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:
Mentor Graphics Enables Smart Device Development for M2M Applications with Support for Zero Configuration Networking
http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/news/mentor-smart-device-for-m2m-applications-with-support-for-zero-configuration-networking?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2013_02_05_embedded_technical_news_nucleus
Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced a solution to design network-based devices for machine-to-machine (M2M) and smart energy applications with the latest release of the Mentor® Embedded Nucleus® Real Time Operating System (RTOS) platform. Embedded developers can design auto configuring network devices for environments without supporting infrastructure, such as network servers, with the addition of mDNS and DNS-Service Discovery (SD) support to the Nucleus RTOS.
Devices can connect to the network automatically without network servers or manual configuration by using the Nucleus RTOS networking middleware which manages IP address resolution, device naming, and network browsing for service discovery.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Closed gTLD debate threatens Google and Amazon
Kevin Murphy, February 8, 2013, 11:44:29 (UTC), Domain Policy
http://domainincite.com/11785-closed-gtld-debate-threatens-google-and-amazon
Howls of criticism about Google, Amazon and others’ plans to grab huge swathes of new gTLD real estate and keep it to themselves seem to have spurred ICANN into action.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fact: Fiber steadily eroding copper cabling products’ market share
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/structured-cabling-report.html
A new report from Global Information (GII) states that the global structured cabling market has been characterized by its stable growth over the past several years, with the market growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.8% to reach $5.6 billion in 2011. Growth in the structured cabling market is expected to exceed $8 billion by 2015.
The ongoing battle between copper and fiber systems persists, contends the report. Fiber has taken a foothold in the network at 10G. According to the report, fiber-optic products are poised to steadily take market share from copper products in the structured cabling market over the next five years. However, while the copper structured cabling market is expected to shrink, there is still potential to recognize revenues, particularly in Cat 6 UTP for Gigabit Ethernet and Cat 7 for 10G, finds the study.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIA task group exploring security measures for cabling systems
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/tia-cabling-security-specs.html
Grant Seiffert, president of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), authored an article titled “Protecting the Communications Infrastructure” that appeared in a recent issue of The CIP Report,
“One area currently facing security threats is cloud computing,” citing a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report identifying gaps for standards coverage related to the cloud. “In response to this report [U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Volume II – Useful Information for Cloud Adopters], TIA’s Engineering Committees are working on standards to close these security gaps,”
For example, TIA-942 “provides requirements and guidelines for several security-related subjects involving data centers, which serve as the engines of the cloud,” Seiffert reports. “This document includes security-related requirements and guidelines appropriate for data centers on the placement of telecommunications spaces, architectural considerations, signage, cable routing, access points, supporting equipment and site selection.”
Seiffert then explains that while the NIST report puts focus on data centers, “prudence would dictate that similar guidance apply to the physical security for other types of premises where cloud access is of particular importance … Accordingly, the Task Group on Network Security is not limiting the focus of the discussions to data centers.”
Furthermore, the group has pointed out installation guidelines in other existing standards—TIA-569 Telecommunications Pathways and Spaces, TIA-568-C.0 Generic Telecommunications Cabling for Customer Premises, TIA-568-C.1, Commercial Building Telecommunications Cabling Standard, and TIA-606 Administration Standard for Telecommunications Infrastructure—as examples of specifications that consider the protection of cabling infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expanding Ethernet beyond ‘feeds-n-speeds’
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/ethernet-watch/4406473/Expanding-Ethernet-beyond–feeds-n-speeds-
And let’s not kid ourselves, with the on-going industry debate between 400GbE and Terabit Ethernet, the industry has resolved itself to the fact that it is not a question of whether Terabit Ethernet will ever be defined, it’s simply a question of when.
First of all, Ethernet, however, has always been thought of as a volume driver. With its history of being in every PC and on every laptop, Gigabit Ethernet is the model of success that comes to everyone’s mind. Many wonder, however, with the move to smaller, thinner mobile tablet computers that rely on IEEE 802.11 wireless technologies and won’t use the RJ45 connector. And while I spend a lot of my professional time making things go faster, I personally don’t see the benefit yet for a faster connection for my laptop or tablet computer. Mobility is more important to me.
So, are Ethernet’s high volume days behind it? While this is a reasonable question to ask, and one that the Ethernet community should be asking itself, I think the prediction of Ethernet’s demise, as I have seen some editors predicting is, well, frankly, silly.
Consider the IEEE 802.3bp Reduced Twisted Pair Gigabit Ethernet project currently underway. As the name implies, the effort is defining delivery of Gigabit Ethernet over less than the standard four pair used today—perhaps one or two pair. One of the primary justifications for this project is networking applications in vehicles. It has been forecasted that a nominal 300 million ports in automobiles will be shipped by the end of this decade.
The screaming and tears stop instantly as the kids start watching streaming video or chatting with their friends.
So how about Power over Ethernet for my car too?
This example illustrates a few lessons that the Ethernet community should consider.
Ethernet has a wealth of technology that can be leveraged into a multitude of applications. And let me be clear—not everything Ethernet does has to go 100m over UTP cable and connect with an RJ45 connector. I would argue that mindset has limited the industry from exploiting Ethernet’s catalog of technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unlocking Ma Bell: How phone phreaks came to be
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57568835-93/unlocking-ma-bell-how-phone-phreaks-came-to-be/
In “Exploding the Phone,” Phil Lapsley writes an entertaining and educational history of the people who hacked the original phone networks. Lapsley talked to CNET about his book.
Imagine a day when it cost an arm and a leg to use the phone, especially for long-distance calls. Then imagine that buried deep within the telephone network infrastructure was a flaw — a hole that allowed those who were aware of it, and capable of exploiting it, to make all the free calls they want.
These days, phone calls are free — or nearly so — and hackers put their energies into computer networks, jailbreaking iPhones, and other more modern pursuits.
For example, today, if you want to learn how the phone system works, you just do some Googling and bang, it’s there for you to read about. It simply wasn’t like that in the 1960s and 1970s: information was vastly harder to come by. But there’s a flip side.
Today, we assume anything a company does will be a trade secret, and there will be non-disclosure agreements and such to protect intellectual property. While that was generally true back then, too, it wasn’t quite the case for AT&T, the telephone company. AT&T was a private company but was a government-regulated monopoly, and didn’t really have any competitors. In that environment, you don’t need to be quite as careful with your secrets. Indeed, some of AT&T’s published journals (The Bell System Technical Journal, Bell Labs Record) were partly for well-deserved bragging rights — hey, look at the cool stuff we did! It’s a very different world. Maybe there is a Google Labs Technical Journal, but if there is, I suspect you have to work there to read it.
Was it legal?
We’ll never know for sure, because that would have required a court case involving it. AT&T very carefully keep Greenstar out of the lime ight (and out of court).
And what was the Telephone Crime Lab?
The Telephone Crime Lab was a small department at Bell Laboratories that dealt with crimes involving the telephone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is the Concept of ‘Cyberspace’ Stupid?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/02/12/2224201/is-the-concept-of-cyberspace-stupid
“analogizing cyberspace as a real place leads to an inability to think logically about laws, rules, and how and when the governments could or should intervene to regulate the Internet. He states that such a debate is essential”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stop pretending cyberspace exists
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/12/the_end_of_cyberspace/
Treating the Internet as a mythical country makes us dumber
Some ideas make you dumber the moment you learn of them. One of those ideas is the concept of “cyberspace.”
That’s what makes it necessary to state what ought to be obvious: There is no such place as cyberspace. It is not a parallel universe, coexisting with our world but in a different dimension. It is just a bad metaphor that has outlived its usefulness. Using the imagery of a fictitious country makes it harder to have rational arguments about government regulation or commercial exploitation of modern information and communications technologies.
Most Internet activity takes place in particular territories governed by states.
Cyberspace is not the equivalent of land that has suddenly arisen off the coast and has yet to be claimed effectively by any existing nation-state.
The idea that corporations are “invading” a mythical Oz-like kingdom called cyberspace is just as dopey.
If you’re not convinced by now that the very notion of cyberspace is silly, try substituting “fax” or “telephone” or “telegraph” for “cyber” in words and sentences. The results will be comical.
My guess is that cyber-hype is on the way out, for several reasons. For one thing, the novelty of PCs and wireless phones has worn off. They are no longer mystical portals to another dimension, but mere appliances.
At the same time, the borders between different communications modes — telephones, TVs and the Internet — are rapidly collapsing. No matter who wins the Battle of the Telcos — cable, telephone companies or something else entirely — modern IT-based communication will become a boring part of the 21st century landscape, like other utilities, including electricity and telephony and telegraphy, that seemed magical to earlier generations.
the idea of cyberspace as a parallel reality free from government regulation and commercial corruption was confused in its conception and doomed in practice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enable software programmable digital pre-distortion in cellular radio infrastructure
http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4406924/Enable-software-programmable-digital-pre-distortion-in-cellular-radio-infrastructure
Cellular network operators require significant equipment cost reduction as they strive to increase the network capacity through the use of new air interfaces, new transmission frequencies, wider bandwidth, increasing antenna counts and a greater number of cell sites. Furthermore, these operators require increased equipment efficiency and greater network integration to reduce operating costs. To provide equipment that meets these disparate needs, manufacturers of wireless infrastructure equipment seek solutions that provide greater levels of integration with higher performance and increased flexibility, while delivering lower power and cost. In addition, the equipment providers must do this while shortening time to market.
The key to reducing the overall equipment cost is integration, but it is down to the advanced digital algorithms that improve power amplifier efficiency to reduce operating costs. One such algorithm that is commonly used is digital pre-distortion (DPD). It’s a challenge to improve the equipment efficiency while the equipment configurations get ever more complex.
Implementing Cellular Radio on an All Programmable SoC
DPD improves power amplifier efficiency by extending its’ linear range. Efficiency is improved when the amplifier is driven harder to improve the output power, while static power remains relatively constant. In order to extend this linear range, DPD uses an analogue feedback path from the amplifier and a significant amount of signal processing to calculate coefficients that are used to represent the inverse of the amplifier’s non-linearity. These coefficients are then used to pre-correct the transmitted signal driving the power amplifier, resulting in the increase of the amplifier’s linear range. The DPD algorithm can be broken down into multiple functions
DPD is a closed loop system where the previously transmitted signal is captured to determine how the amplifier behaved with the transmitted signal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China’s ‘Wall’ Hits Business
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323926104578277511385052752-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwMzExNDMyWj.html
Firms Say Censorship Slows Web Connections, Curbs Access to Services
Fredrik Bergman ran into a problem when a client in Sweden tried to transfer files to his firm’s headquarters here: Each time, the firm lost its Web connection for an hour or so.
After several weeks of multiple outages a day, he says, the firm solved the puzzle: the files were named for the Swedish town of Falun, where the client was working. Mr. Bergman says his firm thinks the name triggered the filters China’s online censors use to block discussion of Falun Gong, a religious group long banned in China.
Once the files were renamed, the transfers went smoothly.
Experts say the blocks that keep Chinese users from accessing services like Facebook, Twitter and Google Inc.’s online-video unit YouTube, are hurting businesses, slowing their traffic and hindering their use of a new generation of cloud-computing services like those offered by Google.
Akamai Technologies, which provides services to help websites speed up connections, says China’s average connection speed ranked 94th globally in last year’s third quarter, well behind Asian rivals like Malaysia, at No. 71, and Thailand, at No. 58.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China said last year that nearly three-quarters of about 300 businesses it surveyed said unstable Internet access impedes their efficiency. About 40% said China’s censorship efforts have a negative business impact.
“The real question is whether the next administration is going to continue to roll back Internet availability to foreign firms,”
Stepped-up censorship efforts in recent months include a crackdown on so-called virtual private networks, or VPNs. While companies use commercial VPN services routinely for secure data, foreigners, China’s elite and other tech-savvy users can use personal VPNs to leap the Great Firewall to use services like Facebook.
But it is illegal for foreign companies to operate a VPN in China without a local partner
“We think [the crackdown] is damaging: consumers don’t like it,”
“This is where all the open-source projects are stored. This is access to the world’s source-code knowledge,” he said, adding, “By blocking GitHub they’re going to stifle a ton of innovation,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Weightless, the hopefully-not-vaporware Internet of Things chip
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/14/weightless-the-hopefully-not-vaporware-internet-of-things-chip/
magine a single chip able to interface with your Ethernet, USB, and serial devices, turn those connections into wireless radio signals with miles of range, able operate off a single AA battery, and costs less than $2. That’s the promise of the Weightless special interest group that wants to put several hopefully not vaporware radio chips in the hands of everyone on the planet.
Long-range wireless networks are a tricky thing
Weightless hopes to change that with a small radio chip that includes a MAC, PHY, and all the components necessary to turn just about any digital connection into a wireless link between devices. The radio will operate in the spectrum left behind by UHF TV (470 – 790MHz), and the folks working on already have some reference designs etched into silicon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Weightless SIG
http://www.weightless.org/
White space spectrum provides the scope to realise tens of billions of connected devices worldwide overcoming the traditional problems associated with current wireless standards – capacity, cost, power consumption and coverage. The forecasted demand for this connectivity simply cannot be accommodated through existing technologies and this is stifling the potential offered by the machine to machine (M2M) market. In order to reach this potential a new standard is required – and that standard is called Weightless.
The value in machines having wireless communications has long been understood and a large market is predicted for many years. That this has not transpired has been because of the difficulty of meeting all the requirements within the constraints of the available radio spectrum. These constraints changed significantly with the advent of white space availability which provides near-perfect spectrum with free access.
However, the combination of the unique and unusual nature of that access and the very different characteristics of machine traffic compared to human traffic means that using any existing standard is far from optimal. Hence, the need for a standard designed specifically for machine communications within white space. Weightless technology has been optimised for this specific scenario and is now being delivered as a royalty-free open standard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic
167 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype traffic in 2012 a 44% increase.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/skype-calls-now-equivalent-to-one-third-of-global-phone-traffic/
New research (PDF) from TeleGeography, a telecom market analysis firm, shows that worldwide Skype usage is now equivalent to over one-third of all international phone traffic—a record level.
The firm’s new data, released Wednesday, shows that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes.” At the same time, “cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.”
“International providers have to rely on steady growth rates to maintain revenues,”
“What we’ve seen is a slowdown in growth rates and some is due to economic trends.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Once the servers and storage are virtualised, the network is going to experience traffic patterns the likes of which it has probably never witnessed. Whilst managing these surges by hand is doable, it’s likely to temper any benefit of the dynamics infrastructure. This is why software defined networks are seeing a rise in prominence. They should, in theory, enable networks to be dynamically configured to contend with the demands of the private cloud infrastructure.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/15/sdn_event/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The newest overhyped mobile industry buzzword: LTE-Advanced
http://gigaom.com/2013/02/17/lte-advanced-is-the-new-buzzword-hype/
Summary:
There are no LTE-Advanced networks or chips today, but that hasn’t stopped equipment makers and carriers from claiming the opposite. Here’s how they’re getting away with it.
Everywhere you look, some infrastructure vendor is bragging about its LTE-Advanced base station or some carrier is talking up its LTE-Advanced-capable network. With these claims, it’s hard to imagine that just two years ago that plain-Jane LTE was on the cutting edge of mobile technology.
celltower2There are no true LTE-Advanced networks, chips or devices in the market today and there won’t be for many years. The mobile industry is playing an old game: technology inflation.
You may remember that a few years back T-Mobile and AT&T magically transformed their HSPA networks from 3G systems into 4G systems by waving their marketing wands. That technology inflation, however, began years began years before when Sprint first attached the 4G moniker to its WiMAX networks.
Even today, mobile technology purists would argue the world has yet to see its first 4G network, since no carrier system yet meets the original 4G guidelines established by the International Telecommunication Union. Instead of condemning the industry’s fast-and-loose play with the term, the ITU simply caved, retroactively defining 4G as pretty much anything the carriers wanted it to be. 4G has always been an iffy term, but after the ITU dropped the ball it became a meaningless one.
Now the same thing is happening with LTE.
In an effort to seem more progressive than their competitors, carriers, infrastructure vendors and chipset makers are finding loopholes in the technical standards to elevate their LTE technologies to the rarified status of LTE-Advanced. Basically, the industry is carrying around a Cadillac keychain but it’s really driving a Buick.
It’s important to note that LTE-Advanced isn’t a monolithic technology, it’s really a collection of technologies.
One operator’s LTE-Advanced is going to look very different from another operator’s LTE-Advanced, but there are some minimum guidelines.
at the very least an LTE-Advanced carrier should deliver more than 300 Mbps of downlink capacity or more than 50 Mbps of uplink capacity.
So how is everyone getting away with calling their products LTE-Advanced? Why, through marketing of course. They’ve latched onto a single spec in the LTE-Advanced standards, a technique called carrier aggregation.
By boasting technical support for carrier aggregation on LTE networks, marketers have made the huge leap the LTE-Advanced, which is ridiculously misleading. It’s the equivalent of ordering a Coke and then claiming you’ve indulged in a full meal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cable’s Walls Are Coming Down
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/cord-cutters-soon/
Everybody hates the cable company. The big cable carriers constantly score among the lowest in customer satisfaction among all industries.
Yet the cable operators continue to thrive largely because they operate as natural monopolies — the upfront capital costs of laying new cable keep potential competitors at bay.
But get ready for a sea change. Even if you’re tied to a subscription television service today, there’s a great chance you’ll become a cord-cutter in short order.
On-demand content from the mainstream outlets is also everywhere — Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony are all happy to take your money to deliver programming that once was exclusively distributed by cable and satellite providers.
Despite its current financial health, subscription TV knows cord-cutting is inevitable, and the industry is trying desperately to protect its assets. The cable and satellite services have three final stongholds that are keeping most people tethered: live sports, live news and first-run premium content.
As those two last walls (live sports and news) crumble, they’ll topple the third. For now, it’s not economically feasible for most networks, especially HBO, to show original programming online at the same time they show it on-air.
Cutting the cord is still an outlier activity. You have to do too much searching, use too many specialized devices, and configure too many settings to get what you want. But as devices from Google, Apple, Roku and others make internet delivery indistinguishable from cable and satellite delivery, we’re going to wake up one morning and find cord-cutting has gone completely mainstream. And those devices are pretty much already here.
All the advantages enjoyed by subscription TV today are melting away. In five years, those advantages will have been eliminated entirely. In a decade, many of today’s constraints will seem laughable. The idea that you had to pay for 400 other channels just because you wanted to watch a single show will be akin to paying for internet access by the hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The result of pinging all the Internet IP addresses
http://www.securityartwork.es/2013/02/07/the-result-of-pinging-all-the-internet-ip-addresses/?lang=en
In the previous post we considered the theoretical cost and feasibility of scanning all Internet IP addresses and it resulted to be very low. Therefore, we decided to conduct a little experiment: see if it was possible to scan the entire Internet, of course without doing anything harmful.
Ping overall results answered: 284,401,158 IP addresses responded to the ping, i.e. 7% of systems.
We can see that many networks do not answer anything, mainly because they are reserved networks. Also, there are blocks with many IPs answering.
Obviously from the number of answers it is not possible to draw conclusions about the density of IP population, as they may be conveniently filtered.
This experiment is a proof of concept of how easy it is to make a global action against all Internet, with almost no cost, short time and basic knowledge. We can see that it would be possible to scan a TCP port, or even do some intrusion attack globally (always stateless), for which any UDP attack could be very effective (as it did with slammer). In any case these actions are and would be considered as attacks, so as expected we will not go further and evolve this project.
Probed that IPv4 is really small, we have another argument to answer the usual question: Why would somebody want to attack me?
Although the experiment has been the most innocuous and harmless we could thought about, during the experiment we have received some complaints from organizations related to the the scan. However, taking into account the number of “attacked” sites, the complaints have been few and the hosting provider that received the pings acted in any case time communicating the complaint after the end of the experiment, which shows that such a global attack would be really unstoppable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of things: Should you worry if your jeans go smart?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15004063
What if those new jeans you’ve just bought start tweeting about your location as you cross London Bridge?
It sounds far-fetched, but it’s possible – if one of your garments is equipped with a tiny radio-frequency identification device (RFID), your location could be revealed without you knowing about it.
This technology is just one of the current ways of allowing physical objects to go online – a concept dubbed the “internet of things”, which industry insiders have shortened to IoT.
“A typical city of the future in a full IoT situation could be a matrix-like place with smart cameras everywhere, detectors and non-invasive neurosensors scanning your brain for over-activity in every street,” says Rob van Kranenburg, a member of the European Commission’s IoT expert group.
“The IoT challenge is likely to grow both in scale and complexity as seven billion humans are expected to coexist with 70 billion machines and perhaps 70,000 billion ‘smart things’, with numbers infiltrating the last redoubts of personal life,” says Gerald Santucci, head of the networked enterprise and RFID unit at the European Commission.
“In such a new context, the ethical worries are manifold: to what extent can surveillance of people be accepted? Which principles should govern the deployment of the IoT?”
Another way to make things smarter is by embedding sensors in them and sending data online via a wireless low-power technology called Zigbee.
IBM is doing just that – its project that remotely monitors the environment that could affect the health of elderly people in Bolzano, Italy, extended caretaker supervision with sensors embedded all over the patients’ homes, providing round-the-clock peace of mind not only for the patients but for their families too.
Cars are rapidly becoming smart, too.
Toyota, for instance, has always been one of the frontrunners in telematics – and now it has decided to team up with Salesforce.com to allow cars to chat to their drivers on a private social network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Bell Tolls for Telcos?
http://www.telegeography.com/press/press-releases/2013/02/13/the-bell-tolls-for-telcos/index.html
New data from telecom market research firm TeleGeography show that international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes. However, as call volumes continue to grow, so do the challenges facing the international long-distance industry.
While international phone traffic growth is slowing, traffic from voice and messaging applications like Skype continues to increase at a stunning pace. TeleGeography estimates that cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CommScope demos technical feasibility of Category 8 copper cabling system
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/commscope-cat8-demo.html
CommScope announced that it has successfully demonstrated the technical feasibility of Category 8 cabling for enterprise networks. The company calls the demonstration “a step along the path towards a viable 40GBase-T system for data center applications.”
CommScope verified its proof-of-concept solution for a viable 40 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet channel by utilizing prototype Category 8 RJ-45 connectors and copper twisted pair cables.
CommScope verified its proof-of-concept solution for a viable 40 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet channel by utilizing prototype Category 8 RJ-45 connectors and copper twisted pair cables. All components of the next generation data center infrastructure concept were designed by engineers in CommScope labs, according to a press release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open-source system performs packet capture
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4407039/Open-source-system-performs-packet-capture
Continuum PCAP from NextComputing combines an enterprise-class packet-capture engine with familiar open-source tools to perform high-speed network packet capture, traffic monitoring, and analysis. The manufacturer reports that by building on open-standards hardware and software, Continuum PCAP offers performance similar to more costly capture systems, but at a lower cost.
Through a simple browser-based user interface, Continuum PCAP monitors 1G and 10G networks, capturing network traffic at lines rates of up to 7.5 Gbps to industry-standard PCAP files. It also provides packet analysis, intrusion detection, real-time indexing, and zero packet loss with time-stamping of every packet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Industry Faces $9.2 Billion Shortfall in Backhaul Investment
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/58605.php?source=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin
Operators are investing in radio network upgrades and migrating to LTE to meet surging user demand for mobile data.
But a report unveiled today predicts that operators will face a new mobile capacity crunch by 2017. The Strategy Analytics study reveals that operators may not be planning sufficient investment in backhaul to meet anticipated demand over the next 5 years.
Global mobile data traffic has increased 13 times in the last 5 years and Strategy Analytics forecasts it to grow by 5 to 6 times more by 2017. The Tellabs-commissioned study predicts a $9.2 billion global backhaul funding gap with a 16 petabyte shortfall in backhaul capacity by 2017.
Investment and capacity shortfalls vary by region
Inadequate backhaul will cost confidence and customers
When mobile data usage first surged in the late 2000s, backhaul investment was an afterthought. But as smartphones took off, the unexpected traffic produced network congestion and outages that created major customer dissatisfaction. As much as 50% of the problems were attributable to inadequate backhaul.
Over the next 5 years, mobile backhaul will become increasingly complex. Operators will struggle to support multi-frequency heterogeneous networks and new bursty usage patterns. Current operator forecasts allocate an average of 17.5% of total cost of operations to backhaul investment, but investment at that level simply cannot meet user demand.
“As many as 40% of mobile users list poor network performance as a reason for leaving an operator,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tips & Tricks: Seven things wireless backhaul should provide to cover your network where fiber can’t
http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4407411/Tips—Tricks–Seven-things-wireless-backhaul-should-provide-to-cover-your-network-where-fiber-can-t?Ecosystem=communications-design
Demand for “everywhere” mobility is, well, everywhere these days. This is placing carriers and mobile network operators under increasing pressure to relieve networks that are becoming overburdened with the demands being placed on them by users. Despite migrations to 3G, 4G LTE and WiMAX, the proliferation of cellular devices and apps requires network operators to take additional steps to increase capacity and coverage. As a result, virtually all network operators are employing small cells to increase capacity in urban areas and provide coverage where gaps exist.
Most carriers are focused on deployment plans in which the majority of small cells will be backhauled using existing fiber or copper. While physical connectivity can work in the majority of cases, total coverage requires backhaul that connects where fiber and copper can’t.
In such cases, wireless technology can provide the ability to rapidly deploy reliable small-cell backhaul solutions. However, carriers need to select a small-cell backhaul system that will deliver carrier-grade connectivity and overcome physical obstacles and interference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
100Gbps and beyond: What lies ahead in the world of networking
App-aware firewalls, SAN alternatives, and other trends for the future.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/100gbps-and-beyond-what-lies-ahead-in-the-world-of-networking/
The corporate data center is undergoing a major transformation the likes of which haven’t been seen since Intel-based servers started replacing mainframes decades ago. It isn’t just the server platform: the entire infrastructure from top to bottom is seeing major changes as applications migrate to private and public clouds, networks get faster, and virtualization becomes the norm.
All of this means tomorrow’s data center is going to look very different from today’s. Processors, systems, and storage are getting better integrated, more virtualized, and more capable at making use of greater networking and Internet bandwidth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla, AT&T And Ericsson Team Up To Demo Seamless Web-To-Mobile WebRTC Integration At MWC
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/24/mozilla-att-and-ericsson-team-up-to-demo-seamless-web-to-mobile-webrtc-integration/
What if your browser could know when you are getting a call on your mobile phone? Earlier this month, Google and Mozilla demonstrated how their browsers’ WebRTC implementations could interoperate. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mozilla is going a step further. The organization has teamed up with AT&T and Ericsson to show a proof-of-concept called WebPhone, which demonstrates how its Firefox browser can use Mozilla’s Social API, AT&T’s API Platform and Ericsson’s Web Communication Gateway to let Firefox users sync with a user’s existing phone number and provide calling services without the need to install any plugins or special apps.
WebPhone, which isn’t currently available to the public, demonstrates how users can receive calls and texts on their desktops. The system was built on top of WebRTC
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optical hardware sales shrank in 2012, finds report
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/optical-hardware-sales-shrink.html
Sales of optical transport equipment declined 4% in 2012, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. The market research firm places the blame on a significant decline in sales of SONET and SDH equipment. “An overall market decline of 4% was pretty good considering that legacy equipment sales declined 30% in the year,” points out Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport research at Dell’Oro Group.
According to the report, the North American and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets took the brunt of the declines, each shrinking 12%. Overall, the weakness in these regions offset year-on-year growth in Asia Pacific (5% year on year) and Rest of World (2% growth).
“Fortunately, optical network equipment continues to be needed even in soft economic times, so long as consumers increase their use of high-bandwidth access devices such as home broadband and smart phones,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report sees ‘aggressive’ price decline in 10G Ethernet switches
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/delloro-price-drops.html
New research from telecommunications and networking industries specialist Dell’Oro Group says that the market for 10 Gbps server ports is expected to grow more than five-fold by 2017.
“We are forecasting an aggressive price decline in 10 Gbps switches in the first half of 2013 that will be driven by a switch refresh cycle based on Broadcom Trident II switch silicon,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: 10-GbE entering next major stage of volume server adoption
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/crehan-server-adoption-report.html
In its recently released 4Q12 Server-class Adapter & LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) Report, Crehan Research sees 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) entering its next major stage of volume adoption, driven by many public cloud, Web 2.0, and massively scalable data center companies deploying 10GbE servers and server-access data center switches.
“Although there is some overlap in terms of timelines and segments, we believe that we are now in the second of three major adoption stages that 10GbE server networking will follow,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: 10-GbE entering next major stage of volume server adoption
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/crehan-server-adoption-report.html
In its recently released 4Q12 Server-class Adapter & LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) Report, Crehan Research sees 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) entering its next major stage of volume adoption, driven by many public cloud, Web 2.0, and massively scalable data center companies deploying 10GbE servers and server-access data center switches.
“Although there is some overlap in terms of timelines and segments, we believe that we are now in the second of three major adoption stages that 10GbE server networking will follow,”
First Stage: The majority of the transition during this stage happens in the 2009-2013 timeframe and mostly involves blade servers.
Second Stage: This stage, which Crehan considers to be the current one, mostly involves public cloud and massively scalable data center companies. Although there have already been some early adopters of 10-GbE server and server-access switches within this segment, the confluence of high-bandwidth applications, technology maturity and attractive pricing are now leading to increased deployments, says the researcher.
Third Stage: This stage is characterized by the upgrading of the traditional enterprise segment’s large installed base of rack and tower server ports from 1-GbE to 10-GbE. Crehan expects this stage to gain good traction in 2013. Since much of the infrastructure in this segment is 1GBase-T, Crehan forecasts that this is where 10GBase-T will start to see mainstream adoption, and it predicts strong growth for this technology. Crehan also anticipates that this stage will offer the largest server-access port and revenue opportunity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huber+Suhner’s LC-XD connector doubles fiber density, improves handling
February 20, 2013
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/huber-lcxd.html
At the FTTH Council Europe’s conference in London, Huber+Suhner (Switzerland) unveiled its LC-XD fiber-optic connector. Designed to halve space requirements and improve handling in FTTH central office and data center environments, the company says the new connector’s design handles up to 4032 fibers in one rack, doubling the density handled by previous components.
For FTTH applications with high fiber density requirements, the company says that use of the LC-XD will dramatically cut the amount of space required in central offices, where space is always an issue.
The simplex version of the LC-XD connector is particularly suitable for use in FTTH networks, says the company, where a single fiber is generally required per household. The company asserts that the new connectors “can be strung together in two directions and are pluggable even with indirect contact.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Molex unveils PDJack connector; PoE Plus single-port controller is based on RJ45
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/molex-pdjack.html
Molex recently launched its next-generation PoE plus magnetic PDJack connectors. The single-port controller integrates power device controller circuitry and PoE functionality in a jack. The connector’s design conserves up to 75 percent of space savings on a PCB compared to discrete solutions, reckons the company.
“The PDJack connector with integrated power device controller circuitry plus Ethernet connectivity simplifies installation and the PoE plus infrastructure of networking devices,” states Diarmuid Cullinan, integrated products division manager at Molex. “Based on the RJ45 connector, the fully compliant PDJack connector eliminates complex design and testing for lower direct costs and faster time-to-market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Demanding Wireless Applications and the Cabling That Supports Them
http://www.cablinginstall.com/editorial-guides/2013/02/demanding-wireless-applications-and-the-cabling-that-supports-th.html
The need for wireless connectivity in enterprise environments is at an all-time high and continues to grow. Next-generation 802.11ac specifications will require an even more robust cabling “backhaul” infrastructure than existing 802.11n networks do. The ubiquity of mobile-data services is driving the growth of in-building distributed antenna system (DAS) deployments, which have their own sets of cabling-infrastructure requirements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
200-micron coating enables narrower optical fibers
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/ofs-micron.html?cmpid=EnlCIMFebruary252013
OFS has unveiled its AllWave FLEX and AllWave FLEX+ bend-optimized single-mode fiber which features a 200-μm coating. The coating enables a narrower fiber than those using conventional 250-μm coatings, says the company.
The AllWave FLEX version of the 200-μm fiber will bring its space saving benefits, as well as resistance to macrobend and microbend losses, to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments, enterprise networks, and other applications requiring small bend diameters. It is an ITU-T G.657.A1 fiber.
With the ability to occupy 46% less area than conventional fiber, OFS predicts significant benefits for applications that require more fiber per cable or where conduit or duct space is at a premium.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Skynet Could Help Save the Planet
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=how-skynet-could-help-save-the-plan-13-02-24
Machine-to-machine communication offers an opportunity to make the modern world more energy efficient. David Biello reports
Machines sharing information with other machines is more efficient than having one of us humans gumming up the works. But could a smart grid or precision farming, in which the machines inform each other and make subsequent decisions, significantly reduce energy use and, thus, greenhouse gas pollution?
A new report from eclectic billionaire Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room says yes. The report claims potential savings of nearly 20 percent of current global emissions, or more than 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The changes could come quickly too, with pollution down 1.5 billion metric tons by the end of the decade.
Tomi Engdahl says:
European mobile companies vow to break Google and Apple monopolies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/25/european-mobile-consolidation-apple-google-mwc
Mobile World Congress: Vodafone, Telefónica and Telecom Italia urge regulators to allow consolidation
European mobile companies have vowed to “break the monopolies” enjoyed by Google and Apple in smartphones and urged regulators to allow consolidation among rival operators.
Hit by economic recession and the cost of subsidising expensive handsets, want to redraw the network map of Europe by consolidating down to two or three players per country.
“This is not a level playing field. It is not sustainable that we invest more in handset purchases than in the development of networks,” said the Telefónica chief executive and chairman, César Alierta.
In a belligerent call to arms, he said European telecoms companies have invested €225bn (£197bn) over the last five years but seen little return. Telefónica is challenging Google’s Android software and Apple by backing an alternative smartphone operating system designed by Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox web browser.
Firefox OS will reach consumers in the spring
“This internet is dominated by a small number of players that restrict customers’ choice,” said Alierta. “We support open ecosystems to break monopolies and give greater choice and flexibility to consumers. Firefox represents a way to bring balance back to the sector.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finnish railway company have offered for some time free wireless Internet service in many of it’s trains. Even though the service is free, it is not unlimited.
VR is planning to use an ignore lists to block most web-bandwidth comsuming applications. The company’s purpose is to ensure the on-board for those working at a satisfactory level network.
- We have analyzed the network traffic in and found that a third of the traffic comes from YouTube, VR’s IT Project Manager Lauri Uusitalo says.
According to a new house must be blocked services are in addition to at least Netflix Youtube, Vimeo, Spotify, Dropbox, Steam, Windows Update, and Kazaa and other file uploading and sharing for peer.
In addition to filtering of VR plans to improve the rail network by improving the capacity of the network connection to the Internet. This involves, among other things, 4g connections where possible.
Source: http://www.iltasanomat.fi/digi/art-1288543494870.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should you be worried about the new “six strikes” anti-piracy rules? Yes and no
http://gigaom.com/2013/02/26/should-you-be-worried-about-the-new-six-strikes-anti-piracy-rules-yes-and-no/
Summary:
A new system of warnings for users who download copyrighted content is being rolled out by some of the biggest internet service providers in the United States. Is it something you should be concerned about? That depends.
Why you shouldn’t be worried:
It doesn’t affect all internet service providers
You get six strikes, which is probably more than you need
You won’t get cut off, just lectured and irritated
There are lots of ways around these restrictions
Why you should be worried:
Your ISP is going to be doing some heavy snooping
The new rules don’t take into account fair use
Copyright holders are unlikely to stop here
This puts commercial entities in place of laws
The bottom line: There’s reason for concern
Tomi Engdahl says:
Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/freescales-tiny-arm-chip/
Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor has created the world’s smallest ARM-powered chip, designed to push the world of connected devices into surprising places.
Announced today, the Kinetis KL02 measures just 1.9 by 2 millimeters. It’s a full microcontroller unit (MCU), meaning the chip sports a processor, RAM, ROM, clock and I/O control unit — everything a body needs to be a basic tiny computer.
The KL02 is part of Freescale’s push to make chips tailored to the Internet of Things.
Though Moore’s law has become largely uninteresting at the scale of desktop and laptop computers (when all you’re doing is watching videos, writing, and surfing the web, you don’t need that much power), there is still plenty of room at the bottom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloudflare Partners With World’s Leading Web Hosts To Implement Its Railgun Protocol, Speeds Up Load Times By Up To 143%
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/26/cloudflare-partners-with-majority-of-worlds-leading-web-hosts-to-implement-its-railgun-protocol-speeds-up-load-times-by-143/
Cloudflare, the content delivery network and website security company that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2010, just announced that the majority of the world’s leading web hosting providers now support its Railgun web optimization protocol to provide advanced caching services and to improve their web performance. Railgun, Cloudflare’s tests show, can optimize dynamic content to improve load times by an average of 143 percent and reduce bandwidth usage by close to 50 percent.
Cloudflare now has a presence in 23 data centers around the world, so it can serve the data it caches to users as quickly as possible. It will likely add 50 more locations over the course of 2013.
While regular caching services focus on objects like images, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, Railgun takes a byte-level approach to caching based on delta compression technology.
Railgun, too, looks at files at the byte-level and then just transfers the actual bytes that have changed instead of the complete file. Because large parts of the web are not based on static files anymore, this kind of low-level approach means even highly dynamic sites can profit from this technology. Close to 40 percent of the data on the average site today is not dynamic, according to Cloudflare.
“To further improve the performance of an increasingly dynamic, API-driven Internet we needed to reinvent some of its 23-year-old protocols. Railgun goes beyond what traditional performance-boosting technology has provided, making even highly dynamic content load faster than ever before,” Prince said in a canned statement today. As he told me last week, having fewer packets travel between the origin server and Cloudflare’s data centers also reduces the amount of overhead and lost packets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mid-2013 expansion for Internet names targeted
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_BEYOND_DOT_COM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-25-16-12-35
Hundreds of Internet address suffixes to rival “.com” should be available for people and businesses to use by the end of the year, the head of an Internet oversight agency said Monday.
The initial ones, expected in mid-2013, will likely be in Chinese and other languages besides English, said Fadi Chehade, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
That will be followed within weeks by English suffixes that do not have competing bidders.
Many proposed suffixes, such as “.app,” “.music” and “.tech,” will likely take longer, however, because multiple groups have submitted bids to run them and must work out disputes.
ICANN is overseeing the largest expansion of the Internet address system since its creation in the 1980s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU Digital Chief: Europe’s slow on 4G, but 5G GLORY WILL BE OURS
Vice-prez pledges €50m to design ultra-fast mobe networks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/27/eu_50m_euros_for_5g/
A top Euro politician has urged Europeans to get cracking on rolling out 5G networks after falling behind Asia and America in adopting 4G.
Neelie Kroes, who is vice-president of the European Commission and heads up the continent’s digital strategy, has earmarked €50m (£43m) for funding research into faster-than-4G mobile broadband 5G.
Kroes said the EU should bet big on network innovation, whatever form it takes and will pump millions into that area.
Lawmakers need to help too: differences in frequency spectrums, regulations and standards between European countries made the market fragmented and unnecessarily complicated, said Kroes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
16 core ARM chip aims at mobile network infrastructure
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4407541/16-core-ARM-chip-aims-at-mobile-network-infrastructure
LSI has developed a network processor with 16 ARM Cortex-A15 processors and a range of acceleration co-processors for mobile network infrastructure applications.
The Axxia 5500 supports up to 50 Gb/s packet processing, 20 Gb/s security processing and 160Gb/s of Ethernet switching for base stations, cell site routers and gateways in multi-radio systems and 4G/LTE capable wireless networks.
The 28nm chip is also one of the first to use ARM’s new interconnect, the CCN504 CoreLink, to link the processors with the embedded engines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Enduring Myth of the ‘Free’ Internet
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-enduring-myth-of-the-free-internet/273515/
We somehow have come to believe that information is free, but people with Internet access pay substantial sums to get it — sums many can’t afford.
The mantra of a “free” Internet has shaped the prevailing view of how we access information and entertainment in the digital age. This enduring myth is actually a misnomer. It continues to obscure a serious problem faced by significant sectors of society unable to take full advantage of the Internet or meet the high price of cable and cellular phone systems that are at the core of today’s personal technology.
Yes, it is certainly the case that the devices that connect us to search engines, countless websites, social media, and e-mail bring us vast amounts of content for which we do not pay separately. But access to this “free” information on the Internet, as everyone acknowledges as soon as it is pointed out, is not gratis. Monthly charges for broadband Internet service, plus cable television fees and smartphone bills that together comprise the range of household pleasures and obligations as well as work-related communication that are so embedded in our lives amount to hefty sums.
The leading beneficiaries of all these charges are the big multi-platform companies, the pipes for content and digital services — among others, Comcast, Time-Warner, and Optimum, as well as the telecoms, Verizon and AT&T. With postal delivery in permanent decline and the inexorable shift to online management of family and business finances, the role of the broadband Internet is reaching a stage where anything less than total availability at minimal prices is a matter that deserves far more attention than it is currently getting. “Free” or virtually free and universal Internet has actually become indispensable, while access to high-speed service in the United States compares poorly to that in many other countries.
“We need to have public policies,” Johnston asserted, “that recognize that the Internet is the key to economic growth in the 21st century and that the purpose of our government is not to funnel public resources to promote that of a handful of companies, notably Verizon and AT&T but to promote, as our Constitution says in its, Preamble, the general welfare, to make the country better off.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time Warner Cable says there’s no consumer demand for gigabit internet
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/4036128/time-warner-cable-no-consumer-demand-for-fiber-gigabit-internet
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference moments ago, Time Warner Cable’s Chief Financial Officer Irene Esteves seemed dismissive of the impact Google Fiber is having on consumers.
“We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want,” she said when asked about the breakneck internet speeds delivered by Google’s young Kansas City network. “We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers.” Esteves seems to think business customers are more likely to need that level of throughput
Tomi Engdahl says:
You Don’t Want Super-High-Speed Internet, Says Time Warner Cable
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/time-warner-cable/
Time Warner Cable chief technology officer Irene Esteves says you don’t really want the gigabit speeds offered by Google Fiber and other high speed providers.
“We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want…. We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers,” she said, referring to gigabit-speed internet connections.
Google rolled out its gigabit speed fiber optic service in Kansas City earlier this year. But big telcos like Verizon and Time Warner have been slow to match it. In fact, Verizon has frozen expansion of its much slower — and more expensive — fiber optic service, known as FiOS.
Esteves may be right that the consumer applications for that much bandwidth don’t exist yet, but it’s something of a chicken and egg problem. Startups in Kansas City are already exploring the consumer applications of gigabit connections, such as gaming and streaming media. CyberJammer, for example, is developing a system for musicians to do live collaborations with high quality audio software.
Home health care is another potential market for high bandwidth connections at home.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coming to an e-book or car near you: the Web
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57571954-78/coming-to-an-e-book-or-car-near-you-the-web/
Marrying the broad reach of the Web with two narrow domains, members of the World Wide Web Consortium now have groups adapting Web technology for the automotive and publishing industries.
You’re used to the Web on your PC. You’re getting used to it on your smartphone. So what’s next?
Publishing and automobile industry players have just begun spinning up efforts at the World Wide Web Consortium, said W3C Chief Executive Jeff Jaffe in an interview at Mobile World Congress here. So don’t be surprised to see proprietary technology for e-book readers and in-dash computer systems slowly disappear in favor of software based on Web technology.
Books are perhaps an obvious area for Web technology, given that in electronic form they’re just formatted documents and the Web began its life as a way to share formatted documents. But the two domains have taken years to reach today’s level of convergence.
“The Web equals publishing,” Jaffe said. “There’s really no difference anymore.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bridging the Data Deluge Gap–The Role of Smart Silicon in Networks
http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4408029/Bridging-the-Data-Deluge-Gap-The-Role-of-Smart-Silicon-in-Networks?Ecosystem=communications-design
The proliferation of smart mobile devices, video, user-generated content and social networking, and the rising adoption of cloud services for both enterprise and consumer services are all driving explosive growth of wireless networking infrastructure. Globally, mobile data traffic is expected to grow 18-fold between 2011 and 2016, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016.
Today, video traffic alone accounts for 40 percent of the wireless network load. The number of mobile devices connected to wireless networks will reach 25 billion, averaging 3.5 devices for every person on the planet, by 2015. That number is expected to double, to 50 billion, by 2020.
This growth in storage capacity and network traffic is far outstripping the infrastructure build-out required to support it, a phenomenon known as the data deluge gap.
To bridge this gap, the industry needs to leverage smarter silicon technology to scale datacenter infrastructures more cost effectively
A recent survey of 412 European datacenter managers conducted by LSI revealed that while 93 percent acknowledged the critical importance of improving application performance, a full 75% do not feel that they are achieving the desired results.
Smart software running on general-purpose processors, increasingly with multiple cores, is pervasive in the datacenter. Processors have long inhabited switches and routers, firewalls and load-balancers, WAN accelerators and VPN gateways. None of these systems are fast enough, however, to keep pace with the data deluge on its own, for a basic reason: general-purpose processors must treat every byte equally. While such equality is perfectly acceptable for system-level versatility, it is inadequate for low-level, high-volume packet processing.
This reality is driving the need for more intelligence in silicon that is purpose-built for specific networking applications
The latest generation of smart silicon typically features multiple cores of general-purpose processors and multiple acceleration engines for common networking functions, such as packet classification with deep packet inspection, security processing, especially for encryption and decryption, and traffic management.
In many organizations today, microseconds matter, driving strong demand for faster response times. For trading firms, latency can be measured in millions of dollars per millisecond.
For others, such as online retailers, every millisecond of delay can mean lost sales and fading customer loyalty.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TeliaSonera turned his coat on mobile data pricing
Nordic telecom operator TeliaSonera has warned of mobile data growth, and considered that increasing the data transfer would take profitability. Views have changed in just a year, more positive.
A year ago, the Barcelona mobile phone trade fair management has immortalized even use Skype for charging, data transfer because the number will double every year, but the call revenues fall. Although the basic design does not change much, the situation is now seen in a new light.
“We’re not going to charge Skype use,”
“Our customers will have more and more phones, tablets and modems with a wireless connection. This is reflected in an increase in business. ”
Data increases, the cross-gigabyte data packets can be difficult to grasp. The smart phone to be transferred already accumulated hundreds of megabytes, and gigabytes a month for some. Its importance increases as the 4G networks, data transfer quietly accumulates faster.
Therefore you need to work effectively. For many years, management has spoken to is the fact that the prices have to be raised. Now, the views are more cautious. TeliaSonera cuts costs and reduce the people, in both Sweden and in Finland.
Why is that, if the mobile data business starts to work? The explanation is a dramatic trend in prices, 20 per cent in recent years, at a time when the overall costs have risen by five per cent.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/uutiset/teliasonera_kaansi_takkinsa_mobiilidatan_hinnoittelussa
Tomi says:
NSN revolutionize the base station technology – mobile base station is going to start thinking for mobile phone
The network company Nokia Siemens Networks introduced a new base station at Mobile World Congress.
Until now, the base stations are only received and sent information about users’ devices. NSN’s just presented by the base stations can also process and store information.
The invention is called Liquid Applications. It allows, for example augmented reality applications can store data station completed by the station, you will need to move people. The invention enables operators to provide different parts of the country to users location-related services.
Liquid Applications is part of the company’s Liquid Broadband product range, which enables wireless users to convey personalized information.
Source: http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/ict/nsn+mullistaa+tukiasematekniikan+ndash+asema+alkaa+ajatella+matkapuhelimen+puolesta/a881828
Tomi says:
Nokia Siemens Networks revolutionizes the mobile base station #MWC13
http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-siemens-networks-revolutionizes-the-mobile-base-station-mwc13
Nokia Siemens Networks is fundamentally changing the role of the base station in the mobile network. Since the launch of GSM in 1991, the mobile – or cellular – base station has been the part of the network that just transmits and receives radio signals to create a connection with a mobile phone or device. Now, Nokia Siemens Networks is turning the base station into an intelligent part of a mobile operator’s network, to serve and deliver local content.
The new innovation from Nokia Siemens Networks is called Liquid Applications.
It allows application data to flow across their networks to base stations where it can be delivered instantly to local subscribers. For example, information about the area surrounding the base station, such as that used in augmented reality applications, or news and video content that is trending across an operators network, can be placed at the base station for instant local access to connected devices.
Liquid Applications are enabled by the company’s new Radio Applications Cloud Server (RACS)*. In an industry-first, the RACS enables localized processing, content storage, and access to real-time radio and network information in the base station. By turning base stations into local hubs for service creation and delivery, Liquid Applications helps operators offer a service experience that is local and personal. It works hand in hand with existing charging, messaging and location-based services and is part of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Liquid Broadband portfolio.
Liquid Applications is a key component of Nokia Siemens Networks’ Liquid Broadband portfolio, which also comprises end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) Differentiation** and operator Content Delivery Network (CDN)***.