Mobile infrastructure must catch up with user needs and demands. Ubiquitous mobile computing is all around us. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. As the power and capability of many mobile devices increases, the increased demand on networks. We watch more videos, and listen to music on our phones. Mobile Data Traffic To Grow 300% Globally By 2017 Led By Video, Web Use. Mobile network operators would have had an easier life if it wasn’t for smartphones and the flood of data traffic they initiated, and soon there will be also very many Internet of Things devices. Businesses and consumers want more bandwidth for less money.
More and more network bandwidth is being used by video: Netflix And YouTube Account For Over 50% Of Peak Fixed Network Data In North America. Netflix remains the biggest pig in the broadband python, representing 31.6% of all downstream Internet traffic in North America during primetime. In other parts of the world, YouTube is the biggest consumer of bandwidth. In Europe, YouTube represented of 28.7% of downstream traffic.
Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2014 expects that Software Defined Anything is a new mega-trend in data centers. Software-defined anything (SDx) is defined by “improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning.” Dominant vendors in a given sector of an infrastructure-type may elect not to follow standards that increase competition and lower margins, but end-customer will benefit from simplicity, cost reduction opportunities, and the possibility for consolidation. More hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical.
Software defined technologies are coming quickly to telecom operator networks with Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV). Intel and rather a lot of telcos want networks to operate like data centres. Today’s networks are mostly based around proprietary boxes designed to do very specific jobs. It used to be that way in the server business too until cheap generic x86 boxes took most of the market. The idea in NFV is that low-cost x86 servers can successfully many of those those pricey proprietary boxes currently attached to base-stations and other parts of the network. This scents a shift in the mood of the telcos themselves. This change is one that they want, and rather a lot of them are working together to make it happen. So the future mobile network will have more and more x86 and ARM based generic computing boxes running on Linux.
With the introduction of Network Functions Virtualisation base stations will have new functions built into them. For example NSN has announced a mobile edge computing platform that enables mobile base stations to host data and run apps. Think of this as an internet cloud server that’s really close to the customer.
Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker are talked about. Telecom companies and cloud service providers are selling together service packages that have both connectivity and cloud storage sold as single service. Gartner suggests that bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is essential.
The type of device one has will be less important, as the personal or public cloud takes over some of the role. The push for more personal cloud technologies will lead to a shift toward services and away from devices, but there are also cases where where there is a great incentive to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device. Gartner suggests that now through 2018, a variety of devices, user contexts, and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable, although many would like to see this working.
“Internet of Things” gets more push. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. The concept of “Internet of Things” will evolve a step toward The Internet of Everything. Gartner identifies four basic usage models that are emerging: Manage, Monetize, Operate, Extend. The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. The Industrial Internet of Things will be talked about. IoT takes advantage of mobile devices’ and sensors’ ability to observe and monitor their environments
Car of the future is M2M-ready and has Ethernet. 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.
Smart Home Systems Are on the Rise article tells that most automated technology is found in commercial buildings that feature automated lighting that changes in intensity depending on the amount of sunlight present. Some of these buildings have WiFi incorporated into their lighting systems. There will be new and affordable technology on the market, but people today are still reluctant to bring automation to their homes.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
SD Cards Now Support Contactless Communication
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324038&
The SD Association (SDA) updated its iSDIO specification to offer an SD memory card that supports TransferJet contactless communications. Data on an ISDIO memory card can now be wirelessly, peer-to-peer transferred between devices equipped with TransferJet, including personal computers, smartphones, and printers. The new specification also supports contactless communication between other iSDIO TransferJet memory cards in any type of device.
Speed-wise, TransferJet transfers data at 560 Mbit/s per with an effective throughput of up to 375 Mbit/s, making it more than 1,000 times faster than the typical NFC setup. Large data files such as videos can be transferred through TransferJet almost instantaneously.
Kumagai said the TransferJet specification will likely see use in standard SD cards first, with microSD cards to follow. The SDA added standardized wireless communication to SD memory card standards in January 2012.
The consortium envisions a number of use cases for TransferJet. From a user standpoint, TransferJet can be thought of as a universal touch-activated interface that instantly connects a wide variety of consumer and non-consumer electronic products. For example, digital photos can be displayed on a TV just by touching the camera to the TV or a TransferJet pad connected to a set-top box. Other scenarios include archiving digital videos by placing the camcorder close to a PC or sharing music by touching a smartphone to a music player.
The maximum range of operation for TransferJet is a few centimeters, and the network topology is always point-to-point, which simplifies the network setup and management procedures
The short range makes it possible to operate in the near field of the radio signal using very little transmit power — less than -70 dBm/MHz.
The spectrum is centered at 4.48 GHz and occupies a bandwidth of 560 MHz. This choice of spectrum, combined with the extremely low transmit power, enables unlicensed operation in Japan, Europe, the US, and other regulatory domains.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside Solid: who will build the “god platform” for the Internet of Things?
Everyone is racing to build the topmost layer for home automation.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/09/inside-solid-who-will-build-the-god-platform-for-the-internet-of-things.html
Everyone’s racing to build the “god platform” for the Internet of Things: the highest, most generalized layer of intelligence and user interface that ties together connected devices and web services.
It’s tempting to look for analogy in mobile phone platforms, where Apple was initially dominant and now enjoys an extremely lucrative and influential minority position against Android. There are some crucial differences, though. For starters, adoption won’t be quite as easy; domestic appliances last for a long time, and nothing consumers have seen yet makes connected laundry seem appealing enough to justify early replacement of a washing machine. And even in cases where replacement is relatively easy, the grandest promises entail stitching everything into a seamless system — replacing just the easy stuff can seem pretty lame.
Mobile phones initially channeled existing behavior (Facebook on a desktop browser) into the convenience of availability anywhere (Facebook on a mobile app). The jump from light switch to mobile app is much more dramatic, and, frankly, light switches are a pretty refined and satisfactory technology.
So, companies that want to participate in the home automation market will need to create products that work compellingly in isolation and alongside competitors’ products — and somewhere in all of this, the god platform might emerge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The initials DLNA and UPnP are in themselves enough to make many Reg readers wince at the thought of hours solving incompatibilities – a point that the DLNA acknowledges, and is working to fix in revisions to the standard. Their main announcement at IBC was VidiPath, a certification scheme that aims to make it easier for content from cable and satellite services to be available on multiple devices around the home.
UPnP is branching out into the Internet of Things, with new technologies designed to help discover and control devices like sensors and home automation. In a sense, you could consider it to be a counterpart to Apple’s HomeKit
Convergence is a term used to cover any number of sins. At IBC this year, it seemed to mean the collision of the IoT with your set-top box, with several companies showing off devices, including cameras and sensors, that use the box as a gateway.
Taking that to its extreme is Dutch company Green Peak, whose cloud-based monitoring system, with its potential to alert you to problems in an elderly relative’s home within minutes.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/24/ibc_round_up_object_audio_dlna_iot_/?page=2
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU considers delaying end of mobile roaming charges -draft
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/eu-telecomunications-roaming-idUSL6N0QK4EX20140923
* Draft removes fixed date for end of mobile roaming fees
* Telecoms operators had fought end of roaming charges
The elimination of roaming fees for using mobile phones in other EU countries could be delayed in what would be a win for big European telecoms operators at the expense of consumers, according to a draft EU proposal.
Outgoing EU telecoms commissioner Neelie Kroes had made ending such charges for people using their phones across borders inside the bloc a banner element in a package to overhaul the ailing telecoms sector and in April EU lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to abolish roaming fees by 2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things: Major players agree on goals, but little else
Everyone loves those Things, just not on each others’ terms
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/09/03/linuxcon_internet_of_things_talks/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom Beefs Up Switch for SDN
Ethernet chip packs 7B transistors
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324037&
Broadcom will nearly double the density and memory in its next-generation Ethernet switch in response to the rising size and complexity of data center networks. The Strata XGS Tomahawk packs 7 billion transistors and 480 Mbits memory into a chip aiming to keep pace with the trend toward software-defined networking.
Big data center operators such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook are calling for ways to speed and simplify their rapidly expanding networks. They are driving the industry to an emerging class of network virtualization protocols and chips that must deliver both significantly more bandwidth and more flexibility.
In response, market leader Broadcom said it is sampling Tomahawk, a chip that sports 128 25 Gbit/second Ethernet ports and new capabilities for tracking packets. Rival Cavium recently announced its Xpliant chip with similar targets and bandwidth, but it has not yet taped out.
“It’s likely to take a full year to get a device of the Tomahawk’s complexity to production,” Wheeler said. Meanwhile “Cavium’s chip depends a lot on the software which they have been writing from scratch,” he said.
For example, carriers are developing the so-called Network Services Header. The Open Networking Foundation is said to be at work on a major overhaul of its ground-up effort, OpenFlow. Meanwhile Geneve, a new overlay standard for existing networks, is in the works and could replace the existing VX-LAN and NVGRE overlays.
Tomahawk supports NVGRE and VX-LAN, specs which Broadcom co-authored and are still in early phases of adoption, said Sankar. The chip also supports a number of other protocols including today’s OpenFlow 1.3 which Broadcom supports in software
Broadview is a new integrated capability to track a set of network performance metrics. It also can mirror, re-direct or trace packets.
Mellanox could become the next switch chip vendor to join the SDN fray. It rolled out a 3.6 Tbit/s Infiniband chip recently and is expected to follow up with an Ethernet version, Wheeler said.
“It’s a very exciting point in data center networking,”
“a lot of room for innovation and that’s happening at the levels of silicon, network and software levels,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NXP Beats Qualcomm, Gets First V2V Design Win
Delphi supplies car-to-car modules to GM
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324052&
The future of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications in the United States appears more imminent, now that Delphi Automotive revealed that it has become the first Tier 1 to supply car-to-car communications modules to General Motors’ 2017 Cadillac models.
Driving Delphi’s V2V and V2I communication platform are application software developed by Cohda Wireless and NXP Semiconductors’ wireless chipset that runs IEEE 802.11p, also known as dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) — a wireless communication standard designed for the automotive industry.
The connectivity among cars and between cars and infrastructure will make the traffic much safer and “greener,” Brown said
Few chip vendors have talked about their plans for 802.11p offering. Qualcomm is the only exception. Stressing its strong presence in the in-car cellular modem market, the company talked about integrating DSRC technology into its WiFi chip when it announced the Snapdragon automotive solutions this year.
Last year, Cohda received capital infusion from Cisco and NXP. It is now one of the key members of the V2V and V2I “ecosystem” NXP is developing.
The DSRC module, designed by Cohda and NXP, contains NXP’s radio and baseband chips, Cohda’s firmware, and GPS/Glonass capabilities. When the DSRC module is installed in a car, it will also need an MCU that can run V2V and V2I applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Energy Harvesting Opens Market for Devices on the Internet of Things – and PLM Helps it Grow
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/103709
As many “things” on the Internet of Things become smaller, more mobile and even wearable, they proliferate in the billions. The opportunities are immense, but in a world market with hugely diverse suppliers and users, an appropriately scaled product life cycle management system is essential.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Drop-in Bluetooth 4.0 module-on-module for control systems
http://edn.com/electronics-products/other/4434767/Drop-in-Bluetooth-4-0-module-on-module-for-control-systems
Toshiba has a development module-on-module (or “Module2″) that combines a Bluetooth 4.0 module with an MCU to shorten development times. The Module2 enables simple integration into sensor control systems, lighting and heating systems, PC peripheral systems and legacy host control systems.
The Module2 measures 25 x 17 mm and is suited for battery driven applications. It comprises a Toshiba TMPM395FWAXBG ARM Cortex M3 core MCU along with a Panasonic PAN1026 Bluetooth 4.0 dual mode module, with antenna, that incorporates a Toshiba TC35661-501 Bluetooth LSI with embedded Bluetooth stack and SPP and BLE Gatt profiles.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > From the Edge
Internet of Things: Innovation Contests
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/from-the-edge-/4434854/Internet-of-Things–Innovation-Contests?elq=8bc799508dd641cd837a06f1651da8c6&elqCampaignId=19294
As you may have noticed, one of the hottest topics in technology, and a sector ripe with innovation, is the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is the growing web of interconnected physical objects and machines – refrigerators, cars, medical devices, thermostats, even toothbrushes – capable of delivering real time intelligence and updates that improve and simplify daily life. Business Insider estimates 1.9 billion IoT connections today, and 9 billion by 2018 – roughly the current number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearables, computers, and PCs combined.
Until recently, developing and deploying IoT solutions was a time consuming and challenging endeavor due to the complexity of machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, the engine behind the IoT. A diverse ecosystem of solution providers and wireless network technologies required complex integration engineering and long development timelines that often stalled projects before they even got off the ground.
Thankfully, a new breed of consolidated M2M solutions and services are speeding development and transforming today’s marketplace.
For example, development kits, such as the Java™-based Gemalto Cinterion® Concept Board (see Figure) enable professional developers and hobbyists to transform ideas into prototypes
To motivate solutions and ideas that can help improve our daily lives, Gemalto is sponsoring two separate competitions this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Designing for wearables: Tremendous opportunity but not without challenges
http://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4434880/Designing-for-wearables–Tremendous-opportunity-but-not-without-challenges
There’s been much buzz about wearables in recent years but little real traction so far. While Apple’s Watch announcement earlier this month shined a spotlight on the segment, there are still design and supply-chain challenges to overcome before engineers and industry players can begin to fully take advantage of the rapidly increasing wearables opportunity.
Many believe the wide-open wearables space, a hot topic at next week’s Designers of Things Conference, will be won not by a single industry player or platform, but by the maker community and open-source replications on designs.
Freescale is taking that route with the WaRP (Wearables Reference Platform, photo right) open-source community board designed from the ground up specifically for the wearables space.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco: Hand us the keys. We’ll drive Intercloud into telcos, Google
And Azure, of course… Just a couple of quarters
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/25/cisco_woos_azure_google/
Cisco will announce tie-ups between its Intercloud platform and the major public cloud vendors over the coming quarters, the network giant’s EMEA partner boss said today.
Snagging the likes of incumbent telecoms operators, and ensuring full bi-directionality with the likes of Azure and Google is crucial if it is to establish its Intercloud Fabric as the default platform for moving workloads between data centres, while promising CIOs and partners that security and policy restrictions will not be compromised.
Cisco has characterised the existing public cloud services as islands between which it is hard to shift workloads – much as there were once networks which were cut off from each other in the pre-internet era. And what connected those islands in Cisco’s view? Well, Cisco.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alcatel-Lucent techie: Race for ‘5G’ technologies is ‘ridiculous’
’5G’ efforts are missing the point of the new mobile networks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/25/5g_efforts_are_missing_the_point_of_the_new_mobile_networks/
Vendors are generally delighted to raise their profile by pretending to have “5G” systems just around the corner, but it was a CTO from Alcatel-Lucent who threw a welcome bucket of cold water over the 5G hype at last week’s CTIA Super Mobility Week conference in Las Vegas.
Michael Peeters, the company’s wireless CTO, told the conference’s Towers & Small Cell Summit stream that the current talk about 5G development was “ridiculous” because it was focused on the old issues of technologies to increase capacity and bandwidth, whereas the real revolution would come from an architecture which was open, federated and “invisible”.
He made a very good point – vendors and operators are largely staying within their comfort zones, thinking of 5G as an extension to 4G, with or without a brand new air interface, and focusing on extending current technologies, such as MIMO antenna arrays, rather than on a completely new approach.
Yet with many physical network technologies approaching their limits, the real challenge is to enable a host of different platforms to work together as a seamless whole, largely software-controlled and flexible enough to support any usage pattern from low bandwidth smart meters to future generations of super-HD video.
Don’t forget LTE and ‘4.5G’
Peeters’ own view of 5G is that it will create a fully open frame-work which will be invisible and “non-disruptive” to users and operators, enabling huge numbers of services and vast capacity be-hind the scenes through its flexibility, but leaving providers to differentiate with their applications and services. This platform will evolve after an interim “4.5G” stage, which will be more conventionally focused on extending current architectures to support greater capacity and cost efficiency. In particular – toeing the ALU company line here – 4.5G will involve very dense networks of small cells, to slash cost of ownership of networks in congested areas.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom looks to 25/50/100 G to drive new chip
‘Tomahawk’ sampling now, expect products 2015
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/25/broadcom_looks_to_2550100_g_to_drive_new_chip/
Broadcom is lining up its next assault on the cloud-scale Ethernet market, announcing the next iteration of its high-performance switch silicon due to appear in products in 2015.
By-the-numbers, the Tomahawk is a bit of a brute, a 7 billion transistor monster configurable from 32 ports of 100 Gbps, 64 ports of 40 or 50 Gbps, or 128 ports of 25 Gbps, claiming an aggregate 3.2 Tbps bandwdith.
That lines the chip up with Broadcom’s involvement in the 25/50 G Ethernet consortium launched earlier this year, which specs interfaces for 25 Gbps single-lane or 50 Gbps dual-lane physical links.
“Switches are limited in the number of endpoints they can talk to”, Sankar said, making it vital not only to lift the performance of switches, but their density.
The chip also lines up with the 25/50 Gbps Ethernet group’s aim of giving performance a kick along without needing new cabling – getting higher performance than current 40 Gbps links on half as many copper or fibre lanes means switch builders will be able to get twice the connectivity density.
In the fabric layer, Sankar said, running up 100 Gbps links on the same number of physical lanes as 40 Gbps means 2.5 times the fabric performance.
Apart from raw performance, the chip takes in management and control requirements, building BroadView instrumentation and FleXGS packet processing engines.
With the data centre market prepping the transition from 10 Gbps server connections and 40 Gbps storage connections, upwards to 25/50 Gbps and 100 Gbps requirements, Sankar says there’s strong potential for OEM shipments to drive Broadcom’s 2015 performance
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where’s My Data? Internet File System for the Nucleus RTOS
http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/blog/post/where-s-my-data-internet-file-system-for-the-nucleus-rtos-3a3211fc-36a1-4c7e-aa42-df535e8dff8a?contactid=1&PC=L&c=2014_09_24_embedded_technical_news
Customers building applications for consumer products, medical devices, industrial automation, mil/aero, smart devices and so on have common concerns around managing data. Many developers turn to the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol that lets programs make requests for files and services on remote computers on the Internet. Since CIFS uses the client/server programming model, the client program can make requests of a server program (usually in another computer) for access to a file or to pass a message to a program that runs in the server computer. The server takes the requested action and returns a response.
Sounds like a great feature, right? What about implementing CIFS in embedded devices?
CIFS NQ™ enabled devices can perform full client, server, and client/server file sharing functions in a Microsoft Windows networking environment. This capability is important because multiple devices can safely and remotely browse each other’s shared folders including the ability to read, write, edit, copy, delete and update each other’s files without the need to transfer files to/from the device’s local disk or memory.
There are many embedded devices that make use of CIFS NQ
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things sue the manufacturers: IT component shall withstand 20 years
Internet of Things is expected to revolutionize everyday life more than the industrial revolution in due course. OEMs must be prepared to change their behavior.
Electronic Component price has been reduced so that the smaller and more affordable devices should be connected to the Internet. Also, manufacturers are facing a new situation, as objects to be connected to IT devices and components would be good to take 20-30 years.
“Many of the objects have a long life – computer equipment and electronic parts are not. This is the IT industry in a whole new perspective, the communication technology should serve two to thirty years, “explains internet architecture expert Jari ArkkoEricssonilta. He is also the Internet Engineering Task Force Chairman of the organization.
For example,the smart electricity meter manufacturers are already prepared for the fact that the current mobile networks (GSM) function at some time in the future, and therefore, the meters have standby option to start to use LTE networks easily.
many other everyday objects we use or devices are already connected to internet: alarm and air conditioning systems, heart rate monitors, smart watches, wearable technologies is. And new applications will continue.
Internet of Things is also affecting the construction and building technology. Some houses have a number of sensors to warn of potential moisture damage. Sensors and radars are maybe going to be integrated into the pipes.
Finnish IoT-related research and development is the world’s leading away, and the Finnish know-how of interest to the world. VTT, Tekes and the Finnish universities is ongoing related research and development programs.
“You have to remember, however, that the Internet of Things with technology is developed very active not only in Finland,”
The Internet of Things progressed considered to solve many security issues.
“Security is a big challenge.”
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/teknologia/93799
Tomi Engdahl says:
Out of stealth, Saisei pitches IP flow controller
Scavenging wasted bandwidth
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26/out_of_stealth_saisei_pitches_ip_flow_controller/
Year-old startup Saisei is putting forward an SDN management framework it reckons can free up as much as half of the network performance that now gets sucked up by various overheads.
The outfit’s FlowCommand network performance enforcement (NPE) software is designed to take IP packet queuing and scheduling out of the performance equation in big networks, imposing control on the millions of flows that a big operation needs to serve.
The company claims its network-edge FlowCommand can handle up to five million flows on a 10 Gbps network, monitoring all flows 20 times per second, and can apply policies in under a second. All of this, the company says, is designed to protect networks and users against “aggressive” users or flows – the 20 per cent that occupies most network traffic.
FlowCommand is designed for deployment in virtualised environments on generic x86 hardware as a network-edge solution just behind the router and switch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Transit price falls slowing: Telegeography
Brazilians get waxed, Londoners get a steal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26/internet_transit_price_falls_slowing_telegeography/
IP transit prices are still declining globally, but in bad news for ‘net users of all kinds, the declines are slowing.
In what could be an indicator of continuing heavy demand for transit services, research company Telegeography says what was once a rapid fall in transit prices has eased considerably. The company says the 50 per cent year-on-year drops common just a few years ago are no longer in evidence.
“The median price of a 10Gbps Ethernet (10 GigE) port in Hong Kong, London, New York and Sao Paulo fell less than 15 per cent annually in each of the past two years,”
Transit services are what allow ISPs to pass traffic to and from the big Internet backbones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP gets appy over SDN
In-house and partner software in SDN app store
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26/hp_gets_appy_over_sdn/
“It works for dating apps, so why not for SDN infrastructure?”, HP might be hoping, with the launch of its software defined networking app store.
The SDN App Store, taking sign-ups here, is a shot at putting partners, consulting and support services for SDN applications in one place.
Tools like network monitors, virtualised firewalls, ditto-load balancers, and other applications from both HP and its partners will be available for customers to download and run.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook to win EU approval for $19 billion WhatsApp bid: sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/25/us-whatsapp-m-a-facebook-eu-exclusive-idUSKCN0HK1FV20140925
Facebook (FB.O), the world’s leading social network, will win unconditional EU approval for its $19 billion offer for mobile messaging startup WhatsApp in a deal pitting it against telecoms operators, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
A plan by WhatsApp to add free voice-call services for its 450 million customers later this year, however, makes it a potentially powerful competitor to companies such as Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI) and Telefonica (TEF.MC).
Analysts said the move is likely to hit telecoms providers’ turnover as the industry heads into its fifth year of revenue decline. The sector had looked to EU regulators to extract concessions from Facebook.
WhatsApp and its rivals such as KakaoTalk, China’s WeChat and Viber have in recent years won over telecoms operators’ customers with a free text messaging option, posing a serious threat to the sector’s revenues from this business, which totaled about $120 billion last year, according to market researcher Ovum.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Binge alert: Subscribers now watch more than 90 minutes of Netflix every single day
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/25/binge-alert-subscribers-now-watch-more-than-90-minutes-of-netflix-every-single-day/
Just one more episode: All of your binge watching is adding up, to an average of 93 minutes of Netflix viewing per day, and around 45 GB of data every month.
the overall amount of Netflix streaming has increased 350 percent over the last ten quarters.
As Netflix continues its international expansion, more and more of that streaming time comes from outside of the United States. In Q3 of 2011, 94 percent of all Netflix streaming hours were coming from U.S. subscribers, according to the report. Fast forward to Q2 of 2014, and the U.S. contribution to Netflix’s total streaming hours declined to 72 percent.
Netflix performs a lot better for customers of some ISPs, and worse for others.
For example, Netflix advises its subscribers that 4K streams can consume up to 7 GB of data per hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM gives Internet of Things a piece of its mind – the Cortex-M7
32-bit core packs some DSP for VIP IoT CPU LOL
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/24/arm_cortex_m7/
ARM has had a look at the fridges, speakers and robots that use its Cortex-M series processor cores and decided they need a few maths lessons.
The Brit CPU designer has today revealed its new 32-bit Cortex-M7, which will sit at the top of its its microcontroller-grade family of cores in terms of performance. The previous cock-of-the-roost was the Cortex-M4.
The M7, we’re told, has twice the DSP power of the M4 by executing twice as many instructions simultaneously, and it also helps that the M7 can operate at a higher clock frequency than the M4.
DSP (digital signal processing) is particularly useful for efficiently juggling incoming streams of audio and video data, and performing fast motor control – better than a generic CPU core can manage.
More intelligent SoCs means less data flying back to base – since the microcontrollers can make more of their own decisions – which will result in simpler networks (and less information to intercept) but it’ll make the code on the cores more complex – and that means more bugs, potentially.
According to ARM’s benchmarking, the M7 achieves five CoreMark per MHz, or a 2,000 CoreMark score at 400MHz in a 40nm process at low power, if you run the code in tightly coupled memory. The M4 can hit 3.4 CoreMark per MHz,
Atmel, Freescale and ST Microelectronics have already snapped up licenses to pump out chips with M7 cores in the 90nm to 40nm process range; each core taking up a 0.1mm square of silicon, before the manufacturer whacks peripherals, control logic, power management, and so on, into a chip package.
These will join the 2.9 billion Cortex-M cores embedded in devices in 2013, ARM is keen to tell us, and 1.7 billion already out the door in the first six months of 2014. As well as comms and embedded tech, 14 per cent of the 2013 figure apparently ended up in payment cards, a world away from drones and the Internet of Things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Radios Tune Up for 5G
Air interfaces may arise for multi GHz, IoT nets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324087&
Expected by 2020, 5G cellular may spawn two new air interfaces as well as new antenna designs based on emerging massive MIMO technology, wireless experts say. Along the way, LTE will crack the Gbit/s barrier.
“We should consider a new air interface for the millimeter wave band, and there are some opportunities for [another air interface aimed at] IoT access,” said Kenneth Stewart, chief wireless technologist at Intel in a talk at an event here hosted by WiFi specialist Quantenna.
Stewart suggested that in the broad category of the Internet of Things some devices could benefit from a tailored air interface, such as devices “that don’t have to sync before they transmit… We’d like to see innovation targeted to specific use cases.”
LTE and WiFi will continue to live on for years after the advent of 5G, Stewart said. He showed a concept for a 2020 wireless chip (above) using a full suite of 3, 4, and 5G interfaces supporting as many as 60 LTE bands in addition to 802.11ax WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. “We don’t see a fundamental obstacle to delivering this device.”
Experts here generally agreed the advances of 5G will depend heavily on use of millimeter wave frequencies and massive MIMO antennas. “Most of the interest and benefits [of 5G] lies in [use of] millimeter wave bands” around 28 to 90 GHz, Stewart said.
In a brief discussion with EE Times, Stewart noted significant challenges remain in building such antenna arrays with consistent performance at low cost.
“There’s a fundamental disconnect between the information theory and implementation communities around this technology,” he cautioned.
Today 802.11ac supports multi-user MIMO on downlink channels, but companies such as Quantenna need to drive the support into uplinks for use cases such as sports stadiums, said panelist Arogyasawami Paulraj, a Stanford professor considered the father of MIMO.
In 5G networks, data may ride broadband millimeter wave channels while control signals take more pedestrian 3G routes, he added. “Despite the issues, millimeter wave frequencies will be used opportunistically, although at times you might have and then lose lots of throughput.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
MQTT vs. WebSocket
WebSocket is good for browsers, but is it optimal for embedded connectivity?
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/05/mqtt-vs-websocket.html
WebSocket was initially created in order to provide browser a way to establish a full-duplex communication channel. It’s the TCP socket of Web, as ordinary browser can not open a native TCP socket. WebSocket can be used for connectivity of embedded devices as well, but is it optimal for that purpose?
I have been looking for alternative solutions, but haven’t found a satisfying one, until I got informed about MQTT. The acronyme stands for Message Queue Telemetry Transport, a protocol initially invented by IBM.
IBM and IoT, doesn’t immediately sounds like they have anything in common. What does the Big Blue have to do here? Even if IBM is behind the protocol, it’s not a single source proprietary stuff. Protocol specifications are published publicly, and a technical committee of OASIS organization is on it’s way to standardize it.
MQTT over WebSocket
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/09/mqtt-over-websocket.html
MQTT over WebSocket sounds like “tårta på tårta” in the first place, like the Swedes tends to say. But is it really like that, just plain overhead?
All major MQTT brokers do support MQTT over WebSocket nowadays, including Mosquitto, ActiveMQ, HiveMQ, and more. What is it good for? I have already discussed about differences of these two protocols in my earlier posting MQTT vs. WebSocket.
There are at least two scenarios where MQTT over WebSocket does make sense
Tunneling always causes some extra overhead in data communication, but it can do some good as well. In many organizations, firewall rules may block direct MQTT communication, but WebSocket traffic is usually happily accepted. So it may be your only way to get through the firewall, even if you’re doing no evil.
b) Not only firewalls, but there may be other technical reasons preventing usage of the protocol of your choice. Many cloud environments which are build a top of CloudFoundry standard only accept incoming connections if forms of Http(s) and WebSocket(s). In order to use plain MQTT only, an external server running the broker is needed, and the connection is then created from the Cloud to the server. Many clouds do allow doing so.
Two or more MQTT brokers may be connected over WebSocket. In a sensor network kind of schenario, it may make sense that not every sensor connects directly to the back-end system (cloud). Instead let there be number of intermediate brokers to reduce the number of direct connections the back-end system must handle.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World’s Smallest 3G Module Will Connect Everything To the Internet
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/28/199208/worlds-smallest-3g-module-will-connect-everything-to-the-internet
The U-blox SARA-U260 chip module is only 16 by 26 millimeters — and it’s just been certified to work with AT&T’s 3G network. While consumers want 4G speeds for their browsing needs, 3G is plenty fast for the innumerable automated systems that will be necessary for the Internet of Things to work.
‘World’s smallest’ 3G module will bring Internet to all sorts of devices
The U-blox SARA-U260 chip module has been certified for use on AT&T’s network
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/438215/worlds-smallest-3g-module-will-bring-internet-all-sorts-devices
AT&T has certified a 3G chip module that the manufacturer calls the world’s smallest, but that doesn’t mean the carrier is going after toddlers as its last untapped customer base.
The U-blox SARA-U260 module, which measures 16 by 26 millimeters, can handle voice calls. But it’s not designed for really small phones for tiny hands. Instead, it’s meant to carry the small amounts of data that machines are sending to each other over the “Internet of things,” where geographic coverage — 3G’s strong suit — matters more than top speed. That means things like electric meters, fitness watches and in-car devices that insurance companies use to monitor policyholders’ driving.
The AT&T certification means device makers can now start building products around the U260 module for use on the carrier’s network. The U260 module is equipped for use on 3G networks with roaming to 2G where necessary, such as in rural areas. It includes features for various types of connected gear, including telematics devices, point-of-sale terminals, handheld devices and utility meters, according to U-blox. Along with A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System), it has a hybrid technology called CellLocate that uses cellular signals for a location fix indoors or in other locations where GPS isn’t available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cortex-M7 Launches: Embedded, IoT and Wearables
by Stephen Barrett on September 23, 2014 7:01 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8542/cortexm7-launches-embedded-iot-and-wearables
Tomi Engdahl says:
When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/09/28/1341216/when-everything-works-like-your-cell-phone
The Atlantic is running an article about how “smart” devices are starting to see everyday use in many people’s home. The authors say this will fundamentally change the concept of what it means to own and control your possessions. Using smartphones as an example, they extrapolate this out to a future where many household items are dependent on software.
When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/when-everything-works-like-your-cell-phone/379820/?single_page=true
When a thing connects to the Internet, three things happen: it becomes smart, it becomes hackable, and it’s no longer something you own.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What It’s Like To Use North Korea’s Internet
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3036049/what-its-like-to-use-north-koreas-internet
Even the country’s 2 million mobile phone subscribers can’t see outside the borders of Kwangmyong and Koryolink 3G.
“For the average North Korean, the Internet doesn’t exist,” Martyn Williams tells Co.Labs. He’s spent decades studying the country, and is now a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and the editor of the North Korea Tech blog.
Instead of access to the Internet, Williams tells me, the country has an intranet–an internal collection of networked servers and computers that is only accessible from inside North Korea’s borders. The name of this intranet is Kwangmyong, which roughly translates into “Bright” in English.
Kwangmyong is a free service to the country’s inhabitants–even though less than 10% of the population is believed to have ever accessed it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Stuff: Chip rivals try to stop Cortex-M7 from flexing ARM’s muscle
Processors, microcontrollers start to collide
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/29/processors_and_mcus_start_to_collide_in_iot_as_arms_m7_shows/
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing an estimated five times more quickly than the overall embedded processing market, so it’s no wonder chip suppliers are flocking to fit out connected cars, home gateways, wearables and streetlights as quickly as they can.
However, the sector is so new that there is considerable uncertainty about the precise capabilities which will be required, and new bars are set in critical areas like performance:power consumption ratios all the time.
For chip providers, the IoT presents a huge variety of target devices, but also presents the challenge of balancing the massive volume potential of low end “things” and sensors, with the higher prices and margins of full processors.
The launch of Quark saw Intel firmly staying at the high end of the IoT, with an architecture which drove down power consumption to ARM-like levels, but retained the level of processing power needed for products like gateways. The giant will probably not venture into the low end of the embedded space, where 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) still rule, rather than 32-bit platforms like Cortex-M7, but that does not mean the low end is not growing.
In quite large percentages of those projected billions of IoT devices, the very basic circuits – ultra-low power and with simple wireless connectivity – will always suffice, because many IoT devices will not need a full TCP/IP stack or IPv6, which are the big drivers behind 32-bit, and it is still easier to drive power levels right down with an 8-bit architecture.
Companies continue to develop 8-bit MCUs around the venerable 8051 core,
They can’t all consume 1W because we don’t have enough energy, so they need to consume microWatts and they need to be inexpensive.
Generally, though, there is a trend for more performance at the edge, so the challenge is to bring 8-bit power efficiency levels to bigger architectures. To the delight of chipmakers, the IoT is re-placing one chip with several in many instances – for instance, an Cortex-M0+ sensor hub coupled with a Cortex-M4 or –M7 doing the apps processing. And standalone MCUs will increasingly be superseded by SoCs integrating more memory and peripherals.
And the need to IP-enable devices, and to increase their intelligence, means that much of the innovation is going into the overlap territory between souped-up 32-bit microcontrollers like ARM’s, and low power microprocessors and SoCs with full operating systems.
ARM, as an IP supplier, does not need to make a firm choice. It needs only to ensure it covers every possible option customers might choose when planning their silicon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things Refrigerator Alarm
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/29/internet-of-things-refrigerator-alarm/
a project that sends out an alarm when the refrigerator door opens, alerting others that you’re on the prowl for munchies.
The device uses a light sensor connected to an OpenPicus IoT kit that contains a FlyportPRO Wi-Fi module. When the refrigerator door is opened, the device sends out an email message via a web server, which can be sent to whomever you choose. All of the project’s code and instructions are available on the project site as well.
The project is pretty clever in that no actual interfacing with the refrigerator is required
Hack your fridge with IoT Kit!
http://blog.openpicus.com/2014/09/hack-your-fridge-with-iot-kit.html
The alarm for your fridge activates at a certain time and sends an email (to your girlfriend, mum, enemy or whoever kicks your ass) every time you open the door of the fridge
How to set it up? Easy, FlyportPRO starts as softAP and you can connect to its web server where you can setup the email address of the receiver, the subject and the activation time (start/stop). After setup it restarts and connects to your Wi-Fi and the light sensors makes the rest. When you open the fridge the internal light will turn on and the email will be sent. Easy eh?
Once again we were surpriced about how easy is to make this kind of IoT hacks using the IoT Kit:
- Hardware setup = 30 seconds! No soldering, nothing!
- Software development is really easy since for each sensor we give you the library ready to use!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Content Centric Networking and a tour of (Xerox) PARC
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/29/content-centric-networking-and-a-tour-of-xerox-parc/
[Elecia White] and [Dick Sillman] are posing with the backbone servers they’ve been designing to take networking into the era that surpasses IPv6. That’s right, this is the stuff of the future, a concept called Content Centric Networking.
The Future of the Internet
Back to the story at hand: Content Centric Networking. I’ve already mentioned that this is an alternative to IPv6. There are so many addresses available with v6, when are we ever going to run out and need to replace it? That’s not really the point.
CCN looks at a better way to address the transfer of data. Right now everything is based on IP addresses; one specific address maps to one specific location. But our devices aren’t exactly stationary any longer and that trend is going to continue. CCN focuses on the data itself and the device it’s intended for — agnostic of the location — by using names instead of addresses for routing.
There’s a lot to consider with this, like security. I was a bit shocked to find that the system signs every single packet. It doesn’t really matter how the data gets somewhere, or if it falls into the wrong hands. Man in the middle, spoofed addresses, and a slew of other issues can be solved this way. But back to my shock: how can you sign every single packet without a huge speed hit compared to what we have today? And how can you figure out where content is going if there’s no address to send it to?
The answer to speed is the hardware that [Elecia] and [Dick] are working on. They showed me one of their dinner-tray-sized 26-layer router PCBs that gets slotted into the racks in their work area. Impressive to say the least.
The answer to the rest is not completely clear in my mind. But I think that’s about par for the course.
To truly grasp CCN you’re going to need a lot more reading
Comment on the article:
Okay really short answer: CCN is not viable. There is nothing it does better than what is already available. It has higher overhead, higher delay, higher jitter, lower robustness, more difficult setup, far more expensive hardware (CCN would require $100 routers to be replaced by $10,000 varieties) and virtually no market penetration. It is a dead-end in the way that IPX/SPX, multipath tcp, or sdn is. In some specific situations it is better, but the negatives are so enormous that it just isn’t going to happen at a large scale.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LTE Upgrade Will Let Phones Connect To Nearby Devices Without Towers
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/30/0042219/lte-upgrade-will-let-phones-connect-to-nearby-devices-without-towers
A new feature being added to the LTE protocol that smartphones use to communicate with cellular towers will make it possible to bypass those towers altogether. Phones will be able to “talk” directly to other mobile devices and to beacons located in shops and other businesses. Known as LTE Direct, the wireless technology has a range of up to 500 meters, far more than either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
Future Smartphones Won’t Need Cell Towers to Connect
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530996/future-smartphones-wont-need-cell-towers-to-connect/
Qualcomm, Facebook, and other tech companies are experimenting with technology that lets smartphones use their LTE radio to connect directly to other devices up to 500 meters away.
An autonomous, “always on” proximal discovery solution.
https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/research/projects/lte-direct
LTE Direct is a new and innovative device-to-device technology that enables discovering thousands of devices and their services in the proximity of ~500m, in a privacy sensitive and battery efficient way. This allows the discovery to be “Always ON” and autonomous, without drastically affecting the device battery life unlike other Proximity solutions such as OTT based that use GPS, or BT-LE and WiFi Direct.
LTE Direct uses licensed spectrum, allowing mobile operators to employ it as a way to offer a range of differentiated applications and services to users. It relies on the LTE physical layer
Tomi Engdahl says:
If It Ain’t Automated, You’re Doing It Wrong
http://www.thenewip.net/author.asp?section_id=289&doc_id=710937&cid=oubtrain&wc=4
In all the excitement over virtualization and the impact that NFV and SDN will have on telecom networks, one stark reality remains for every IP network operator: However you are evolving your network, if you aren’t automating the back-end processes, you’re doing it wrong.
This has been a reality for telecom network operators for years now, and most have been working very hard at this task, not only because automation leads to higher service quality and faster service delivery but because it also generally means lower costs of operation.
As those engaged in this process know all too well, introducing automation means extracting people, reducing the human error factor in the process, and enabling flow-through processes that start with the customer input.
Introducing software-defined networks and network functions virtualization into the telecom world will enable a much greater degree of network programmability, with centralized control over network resources that allows them to be targeted and re-used in the way that meets customer demand in the most efficient way possible. Moving services to the cloud model then makes it possible to meet the on-demand needs of many enterprise customers.
a one-size cloud does not fit all businesses — the programmability must allow for customization to some degree, so each customer’s slightly different approach can be accommodated.
“There are a lot of processes we have had in place for the last 50 years that we need to get rid of,” he said. “This is how our companies have run — with an enormous workforce.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alca-Lu spinoff Nuage plugs into Oracle SDN
Integrated with OpenStack under Oracle Linux
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/30/alcalu_spinoff_nuage_plugs_into_oracle_sdn/
Alcatel-Lucent’s Nuage software-defined networking (SDN) venture has announced that it’s adding Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux integration to its stack.
Nuage, which spun out of Alca-Lu in April 2013, with the aim of splitting its SDN and network function virtualisation (NFV) work from the tyranny of the installed base. Its virtualised service platform (VSP) is designed as an abstraction layer for multi-tenant data centres with Layer 2, 3 and 4 services.
Its first release was, however, lined up with the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch Ethernet kit.
Nuage says the SDN plugin is ready for use now and has been tested against Oracle’s platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Carrier Ethernet Service Activation Testing and troubleshooting –– beyond Y.1564 : Part 1
http://www.veryxtech.com/blogs/releases-blog/
Abstract: As Carrier Ethernet service providers rollout newer services for Ethernet Business Services and Ethernet Backhaul, they would no doubt need to ensure the integrity of their circuits while keeping network downtime to a minimum. It becomes imperative that they are equipped with the right tools to benchmark these services to industry standards, while facilitating rapid turn-up and trouble shooting of the services.
Often Carrier Ethernet service providers rely on either ITU-T Y.1564 or RFC2544 tests, to check network integrity before service turn-up. But these tests however though necessary, are not sufficient to ensure service verification in CE networks.
Experience shows that like the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”, there are a number of other problems that could potentially lie undetected until customers start using the network. Configuration mismatches and equipment interoperability issues can result in a number of problems relating to VLANs, CoS, burst handling, security, etc.
When one of the devices in the network is configured with wrong VLAN mapping, it results in the wrong VLAN traffic being received at the other end of the circuit, resulting in unpredictable traffic behavior. The process of isolating the specific device which was configured with the wrong VLAN mapping could be quite cumbersome using just packet dumps.
Class of Service: Similarly, the Class of Service information which is carried over the packets in the 3-bit Priority Code Point (PCP) information is also prone to be misconfigured during circuit creation. As a result, the Class of Service policies will be inappropriately applied in the misconfigured node
While Y.1564 tests verify bandwidth profile parameters such as throughput, frame delay, frame delay variation and frame loss, the tests can pass in many cases due to arbitrary traffic. It is important to ensure that the bandwidth profile parameter values are verified for the right traffic, otherwise surprises could result when customers start using the service.
While Y.1564 verifies traffic behavior of SLA parameters, it is also important to verify the parameter values for various frame sizes, because different applications using the service would drive traffic of varying frame sizes. So it is important that the circuit behavior is verified for all frame sizes less than the MTU supported for the service, to completely ensure the SLA compliance for all applications using the service. Without such verification, there is always a chance that SLA non-compliance is reported by the customer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Atmel and Arduino Announce Wi-Fi Shield 101 at World Maker Faire
http://hackaday.com/2014/09/30/atmel-and-arduino-announce-wi-fi-shield-101-at-world-maker-faire/
Atmel and Arduino teamed up at World Maker Faire to introduce the Wi-Fi shield 101. [Gary] from Atmel gave us the lowdown on this new shield and its components. The shield is a rather spartan affair, carrying only devices of note: an Atmel WINC1500 WiFi module, and an ATECC108 crypto chip.
The Wi-Fi shield 101 and associated libraries should be out in January 2015. We can’t wait to see all the new projects (and new ways to blink an LED) the shield will enable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sep. 30, 2014
Offline and Falling Behind
http://internet.org/press/offline-and-falling-behind
Bringing the next 4.4 billion people online will require companies, governments, and civil society to work together to remove barriers that stand in the way of a more connected world.
A new study released today from McKinsey & Company, “Offline and falling behind: Barriers to Internet adoption,” with research conducted in collaboration with Facebook, identifies the barriers that impede consumers from gaining access to the Internet. The study examines the trends that have fueled Internet growth, the demographics of the offline population and describes four categories of barriers: incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability, and infrastructure.
The report found that there are currently 4.4 billion people without Internet access, and 3.4 billion of those people live within 20 countries. The offline population is disproportionately rural, low income, elderly, illiterate, and female. For example, between 1.1 billion and 2.8 billion people are out of range of an existing mobile network; 920 million people offline are illiterate; and, in developing countries, women are 25 percent less likely to be connected than men. An estimated 3.8 billion to 4.2 billion individuals will still lack access to the Internet in 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Calls for Simpler Protocol
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324106&
In my last blog, I described why Internet of Things traffic must be self-classified if we are to wring meaning from billions of devices. Those self-classification techniques work fine with IPv6 — but IPv6 has too much overhead for the vast majority of IoT devices. Instead, I suggest a minimal data format I call Chirp.
With Chirp only the most important elements of an IoT signal need be sent or received. A Chirp can consist of a classification of data type, some minimal (non-unique) addressing, the actual value or reading, a directional “arrow” indicating whether this is a message intended for a device or for a server, and a minimal checksum to protect against garbled transmissions.
As I explained in my book, the low overhead of a Chirp is especially important for the IoT because many devices will send or receive only a tiny squib of data with each message — often only 8 bits or fewer for a simple reading or status. This minimum message requires the addition of only 3.5 bytes of overhead to form a viable Chirp. Contrast this with roughly 40 bytes of overhead for an IPv6 packet to encapsulate that same 8-bit-or-less message, and the efficiencies become clear — not to mention the processor power and memory needed to manage an IPv6 connection.
A Chirp device need not be concerned with managing a higher-level client-server relationship. Instead, Chirps may simply be repeated when a reading or state changes. Since the overwhelming majority of IoT messages are each individually uncritical, the success of any one Chirp transmission is of no consequence. For those applications that are critical — a video surveillance data stream, perhaps — IPv6 is available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensors Build Case Against Cold
NYC startup wants to crack down on slumlords
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324130&
NEW YORK — As some predict that New York’s easy summer will turn into a hellish winter, a local startup aims to fix the freeze. Heat Seek, grand prize winner of this year’s NYC BigApps competition in the live and connected device categories, wants to keep tenants warm with inexpensive temperature sensors.
Each year, the New York City government logs 200,000 complaints about improper heating, Heat Seek said. Battling for heat can be an arduous process; local laws require handwritten temperature logs. Heat Seek’s system is designed to record apartment temperatures every hour and then present the data for lawyers, advocates, and inspectors.
The two-part system will feature a Digi Xbee-based sensor cell that will use an Analog Devices TMP36 temperature sensor to record an apartment’s temperature every hour. Hardware engineer Harold Cooper said the company chose Xbee to power the cell because of its reliance on mesh networks.
“We want all the data to get to our servers so it can be stored and analyzed and used to make reports for lawyers,” he told us. “But we don’t want each sensor to have Internet access, because of cost, and we can’t expect them to be in buildings that have wireless infrastructure.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google, Silicon Labs Mesh for ZigBee-Like Protocol
Silicon Labs to release a beta program
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324138&
With industry players all battling to “own” customers and their data, the Internet of Things (IoT) market looks chaotic and fragmented. One sign of the times is the host of industry groups and consortia that have sprung up in recent months and are jockeying to lead the IoT market.
These initiatives include the Qualcomm-led Alljoyn, the Intel-initiated Open Interconnect Consortium, Apple’s HomeKit, and Google’s Thread.
However, the IoT industry’s fragmentation is “somewhat artificial,” Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle told us. Everyone in the industry wants to build its own IoT “ecosystems” and “gateways,” and too many people are doing things their own way. But, then, “Who wants five gateways in a home?
Silicon Labs hopes that the industry will come together at least on the network layer to enable connectivity and interoperability among IoT devices.
ZigBee 3.0?
Google’s Nest-led Thread Group is meeting at its campus in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday to unveil Thread’s IP-enabled low-power network, its protocol and software stack that can run on today’s 802.15.4 products (which will be upgraded via software).
Tuttle said the IoT industry badly needs a “low-data-rate, low-power version of WiFi,” and Thread plans to deliver it. Silicon Labs is one of founding members of the group, along with ARM and Freescale.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet of Things? Hold my beer, I got this: ARM crafts OS to rule them all
New mbed operating system tries to pave over chip rivalries to lure in IoT startups
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/internet_of_things_hold_my_pint_i_got_this_arm_crafts_os_to_rule_them_all/
ARM will today announce a new operating system called mbed OS: it seeks to smooth over all the differences between various competing system-on-chips so that high-level applications can talk to sensors and other gizmos whether they’re using silicon from Atmel, Marvell, ST, Freescale, NXP, and so on.
It essentially comes in two parts: in the bottom half, there’s the mbed OS kernel running on system-on-chips in little devices: this OS provides the drivers, reacts to stuff happening around the hardware, and communicates with the outside world. Programmers can write software to run directly on top of the kernel; this code controls the operation of the device.
Then in the top half of the stack, there’s server-side software called the mbed Device Server that runs on much larger x86 or ARM-powered computers. This connects high-level applications, such as a website back-end, to the individual devices; it allows large bits of software to manage and draw from lots of little gadgets that don’t, individually, have much in the way of intelligence.
An internet-connected gateway, which could be a smartphone, tablet or a little box in a cupboard, talks to devices over short-range comms, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and then routes that information through to an mbed Device Server. That server could be in the cloud, or could be a local machine. A device could, if it’s capable, skip past the gateway stage and go straight to the server. It’s a flexible architecture.
Now, it appears, ARM’s tying everything together, and packaged it so that high-level app developers can prototype stuff for ARM-powered sensors’n’gadgets faster – since there’s a common, well-defined base from which to start.
The plan is to use open standards, such as HTTP and MQTT on top of TLS and DTLS, to deliver data securely between devices and whatever software is masterminding them. The software supports Bluetooth Smart; 2G, 3G, LTE and CDMA phone networks; Google Thread; Wi-Fi; and 6LoWPAN. It’s understood ARM is not using an open-source library for its TLS cryptography.
The new mbed OS is designed for the Cortex-M family, ARM’s series of 32-bit microcontroller cores. These can cost about $5 to $10 each, and range from the tiny M0 to the beefier M4 and M7. The mbed OS is not a port of an existing kernel
The OS is event driven rather than a classic real-time OS
mbed OS sleeps until an interrupt from a sensor or other peripheral wakes it up, it handles the event, makes a decision whether to trigger a signal higher up the stack, and then falls to sleep again.
“Today’s Internet of Things largely exist in isolation, and it has been impossible to realize a truly interconnected world where devices are interoperable with many different cloud services,” said Krisztian Flautner, ARM’s general manager of its IoT business.
ARM is working with IBM on its Smart Cities. This means street lights being able to sense, using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, how many people are nearby and adjusting their lighting accordingly, via a system running mbed Device Server. This can be more fine-grained that relying on primitive motion detectors.
ARM says it’s got a load of companies on board already in the new-look mbed project – from IBM doing the aforementioned Smart Cities to system-on-chip manufacturers taking the Cortex-M core blueprints and building peripherals around them in silicon. These manufacturers are expected to support the mbed OS, from the chips to the boards.
The mbed OS should be ready for ARM’s partners to use by Q4 2014, we’re told; don’t expect any devices using the software until 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet AMD’s pole-dancing 64-bit ARM chip: Hierofalcon wants to be in a mast near you
Virtual servers, virtual storage, virtual networks … will it end?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/01/amd_64bit_arm_network_virtualized_functions/
AMD is today pitching its 64-bit ARMv8 system-on-chip codenamed Hierofalcon at software-defined networks in telcos. Essentially, it thinks the processor can do the job of dedicated hardware better, in terms of size and performance per watt.
We’re told the processor can have up to eight Cortex-A57 cores, is being sampled by “the usual suspects” in the industry, and will later today, at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, California, be demonstrated running “Network Functions Virtualization” (NFV). AMD defines NVF as…
the abstraction of numerous network devices such as routers and gateways which enable relocation of network functions from dedicated hardware appliances to generic servers. With NFV, much of the intelligence currently built into proprietary, specialized hardware is accomplished with software running on general purpose hardware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google, Silicon Labs Mesh for ZigBee-Like Protocol
Silicon Labs to release a beta program
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324138&
However, the IoT industry’s fragmentation is “somewhat artificial,” Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle told us. Everyone in the industry wants to build its own IoT “ecosystems” and “gateways,” and too many people are doing things their own way. But, then, “Who wants five gateways in a home?”
Tuttle said the IoT industry badly needs a “low-data-rate, low-power version of WiFi,” and Thread plans to deliver it. Silicon Labs is one of founding members of the group, along with ARM and Freescale.
Thread’s IP-enabled low-power, low-data-rate network layer isn’t the same as that of ZigBee. It is more like “ZigBee 3.0.”
However, Thread Group will not wait for this to be discussed and approved by the ZigBee Alliance. Instead, the group will fast track it as a de facto standard and then bring it back to the ZigBee Alliance for approval. “We just think that it will be more efficient that way.”
Previously, ZigBee attempted to make its standard “IP-enabled” for the industrial market. Such efforts were mostly driven by utility companies. With too many players getting involved, the alliance made compromises along the way. In the end, Tuttle said, the IP-enabled ZigBee spec has yet to be broadly adopted.
Now with Google’s Nest on its side, along with help from ARM and Freescale, Silicon Labs is confident that the IoT industry will rally behind the new Thread network layer.
Competing groups such as Alljoyn, the Open Interconnect Consortium, Homekit, and even Thread have a recommended set of applications built on their own APIs. But each group could leverage Thread’s proposed IP-based mesh networking software stack for the Connected Home, he said.
ZigBee vs. Bluetooth Low Energy
The 802.15.4-based devices touted by the Thread Group aren’t exactly ZigBee, but they resemble ZigBee functionally.
No smartphones and tablets today come with ZigBee. The absence of ZigBee in such ubiquitous mobile products creates an opening for CSR Mesh technology, which takes advantage of Bluetooth Low Energy.
How is Silicon Labs, or the Thread group as a whole, going to address ZigBee vs. Bluetooth issues?
The solution, in Tuttle’s mind, is straightforward. The first step is to enable every ZigBee network device used at home to talk to smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy.
He revealed that Silicon Labs is developing a next-generation platform specifically designed to talk to multiple wireless technologies, including ZigBee, Bluetooth Low Energy, and sub-gigahertz networks. This isn’t just a new SoC with different RFs slapped on. “I’m talking about a programmable device platform.”
CSR mesh is a “system that isn’t well thought out,” Tuttle said. “It’s not standardized yet, and it hasn’t reached the same level of maturity as that of Bluetooth Low Energy or ZigBee.”
The Thread Group states on its website that its goal is to develop “a mesh network designed to securely and reliably connect hundreds of products around the home — without blowing through battery life.”
One of the basic requirements for the Thread networking protocol is that it’s designed specifically for the home with a robust self-healing mesh network. There’s no single point of failure. It’s interoperable by design using proven, open standards and IPv6 technology with 6LoWPAN as the foundation, and it must be just a software enhancement for today’s 802.15.4 products.
All Thread networks are supported by “banking-class, public-key cryptography,” the group says on its site. “Product install codes are used to ensure only authorized devices can join the network.”
The group says its networks are designed from the ground up to consume very little power. They are based on the power-efficient 802.15.4 MAC/PHY, and short messaging is designed to save bandwidth and power. Its streamlined routing protocol reduces network overhead and latency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM Extends Into IoT Software
New IoT division rolls device OS and cloud code
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324126&
This year, ARM will release a free, open source operating system for Cortex-M devices and processor-agnostic IoT cloud software that it will license on a royalty basis for large service providers. The so-called mbed platform is the first product of a new business unit focused on the Internet of Things and the latest effort at unifying the fragmented sector.
Embedded software companies are just beginning to discover their partner ARM is now a competitor.
ARM’s IoT unit joins at least 17 companies providing an embedded OS, including two from Microsoft. At least seven are based on Linux or other open source code, including FreeRTOS, one of the most widely used, according to the latest EETimes embedded systems study.
ARM has “huge market access, and it knows its licensees requirements months before anyone else, so it has a huge market advantage,” said Richard Barry, the developer and founder of the company behind FreeRTOS. The OS move is “analogous to ARM’s compiler strategy where it invests heavily in free compilers and also promotes its own heavily. ARM is full of contradictions… It both wants to enable processors and dominate the tools market at the expense of its ecosystem.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
MediaTek May Narrow Qualcomm’s Lead in China’s 4G Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324149&
MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest chip designer, has a chance to narrow Qualcomm’s lead in China’s 4G smartphone market with the launch of a new octo-core processor in the first quarter of 2015. MediaTek is sampling now the MT6795, a new 64-bit LTE True Octa-core SoC and will start selling the chip early next year, according to Joey Lee, a company spokesperson.
The Hsinchu, Taiwan, company, which has a larger share than Qualcomm in China’s 3G handset business, should be able to pare Qualcomm’s lead in the 4G LTE segment with the introduction of the MT6795, according to Randy Abrams, a Taipei-based analyst with investment bank Credit Suisse.
“The chip will provide Samsung Galaxy Notes-like performance at half the price,” Abrams said in a phone interview. “It’s for Chinese brands that want performance comparable to Galaxy Notes or the Apple iPhone at the equivalent of $300 to $400 retail for a handset.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearables & IoT Boom Creates Supply Chain Challenges
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324123&
Entrepreneurial designers are creating new ideas for wearable and connected devices daily. Consumers are racing to support their Kickstarter campaigns. Unfortunately, many brilliant ideas are killed when it comes time to move from prototype to full-scale manufacturing.
“The barriers to entry are low in the wearables market, because the parts exist,”
At the same time, the crowdfunding community is pushing back on designers to make sure they’ve considered manufacturing and procurement issues. “One of the major challenges that crowdfunding sites have run into is that a product idea will go on the site, get funded, and then run into problems with manufacturing,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM attempts to speed up ‘internet of things’ adoption with new platform
http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/01/arm-mbed-device-platform/
It’s the year 2014, and we’ve yet to have our flying cars and commuter jet packs. But we do have a glimpse of the future with the advent of the “internet of things.” It’s essentially the idea of connecting everyday objects — be it thermostats or kitchen appliances — to the web, in an effort to make our lives easier. As wonderful as that sounds though, development of new IoT technologies can be slow, due in part to the multiple different protocols in existence today and how tiresome it is to create an ecosystem from scratch.
The mbed OS, for example, already comes packaged with security, communication and device management features along with built-in support for key standards like Bluetooth Smart, LTE, Wi-Fi and Thread, while the mbed Device Server offers straightforward integration with cloud services. Plus, it’s all based on open standards, which could mean different smart gadgets from different manufacturers will finally be able to communicate with one another.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Network Function Virtualization goes open source
http://www.zdnet.com/network-function-virtualization-goes-open-source-7000034207/
Summary: Telecom and networking powers are uniting under The Linux Foundation to create an open source Network Function Virtualization reference platform.
In 2014, companies and open source programmers alike are working as hard as they can to virtualize hardware into software. The latest example of this is Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
The name of the NFV game is to take such appliances or server-based network operations as Network Address Translation (NAT), firewalls, intrusion detection, and Domain Name Service (DNS) and move them to virtual machines. Of course, there are all kinds of ways to do this on a single server, but NFV takes it far beyond that to a level where an entire carrier’s network services can be deployed and managed virtually.
To turn this idea into reality, almost 40 telecomm and network companies, such as AT&T, Cisco, HP, NTT DOCOMO, Telecom Italia and Vodafone, joined forces with The Linux Foundation to create a new collaborative project: Open Platform for NFV, (OPNFV). The ultimate goal to build a carrier-grade, integrated, open source NFV reference platform.
But, according to the Foundation, “While not developing standards, OPNFV will work closely with ETSI’s NFV ISG [NFV's standardization organization], among others, to drive consistent implementation of standards for an open NFV reference platform.” In short, the other major companies working on NFV may not be members of OPNFV, but OPNFV isn’t going to try to steer its own course away from the ETSI. In time, Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s Executive Director, expects other telecomm and networking companies to join OPNFV.
The initial focus of OPNFV will be on building NFV infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM), leveraging existing open source components where possible. These, Zemlin said, include OpenDaylight (software defined networking), OpenStack, Open vSwitch and the Linux kernel
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hong Kong’s Protesters Don’t Need the Internet to Chat With One Another
http://time.com/3449812/hong-kong-protesters-firechat/
FireChat connects directly to other protesters’ phones, building a massive network
When you pack that many people into a tiny area, your phone’s Internet grinds to a halt.
Smartphones should make it easier to organize protests, but they’re as good as bricks when cell towers get overloaded with traffic or when governments decide to flip the switch.
In the face of these hangups, Hong Kong’s demonstrators have turned to FireChat, a smartphone app that allows users to communicate even when they can’t get online or send texts. Unlike chat programs that work over the Internet, FireChat connects directly to other nearby users within up to about 250 feet.
FireChat is based on mesh networking, in which every device on a network works as a node for expanding that network. The idea’s been around for decades, now popular as a way to communicate during disasters like hurricanes. But Hong Kong shows it’s useful during civil disobedience, too. Some 200,000 people there downloaded the app between Sunday and Tuesday, said Micha Benoliel, CEO of Open Garden, the company behind FireChat, sending it skyrocketing to the top of the region’s app store charts.
Still, FireChat isn’t perfect for protesters. The chat rooms are open, making it easy for a first-timer to join — but that first-timer could also be a local authority poking around at the goings-on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT coding kit targets experimenters who can’t code
SAMLabs hits Kickstarter target
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/02/iot_coding_kit_targets_experimenters_who_cant_code/
London startup SAMLabs reckons the Internet of Things is just like LegoTM – and has put together a combo of hardware breadboard and software programming environment to prove it.
The Kickstarter-supported project combines designers and engineers from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College, London, working in Microsoft Ventures’ Whitechapel workspace.
The educational project is based on discrete Bluetooth Low Energy-connected single-function modules broken into two categories – “sensors” and “actors”.
The software is also designed to be easy: it’s a drag-and-drop visual environment, the group says, using flow-based programming.
The group is also open-sourcing everything – not only the software, but also the hardware schematics and board designs. Most of the components, they say, are off-the-shelf from electronics distributors.
SAM: The Ultimate Internet Connected Electronics Kit
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1842650056/sam-the-ultimate-internet-connected-electronics-ki