely resetting passwords, deactivating users and receiving information about scheduled maintenance from Salesforce.com.
Much has been made of the “Internet of things,” but that phrase misses the point, Peachey said. “Every company needs to create their own Internet of customers.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Services fuel the next generation data centre
It’s more than just boxes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/17/services_fuel_data_centre_evolution/
In its basic form, a data centre is just a big room full of cages and cabinets, with highly reliable power, efficient security, fire and flood protection and a variety of internal and external network connectivity.
In recent years providers have tried to differentiate their offerings but there is not really that much you can do to dress up what is basically a big noisy room. So for “cold aisle technology”, for instance, read “we have improved the airflow a bit”.
How, then, can data centres evolve into anything better? Simple: if there is not much you can do with the environment, develop what you can do in that environment and what you can connect it to.
Keep it private
If you are a data centre provider with multiple premises, you have the opportunity to provide high-speed physical links between locations.
Giving your customers the ability to extend their LAN between premises has huge benefits for their disaster recovery strategies and capabilities: with a low-latency physical Gigabit Ethernet link between your premises you can do real replication.
If your data centres are not close to each other, though, point-to-point links are too costly. One alternative is to look at a layer 3 offering – managed MPLS services are ten-a-penny these days.
The emerging concept, though, is the virtual private LAN service, or VPLS. This is a virtualised layer 2 service – think of it as a virtual LAN switch in the cloud, into which you can plumb your endpoints.
VPLS is less well known but the concept has been around for some time
There is, of course, a fundamental problem with VPLS. In fact, on reflection, there are two.
The first is that if layer 2 were a good way to do wide area networking (WAN), we wouldn’t bother with layer 3 in any of our WAN applications. Layer 2 is brilliant when you want to connect A to B in a point-to-point sense because it gives a native connection to the endpoints that looks just like they are plugged into the same LAN switch.
The big problem with layer 2 networks is broadcast domains. A layer 2 network or VLAN is a single broadcast domain, and if you suddenly connect five distant things together via VPLS you have made yourself a great big broadcast domain whose traffic levels grow exponentially as you introduce new nodes.
Connect three offices at 10Mbps and two data centres at 100Mbps (a fairy typical starting point) without enough thought, and a broadcast storm on a data centre edge port will wipe out your offices’ connectivity. Not great.
So what you will end up doing is putting in layer 3 transit networks to control the traffic flowing over the VPLS network and restrict wide area layer 2 operations to the devices that really need to talk natively at layer 2 to their distant counterparts.
The second issue is that a VPLS service will, by its nature, operate over some kind of layer 3 (IP/MPLS) network. So in the scenario above you are running layer 3 on a layer 2 tunnel that is established through a layer 3 network, which sits on top of layer 2 technologies.
So yes, it may well be slower than just having a boring old MPLS network in the first place.
A quick re-cap: we have said that the way forward for data centre evolution revolves around VPLS, but that VPLS isn’t actually good for very much.
In fact, VPLS is only a bad choice if you are trying to shoehorn it into a traditional network model. If you use it for the cool things it can provide, it is perfect.
Like many data centres you don’t provide internet connectivity yourself but instead have three pet internet providers – let’s call them X, Y and Z – with presentations in your telco room. Each of your customers signs up to one of them for its internet service and you patch it into the right ISP with an Ethernet cross-connect. All very traditional.
Now let’s flex this and introduce VPLS. You define two virtual private switches, one for each customer, in your VPLS network.
Data centre evolution is initially all about services
In fact I have known providers whose entire raison d’être is to sell services; they are almost reluctant to rent rack space and do so only because the customer demands it. Others have continued to simply be big, noisy, low-risk rooms.
More than this, though, data centre evolution is about connectivity to services. Yes, you can achieve a lot using layer 3 networking, but the VPLS model makes service provision an order of magnitude more flexible and quicker to market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Industrial Internet Group Debuts Soon
Ka-Ching! GE rings up $290M in IoT Sales
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320100&
A US consortium to drive standards for the so-called Industrial Internet hopes to debut in early January, according to one of the executives driving the group.
Bill Ruh heads an Internet of Things effort for GE that has rung up $290 million in sales so far this year. By plugging web analytics into the big turbines, jet engines, and other products it sells, “we see a trillion dollars a year in efficiency opportunities in the industrial spaces we serve,” he told us.
GE coined “Industrial Internet” to refer to Internet of Things scenarios in its industrial markets, and it has published a much-cited whitepaper on the subject.
The group wants to draft an Industrial Internet framework and identify several open-source projects within it. The effort is sort of an extension of similar work led by the NIST on the smart grid. Membership contracts for the consortium are still being finalized.
“We are very early on,” said Ruh. “When we announce probably in early January, [we will talk about] how we standardize [and] what we take into open source [to] make all the components work together to achieve the vision.”
GE, already doing brisk business in the area, is ramping up for more and working with Intel on its new x86-based Quark SoC.
In a little less than two years, Ruh has helped create a group of more than 700 mainly software engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area
The GE team currently has a broad mix of developers with experience in Hadoop, NoSQL, Python, Ruby, and open-source code working on in-house and third-party applications and analytics platforms.
The big hardware challenge is in adding intelligence to industrial systems in ways that meet their requirements for reliability and real-time operations.
The GE exec said he likes Quark becomes it embeds much of the networking and I/O needed for industrial apps. In addition, it leverages technologies and software from the established PC sector. “Running commodity-style software on embedded systems is the future for working at faster speeds and enabling a renaissance of new capabilities.” One customer is using Android for satellites.
GE hopes to bring to industrial markets the kinds of capabilities wireless carriers have created to manage connections between millions of cellphones and their networks. That requires adoption of cloud services — GE’s products already tap into Amazon Web Services — and lots of open-source code. “The days of an embedded world based on proprietary software are dead.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can the Tesla electric car project to be Sonera risk?
TeliaSonera Finland is excited about the communications agreement with Tesla Motors. But does Sonera drive on dangerous tracks, the cars push data can have an impact even on road safety?
Tesla Motors Elon Musks gives TeliaSonera and car keys manufacturer of data communications between Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and Latvia.
Partner in the TeliaSonera, through which the data passes. These include maps or entertainment, presentation of the Model S car for the 17-inch screen, and then the presentation of the car for servicing requests for correction.
The contract relates to machine to machine (M2M) technology, namely the Internet of Things, which is predicted to become unrestrained growth and is expected to revolutionize many areas.
- Automobile manufacturers have to first of all ensure that new stimuli on the screen do not interfere with the driver. But of course, we have a business critical responsibility to ensure that services work when they are needed, to start Sonera’s corporate sales manager Niittymäki.
- I am convinced that when we talk about this new area, no one is prepared for all scenarios. But cyber-threats are not a new thing for us, that is precisely the operator’s core competencies.
Internet of Things is about a wide variety of devices that are connected to the Internet and who can talk to each other without people. A typical example is a factory machine or even a jet engine attached to a sensor that tells a thousand hours in advance that a part may be falling apart.
Tesla Model S will be able to contact the service center to report on safety and performance.
Tesla gets ready TeliaSonera service package, which includes the electronic management portal. Sonera is able to perform the contract at the current infrastructure.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/ratkaisut/2013/11/19/voiko-tesla-sahkoautoprojekti-olla-soneralle-riski/201316025/7
Tomi Engdahl says:
3CX PBX for Windows: Everything you ever wanted from a phone system
People-friendly VoIP
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/19/windows_pbx/
Asterisk the leader
In 1999 Asterisk was born. This is an open-source VoIP system that you can run up on pretty much any PC you find lying in a cupboard. It operates as a fully fledged PBX, entailing no cost aside from the hardware and the phone lines you plug in.
Helpfully, Asterisk’s creator Digium is a vendor of Asterisk-supported ISDN and analogue hardware, so connecting Asterisk to the public telephone network is not a problem.
The virtual route
In the past few years, however, the hardware vendors have taken that extra step. So if, for instance, it is time to upgrade your Mitel 3300 ICP, you have the option of running it as a virtual appliance on a VMware ESXi hypervisor.
The same goes for the CUCM – unsurprising given that a CUCM controller is really just a PC with a blue-green bezel on the front.
Take a SIP
Public telephone services are starting to emerge from the Dark Ages and service providers are beginning to offer PSTN services using SIP on an IP-based circuit as an alternative to ISDN.
At present SIP services are mainly provided by third parties trying to compete with the traditional PSTN suppliers. The problem is that if the PSTN provider starts to sell a SIP service it screws up its revenues because competition forces it to sell it much more cheaply.
In places like mainland UK, Europe and the USA, however, SIP services from newer telcos are now plentiful, so it makes a lot of sense to go for a software PBX. The only legacy consideration it leaves us with is analogue faxes, and since there is vast competition in the internet-based fax market, that is an easy one to work around.
Tomi Engdahl says:
100 Gigabit Ethernet service launched for carriers, enterprises in Texas
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/alpheus-texas-100g.html
Alpheus Communications, a provider of metro-regional fiber and networking platforms in the greater Texas area, has launched 100 Gigabit Ethernet service to meet its customers’ growing needs to more efficiently deliver data on higher-bandwidth circuits between and within Texas’ major metropolitan areas, including Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data center SDN market forecast to grow 6x by 2017
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/delloro-datacenter-sdn.html
According to the newly released research from networking and telecommunications industry analyst Dell’Oro Group, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) market will grow more than six-fold over the next five years. According to the analyst, the majority of this market will comprise Ethernet switches and network security appliances, which are forecast to deliver seventy-five percent of total sales revenue in 2013.
“Almost every major Ethernet Switch vendor with exposure in the data center is announcing significant new products over the next several weeks,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet Alliance SC13 demo integrates data center fabric including 10/40G, LAN/SAN, RoCE equipment
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/ethernet-alliance-sc13.html
Chow adds, “Our Supercomputing 2013 demo integrates the best Ethernet technologies and advancements in a mixed-vendor environment – we have an operational Ethernet fabric that includes 10-GbE and 40-GbE inter-fabric links, LAN/SAN convergence with data center bridging (DCB), and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), 10/40GbE line-rate access performance, and full Layer 1 interoperability. This demo illustrates Ethernet’s growing command of HPC and other relevant high-performance fabric requirements, and sets the pace for its continued expansion within the supercomputing and advanced research community.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
28-nm PHY brings 10GBase-T power consumption as low as 1.5W per port
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/28nm-10gbaset-phy.html
On November 5 integrated circuit (IC) developer Aquantia announced sampling of its latest-generation, 28-nm 10GBase-T PHY. When making the announcement, the company said, “The new device, which is the fourth generation of 10GBase-T ICs from Aquantia, reduces the power consumption of its data center products to 1.5W per port while also integrating such features as Energy Efficient Ethernet, 1588 and MACsec.” I
Aquantia explained that the 1.5W consumption level applies to 10GBase-T lengths on par with those of 10GBase-CX4—up to 7 meters—used in top-of-rack architectures with direct-attach twinaxial cabling. When used in a full 100-meter 10GBase-T architecture, the PHY consumes energy at 3W-per-port—still a marked improvement over previous- and current-generation PHYs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New Threat: Targeted Internet Traffic Misdirection
http://www.renesys.com/2013/11/mitm-internet-hijacking/
Traffic interception has certainly been a hot topic in 2013. The world has been focused on interception carried out the old fashioned way, by getting into the right buildings and listening to the right cables. But there’s actually been a significant uptick this year in a completely different kind of attack, one that can be carried out by anybody, at a distance, using Internet route hijacking.
After consultations with many of the affected parties, we’re coming forth with some details in the hope that we can make this particular vulnerability obsolete.
For years, we’ve observed that there was potential for someone to weaponize the classic Pakistan-and-Youtube style route hijack.
This year, that potential has become reality. We have actually observed live Man-In-the-Middle (MITM) hijacks on more than 60 days so far this year. About 1,500 individual IP blocks have been hijacked, in events lasting from minutes to days, by attackers working from various countries.
Simple BGP alarming is not sufficient to distinguish MITM from a generic route hijacking or fat-finger routing mistake; you have to follow up with active path measurements while the attack is underway in order to verify that traffic is being simultaneously diverted and then redelivered to the victim. We’ve done that here.
What makes a Man-in-the-Middle routing attack different from a simple route hijack? Simply put, the traffic keeps flowing and everything looks fine to the recipient. The attackers keep at least one outbound path clean. After they receive and inspect the victim’s traffic, they release it right back onto the Internet, and the clean path delivers it to its intended destination. If the hijacker is in a plausible geographic location between the victim and its counterparties, they should not even notice the increase in latency that results from the interception. It’s possible to drag specific Internet traffic halfway around the world, inspect it, modify it if desired, and send it on its way. Who needs fiberoptic taps?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quirky and GE Partner to Conquer the Internet of Things
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/11/how-ge-and-quirky-want-to-smarten-up-your-home/
Our homes are full of gadgets that do some very cool things. Problem is, they do those cool things all by themselves with no consideration for the other gadgets that are doing equally interesting things around them. This is perfectly fine, but imagine, if you will, a home where your refrigerator communicates with your egg tray and your egg tray communicates with your phone, all in order to make your life easier. This is one grand vision for the Internet of Things, tech’s favorite new fixation, and it’s a reality that’s actually not too far off. All we need is more connected gadgets and a platform to connect them to.
Enter Wink. The new platform from crowdsourced invention startup Quirky is looking to become the go-to app for your ever-increasing collection of connected items. Launched earlier this year with tech behemoth General Electric, Wink is essentially a way to control all of the internet-connected devices you own.
Think of it as the command center for your new Internet of Things lifestyle. “If we can give consumers a single app that makes sure all of their connected things work with all of their other connected things, we think that’s really powerful,” says Ben Kaufman, Quirky’s founder and CEO. “With GE’s scale and Quirky’s speed, we have the ability to connect a lot of things super quickly.”
The Pivot Power Genius is a flexible power cord whose outlets can be controlled from a mobile device ($79.99).
GE has granted Quirky access to thousands of patents from its library with the hope that the nimble start up will be able to churn out new, innovative products faster than the lumbering corporation could even dream of doing. This, says Comstock, is one of the main reasons GE wanted to partner with Quirky in the first place. “We were intrigued by the community dynamic and the speed by which the team was able to get great products to market,” she says.
Quirky is known for its rapid-fire prototype-to-retail process, which draws on the creativity of its 600,000 community members. If you’re not familiar with Quirky, this is how it works: Anyone who signs up can submit a idea, or kernel of an idea, for consideration.
From there the community votes on its favorites, Quirky’s evaluation team chooses the most promising, and the top inventions go on to be developed by the company’s team of designers and engineers. Those top products get shuffled through the Quirky design, refinement and branding process, and in mere months, a brand new, polished product is ready for retail.
Quirky has essentially been given a key to the electronics company’s knowledge base
Tomi Engdahl says:
Otaniemi new monitoring technology saves up to 15 percent of energy use in buildings
VTT and Samsung to develop the campus in buildings, remote management technologies and services. Otaniemi is running a hundred houses a comprehensive pilot experiment in which the collected measurement data of energy consumption and the indoor conditions of about 10 000 data points.
The aim is to show that the energy consumption of buildings in the campus area can be calculated as 15 percent of the new monitoring technology. It will also provide information and set up a more long-term development work, with the aim of zero carbon and energy campus.
“Achieving this goal seems possible. Now we are in mid-project, and many of the properties have already been able to achieve an average of 15 per cent energy saving target. Effects of the system is required to ensure, however, still a few years follow-up,” says Janne Peltonen.
VTT has built the Otaniemi campus area monitoring system that collects information about the buildings electricity, heat and water consumption, as well as conditions of temperature, carbon dioxide levels, humidity, light intensity and equipment electrical loads. Working in the university campus and a resident of the Community is the ideal living-lab environment for research.
Building a comprehensive daily monitoring of the possibility to address problem areas quickly.
The monitoring system will convert the data notified by the office staff and the student-housing residents can follow the VTT and the Samsung develops mobile applications. Applications provide information about the interior of the circumstances and are also feedback channels such as real estate management companies and owners.
Finnish municipal building stock is estimated to be 15-20 percent of the energy saving potential, which has not yet been exploited.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/uutisia/otaniemen+uusi+monitorointitekniikka+saastaa+jopa+15+prosenttia+rakennusten+energiankulutuksesta/a948558
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone Data Consumption is 44 Percent Greater on Larger Screen Phones, According to NPD
https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/smartphone-data-consumption-is-44-percent-greater-on-larger-screen-phones-according-to-npd/
As consumers opt for smartphones with larger screens, they are increasing their usage and data consumption. According to the Connected Intelligence Smartphone Usage Report from The NPD Group, monthly Wi-Fi and cellular data consumption on smartphones with screens 4.5 inches and larger is 44 percent greater than it is on smartphones with screens under 4.5 inches, at 7.2GB and 5.0GB, respectively.
Smartphone penetration continues to grow as late adopters enter the market and the number of consumers opting for larger screens is growing. According to the Connected IntelligenceConnected Home Report, in Q3 2013, 61 percent of cell phone subscribers in the US used a smartphone.
“OEMs are poised to continue increasing the product assortment and availability of smartphones with larger screen sizes in the coming years,” said John Buffone, director, devices, Connected Intelligence. “Even though today larger screens represent a smaller part of the market, their relevance is increasing as consumers look for more ways to interact with content while on-the-go. This is a win, not only for the manufacturers, but also for the carriers as data consumption and usage will keep increasing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
100G Ethernet and Interlaken IP Cores
http://www.eeweb.com/news/100g-ethernet-and-interlaken-ip-cores
Altera Corporation today strengthened its intellectual property (IP) portfolio with the addition of four new best-in-class IP cores to the company’s MegaCore IP library. These new best-in-class IP cores include an ultra-high performance and ultra-low latency 100G Interlaken, 100G Ethernet, 40G Ethernet and 10G Ethernet IP.
The Interlaken and Ethernet IP cores, as well as other standard interface IPs, are currently available and fully supported in the latest release of the Quartus II software v13.1.
All IPs included in the MegaCore IP library are validated and demonstrated in silicon.
he new Interlaken and Ethernet IP cores are optimized for use in Altera’s high-performance Stratix V FPGAs as well as future Generation 10 FPGAs and SoCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Importance of Network Identification
http://newsletters.pennnet.com/utility_products_enl/232534751.html
A properly identified network is easier to install, operate, and maintain. MACs can be performed with more accuracy and speed, and downtime issues can be resolved quicker with the use of a well-organized labeling plan for the network infrastructure. The TIA-606-B Standard provides a foundation for network administration and identification
Tomi Engdahl says:
Connect Your System to the Outside World
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=269781&cid=nl.dn14
Connectivity is everything these days. If you can’t talk to the outside, it’s hard to make a compelling case for a product. Devices need to be connected either to the Internet, to an intranet, or some other outside medium. Component makers have gotten much better simplifying this process. One example is the latest 32-bit MCU family announced by Microchip. The company’s 24-member PIC32MZ Embedded Connectivity (EC) family offers a performance level of 330 DMIPS and 3.28 CoreMarks/MHz.
Note that the inclusion of a 10/100 Ethernet MAC, a Hi-Speed USB MAC/PHY, and dual CAN ports help support those communications applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless carriers reshape business to cash in on fast-growing M2M segment
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/wireless-carriers-reshape-business-to-cash-in-on-fast-growing-m2m-segment/0c09edad2eea0326be0b525407021cf8.html?OCVALIDATE&ocid=101781&[email protected]
Global M2M connections will rise to an estimated 375 million in 2017 and the revenue generated by wireless carriers will more than double in that time span.
Amid a slowdown in their core business of cellphone-based communications, wireless carriers are restructuring to capitalize on the booming market for machine-to-machine (M2M) cellular service.
The rise of M2M comes at a time when the traditional cellphone-based mobile services market is becoming increasingly mature and saturated, with growth slowing particularly in the developed markets like the United States and Western Europe.
“Wireless service providers ranging from Verizon Wireless, to Vodafone, to China Mobile are turning to the cellular M2M market as a new, high-growth market opportunity,” said Sam Lucero, senior principal analyst for M2M & the Internet of Things at IHS “However, to take full advantage of the M2M’s market’s potential, the wireless firms must deliver their customers much more than simple cellular connectivity. Instead these companies must offer a full suite of VAS and MAP services, prompting them to establish their own M2M business units and develop or acquire M2M connection platforms.”
Taking care of business
Many MNOs have established M2M business units as they have expanded their market strategies beyond simply providing wholesale connectivity to mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and other aggregators. Examples include Sprint’s Emerging Solutions Group and Telekom Austria’s Telekom Austria Group M2M GmbH unit.
The M2M business unit strategy allows wireless carriers to develop specialized expertise in both horizontal M2M business issues—such as connectivity management—as well as vertical-specific domain expertise. Application complexity is a key feature of many M2M vertical markets. Wireless carriers are finding that they can engage more effectively with application developers, service providers, and corporate adopters when they have in-depth expertise in the technical and business issues facing their partners and customers.
Getting on the platform
In parallel with the establishment of M2M-specific business units, wireless carriers are deploying M2M Connection Platforms (MCP) to tailor the operators’ infrastructure and systems to the needs of the M2M market. MCPs are required because of the major departure that M2M represents compared to established cellphone-based services.
Traditional systems and processes by carriers are oriented toward serving mobile handset service subscribers. These systems are designed for single-device activation processes. They also work with cellphones and other consumer devices that are in the possession of their users in the event of technical difficulties.
Furthermore, they operate based on 18- to 24-month replacement/upgrade cycles, reducing the need for backward compatibility of network infrastructure with still-deployed legacy devices. The use cases also are relatively simple, based on communication and content. Finally, traditional cellular services have high average revenue per user (ARPU), particularly for smartphones, which normally amounts to more than $80 per subscriber per month.
In contrast, M2M services more typically consist of devices that are remotely deployed in bulk, sometimes in very large volumes. M2M devices also are remotely deployed, requiring an expensive “truck roll” service call if there are technical difficulties in the field.
Moreover, M2M devices have long expected deployment times in the field, ranging up to 15 years or more.
These devices and services also often have complex use cases, requiring a strong understanding of vertical-specific business and technology issues. Finally, they have a low ARPU per device, typically at less than $5 per connection per month.
Consequently, wireless carriers are deploying related platforms—the MCPs—that generally provide for automated remote bulk provisioning of devices directly by the customer, as well as remote trouble-shooting, management of the connection directly by the customer and integration of MCP functionality into the customer’s existing enterprise management systems via application programming interfaces (APIs).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boffins ponder wireless ‘hetnets’ as home backhaul helpers
There goes the neighbourhood
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/21/helping_hetnets_work_in_the_home/
Heterogeneous networks – hetnets, or WiFi offloading – are all the rage among carriers and equipment vendors, but it generally assumes the WiFi access point has a wired connection.
A group of Greek and UAE researchers has proposed a scheme for using wireless as the backhaul channel. The researchers are particularly looking at how offloading works in home settings, with the growing popularity of femtocells (eNB in the research paper) as ways for providers to stop customers straying off their networks to fixed connections. This is particularly pertinent in places where the fixed infrastructure is running behind mobile network deployment.
The problem is that with three different wireless networks in use (counting the home WiFi), there’s a lot of potential for interference. As the Arxiv-hosted paper puts it:
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix, YouTube video killed the BitTorrent star? Duo gobble web traffic
File-sharing officially on the wane
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/bittorrent_gets_the_boot_as_netflix_and_youtube_win_the_web/
Streaming video now makes up more than half of internet traffic in North America as more and more internet users shun filesharing sites.
Netflix and YouTube now account for the lion’s share of all online traffic, according to the Global Internet Phenomena Report by Sandvine
Netflix is top, with 31.62 per cent of downstream fixed access traffic, followed by YouTube, with 18.69 per cent. Bittorrent occupies the fourth place, with 4.05 per cent of traffic – significantly down from its heyday 10 years ago, when it made up more than half of all traffic.
However, Bittorrent still rules the roost when it comes to upstream traffic, accounting for 36.35 per cent.
When it comes to mobile traffic in the US, YouTube is the top downstream site, wolfing up 17.69 per cent of the total traffic, followed by Facebook with 15.44 per cent. With mobile traffic, the top two are reversed, probably due to the number of people uploading selfies to Zuck’s advertising empire. Facebook accounts for 20.62 per cent of upstream traffic, compared to YouTube’s 13.20 per cent.
The report said: “Netflix continues to be the unchallenged leader for traffic, accounting for 31.6 per cent of downstream traffic during peak period.”
Profit Funnel System says:
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Tomi says:
The Finnish Government has granted to the DNA, Elisa and TeliaSonera their licenses won by the 4G frequencies .
TeliaSonera’s network has to reach 95 per cent of Finland population coverage with in three years of the license period beginning, and 99 per cent of the population of mainland Finland in five years.
Similarly, DNA and Elisa’s network to keep five years to cover 97 percent of the mainland population of Finland.
Licences are valid until the end of 2033.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/uutisia/dnan+elisan+ja+teliasoneran+4gverkkojen+peitolle+asetettiin+tarkat+vaatimukset/a949189
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT on a Fingertip Is Researcher’s Goal
In search of the virtual keyboard
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320172&
“In a world where the display is on your glasses and the computer is in your pocket, you want your accelerometers on your fingertips. That way, you’ve got your keyboard, mouse, and air guitar whenever you want them.”
The Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center, where Pister works, currently makes prototype devices “the size of big, ugly college rings,” he said. “I am certain we will have single-chip nodes. We are very close.”
The future looks bright, but in Pister’s view, the present might be characterized as partly cloudy.
The oil and gas industries have led the industrial automation sector in real-world IoT adoption. The startup he founded — Dust Networks, now part of Linear Technology — helped enable several such deployments. But many glorious predictions have fallen far short. One market watcher predicted there would be more IoT nodes than cellphones by 2007, creating an $8.1 billion market. “That did not happen. We’re not even remotely close to the numbers they predicted.”
Several problems have stalled growth, such as a lack of reliable, low-cost, standard-based products from multiple vendors. “Sadly, most wireless products out there are crap, and they end up setting the industry back, slowing down adoption for everyone. Wireless is a really hard challenge that people in the academic and commercial worlds are still very much working on.”
Help is on the way. Pister and other technologists have been driving a set of standards based on the widely used Internet Protocol. The IoT version is based on the IEEE 802.14.4e radio that uses a form of mesh networking with time synchronization, letting radios stay off most of the time to save power.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chat With Presidential Fellows on IoT
Meet Smart America Challenge engineers
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1320115&
The two engineers behind the Smart America Challenge will explain what they’re up to and take your questions about the Internet of Things in a live Twitter chat this Friday.
The challenge is just one of multiple IoT efforts in the US. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is organizing a consortium to identify gaps in standards for what it calls cyber-physical systems (CPS). I am told 10 companies, including AT&T, Cisco Systems, GE, IBM, and Intel, will be among the members when the consortium is launched, probably in January.
The US is not alone. China and the European Union also have initiatives in IoT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internets of Things Need Glue
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319184
There is no Internet of Things. There’s a lot of hype and PowerPoint about the Internet of Things, but it does not exist — yet.
Today a couple dozen Networks (plural) of Things are duking it out in as many market sectors. The typical node on one net doesn’t know how to talk to nodes on another net unless it was made by the same company and installed by the same person.
You can view this Web page on your iPhone, Android tablet, Windows PC, Macbook, or Linux workstation because the Internet has a common set of standards for creating, transporting, and rendering content such as IP, HTTP, and HTML. These common standards do not exist in the Internet of Things today. Instead there are many fairly complete and incompatible IoT software stacks, from ANT to Zigbee and Z-Wave.
“IoT covers a large number of domains — smart buildings, home automation, smart cities, and industrial automation systems — and there are many protocols in each of these environments. There is not one common way of communicating among them. This creates vertical silos of application systems that do not interoperate. This is the main roadblock in IoT today.”
His colleagues over in the US. see this problem, too. To address it, they are putting together a consortium, calling it the Industrial Internet, a term favored by GE. Unfortunately they see the framework architecture they intend to develop as a competitive advantage for US companies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super Computer 13: GPUs would make terrific network monitors
An off-the-shelf Nvidia GPU is able to easily capture all the traffic of a 10Gbps network, Fermilab research finds
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/112113-sc13-gpus-would-make-terrific-276246.html
A network researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has found a potential new use for graphics processing units — capturing data about network traffic in real time.
GPU-based network monitors could be uniquely qualified to keep pace with all the traffic flowing through networks running at 10Gbps (gigabits per second) or more, said Fermilab’s Wenji Wu.
Wenji presented his work as part of a poster series of new research at the SC 2013 supercomputing conference this week in Denver.
Network analysis tools face an extreme challenge in keeping up with all of the traffic of today’s larger networks, he said. Adding to the strain, network administrators increasingly expect to inspect operational data in real-time, as it is happening.
For processing, today’s commercial monitoring appliances typically rely on either standard x86 processors or customer ASICs (application specific integrated circuits).
Both architectures have their limitations, Wenji noted. CPUs don’t have the memory bandwidth or the compute power to keep pace with the largest networks in real time. As a result, they can drop packets.
ASICs can have sufficient memory bandwidth and compute power for the task, but their custom architecture is difficult, and expensive, to program.
GPUs can offer all of these capabilities, Wenji said. They have “a great parallel execution model,” he said, noting that they offer high memory bandwidth, easy programmability, and can split the packet capturing process across multiple cores.
In the latest Top500 ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, 38 machines used Nvidia GPUs to boost their output.
Wenji has built a prototype at Fermilab to demonstrate the feasibility of a GPU-based network monitor, using a Nvidia M2070 GPU and an off-the-shelf NIC (network interface card) to capture network traffic. The system could easily be expanded with additional GPUs, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: 100G port revenue to surpass $6B by 2017
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/100g-port-revenue.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
For optical transceivers, 10G equals 10M in 2013
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/10/lightcounting-q3-2013.html
When announcing preliminary findings from its most recent quarterly sales database, optical market-research firm LightCounting stated, “While increasing sales of 100G and 40G products dominate the headlines, 10GigE optical transceivers are on target to set a new record in 2013. Very strong demand for short-reach 10GigE optical transceivers will push the total shipments of 10GigE modules above 10 million in 2013—up 40 percent from last year.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IEEE 802.3bk expands optical loss budgets for EPON
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/09/ieee-boosts-epon.html
The IEEE just announced approval of IEEE 802.3bk, Standard for Ethernet Amendment: Physical Layer Specifications and Management Parameters for Extended Ethernet Passive Optical Networks. The new specifications are designed to enable higher-density and longer-reach applications of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) infrastructure while improving cost of network ownership, says IEEE.
As EPON has grown in popularity, new requirements and areas for improvement have arisen. These include the cost-effective deployment of EPON in rural areas with lower customer densities, increasing subscriber density per port in the central office, sharing available links among larger concentrations of users, and serving users at distances from the nearest network hub that were greater than the original specifications covered.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Specifications and applications mark intelligent building systems
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-9/features/specifications-and-applications-mark-intelligent-building-systems.html
As the TIA works to revise and rename its standard covering building intelligence, more opportunities arise to use intelligent systems.
pecifically, whereas the 862-A standard is titled the Building Automation Systems Cabling standard, 862-B very likely will drop the word “automated” from its title and add some form of the word “intelligent” or the phrase “intelligent building.”
Tomi says:
Internet Traffic Following Malicious Detours Via Route Injection Attacks
http://threatpost.com/internet-traffic-following-malicious-detours-via-route-injection-attacks/102981
Attackers are accessing routers running on the border gateway protocol (BGP) and injecting additional hops that redirect large blocks of Internet traffic to locations where it can be monitored and even manipulated before being sent to its intended destination.
Internet intelligence company Renesys has detected close to 1,500 IP address blocks that have been hijacked on more than 60 days this year, a disturbing trend that indicates attackers could finally have an increased interest in weaknesses inherent in core Internet infrastructure.
It is unknown how the attackers are accessing the affected routers, whether they have physical access or whether the router is exposed to the Internet, but that’s the easy part. The route injection is merely a few tweaks to the router’s configuration.
“It’s actually making a BGP-speaking router do exactly what it is intended to do. All you’re doing is changing the configuration on the router,”
Tomi says:
XBOX ONE and PS4, you’ll make us RUN OUT of INTERNET
The internet is finite, warn Blue Coat killjoys
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22/xbox_one_patching_web_meltdown/
Web puritans Blue Coat are predicting that the end of internet days because of the release of Xbox One and rival PlayStation 4 gaming consoles.
That’s the stark message from a preposterous article – titled Will Xbox One and PS4 finally break the internet? – that reached our inbox on Friday morning.
Today, some of us will be lucky enough to play on Microsoft’s latest gaming console, the Xbox One. But will next generation gaming, which focuses on online gaming and streaming, bring the end of internet as it is today?
The internet is finite and all users of PS4 and Xbox One must download “Day One” patches of 500 MB to operate the machine from Sony and Microsoft servers. As it happened with the release of iOS 7, extra traffic on the network will affect the online experience of gamers and non-gamers.
Blue Coat, which sells security appliances that handle web content filtering, has a huge vested interest in talking up the threat of impending network doom. Its warning are far from restricted to the gaming arena. It’s also a prophet of doom when it comes to football’s World Cup.
Blue Coat started out as a provider of web security, URL-blocking and WAN optimisation products.
The deep packet inspection capabilities of its products have proved to be of interest well beyond the business world to ISPs and government in countries with questionable records on human rights, including Syria, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), China, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The next market to get a Google fiber hookup will be… Uganda?
http://bgr.com/2013/11/22/google-fiber-uganda-project/
Google is working on boosting the Internet infrastructure in Kampala, Uganda, by installing its own fiber-optic network. Installed in recent months and officially unveiled on Wednesday, the network will allow 10 local mobile operators and Internet service providers to improve data speeds by a factor of 100 in most places of Kampala, a city that has a population of three million potential Internet users.
Carriers will get the faster data speeds, and will be able to offer access to speeds of up to two gigabits per second to customers. Three of Kampala’s service providers have already agreed to use Google’s fiber backbone, although end-user prices for faster service have not been announced.
While Google will offer better-quality Internet to ISPs in the region for cheaper prices, hoping to drive down Internet-related costs in the process, it will surely benefit on the long run from the move.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Little devil: Electric Imp is an Internet of Things Wi-Fi PC-ON-AN-SD-CARD
The card micro that makes connecting projects to the cloud easy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/25/review_electric_imp_internet_of_things_card/
Most products’ origins are prosaic: an inventor or a suit spots a gap in the market and attempts to fill it. Other products, however, have rather more bizarre beginnings. A case in point: Electric Imp came about because co-founder Hugo Fiennes wanted to connect the lights in his new bathroom to the internet.
Directly coupling off-the-shelf networking hardware to your electronics isn’t easy, yet it’s necessary if you’re to base a project around something more power efficient than a tiny computer running a full OS needed to control a USB or PCIe Wi-Fi adaptor.
Fiennes’ thinking brought him to the notion of a very small wireless device that could be readily integrated into a project to allow the maker to focus on the electronics and not to have to worry about connectivity, protocols, web and app integration, and all that malarkey.
Conveniently for someone of an entrepreneurial bent, the doohickey might also appeal to commercial product developers looking for an easy way to bring new or existing kit into the Internet of Things. Makers and manufacturers, Fiennes’ concept could serve them all.
The Imp itself is an SD-like card that contains a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor core, 160KB of memory – the firmware takes up about 80KB of that, leaving the rest for program code – and a 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi transceiver.
I say the Imp is “SD-like”: looking at it, you’d never think it wasn’t an SD card. It’s not – Electric Imp is simply taking advantage of the off-the-shelf card design and associated slot mechanisms to ease the implementation of Imp in third-party products. So don’t try and stick it in your camera, OK? Imp’s connectors are electrical incompatible with a real SD card.
The Imp itself is, like a newborn, largely useless on its own. It needs a source of sustenance and a mechanism for communicating with the outside world.
Electric Imp’s own, developer-centric Impee, dubbed ‘April’, sports a spring-loaded SD slot necessarily trimmed back so the metal doesn’t interfere with the card’s Wi-Fi signal.
The Impee’s not yet ready to be hooked up to electronics projects yet – the powered Imp needs to “blink up” first. For this you’ll need Electric Imp’s mobile app, which allows you to prime the Imp for the wireless network it’ll be connecting to. It’s available on Android and iOS
Whether you use the network the phone already knows about or key in the details of another one, you next hold the phone’s screen up against a tiny window on the end of the Imp, and the SSID and associated WPA key are literally flashed across. Audio tones tell you when to put screen to card and take it away again. If all’s well, the card will now connect to the internet and Electric Imp’s servers, download and apply any firmware updates.
Programming the Imp is carried out in an online IDE. Imp uses an object-oriented scripting language called Squirrel to code two event-driven programs that run in parallel: one in the Imp, the other on Electric Imp’s servers.
Each Agent is assigned a unique web address which can then be embedded in a local HTML page presented by a browser or coded into a mobile app and accessed using Android and iOS stock URL handlers.
It’s not hard to imagine a typical usage scenario. A mobile app asks for, receives and displays the temperature in your living room, from the Imp, then allows you to turn the central heating on if it’s getting a bit nippy.
The IDE doesn’t compile code: ImpOS incorporates a Squirrel interpreter.
The Squirrel language itself is not too hard to get to grips with if you’ve programmed C or Python before, and you’re doing relatively simple stuff.
Squirrel is available under the open source MIT licence
The Imp API is a work in progress too, but it’s already capable.
Agent software can also make use of an HTTP-centric API to mediate communications between a browser or a mobile app and the Agent, and to prepare and interpret data transmitted in JSON form. Data can be encrypted for security. The Agent can also interact with the server it’s running on.
Electric Imp’s own tutorial code was sufficient to allow me to begin adapting it to switch a red LED lamp on my breadboard on and off remotely and then to add a second, green LED using a second GPIO pin as a switch.
All I had to do was enable UART communications on the Imp.
Half an hour later, I had a working iPhone app able to trigger printed messages remotely at the touch of a button. These are trivial applications intended only for testing, of course, but they show that the Imp has a lot of potential.
It’s entirely possible to do this with the Raspberry Pi, the Beaglebone and the various Arduino boards. Indeed, Imp’s size is less of a USP now that you can get very small DIY microcontroller units, such as Adafruit’s Arduino-friendly Trinket, which are more robust than the Imp alone.
But what Electric Imp provides out of the box and which these alternatives don’t is a clear, functional API for responding to incoming control and information request messages. It also has cloud infrastructure in place so you don’t need to set all that up either.
The Reg Verdict
The Imp is a great way to connect projects and products to the internet. The hardware is inexpensive – $30/£24 for the Imp; $13/£16 for an Impee breakout board
When you’re remote-controlling your hardware after a just a half-hour’s experimentation, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t embraced the Imp and the Internet of Things before.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco untroubled by mega-clouds fleeing its proprietary ASIC grip
Prison warden gets ready to sell powerful inmates skeleton keys
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/25/cisco_asic_sdn_response/
Networking giant Cisco is facing the same onrush of terrifying low-cost competitors that server vendors and chipmakers are dealing with, and is now trying to convince the world that its tech is more open and interoperable than people think.
The new marketing approach has come about as the networking company prepares to sell its answer to software-defined networking – a technology that threatens to depress its margins, and make it easier for its customers to mix and match hardware and software from a variety of vendors to lower prices and gain control.
To deal with this problem Cisco has bought a spin-in company founded by Cisco employees named Insieme to give it software-defined networking capabilities, though the company’s marketing types insist on terming this tech “Application Centric Infrastructure”.
Cisco claimed earlier this month that the decoupling of network software from hardware was a bad thing for buyers both from a serviceability and from a technology perspective.
The SDN tech sees Cisco pair a new range of switching gear with a proprietary “Insieme” application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and revamped network “NX-OS” or ACI-based policy controller that, it says, should blow the doors off white boxes running a separate OS and general merchant silicon.
Coincidentally, this happens to be the exact strategy needed to shore up Cisco’s business model by allowing it to offer software-defined networking, while maintaining a firm grip on clients via the use of an integrated software and hardware product.
So, what exactly is going on?
With its new SDN tech Cisco will use a mix of SDN hardware from pure merchant silicon – generally available ASICs with well-documented features – to merchant silicon plus some proprietary stuff, to fully proprietary Insieme ASICs with greater technical features. This may help it retain high-end megacloud customers.
From what we understand this helps it sell the comparatively open merchant silicon to people like Facebook at a knock-down price, and the more proprietary stuff to smaller firms which lack the expertise needed to take control of their full networking stack. Its merchant-silicon-based gear has better 15 percent better power densities and 20 percent more non-blocking density than the competition, Jiandani said.
“Maybe we are doing hardware-defined networking … but if I can put that same box with better performance and better programmability in your data center, cheaper than a white box out of Taiwan, do you care?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow: Holistic View Drives Industrial IP Advantage
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=269919&itc=dn_analysis_element&
Manufacturing companies stand to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of Internet Protocol technologies that are being bundled under the Internet of Things (IoT) banner. But according to a new industry group called the Industrial IP Advantage that is gearing up to educate engineers on networking technology and business impact, adopting a holistic view that brings together control engineering, IT, and plant management is ultimately a key to success.
Industrial IP offers a holistic deployment of Internet Protocol that will be a real game-changer for manufacturing. This digital communications fabric is the way to drive IoT value and connect not only equipment, people, and devices, but also to the supply chain and customers.
Founding members of the Industrial IP Advantage, including Panduit, Cisco, and Rockwell Automation, are banding together as a group to promote deploying a secure, holistic, digital-communications fabric based on standard, unmodified use of the Internet Protocol (IP). The idea is that to take full advantage of this intelligence — all devices within a plant need to talk with one another, as well as those at the enterprise level, using a unified networking infrastructure that is IP-centric.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Carriers putting brakes on optical network equipment spending
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/infonetics-on-spend.html
Infonetics Research has released highlights from its 3rd quarter 2013 (3Q13) Optical Network Hardware report. According to the analyst, the global optical network hardware market (WDM and SONET/SDH) is down 7% sequentially in 3Q13, and down 1% from the year-ago quarter. The data states that total optical spending is flat on a rolling 4-quarter basis, with WDM growth accelerating and notching a 5th consecutive quarter of growth in 3Q13.
“In the third quarter of 2013, sales of WDM optical equipment are up 4% from a year ago and remain at the elevated levels reached earlier in the year, but overall optical spending is down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-over basis,” comments Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.
North America optical spending jumped 13.4% year-over-year in 3Q13 following an 11.1% year-over-year increase the previous quarter, driven by aggressive 100G rollouts by tier 1 operators.
The research also finds that in 3Q13, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) WDM spending declined on a year-over-year and sequential basis, nearing the record low set in 1Q13.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s the Difference Between T568A and T568B?
http://www.cableorganizer.com/articles/difference-between-T568A-and-T568B.html
When it comes to wiring RJ45 data jacks and plugs, ANSI, TIA and EIA agree on two wiring standards: T568A and T568B. While these standards are very similar and can oftentimes be chosen according to nothing more than the installer’s preference, there are a few significant differences between the two, and it’s very important to know about these before you begin to build – or expand – your network.
If you look closely at the two wiring diagrams shown above, you’ll see that the only difference (to the eye, at least) between T568A and T568B is that the pin positions for the green and orange pairs have been switched. But aside from the color reversals, there are a couple of compatibility factors that can affect your choice of an RJ45 wiring scheme.
Even though backward compatible with both one-pair and two-pair USOC wiring schemes, T568A has been largely superseded by the more up-to-date T568B. T568B and has become – overall – the most widely chosen wiring schematic because it matches AT&T’s old 258A color code, but at the same time accommodates for current and future needs. In addition, T568B offers backward compatibility with USOC, though for only one pair.
As a general rule, T568A and T568B should not be combined or interchanged. Keeping in mind that T568B is the preferred format for new networks in the United States
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Build Covert Acoustical Mesh Networks In Air
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/11/25/1435200/researchers-build-covert-acoustical-mesh-networks-in-air
“Researchers at Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany have presented a paper on covert acoustical communications between laptop computers. In their paper ‘On Covert Acoustical Mesh Networks in Air’, they describe how acoustical communication can be used to secretly bridge air gaps between computers and connect computers and networks that are thought to be completely isolated from each other.”
“The fundamental part of the communication system is a piece of software that has originally been developed for acoustic underwater communications. The researchers also provide different countermeasures against malicious participation in a covert acoustical network”
Tomi Engdahl says:
SP Ausnet picks Ericsson for 3G smart meter rollout
Will they be able to handle the tinfoil hat brigade?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/25/sp_ausnet_smart_meters/
Ericsson has put up its hand and declared itself the winner of the contract to provide Australian electricity distributor SP Ausnet with 108,000 smart meters in the State of Victoria.
Victoria has mandated smart meters, arguing that they are more accurate than their predecessors and offer better information to consumers.
There’s some community opposition to smart meters, with opponents arguing that they don’t save consumers money, impose unwarranted installation charges and are a health risk thanks to their use of radio communications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
America falls a dismal 31st on ranking of consumer download speeds (report)
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/26/america-falls-a-dismal-31st-on-ranking-of-consumer-download-speeds-report/
30 countries have faster Internet than America, at least according to the most recent update from Speedtest.net.
Speedtest.net compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe, calculating the rolling mean in Mbps.
Hong Kong topped the list, followed by Singapore, Romania, South Korea, and Sweden.
Speedtest is powered By Ookla, a company that makes applications for broadband testing and Web-based network diagnostics. It claims that its solutions have been adopted by nearly every Internet Service Provider in the world, and that its measurements of speed and quality go “way beyond” what most speed tests do.
Various reports about Internet speed differ greatly, however. Akamai’s State of the Internet report from July put the U.S. at number nine, below South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Sweden.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Juniper bags AARNet fatter pipes and SDN
MX routers for 100 Gbps-plus backbones
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/juniper_bags_aarnet_fatter_pipes_and_sdn/
Juniper has given an elbow to Cisco’s ribs down under, nabbing a key AARNet upgrade contract in the long-time Borg-friendly network.
The research network, whose history stretches back to the very beginnings of the Internet in Australia, is currently planning its AARNet 4 upgrade, which will deliver a 30-fold expansion in capacity over AARNet 3.
As well as expanding capacity, the Juniper deployment will support the company’s SDN architecture, making the new network fully buzzword-compliant.
Juniper’s MX Series 3D routers will provide 100 Gbps Ethernet backbone connections, and allow backbone routes to be built out of multiple 100 Gbps Ethernet links.
MPLS and VPLS (Virtual private LAN services) will be implemented in the network, for greater resiliency and traffic control, and to support Layer 3 VPN services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ISPs should block ‘pirate’ websites, says European Court of Justice
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2309389/isps-should-block-pirate-websites-says-euro-court-of-justice
THE EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE is deciding whether it is right that an internet service provider (ISP) can be told to block access to a website suspected of playing host to pirated content.
It is due to vote on this soon, and in the meantime ECJ Advocate General Cruz Villalón, a member of the court, said that the ban mechanism was a likely one, but added that it must also be managed and proportionate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is the Internet of Things and how insurers will use it against you
The humbling sensation of having your stupidity monitored
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/the_internet_of_things_is_everywhere/
What is “the internet of things” and why should we care? Put simply, the internet of things is a catch-all term for ultra-low-power embedded devices that mostly consist of sensors and control systems.
This market segment is expanding rapidly; devices falling into this category will soon outnumber all other types of computers on the planet, if they don’t already. The internet of things also signals new threats to personal privacy.
Devices that make up the internet of things are typically those which require minimal – or no – human interaction. Many of these are already in homes: they range from network addressable lightbulbs to the bleeding-edge biosensors and medical equipment that enable body hacking aka “the quantified self”.
Despite Intel’s belated recognition of its own utter irrelevance in this space, it isn’t a credible player. When we talk about the widgets powering the internet of things, we are talking almost exclusively about specialty ARM chips, the lower power the better.
Most devices that fall into the internet of things category don’t need any real processing power, just enough guts to poll a sensor of some variety, wake up an ultra-low-power radio, fire off its findings and go back to sleep.
The overwhelming majority of first-wave internet of things devices will be dumb network-connected sensors providing raw data. The number-crunching and analysis will occur elsewhere.
There are a multitude of low-power wireless technologies.
You’ll notice I said “ultra-low-power” a lot. That’s because the power goal behind most internet of things devices is usually something seemingly absurd, like a Bluetooth device that can run for two years off a watch battery or ambient backscatter (PDF) devices that use so little power they can sustain themselves on the kinds of radio energy put out by everything from television stations to your home Wi-Fi.
Why do we want the internet of things?
Many of the “sensory and control” possibilities unlocked by internet of things technologies are pretty self-explanatory. Retrofitting an existing building with traditional centralised automation technologies aimed at lighting or HVAC is expensive.
The internet of things approach would be to bypass all that hullabaloo and simply install wireless light bulbs. These could be added as existing bulbs fail and each new bulb added gives your system individual control of that bulb.
Add some sensors and you can have the lights in your home turn on and off when they sense you (via cell phone, implant, watch, etc) enter or leave the room.
I’m wiring up my fish tank to the internet. The newest incarnation will automatically top itself up when the water gets low, feed the fish and other mundane tasks.
IoT as the insurers’ don’t-be-stoopid enforcer
It’s not all roses. Consider the humble smoke detector. People are reinventing it, this time with extra internet.
While that could be great for me, how long do you think it will be before the cost of home insurance will depend on my purchasing, properly maintaining and configuring several of these devices to report back to the insurance company? In a single family home that’s a minor annoyance to have to do. In a multi-unit dwelling there’s a case to be made that their use be mandated by law.
What about other sensors? How warm do you keep your home?
Wouldn’t the bank that holds my mortgage or the company that insures it have a financial interest in real-time monitoring as well?
Go deeper. Did you leave the stove on and the leave the house? Did you use the wrong kind of toilet paper the last time you used the washroom, or flush grease, paint or other no-nos down the drain?
Today, internet of things technologies can be used to help prove qualification for fitness tax credits.
The merging of the physical and the virtual worlds offers the carrot of increased efficiency, safety, and gentle reminders for those things we’ve forgotten. The internet of things brings with it ethical issues with which legislators are already struggling.
It is also the future of IT. “Wearable computing” is far more likely to manifest as a subset of the internet of things than be “yet another general computing platform”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chromebook users offered international always on data
Roam around the world for under a quid a day
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2309201/chromebook-users-offered-international-always-on-data?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=Cpc&utm_campaign=Inquirer%252BReferral&WT.mc_is=977=obinsource
A WHITE LABEL telecoms service has been launched that could mark the end of roaming data charges and fiddling about with APN settings.
Ireland-based Cubic Telecom has announced a multi IMSI mechanism allowing users to cross between coverage areas and even international borders and be sure they are on the best network.
At launch, the technology is being rolled out under two brand names, HP Mobile Connect and Maxroam for Chromebook. Both offer a monthly top up system with no minimum contract.
Cubic Telecom CEO Barry Napier told The INQUIRER that even international borders are no object. He said, “We’ve already signed deals across Europe, the Middle East, USA and Canada and we have some major announcements about Asia coming shortly.”
When crossing into another country the end user has nothing to do except confirm that they understand how their talkplan will be measured in the local currency, but all settings remain the same, and the charges are commensurate to local rates.
Napier expressed that he hopes to make global data roaming a reality for “less than the cost of a bottle of water”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Finnish @ 450 network operators is declared bankrupt
The network was only last year a significant investment when the technology changed to Flash-OFDM to cdma, respectively.
“The owners have stopped the financing of the Group’s business operations and development. In that way, the company has plunged into a half years in financial difficulties, “Datame the acting CEO Leena says Information Week, Kaunisto.
Finnet the camp of the Datame bought the @ 450 network Digita three years ago. Was the network buying too big a bite for the company?
“I would not say that too big a bite. It is simply such that the owners no longer want this money to investors. Of course, business has changed, and the competition is fierce, “Kaunisto respond.
The company and its operations have been made to sell throughout the autumn, but so far the buyer has not been found.
Datame offers the @ 450 network, in addition to 3G and 4G connections. All services operating until further notice, despite the bankruptcy application without interruption.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/450verkon+operaattoria+haetaan+konkurssiin/a950432
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSN virtualizes the network
Nokia Solutions and Networks says that it had completed the test, in which the functionality of virtualization technology was demonstrated in practice. NFV Project (Functions Networks Virtualization) was carried out in conjunction with Korean operator SK Telecom. Virtualization is the solution to the fact that the operator must be a growing demand for data continuously expand their networks.
Adding new cells and base stations will make the entire network infrastructure, however, more and more complex. Virtualization is an elegant solution to this problem. It moves network elements to be implemented by external servers. NSN’s solution comes to standards ATCA servers with multiple network elements are managed by a separate cloud tool.
Nokia’s proof-of-concept project has four virtualized network elements. These are the MSC server, the MME management, call control (CSCF Call State Control Function) and VoIP telephony server.
Virtualization is part of NSN’s Liquid Core architecture.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=717:nsn-virtualisoi-verkkoaan&catid=13&Itemid=101