A startup called SolidEnergy says that it has developed a new design for a safe, rechargeable lithium metal battery, potentially revolutionizing energy storage for small devices like smartphones and wearables.Breakthroughs in materials science mean that former MIT post-doctoral student Qichao Hu’s company can produce batteries with double the energy density of current-generation lithium ion batteries. This means that they can either be twice as powerful as a lithium ion battery of equivalent size, or pack the same capability into a unit half as large, according to MIT News.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Swiss conglomerate Datwyler today said that it was still considering its options after its $795 million bid for Raspberry Pi manufacturer Premier Farnell was trumped by a $900 million offer from Avnet Inc late last month.In an earnings release issued today, Datwyler emphasized that the process isn’t over, and that the prospect of acquiring the U.K.-based electronics supply company is still a highly attractive one.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: How well does social engineering work? One test returned 150% + 'Golden keys' that unlock Windows' Secure Boot protection discovered+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One reason the Raspberry Pi’s runaway success has been a fun story to cover is that it’s very non-corporate – there’s relatively little branding silliness or careful PR stage management involved, and journalists like me instead get to write about an inventive little tool that is letting normal people around the world accomplish interesting and creative things.Yet the business side does, occasionally, rear its ugly head – late last month, U.S.-based electronics vendor Avnet purchased Premier Farnell, one of two licensed manufacturers of the Raspberry Pi, for about $900 million.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: How a 96-year-old company modernized its infrastructure by embracing innovation | Oracle says it didn’t ask employee to cook cloud accounts+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Aaron Levie, the outspoken founder and CEO of enterprise file sharing and storage powerhouse Box, foresees a time when all enterprise data will head to the cloud, and his company this week is introducing expanded capabilities to speed that transition.
Levie talked to Network World this week ahead of the company’s news about its Zones and Accelerator projects, and also discussed start-ups, the march of the public cloud, and even his past work as a professional magician.
As for Zones, these allow Box customers to specify a geographic area for their data to be stored in, to help them cope with compliance issues generated by laws that mandate certain information be stored. The project started with Germany, Ireland, Singapore and Japan, and today’s announcements say that Australia and Canada are up next. (Australian service should be available in the third quarter of this year, with Canada to follow in the fourth quarter.) Levie says this makes Box the “most global” solution in its market segment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The announcement this week of a final testing protocol aimed at discovering, once and for all, whether LTE-U technology can coexist peacefully with existing Wi-Fi networks has the LTE-U camp up in arms, as Qualcomm issued a thunderous denunciation of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s framework.
The plan, said Qualcomm senior vice president for government affairs Dean Brenner, is heavily biased against LTE-U and offers no real opportunity to demonstrate the technology’s ability to work harmoniously alongside Wi-Fi networks.
+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Wi-Fi, LTE-U enter new phase of coexistence debate + LTE-U: A quick explainerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The announcement this week of a final testing protocol aimed at discovering, once and for all, whether LTE-U technology can coexist peacefully with existing Wi-Fi networks has the LTE-U camp up in arms, as Qualcomm issued a thunderous denunciation of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s framework.
The plan, said Qualcomm senior vice president for government affairs Dean Brenner, is heavily biased against LTE-U and offers no real opportunity to demonstrate the technology’s ability to work harmoniously alongside Wi-Fi networks.
+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Wi-Fi, LTE-U enter new phase of coexistence debate + LTE-U: A quick explainerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Firefox 48Image by PixabayFirefox, for years now, has been an also-ran in large chunks of the browser market – yet, in terms of its technology, has been catching up to the bigger players fast. Firefox 48 continues the process of making the browser more streamlined, robust and powerful. Take a look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The long-running contretemps between the supporters of LTE-U and regular Wi-Fi, over the idea of the two wireless standards co-existing on the same frequencies, has moved into a new phase, as test plan parameters are expected to be rolled out at Wednesday’s coexistence workshop in San Jose.The workshop is a meeting of interested stakeholders from both parties. The LTE-U camp, primarily made up of Qualcomm, Ericsson and the major U.S. wireless telecoms, has long insisted that LTE-U technology will not interfere with existing Wi-Fi networks, despite using the same frequencies. Skeptics, which include the cable industry and many of the country’s biggest tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, are worried that the rosy coexistence picture presented by LTE-U’s backers is unrealistic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network and application performance management company Riverbed announced this morning that it would acquire end-user experience monitoring firm Aternity for an undisclosed fee.Aternity, a privately held company headquartered in Westborough, Mass., was founded in 2004 as Gelion Networks. Its core technology, which is currently operating on 1.7 million global endpoints, is real end-user monitoring, which detects performance issues by analyzing user behavior. The idea, according to Riverbed, is to add Aternity’s technology into the company’s extensive existing lineup of monitoring and management capabilities.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Why Belgium leads the world in IPv6 adoption + White boxes are now ready for prime timeTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network and application performance management company Riverbed announced this morning that it would acquire end-user experience monitoring firm Aternity for an undisclosed fee.Aternity, a privately held company headquartered in Westborough, Mass., was founded in 2004 as Gelion Networks. Its core technology, which is currently operating on 1.7 million global endpoints, is real end-user monitoring, which detects performance issues by analyzing user behavior. The idea, according to Riverbed, is to add Aternity’s technology into the company’s extensive existing lineup of monitoring and management capabilities.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Why Belgium leads the world in IPv6 adoption + White boxes are now ready for prime timeTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LogMeIn, the makers of the popular remote desktop software as well as IT security and conferencing offerings, will become part of a Citrix subsidiary in the wake of a complicated, $1.8 billion transaction announced Tuesday by the two companies.The transaction is what’s called a Reverse Morris Trust, which apparently allows the untaxed transfer of a subsidiary to new ownership by spinning off a new company and completing a merger. In this case, Citrix has created a wholly-owned subsidiary called GetGo, which owns its GoToMeeting products.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Dropbox aims for enterprise with new team and IT admin features | Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LogMeIn, the makers of the popular remote desktop software as well as IT security and conferencing offerings, will become part of a Citrix subsidiary in the wake of a complicated, $1.8 billion transaction announced Tuesday by the two companies.The transaction is what’s called a Reverse Morris Trust, which apparently allows the untaxed transfer of a subsidiary to new ownership by spinning off a new company and completing a merger. In this case, Citrix has created a wholly-owned subsidiary called GetGo, which owns its GoToMeeting products.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Dropbox aims for enterprise with new team and IT admin features | Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sysadmin Day – last Friday of July, first Friday in our heartsYes, Sysadmin day is just around the corner again, as we prepare to recognize business IT’s foot soldiers in the war against downtime and general stuff-not-working-right-ness. Here are 10 ways to celebrate these great and deserving people. (MORE: Our 2015 look at Sysadmin Day)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sysadmin Day – last Friday of July, first Friday in our heartsYes, Sysadmin day is just around the corner again, as we prepare to recognize business IT’s foot soldiers in the war against downtime and general stuff-not-working-right-ness. Here are 10 ways to celebrate these great and deserving people. (MORE: Our 2015 look at Sysadmin Day)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. district court judge last week effectively ended a payphone company’s lawsuit against the City of New York, opening the door for an ambitious public Wi-Fi hotspot program to proceed.The payphone company, Telebeam, had sued the city in 2014, arguing that the city shouldn’t have been allowed to force Telebeam to cede up 1,300 public payphone sites when it awarded the contract to rival CityBridge.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft disavows 1B-or-bust goal for Windows 10 + Hackers claim to have launched DDoS attack that crashed Pokémon Go serversTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. district court judge last week effectively ended a payphone company’s lawsuit against the City of New York, opening the door for an ambitious public Wi-Fi hotspot program to proceed.The payphone company, Telebeam, had sued the city in 2014, arguing that the city shouldn’t have been allowed to force Telebeam to cede up 1,300 public payphone sites when it awarded the contract to rival CityBridge.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft disavows 1B-or-bust goal for Windows 10 + Hackers claim to have launched DDoS attack that crashed Pokémon Go serversTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Eleven gigahertz of high-frequency spectrum is now available for use in mobile broadband technologies, after the FCC on Thursday created the Upper Microwave Flexible Use service in the 28GHz, 37GHz and 39GHz band, along with a new unlicensed band, even higher up the spectrum, in the 64-71GHz range.The move was greeted with delight from the U.S. telecom industry, which said that the opening of new spectrum is a critical step on the road to 5G wireless technology. The millimeter-wave bands – those between 30GHz and 300GHz – are central to the development of 5G, and the U.S. is now the first country to designate those frequencies for commercial use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FCC on Thursday will vote to identify and open new high frequency bands for use in the forthcoming 5G wave of wireless technology, clearing the way for development to continue on the next big jump in mobile data capabilities.
Why?
Netflix and Pokemon Go, mostly.
Not exactly. Pokemon Go doesn’t use much data.
Fine. It’s actually because FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler decided that now is the time to start the ball rolling on the process, which has been delayed in the past. Standards bodies and industry have begun to make noise on 5G of late, which means it’s probably a good thing that regulators like the FCC are getting in on the act.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous over the past decade and a half that we talk about it – and complain about it – like it’s part of the weather. Be honest, average user – the first thing you think when your connection starts acting up is “damn it, what’s wrong with the Wi-Fi now?”
But the degree to which Wi-Fi is likely to be the limiting factor for any given connection is shrinking. Wi-Fi has evolved quickly over the past few years, so much so that it can seem like wireless is outstripping wired networks in terms of raw capability.
+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD:Why one Cisco shop is willing to give Wi-Fi startup Mist a shot +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The world’s largest social network today announced that it will launch OpenCellular, a mobile infrastructure platform designed to lower barriers to entry for would-be providers of internet service to the developing world.OpenCellular, in essence, is designed to be a customizable base chassis for a wireless access point, able to connect devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi. Facebook said that the emphasis in the design process was on keeping the design as modular and inexpensive as possible, as well as making it easy to deploy.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Boston is nation’s top tech-talent exporter + Antivirus merger: Avast offers $1.3 billion for AVGTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Jon Gold