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.
1,803 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mellanox preps to ship 100 Gbps adapters
Pitching InfiniBand beyond the supercomputer biz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/mellanox_preps_to_ship_100_gbps_adapters/
Mellanox has rounded out its 100 Gbps InfiniBand interconnect strategy with the release of single/dual port adapters.
The ConnectX-4 release follows the March announcement of 100 Gbps-capable cable solutions and the aggregate 7.2 Tbps, 100ns-latency 36-port EDR (enhanced data rate) SwitchIB product in June.
The ConnectX-4 VPI adapter supports 10, 20, 25, 40, 50, 56 and 100 Gbps speeds, and can be configured as two InfiniBand ports, two Ethernet ports, or one of each.
The company’s VP of marketing Gilad Shainer told Vulture South that the company has high hopes for the 100 Gbps market, with the predecessor 40 Gbps products reaching into the hundreds of thousands of units per quarter.
He said that the kinds of interconnect speeds typically associated with the supercomputer market are now “emerging outside of HPC – various applications are showing the need for faster throughput.”
The new adapters support 150 million messages per second, Shainer said, and InfiniBand at 100 Gbps over copper is now becoming an attractive alternative to fibre. “Copper cable has a huge advantage over fibre because it’s cheaper,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco ends Q1 an inch ahead of guidance
Lines up new CFO to start in 2015
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/cisco_ends_q1_an_inch_ahead_of_guidance/
Cisco has farewelled its chief financial officer after announcing results that showed a still-beating heart somewhere in the giant switch market.
John Chambers, reading from the slides, said Cisco’s transformation means the company is moving from “selling boxes” to selling solutions “as we disrupt the market”
He claimed victory in the SDN market courtesy of the Nexus 9000 and ACI (application-centric infrastructure) product lines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ITU thought bubble ponders mass mobe-tracking to kill fake IT
Gabfest to consider how to spot and track counterfeit kit before it crocks networks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/itu_thought_bubble_ponders_mass_mobetracking_to_kill_fake_it/
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will next week meet to consider the issue of “counterfeit and substandard ICT products” and what can be done about them, but some of the proposals on the table look more than a little worrying.
Notice of the meeting was posted in late September, when the ITU announced next week’s gabfest would include “A focus of the event will be to examine the role of ICT innovations such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, Identity Management and the Internet of Things in tracing counterfeit goods and identifying their origins.”
The Ukraine’s submission [PDF] points out that the nation records the International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IMEI) of every mobile phone imported to the nation by registered importers.
“This type of system architecture has proved to be very effective in ensuring that mobile devices are imported in accordance with national regulations in the Ukraine and should be considered for application to combating the spread of counterfeit and substandard ICT equipment,” the submission says.
China’s contribution [PDF] explains how the nation’s food industry now tracks milk production with RFIDs on every cow and plans a regime whereby “… every can of milk power … can be tracked backward to its manufacture farm and forward to its distribution market.” The implication is that if this can be done for milk, why not ICT products?
The ITU thinks a response to counterfeit kit is justified because such devices are often sufficiently shoddy that they “… raise the risk of network disruptions and interoperability challenges that result in poor quality of service, with potentially dire consequences in emergency situations. They also pose major risks to consumers’ health and safety and that of our environment, especially related to the disposal of e-waste from such products.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T To “Pause” Gigabit Internet Rollout Until Net Neutrality Is Settled
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/11/12/2150201/att-to-pause-gigabit-internet-rollout-until-net-neutrality-is-settled
AT&T says it will halt its investment on broadband Internet service expansion until the federal rules on open Internet are clarified.
AT&T to ‘Pause’ Gigabit Internet Rollout Until Net Neutrality Is Settled
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2472059,00.asp
AT&T said this week that it will “pause” its gigabit Internet rollout until it has a better idea of what the government will do regarding net neutrality.
In April, AT&T committed to expanding its ultra-fast fiber network to cover up to 100 cities nationwide, including 21 major metropolitan areas.
But on Monday, President Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband as a telecom service rather than an information service in its upcoming net neutrality rules. The move would give the FCC more power to regulate ISPs (like AT&T) and wireless carriers.
Not surprisingly, the industry had a fit. But AT&T is apparently doing more than complaining — it’s pausing the rollout of gigabit Internet.
“We can’t go out and just invest that kind of money, deploying fiber to 100 cities other than these two million [covered by the DirecTV deal], not knowing under what rules that investment will be governed,”
AT&T U-verse with GigaPower is already available in Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. It also had plans to expand to Cupertino, Nashville, Raleigh, and more.
AT&T declined to comment on specifics of the pause.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lora-network connects nodes in a wide area
If you want to collect data from a wide areas, up to thousands of nodes consisting of IoT network, Semtechin developed by Lora is one of the most promising. The company does things with its technology Electronica in Munich covering almost the entire network.
Semtech divided Partners about a thousand Lora node. They automatically call Lora gateways, which were for demo purposes scattered around the city for about ten pieces.
Semtechin wireless products, Vice President Hardy Schmidbauer said that Lora links in a range of about 10 miles, or outdoors 15-20 miles. One gateway can serve up to a thousand knots.
Loran has the advantage of very low power consumption. A pair of batteries nodes can survive for ten years. Data is transferred to 300 bits, depending on the embodiment – a rate of one hundred kilobits per second, but in most applications, a sensor data rate is not much matter.
For the user, the great thing is the fact that the data is encrypted journey all the way from node to your application until the user. Lora gateway is basically just a stupid packets on the sender, who will continue the bursts received from the network to the server. Here they come – still encrypted – the user’s application.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2069:lora-verkko-yhdistaa-solmut-laajalla-alueella&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G technology in front of the big challenges
Tokyo, Japan Olympic Games in 2020 should come to an event where the 5G mobile networks for the first time on actual use. The schedule is very optimistic, because the 5G for the requirements of producing the next few years a lot of pain for developers.
Anritsu RF specialist Victor Fernandez told the Laguna fair in the future networks to import a 10 Gigabit connection for users indoors, 100 megabits per second, the outdoors and all of the current 90 per cent less energy.
These are the real challenges, but difficult to implement Fernandez, Laguna sees the 5G’s latency. Network delay to keep drop of 0.1 milliseconds. – I think this is the toughest challenge, he said.
5G networks, the physical demands are tough. In practice, they will require a hundred MHz wide bands and the transition to the millimeter wave region, ie from 30 to 100 gigahertz. In addition to that, will use all of the licenses and the free use of frequencies.
One hundred megahertz 5×20 MHz channel can link to a desired data rate at which data is modulated correctly.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2068:5g-tekniikan-edessa-isoja-haasteita&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things is not open to all
The Internet of Things is now a term with virtually every semiconductor company’s new product introduction. The hope seems to be that the future growth and Gloria part of sticking to your own business. But the views of the IoT through are still scattered. All it does not automatically good.
A good example of such a fragmentation of Cypress Semiconductor, which was presented at the fair new versions of programmable PSoC. The chips themselves are fine, but the mere addition of the radio circuits does not make them automatically IoT products. Cypress introduced a target for the use of, for example, the touch-controlled älylukon, which can now be ble connection due to pair the smartphone. Such an application is a great idea, but it does not yet have anything that designate the product as part of the Internet of Things.
IoT is all about massive data collection devices, where it would have been possible in the past, but there have been a variety of reasons in practice nonsense. It is necessary even after the data analytics in order to collected sensor data is obtained in a reasonable and useful way exploit.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2067:esineiden-internet-ei-aukea-kaikille&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using 433 MHz for wireless connectivity in the Internet of Things
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4437311/Using-433-MHz-for-wireless-connectivity-in-the-Internet-of-Things?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20141113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20141113&elq=419b68d3c39040ed9ce05e02f676a43d&elqCampaignId=20162
The radio frequency that you choose for your wireless IoT application is very, very important. There are regulatory and physical considerations that must be accounted for and weighed against the design goals and specifications of the IoT application you are developing. The three primary frequencies to consider in the US market are 433 MHz, 902-928 MHz, and 2.4 GHz. Here, I am going to focus on the first of these: 433 MHz.
As a reference example, consider Ninja Blocks, a popular IoT solution for makers and hobbyists that uses 433 MHz wireless communications. The vendor offers a plug-in module that adds this wireless capability to its Ninja Block (which is to all intents and purposes a gateway). The wireless “things” the company offers are switches, temperature sensors, wall sockets, and window/door contact sensors. Using these “things” as our analytical basis, let’s explore the regulatory and physical aspects of using 433 MHz.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates operation at 433 MHz under Regulation 10CFR47 Part 15.231. This frequency band is intended for remote control, and although other uses are allowed such uses are not optimal. If you want to do something like control a wall socket with a key fob by pushing a button, you are perfectly welcome to do so as long as the transmission stops within five seconds of the button being released. However, if you want to use a microcontroller or computer to activate the wall socket, you become a data transmitter and different restrictions come into effect.
Although this ruling contemplates a maximum of one second of transmission time, it really says that if you want to transmit at the maximum repetition rate, you can only transmit for 300mSec every 10 seconds. This restriction to one transmission in 10 seconds is the important thing to glean here.
Therefore, there are two modes, if you will, that you can use in this band.
The first is what I will call an event mode. This would be used for things like activating a wall socket when some event, such as throwing a switch, happens. Because you can only transmit for a maximum of two seconds an hour you will be limited in how many events you can handle even if you have very short transmission periods. Consider a transmission period of only 2mSec; you could transmit 1,000 of these messages in an hour. While that might be fine if you simply want to turn a couple of lights on and off, it is wholly inadequate if you want to do more.
Say we want to collect temperature readings to monitor trends. In this case, we will be regularly sending data to the gateway from the temperature sensor so the 15.231.e rule will apply. Under this rule, we can only transmit one time in 10 seconds. There are, in fact, inexpensive indoor/outdoor wireless temperature sensors with displays that currently operate under this rule, but they only tell us the current temperature. They are not capable of logging trends. Their display will update once every 10 seconds, but the user will never notice.
However, for our trend logging IoT application, this 10-second limitation can be a big problem.
The FCC regulations also limit transmitter power output. In the case of 433 MHz, there are two separate limitations. In the event mode application, 15.231.b applies and the transmit power is limited to about 10,000uV/meter at 3 meters.
My experience is that if I use a 3dBi antenna (¼ whip), I can usually transmit about 5mW into the antenna to generate the 10,000uV/meter at 3 meters.
With recent advances, however, 433 MHz now offers no cost advantage over 900 MHz.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Guy Sues Time Warner Cable For Deceptive Acts & False Advertising Over Bogus Promotional Rates, Hidden Fees
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20141111/06050429103/guy-sues-time-warner-cable-deceptive-acts-false-advertising-over-bogus-promotional-rates-hidden-fees.shtml
For many, many years, plenty of people have complained about hidden fees and bogus promotional rates offered by various broadband companies. It appears that Jeremy Zielinski has had enough. He’s actually sued Time Warner Cable in NY for “deceptive acts and practices” and “false advertising.”
Zielinski also notes some other practices that he suggests are unfair or deceptive, such as leasing certain modems that the company insists will not work on its system if you buy them (thus pressuring people into the lease fee)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alcatel-Lucent buries EDGE routers in x86 server fleet
Who needs ASICs with 320Gbps half-duplex performance?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/alcalu_sends_code_into_cloud_with_virty_router/
Alcatel-Lucent is the latest firm to announce that it’s turning its entire routing code base into a virtual router to run on x86 server platforms.
The VSR (Virtualized Service Router) is described by the company as a “suite of software applications” based on the company’s non-stop routing code, and the company’s planning a reveal starting now and continuing through 2015.
The company says it can now demonstrate 320Gbps half-duplex performance on a single x86 server running a virtualised Provider Edge routing platform, which as always means it’s faster than an unnamed competitor platform and much faster than another competitor (as per this canned release).
Compatibility with the company’s Service Router Operator System (SROS) and the 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) means the VSR can be deployed and managed from the same pane of glass as Alca-Lu hardware routers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Judge: Terror bomb victims CAN’T seize Iran’s domain name as compensation
ccTLDs aren’t like cars or houses
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/13/dc_court_cctlds_not_attachable_property/
A judge in Washington DC has ruled that a country’s entire internet registry cannot be seized, averting a global diplomatic crisis.
Lawyers for nine US citizens injured in an Iran-financed bombing in Jerusalem back in 1997 turned to the internet in an effort to recoup millions of dollars awarded to them against the government of Iran more than a decade ago. They wanted Iran’s dot-ir top-level domain handed over as part payment of that debt.
In other words, because an internet registry does not exist as its own separate entity, like a car or a house, it cannot be assumed to be an asset that can be seized.
Since these are ongoing services, the judge then argues that because a ccTLD is being constantly changed and updated it can be viewed as an “ongoing contractual arrangement that necessarily requires continued work or services to have value”. Because of this it cannot be “attached” to a lawsuit under Washington DC law.
“There is little authority on the question of whether internet domains may be attached in satisfaction of a judgment,” he leads off his rationale
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s 200 million cars already connected to the Internet. Research firm Gartner estimates that by 2020 the Internet in cars is already 3.5 billion.
Cars are things Internet, Internet of Things IoT, ie, the fastest-growing application.
All in all, was connected devices is Gartner’s assessment, in 2020 about 25 billion (when number is now about four billion). The figure does not include the ICT devices such as smart phones.
Gartner predicts that the IoT’s revolving around the business quadrupled in five years. One of the most rapidly growing area of the public sector, for example, street and road lighting becomes more intelligent.
Ericsson believes that in 2020 the world has 50 billion Internet connected device.
Telia has estimated that the corresponding figure in the Nordic countries and the Baltic countries in 2020 should be one billion.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/uutisia/gartner+nettiin+kytkettyjen+laitteiden+maara+rajahtaa/a1028517
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keyssa Promises to Let You ‘Kiss’ Your Cords Goodbye
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-13/keyssa-kiss-connectivity-promises-faster-wireless-data-transfer
You need almost a minute to copy a high-definition, 1080p version of the movie Avatar from a USB stick to a Microsoft Surface tablet. Eric Almgren and his colleagues at secretive Silicon Valley startup Keyssa can do it much faster. To demonstrate, Chief Executive Officer Almgren positions a hard drive implanted with the company’s wireless connector a few millimeters from a similarly equipped Dell tablet and taps them together, initiating a high-bandwidth data exchange. The movie, which had been saved on the hard drive, is on the tablet within five seconds.
Keyssa is trying to bring a new level of wireless transfer speed to consumer phones, laptops, and home appliances. After five years of working in secret, the company is unveiling what it calls “kiss connectivity.” Keyssa says the technology—essentially a complex radio that uses high frequencies—will provide a faster alternative to today’s tangle of wireless network equipment and cords, which often produce signals that interfere with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Keyssa aims to replace plugs and ports with low-power wireless connectors that use the extremely high-frequency (EHF) radio band used mostly by astronomers.
Keyssa’s backers include Intel Capital (INTC) and Samsung (005930:KS), and its chairman is Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell, father of the iPod.
Keyssa could make it possible to build a smartphone that has no ports at all—one that’s sealed up, waterproof, and never plugged into a bulky dock or a power outlet.
Keyssa’s connectors transfer up to 6 gigabits of data per second via EHF waves when two devices are held about a centimeter apart. As smartphones have shrunk and file sizes have grown, Wi-Fi and physical connectors, such as USB and HDMI cables, haven’t kept pace. The latest Wi-Fi standard has a top speed of 1.35 gigabits per second—and that’s if no one else is using the network. The fastest USB standard, around since 2008, tops out at 5 gigabits per second. Because it requires a large internal connector, it isn’t widely used. Near-field communication, the 15-year-old technology that powers Apple Pay, has a top speed of only about 400 kilobits a second—enough to transfer encrypted credit card numbers and little else.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Online next year 5 billion devices
Gartner predicts that was the end of next year is already connected to nearly five billion units. More than half of the devices is still a consumer electronics.
Connected to the network for new devices at an accelerating pace. Last year, the number was slightly more than three billion – the vast majority of mobile phones and computers – and this year the number will grow to more than 2.2 billion device.
In 2020, the network has already reached 25 billion units. In the past, there is talk of up to 50 billion units, which only goes to show that the future Internet of Things in volume so it is impossible to accurately estimate.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2074:verkossa-ensi-vuonna-5-miljardia-laitetta&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloated, slow and self-perpetuating: Cisco slams standards groups
Open source meritocracy would avoid ITU power grab and IETF mission creep, says Borg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/14/bloated_slow_and_selfperpetuating_cisco_labels_standards_groups/
Cisco’s chief architect and CTO for engineering David Ward has blasted standards development organisations (SDOs), asking whether they are “relevant in a rapidly expanding environment of Open Source Software (OSS) projects.”
Ward’s post on the subject is pointedly timed: he’s released it on the even of the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF’s) 91st gabfest. His post offers this criticism of standards bodies’ operations:
“Globally, the multiple extant SDOs appear incapable of defining and maintaining their boundaries and new technology study groups are exploding across them. Every organization is potentially (and dangerously) self-perpetuating and few SDOs have a life-cycle plan that bounds their authority and scope (applied to new technologies).”
The core of Ward’s argument is that open source projects move faster than SDOs. That speed means open source projects “can create a market-based consensus to fill a standards void.” He goes on to argue that it may not be a bad thing of open sourcerers do so, but also acknowledges the pitfalls of allowing by-default standards to emerge without governance. Overlapping efforts from camps with different opinions on appropriate technology, or vendors cynically open-sourcing software, both get a mention as undesirable practices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Net neutrality, Verizon, open internet … How can we solve this mess?
The finer points of telecoms policy explained in normal language
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/12/net_neutrality_legal_questions/
“Whether you use computer, phone or tablet, your internet provider should have a legal obligation not to block or limit your access to a website,” Obama said on Monday.
“Cable companies can not decide which online stores you can shop at or which streaming services you can use. Or let any company pay for priority over its competitors.”
Which all sounds like something everyone would agree with.
The key issue is defining what exactly cable companies provide to people when they get an internet connection.
A 1934 law on communications in the US was created to deal with America’s phone system in the early 20th century.
Recognizing that reality, in 1996, the US Congress reviewed telecommunications policy for the first time in 60 years, and made the internet more of an “information service” to distance it from phone services. That moved the internet away from the old laws governing telephone lines.
However, as the internet has became more and more a part of our lives, the FCC realized it needed the equivalent of the 1934 legislation: a way to limit what private companies were able to do.
And so it drew up new rules to do exactly that, and called them the Open Internet Order [PDF]. They were pretty similar to the earlier phone legislation except in one crucial aspect: they were not enshrined in law and did not pass through US Congress, leaving them open to legal challenge.
When the cable companies realized that their core TV businesses were under threat from Netflix and other online video streamers, Verizon decided to challenge the FCC’s rules in the courts. And it won.
There are some problems with simply reclassifying cable companies as “common carriers” as consumers groups and now President Obama wants to happen.
Aside from the fact that the legislation is horribly out of date and no less than 90 percent of it would have to be thrown out (or “forebeared”) in order to make it work, it is difficult to recognize the inherent difference between a phone line and internet access while at the same time saying they are the same thing in law.
At the moment, the “last mile” of cable from a person at home to the internet is assumed to be a commercial relationship between an ISP and the customer. You pay a provider money, you get internet access. What happens out there on the internet high seas is entirely separate.
Mozilla argues that a more realistic perspective is to assume there are two relationships going on at the same time. You have the commercial relationship with your cable provider but you also have relationships to other companies through that connection. A good example is Dropbox: you store your files on another company’s servers that are made accessible through your internet connection.
This “remote delivery” service is effectively between your ISP and the “edge provider”, in this case Dropbox
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s driving all over Bangladesh to teach students about the internet
http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/14/google-teaches-indian-college-students-about-internet/
Think you’ve been on some epic road trips? You’ve got nothing on Google: the Mountain View company just announced that it’s taking a 3G-equipped bus on a year-long tour of Bangladesh. The program, simply dubbed “Google Bus Bangladesh,” is an educational initiative that aims to expose 500,000 students to new tools and web applications that can help them start new businesses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skype launches Skype for Web beta to enable instant messaging, voice, and video calls in a browser — Please welcome Skype for Web (Beta) — Skype has been breaking down barriers to communication for more than a decade by being at the forefront of real-time voice and video.
Please welcome Skype for Web (Beta)
http://blogs.skype.com/2014/11/14/please-welcome-skype-for-web-beta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Future of the Internet of Things
http://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/the-future-of-the-internet-of-things/
When buying anything, you’re going to have a choice: good, fast, or cheap. Pick any two.
Such it is with radios. You can have long-range (good), high bandwidth (fast), or a low price (cheap). Pick any two. The Internet of Things demands a cheap, long-range radio module, but until now this really hasn’t existed. At Electronica last week, Microchip demoed their IoT solution, the LoRa. This module has a 15km (rural) or ~3km (heavy urban) range, works for a year on two AAA batteries, and is very cheap. Bandwidth? That’s crap, but you’re not streaming videos to your shoe.
The LoRa uses a bit of frequency somewhere below 1GHz to communicate with a base station. This base station serves as a bridge for these chips and devices to the Internet.
For the duration of Electronica, the entire eastern half of Munich was covered by exactly six base stations. One base station handled the city center.
This isn’t a first of its kind device – a few folks in Cambridge are working on Weightless, a similar small & cheap radio with terrible bandwidth that communicates with base stations. Weightless is the only protocol so far that isn’t proprietary, but TI, Sigfox, Semtech, and a whole lot of other companies are pouring money into devices like this. This is a huge market, and you simply would not believe the amount of time, engineering, and money that is going into these systems.
Is Microchip’s LoRa the future of the Internet of Things? That’s something for the market to decide. However, GSM will never be low power or cheap, WiFi will never be low power enough, and Bluetooth will never have the range.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What is LoRa™?
http://www.microchip.com/pagehandler/en-us/technology/personalareanetworks/home.html?tab=t3
LoRa is a wireless modulation for long-range, low-power, low-data-rate applications. LoRa networks typically are laid out in a star-of-stars topology in which gateways (base stations, concentrators) relay messages between end-devices and a central network server in the backend.
By achieving a range of more than 15 kilometers in a suburban environment and more than 2 kilometers in a dense urban environment, the LoRa technology solutions targets multiple application domains, like Internet-of-things (IoT), metering, security, machine-to-machine (M2M).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco to defend the operators the right to the money-making
Network equipment manufacturer Cisco have joined to oppose US President Barack Obama’s proposal to network neutrality to secure the future.
Web services are offered by companies such as Netflix and such as Kickstarter have praised Obama’s plan.
Cisco President and CEO John Chambers According to the restrictions, however, would reduce the operators’ desire to invest in their networks. This in turn would affect the selling Cisco networking equipment business.
“If operators do not benefit from the construction of the networks, they do not build networks,” Chambers believes.
According to the company the American operators in the investment desires of the decline was already a major factor in the reduction of Cisco equipment deliveries in the previous quarter.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/kaikki_uutiset/cisco+puolustaa+operaattoreiden+oikeutta+rahantekoon++oma+lehma+vahvasti+ojassa/a1028708
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco targets India with new investment
US$40 million part of US$1.7 billion on the table
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/16/cisco_targets_india_with_new_investment/
In a move interpreted as an endorsement of the new Indian government headed by reformer, and digital service delivery believer, Narendra Modi, Cisco wants to turn around its fortunes in India, and is reportedly putting US$1.7 billion on the table as part of its strategy.
Cisco reportedly wants India to rise to five per cent of its global revenue, partly to offset declining China revenue. The Economic Times reckons the company reported 18 per cent growth in the July quarter, but in the most recent quarter this had slowed to six per cent.
The company is hoping the investment will pay off in the form of government contracts and possible contributions to the country’s national broadband projects, which will eventually connect a quarter of a million villages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s New Data Center Is Bad News for Cisco
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/facebooks-new-data-center-bad-news-cisco/
Facebook is now serving the American heartland from a data center in the tiny town of Altoona, Iowa. Christened on Friday morning, this is just one of the many massive computing facilities that deliver the social network to phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs across the globe, but it’s a little different from the rest.
As it announced that the Altoona data center is now serving traffic to some of its 1.35 billion users, the company also revealed how its engineers pieced together the computer network that moves all that digital information through the facility. The rather complicated arrangement shows, in stark fashion, that the largest internet companies are now constructing their computer networks in very different ways—ways that don’t require expensive networking gear from the likes of Cisco and Juniper, the hardware giants that played such a large role when the foundations of the net were laid.
From the Old to the New
Traditionally, when companies built computer networks to run their online operations, they built them in tiers. They would create a huge network “core” using enormously expensive and powerful networking gear. Then a smaller tier—able to move less data—would connect to this core. A still smaller tier would connect to that. And so on—until the network reached the computer servers that were actually housing the software people wanted to use.
For the most part, the hardware that ran these many tiers—from the smaller “top-of-rack” switches that drove the racks of computer servers, to the massive switches in the backbone—were provided by hardware giants like Cisco and Juniper. But in recent years, this has started to change. Many under-the-radar Asian operations and other networking vendors now provide less expensive top-of-rack switches, and in an effort to further reduce costs and find better ways of designing and managing their networks, internet behemoths such as Google and Facebook are now designing their own top-of-racks switches.
This is well documented. But that’s not all that’s happening. The internet giants are also moving to cheaper gear at the heart of their massive networks. That’s what Facebook has done inside its Altoona data center. In essence, it has abandoned the hierarchical model, moving away from the enormously expensive networking gear that used to drive the core of its networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everyone loves the Spark Core – there are a few floating around the office here. Now there’s a new Spark. It’s called the Photon, and they’re packaging it as a module. There’s an STM32F2 microcontroller and a BCM43362 Wi-Fi transceiver packaged in a nice, FCC certified module. Very cool.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2014/11/16/hackaday-links-november-16-2014/
Introducing the Photon.
A $19 postage stamp-sized hackable Wi-Fi module for interacting with physical things
https://www.spark.io/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Weaves New Fabric
Smaller switches are better, says datacenter.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324638&
Facebook’s new datacenter marks the latest effort to design a warehouse-sized system as a single network. The effort suggests big datacenters may switch to using more smaller, cheaper aggregation switches rather than relying on –and being limited by– the biggest, fastest boxes they can purchase.
The company described the fabric architecture of its new Altoona, Iowa, datacenter in a Web post. It said the datacenter uses 10G networking to servers and 40G between all top-of-rack and aggregation switches.
The news comes just weeks after rival Microsoft announced it is starting to migrate all its servers to 40G links and switches to 100G. Microsoft suggested it might use FPGAs on future systems to extend bandwidth in the future given it is surpassing what current and expected Ethernet chips will deliver.
Big datacenters have long been pushing the edge of networking which is their chief bottleneck. The new Facebook datacenter appears to try to solve the problem using a novel topology, rather than using more expensive hardware.
Chip and systems vendors hurriedly developed efforts for 25G Ethernet earlier this year as another approach for bandwidth-starved datacenters. They hope some datacenters migrate from 10 to 25G to the server with road maps to 50 and possibly 200G for switches.
Facebook suggested its approach opens up more bandwidth and provides and easier way to scale networks while still tolerating expected component and system failures. It said its 40G fabric could quickly scale to 100G for which chips and systems are now available although rather expensive.
Facebook said its new design provides 10x more bandwidth between servers inside the datacenter where traffic growth rates are highest. It said it could tune the approach to a 50x bandwidth increase using the same 10/40G links. The fabric operates at Layer 3 using BGP4 as its only routing protocol with minimal features enabled.
“Our current starting point is 4:1 fabric oversubscription from rack to rack, with only 12 spines per plane, out of 48 possible.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Plan to Turn NYC’s Old Payphones Into Free Gigabit Wi-Fi Hot Spots
http://gizmodo.com/the-plan-to-turn-old-payphones-into-free-gigabit-wi-fi-1659688867
Today, the New York City mayor’s office announced the winning bid to transform the city’s existing payphone infrastructure. LinkNYC will bring free gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity to some 7000 street towers. It’s one of the largest and most ambitious citywide Wi-Fi networks in the world.
In addition to an antenna providing 150 foot Wi-Fi radius, the 9.5-foot towers will have a built-in Android tablets with series of pre-loaded apps, as well as a charging station for your personal gear. And of course, the Links are still phones, except now instead of popping in a quarter, you’ll be able to make free calls to the fifty states. (Three old-fashioned pay phones will be maintained as a throwback to the past.)
As with the payphones of yore, the new Links will be huge advertisements. The expected cost of the rollout is $200 million but supposedly, but the Links will generate $500 million for the city over 12 years.
The winning bid comes form a company called City Bridge, a partnership of companies consisting of the advertising company Titan, the design firm Control Group, Qualcomm, and the hardware manufacturer Comark.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Rise Of The Sensornet: 4.9BN Connected Things In 2015, Says Gartner
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/11/the-rise-of-the-sensornet-4-9bn-connected-things-in-2015-says-gartner/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity
Gartner is predicting a 30 per cent jump in the number of connected objects in use in the wild from this year to next as sensing connected devices proliferate in an Internet of Things (IoT). In a forecast put out today, the analyst predicts there will be 4.9 billion connected things in use in 2015, up from 3.8 billion this year.
The boom in connected sensing devices will gather pace, with the analyst predicting some 25 billion smart devices in circulation come 2020. In other words, hold onto your breath-sensing seats.
For a little comparative context on the figures, annual smartphone shipments topped 1 billion for the first time at the start of this year, based on IDC’s numbers.
The industry verticals driving the IoT next year with the most connected things in use will be manufacturing, utilities and transportation, according to Gartner, which reckons they will collectively have 736 million connected things in use.
By 2020 the mix will shift, with utilities topping the list (thanks to investments in smart meters), followed by manufacturing and then government in third place, comprising a total of 1.7 billion IoT units installed. Government rises up the list thanks to predicted investments in smart street and area lighting for energy reduction purposes.
Gartner characterizes the Internet of Things as a risk to many existing businesses, combined with other digital accelerators such as cloud, mobile and social, and argues that companies will therefore be driven to adopt connected devices, as they were forced to accept the consumerization of IT.
Startups building connected devices are already in abundant supply, boosted by rapid prototyping technologies such as 3D printing and access to crowdfunding to turn a concept into a shipping product at relatively low cost.
Another area set for change as a result of the rise of the IoT is security. Gartner notes how connected devices highlight what it dubs the “tight linkages” between information security, IT security, operational tech security and physical security “like never before”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future of wireless: 5G, small cell networks, and the impact on society
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/the-future-of-wireless-5g-small-cell-networks-and-the-impact-on-society/ec63c3c193e38363901db491ca3c11ef.html
Dr. Ian C. Wong spoke about the future data networks, its impact on society, what is beyond the 4G wireless communication system, and how better communications can improve machine to machine networking for manufacturing, at the 2014 NIDays Chicago.
“With the increasing use of networking devices, what’s stopping the data networks from crashing? The only thing that’s keeping the network going is the few people that refuse to get smart phones,” Wong said, producing some laughter among engineers gathered.
Wong then presented a couple of predictions to the audience: by 2020, networks are trying to get to 20 gigabits per second of wireless capability, and by 2018, on a global scale, we will be using 20 exabytes a month of data on our phone (80%-90% of it will be used on video applications). While consumer needs are driving some of the demand, in developed countries, it’s the industrial Internet that is driving the demand for data. Every machine wants to be smart to stay competitive. Wong emphasized that point by adding, “We are moving from connecting people to people to connecting machines to machines. By creating those connections, these are billions of dollars in value.”
But this demand for data comes with its own set of challenges. One of the challenges is the tactile Internet and that people can’t tolerate things that don’t follow their intended motions for a long period of time. Some examples of when the tactile Internet is used include: gaming and creating a virtual reality game with faster response time so that people don’t get motion sickness; remote control humanoid robots and having those humanoid robots used in healthcare to take care of sick patients without the human nurses and doctors getting sick themselves; and autonomous vehicles coming to the point where there will be no need for traffic lights, and there will be no accidents.
Wong predicted that by 2020 there will be 100 times more traffic online, we will need technology that is 100 times more energy efficient and with 10 times less latency. While this is an imposing challenge, Wong proposed three solutions to meet the demands of the oncoming 5th generation of wireless communication (5G).
1) His first solution was cell densification – smaller power cells everywhere
2) His second solution was to introduce massive multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) communications.
3) His third solution was mmWave access.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cross-phase signal coupling in powerline communication
http://www.edn.com/design/wireless-networking/4437412/Cross-phase-signal-coupling-in-powerline-communication?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141117&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141117&elq=d7f757cdc01546d791b02acfad080c19&elqCampaignId=20211
In the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) market, powerline communication (PLC) is one of the preferred connectivity solutions for transferring data between devices. Using the omnipresent power line system as a communication medium, PLC allows interconnecting a large variety of appliances by transmitting data through the same wires that provide electrical energy.
The PLC technologies are usually classified today in two categories: broadband over power lines (BPL), for high-speed data communication (computer networking, HDTV, etc.) and narrowband PLC, for low-speed monitoring and control applications (smart building automation, advanced metering, outdoor lighting control, etc.). The narrowband PLC technologies typically use the frequency band between 3kHz and 500kHz, providing data rates of tens to hundreds of kbps. Broadband PLC uses a much wider frequency band, usually from 2MHz up to 85MHz, and enables data rates of hundreds of Mbps.
Regardless of the PLC technology, the low-voltage AC power line systems are generally a challenging environment for communication. Severe signal attenuation and considerable noise are the main factors that can affect the communication performance.
Different wiring topologies are used throughout the world for the mains power systems.
Various phase-to-neutral / phase-to-phase voltage systems exist around the world, e.g. 120V/208V, 220V/380V, 230V/400V, 277V/480V, 347V/600V, etc. These power lines can supply typical single-phase loads connected phase-to-neutral or phase-to-phase, as well as large three-phase loads, like motors, rectifiers, arc furnaces, etc.
A PLC signal transmitted between one phase and neutral will travel freely on that pair of wires, being only attenuated by the series line inductance and by the parallel capacitive and resistive loads connected between the same lines. However, to reach transceivers connected on other phase(s), the PLC signal has to pass from one line to the other. In the absence of any phase-coupling device, some “natural” coupling is provided by the low phase-to-phase impedances created at PLC frequencies due to appliances connected between phases, closely positioned conductors, and inter-winding capacitance of the supply transformer secondary. These “natural” bridges are more efficient in the MHz range, as the phase-to-phase coupling impedance is lower. However, the “natural” coupling is not consistent and the installation of coupling devices is more often than not recommended in poly-phase systems.
The common solution is the use of a capacitive coupler, typically installed close to the main electrical panel. A passive capacitive coupler basically consists of one or more capacitors connected between phases.
A passive coupler can be combined with a PLC transceiver to create an active coupler (or coupler-repeater).
Cross-phase communication is one of the main PLC challenges in split-phase and three-phase power systems. SInce PLC transceivers can be connected between any phase and neutral or even between phases, the signals, typically transmitted between one phase and neutral, have to be coupled onto all wires.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five Software Approaches To Harness The Internet Of Things
http://www.forbes.com/sites/medidata/2014/11/04/five-software-approaches-to-harness-the-internet-of-things/?sr_source=lift_polar
Research is evidence-based. But how much information is too much? The life sciences industry is facing an onslaught of digital data, coming from the proliferation of mobile devices and genetic sequencing, to new biomarkers and diagnostics. For the life science industry to make use of all this input – to really succeed in the new “Internet of Things” – technology companies are searching for a holistic approach to harness this vast data.
As the technology industry evolves to meet the needs of life science, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies – companies that host their software in a cloud infrastructure – add a variety of tools to support research.
The manufacturing industry is a far cry from life sciences: it deals with “things,” not people, and its mechanisms, though complicated, are nothing compared to human bodies. Still, there is a lesson to be learned by looking how Volkswagen solved a problem in supplying parts to a large variety of models quickly, reliably and with massive volumes.
For the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, each new service has to outperform its original in-product role. This is achieved by the adoption of new cloud methodologies/approaches:
The 12-factor app: Each service must be compliant with the twelve-factor methodology for building software-as-a-service.
Auto-scaling and flexibility: It is one thing to spawn another process to carry an ever-increasing user load, but it’s quite another to control it.
12-factor compliance: Make services more reliable by improving the way they are built, tested and deployed into production by having each one as self-contained as possible.
Hypermedia service adoption: Application programming interfaces (APIs) should behave like web-pages, where a developer can navigate to and visualize data more easily.
Unified reporting strategy: Using SOA, you can combine the audit trails from all component modules and create a stateless, homogenized, service-driven data feed that we can use for comprehensive, platform-wide reporting and analytics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco launches new telepresence system, Project Squared mobile app
http://www.zdnet.com/cisco-launches-new-telepresence-system-project-squared-mobile-app-7000035791/
Summary: Cisco is busy retooling its collaboration portfolio with a telepresence system that uses less bandwidth and power and Project Squared, a mobile app that offers video conferencing, document sharing and other tools.
Cisco on Monday launched a new three-screen telepresence system designed to cut costs on bandwidth and deployment as well as a mobile collaboration effort dubbed Project Squared.
The system has three 4K cameras, theater quality audio with 18 speakers, a microphone array as well as motion sensors that adjust when a person stands or moves. The IX5000 uses less bandwidth via H.265 compression and will start at less than $9,000 a month for 36 months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The optic NERVE of it: Intel declares WAR on InfiniBand
Chipzilla emerges from ocean belching flames. Again
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/18/chipzilla_declares_war_on_infiniband/
It’s no surprise when Intel announces a new processor architecture – that’s its main game, after all. However, along with the Knight’s Bridge chips released at SC’14, the company seems to have declared war on the HPC mainstream, announcing an optical comms architecture designed to compete with InfiniBand.
The Omni-Path Architecture is an optical HPC interconnect that Chipzilla reckons can beat current InfiniBand switch latency by 56 per cent while operating at a 100 Gbps line speed, supported by a 48 port switch chip (compared to current 36 port InfiniBand silicon).
Omni-Path moves Intel’s on-silicon photonics technology into the HPC mainstream – or at least, that’s what Intel hopes it will do – and it maintains application compatibility with the company’s InfiniBand-based TrueScale architecture.
The next gen of its Xeon Phi range, the 10nm Knights Landing has already been signed into deals for like the Los Alamos / Sandia Trinity and the DoE’s Cori machine.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What the US Can Learn From Canada’s Internet Policy
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/11/17/1753239/what-the-us-can-learn-from-canadas-internet-policy
As the U.S. continues to debate how best to establish net neutrality regulations over Internet service providers, author and journalist Peter Nowak explains how how Canada has already dealt with these issues, and what the U.S. can learn from its neighbor to the north.
What the U.S. can learn from Canada’s Internet policy
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/obama-net-neutrality-us-canada-internet-policy/
“We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas,” Obama said in a speech.
“I am asking the Federal Communications Commission to answer the call of almost four million public comments and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.”
Canada has had such strong net neutrality rules—that is, a framework prohibiting ISPs from unduly discriminating between different types of traffic and which bars paid prioritization or so-called “fast lanes”—since 2009.
Moreover, Obama’s tough stance echoes Canada’s own head of state. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government have been actively trying to rein in telecommunications service providers since 2007.
As the public’s discontent with Internet, phone and cable providers grows, it seems the U.S. is simply catching up to its northern neighbor.
If Canada is ahead in terms of governmental and regulatory interest—some would say interference—in telecom markets, it’s the result of an historical artifact. Canada’s regional phone companies were at one point or another either wholly or partially owned by government.
Government and regulatory oversight has therefore always been part of doing business, hence the greater acceptance of rules from all sides.
“There’s a lot of grumbling, but it’s a done deal,” Frieden says, adding that U.S. providers have largely always been privately owned.
Lobbying rules are also considerably more strict in Canada, with big corporations unable to directly contribute to political campaigns.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Low Power, High Security for the IoT Edge
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324662&
At Electronica last week, Atmel announced a collection of products targeting edge node applications for the Internet of Things (IoT). Low-power operation and hardware-based security were among the dominant features.
The new 32-bit SAM L21 family is based on the ARM Cortex M0+ core and claims a new low for such devices with power consumption at 40 µA/MHz in active mode and 200 nA in sleep mode. Onboard peripherals include full-speed USB host and device interfaces, AES acceleration, 12-bit analog, and capacitive touch sensing. Many peripherals can remain on while the rest of the system is in low-power mode, supporting always-on applications. The family’s specs suit handheld and battery-powered IoT applications, promising designs with multi-year battery lifetimes.
For those creating wireless IoT devices, Atmel is offering the SAM 25 WiFi module. It integrates the FCC-certified WINC1500 WiFi transceiver with the SAM D21 Cortex M0+ MCU, an SPI interface, and the ATECC108A crypto-authentication engine. The module comes pre-loaded with software that includes TLS 1.0, a TCP/IP stack, and WPA2 personal and enterprise security, making it a turnkey platform for secure IoT development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rent-a-Geek
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/rent-a-geek/382770/?single_page=true&google_editors_picks=true
Vodafone Germany is testing out a new crowdsourced tech support that delivers tech support to your door in the form of other users—for a fee. Will U.S. providers adopt a similar model?
Germany, the country that brought us intricate trash-sorting and car-sharing programs featuring slick BMWs, has a new innovation: peer-to-peer tech support. The program, launched this autumn by mobile phone provider Vodafone, basically aims to give less savvy users access to cost-effective tech help delivered right to their doors in the form of other users. Remember that time your mom called you and asked, “How do I transfer my photos from the iPhone to my computer?” Now, instead of calling you, Vodafone will refer her to somebody else’s tech-savvy kid for support.
The platform is called “Vodafone Service Friends” and it’s designed to both help customers and shift work away from Vodafone store reps. Nearly all of the tech support members currently signed up are teens or people in their 20s. The idea, says Anastasia Albert of Mila.com—a Berlin-based startup similar to Angie’s List that’s running the program for Vodafone and charging its users for the service—is to offer support for a price of 10 to 25 euros an hour delivered right to users’s doors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Batteryless wireless sensors possible
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-iot-/4437134/Wireless-Sensors–No-Batteries?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20141114&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_review_20141114&elq=e0ee0265df234881b6ee1b3e673c00c5&elqCampaignId=20184
Many applications for the Internet of Things involve simple sensors that report their findings wirelessly to a hub or gateway. The need for batteries, however, creates cost and logistical barriers to many potential use cases. Fortunately, ultra-low-power, batteryless wireless sensor modules appear to be on the threshold of commercial availability.
A wireless sensor module for the IoT comprises several key building blocks. There is the sensor itself, a microcontroller to process the sensor signal and package it for transmission, and the radio transceiver that sends the information to the next stage. Using conventional logic design, these circuits require a power source of at least 1.8 V at many tens of microamperes for even the lowest-power operating modes.
But over the last decade there has been substantial research done in the design of sub-threshold circuits, including logic, memory, and RF.
Operating with gate voltages below threshold allows the transistor’s supply voltage (VDD) to also be low.
Sub-threshold operation requires careful control of device physics as well as circuit structures that mitigate the effects of noise and temperature variations, but research has provided solutions to these problems. Now, those solutions are being put into practice. Research papers have already described and demonstrated functioning circuits for microprocessors, memory, and analog devices. Now, at least one company is preparing to bring full SOC sub-threshold designs to market.
PsiKick is a two-year-old startup coming out of research efforts at the Universities of Michigan, Virginia, and Washington that is preparing a wireless sensor module for batteryless operation based on sub-threshold circuitry.
The power requirements for this module are astoundingly small, some 100 to 1000 times less than that of comparable sensor platforms currently available. In full operating mode the processor only uses 400 nanowatts while the RF transmitter generates 10 microwatts for an effective range of 10 meters. The module’s supply voltage can be anywhere from 0.25 to 1.2 V, making it a good match to the output capabilities of most energy harvesting methods.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet Revs Base-T Rates
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324641&
A standard in the works called Enterprise Access BASE-T is meant to support next-generation WiFi access points.
The November IEEE 802 Plenary spawned two new study groups. Both target twisted-pair cabling (i.e., BASE-T) applications.
Enterprise Access BASE-T targets higher speeds for Enterprise campus access connections, while 25GBASE-T targets 25GE server connections for the enterprise server space. Given all of the recent attention on 25GE this year, developing a 25GBASE-T PHY for server connections is most likely not a big surprise to many. Given the ongoing work in the IEEE 802.3 25 Gbit/s Ethernet Study Group and the IEEE 40GBASE-T Task Force, 25GBASE-T is a logical addition to IEEE 802.3′s work.
The Enterprise Access BASE-T PHY effort, on the other hand, is a more recent example of Ethernet breaking from its “one size fits all” mentality and moving to a more pragmatic approach. It also nicely illustrates how a solution will be driven by the economics of the application it is targeting.
No networking technology ever seems to sit still in terms of speed, and with the introduction of new wireless IEEE 802.11ac-based products, it is estimated that the wired Ethernet connection to the AP will need to upgrade its speed capability to support approximately 2 Gbit/s within 12 months and approximately 4 Gbit/s in 24-36 months.
The first reaction of some might be to say, “No problem-o! We have 10GBASE-T.” The problem with this plan, however, is that 10GBASE-T is not specified to operate over CAT5e cabling, and the reach on CAT6 cabling is dependent on the cabling itself, as well as how it was deployed. Additionally, a refresh of the actual cabling infrastructure may be cost prohibitive itself.
Rate auto-negotiation will be necessary to operate with Gigabit and 10Gigabit Ethernet BASE-T links. The increase in bandwidth will also drive the need to specify operation of current PoE standards and the new higher-power four-pair PoE standard currently being developed by the IEEE 802.3bt Task Force.
Tomi Engdahl says:
According to fresh Ericsson Mobility Report in the world there is currently nearly 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions. The number of the fastest growing in India and China.
Ericsson forecasts that in 2020, 90 per cent of the world’s more than 6-year-olds have a mobile phone. At that time, nine out of ten are expected to join the mobile broadband connection.
The 2014 third quarter, 65-70% of mobile phones sold were smartphones, compared to last year during the same period accounted for 55%.
At the moment 37% of all telephone lines connected smart devices.
The world’s mobile networks, the mobile voice has remained virtually unchanged for many years, while the amount of data is growing steadily. Data traffic increase from 2013 to 2014 was a whopping 60 per cent globally.
The largest slice of the mobile data traffic will seize a video content. In 2014, they represent about 45 percent of all traffic. Video traffic volume will increase at the same time more powerful terminals, the larger displays, streaming videos, and of course, the better the image quality of video services and content increased supply.
Mobile connections from the consumed video content is expected to grow ten-fold compared to the current year 2020.
Ericsson Mobility Report survey predicts that the first commercial 5G networks in the world will be introduced in 2020. The forerunners of the 5G networks will be in Japan, South Korea and the United States.
3G and 4G technologies together with smart devices, have made it possible to, for example, surfing the web, social media, streaming listening to music and watching videos on the move. 5G is, however, something else: its the network data transmission capacity and energy efficiency will increase 1000-fold, and the delay time will shrink to less than one millisecond.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/uutisia/ericsson+pian+melkein+kaikilla+on+kannykka/a1029805
Tomi Engdahl says:
Platform helps create cloud-connected ZigBee prototypes
http://www.edn.com/design/design-tools/development-kits/4437499/Platform-helps-create-cloud-connected-ZigBee-prototypes?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141118&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141118&elq=de219103bd16480dbfea791b13feafd5&elqCampaignId=20233
Digi International offers the XBee ZigBee cloud kit, an all-in-one bundle that allows anyone with an interest in M2M (Machine to Machine) and the Internet of Things to quickly build a wireless hardware prototype, connect it to the Internet, and control it from the cloud.
The cloud kit comprises the XBee ZigBee-to-Ethernet/WiFi gateway, an XBee-Pro ZigBee 2.4-GHz module, a development board with breadboarding area, cables and power supplies, and basic prototyping components, such as jumper wires, LEDs, relay, resistors, potentiometer, and temperature sensor. Also included are code examples and configurable widgets.
The XBee ZigBee cloud kit costs $199.
XBee® ZigBee Cloud Kit
Create Cloud-Connected Wireless Prototypes Quickly and Easily
http://www.digi.com/lp/xbee-zigbee-cloud-kit/?utm_source=public_relations&utm_medium=press_release&utm_term=xbeezigbeecloudkit&utm_campaign=xbeezigbeecludkit
Tomi Engdahl says:
Photonic Frontiers: Laser Space Instrumentation: Laser instruments earn their place in space for communications and lidar
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-50/issue-11/features/photonic-frontiers-laser-space-instrumentation-laser-instruments-earn-their-place-in-space-for-communications-and-lidar.html?cmpid=EnlLFWNovember182014
Solid-state lasers have earned their place in space instrumentation through programs that have mapped Mars, Mercury, and the Greenland ice sheet, and downlinked high-speed data from a lunar probe, but challenges remain.
Lasers were born early in the space race, but the first successful space applications were based on the ground. Flashlamp-pumped solid-state lasers measured distance to the moon in 1962 and to satellites in 1964
Lasers to Mars
The first high-profile space mission to carry a diode-pumped laser was the ill-fated Mars Observer.
On January 12, 2003, NASA launched the first satellite-borne lidar for continuous global observations of Earth, the Geoscience Laser
Laser communications
Diode pumping also revived interest in high-speed laser links to deep space, where the limited speed of radio links had created a data bottleneck. After NASA’s plans to launch a 5 W, 100 Mbit/s laser relay called the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter in 2009 was cut in the 2005 budget, focus was shifted to a simpler test called the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD).5
The LLCD transmitter was based on commercial telecommunication parts, including a distributed-feedback diode laser, erbium-fiber amplifiers, and a modulator, to avoid the high cost of lasers customized for space, says Donald Cornwell, director of NASA’s optical communications division (Washington, DC). Designed, built and operated by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Lexington, MA), the transmitter emitted 0.5 W at 1550 nm through a 10 cm telescope. A 16-ary pulse-position modulation encoded four data bits in pulse, to carry 622 Mbit/s from the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)
In October 2013, LLCD successfully demonstrated 622 Mbit/s downloads, six times the fastest radio link from the Moon, with a transmitter only half as massive.
NASA’s next laser test will relay data at gigabit rates between a pair of ground stations. Both up- and down-laser links in the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will be in the 1550-nm band, with a pair linking each ground station with a transceiver on a geosynchronous communications satellite. Initial plans called for a two-year test, but NASA is considering up to five years after a 2018 launch.
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.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finally, Intel has also released a bit more information on Omni-Path. Previously announced alongside Knights Landing and newly renamed from Omni-Scale, Intel has announced that Omni-Path will offer link speeds of up to 100Gbps and its companion switch will offer 48 ports. As Intel has positioned Omni-Path as a competitor to Infiniband, at this point Intel is touting that they will be able to offer 56% lower switch fabric latency from the technology, as well as better density and scaling due to the larger number of ports available on the Omni-Path switch
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8732/intels-xeon-phi-after-knights-landing-comes-knights-hill
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson Forecasts 9.5B Smartphone Subs by 2020
Report projects eight-fold traffic increase
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324661&
Although the smartphone market is nearly saturated in certain regions, Ericsson’s annual mobility report forecasts increasing mobile subscriptions and connections through 2020.
“At the end of 2020 there will be 9.5 billion mobile subscriptions, and mobile broadband is the part that is growing the most,” said Patrik Cerwall, executive editor of the Ericsson Mobility Report. “By 2020 90% of the world’s population over six years old will have a phone. I think that is astonishing. It really talks about the connected world where everyone will have a connection one way or another.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zigbee Opens Umbrella 3.0 Spec
Forecast calls for a deluge of IP nets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324664&
The Zigbee Alliance is consolidating its specifications spanning six application areas into Zigbee 3.0 at a time when competing standards based on Internet Protocol (IP) are expected to see rapid growth. The move aims to simplify the user’s job of finding compliant Zigbee products by requiring component vendors to pass a more rigorous certification process.
The Alliance expects to start certification testing for Zigbee 3.0 in the fall of 2015. Compliant products will need to support the standard’s application profiles in home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail, and smart energy.
Zigbee 3.0 does not include two Zigbee specs — Smart Energy 2, a profile based on IP; and RF4CE, a version of Zigbee geared for remote controls. It does cover all specs based on Zigbee Pro, the group’s overarching standard for how networks are formed and devices attach to them across different application areas.
“Underneath the covers we are accommodating these multiple applications in a single standard, so Zigbee thermostats, for example, can be used in either home or office buildings,” says Ryan Maley, director of strategic marketing for the Zigbee Alliance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia speed record in small cells
Nokia introduced picocells implementations Flexi Zone G2 base station in September. It has a capacity of 8 kg out of the bottle, which weighs eight pounds. Yet it supports the LTE-A networks, CA technique (Carrier aggregation), or more carriers into a single radio link.
Now, this feature is demoed for the first time in practice. The test was held in Nokia Arlington Height, Illinois USA laboratory. Link combined with two 20-MHz time division TD-LTE band. Data is transferred to 217 megabits per second (combined 108 and 109 megabits of transfer frequencies).
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2076:nokia-nopeusennatykseen-pienissa-soluissa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
450 MHz LTE data network covers the whole of Finland
Ukkoverkot Oy today (17.11.2014) launched the first of Finland’s comprehensive 4G LTE mobile data network. The network is aimed in particular enterprises, public authorities and other demanding end-users, but it also serves consumer customers throughout Finland.
One of the 450 MHz base station provides about twice as large as the coverage area of 800 egahertsin operating in the base station and up to 20 times larger area than the typical LTE base station at a frequency of 2.6 GHz. In this way the network to provide a good coverage of much of the basic-LTE as a lower cost.
Ukko Mobile 4G LTE network is currently being used across the country to Finnish companies operating in addition to VR’s trains, train networks, many mobile libraries, YLE broadcasting, and emergency services vehicles and FinnHEMS medical helicopter.
Ukko Mobile 4G LTE network is the world’s first commercial 450MHz rated frequency based LTE network. Ukko Mobile holds Finnish only 450 MHz frequency license.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2084:450-megahertsin-lte-dataverkko-kattaa-koko-suomen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swiss positioning and mobile circuits known as u-blox has introduced machines between M2M connectivity module that enables data transmission at a hundred megabits per second. A new module has been certified by the US’s largest mobile operator, ie Verizon LTE network.
MPCI L100 is a two-band data module. It supports LTE category 3 data connections, that is, the network in the future 100 megabits link in addition to the data travels upstream to 50 megabits per second.
The module is connected to the host device miniPCIe interface.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2086:nopea-lte-tulee-koneyhteyksiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google-owned Nest debuts first TV ads for its thermostat, smoke alarm, and Dropcam monitors
Come On, Put This Google-Owned Surveillance Device in Your House. It’ll Be Great!
http://recode.net/2014/11/16/come-on-put-this-google-owned-surveillance-device-in-your-house-its-gonna-be-great/
How do you convince regular people to buy Google-owned monitoring gadgets and install them in their homes?
First, don’t mention Google in your nationally televised ads.
Next, make those ads pretty funny.
That’s the strategy Google’s Nest is taking in TV ads — its first campaign — that started running today for its connected thermostat, its connected smoke alarm and its Dropcam monitors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More Than 90 Percent of U.S. Households Have Three or More Devices Pinging the Internet
http://recode.net/2014/11/18/more-than-90-percent-of-u-s-households-have-three-or-more-devices-pinging-the-internet/
How much do Americans love the Internet?
Well, Ericsson counted all the ways.
It turns out that 90 percent of U.S. households have three or more Internet-connected devices, while just under half of households have five or more devices and nearly a quarter use seven or more devices. The average number of connected devices per household is 5.2, with that number seen to be climbing in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to lead the way in LTE subscriptions, with more than 25 percent of mobile subscriptions in 2013 being of the LTE variety. That number is seen reaching 40 percent this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Create your own smart home with littleBits’ house-friendly kit
http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/18/littlebits-smart-home-hit/
Ever since littleBits’ snap-together circuits got the ability to speak to the internet, they were crying out to be used for home-automation. Today, littleBits itself is making that a dead cert, by launching a “Smart Home Kit.” The pack contains 14 magnetic “bits” to get your inventions started, including five new tools (MP3 player, Threshold, Number, Temperature Sensor, and IR transmitter). Theoretically, that internet-connected iguana enclosure you were after, or that DIY smart-toaster are now just a $250 spend away –the price of the new kit, available starting tomorrow.