Stephen Lawson
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Stephen Lawson
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Nest aims for central role in connected homes, enticing developers to integrate
The big winners in connected homes will be vendors of whole platforms, not individual products, and Google's Nest division is pushing hard to play that role. After pioneering Thread, a low-power networking protocol, Nest is now introducing an application layer that device and appliance makers can use to integrate their products tightly with Nest's. The new tool, called Weave, is for direct interactions between devices without resorting to processing in the cloud. That's good for in-home connections that are fast, don't require much energy and work even if the home's Wi-Fi network is down, said Greg Hu, senior manager of the Nest platform. Nest already uses Weave in its own products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel’s latest IoT move heats up the race for low-power networks
While mobile operators often claim bragging rights to the fastest smartphone connections, another rivalry is heating up around networks that aren't fast at all: Their claim to fame is that they don't suck up power. On Friday, Intel said it would work with cellular heavyweights Ericsson and Nokia to commercialize NB-LTE (Narrow-Band LTE), a variant of the latest cellular technology that uses a small amount of radio spectrum to efficiently carry small amounts of data. Also this week, low-power network specialist Ingenu said it would build a network across the U.S. within two years. Those are just two of the systems being promoted as the perfect glue to connect the burgeoning Internet of Things. They're vying to become the network of choice for electric meters, street lamps, pipelines and other infrastructure. By 2020, nearly 1.5 million devices will be connected to LPWA (low-power wide area) networks, Machina Research estimates. LPWA will cut the cost of IoT and make it useful for more things, Machina analyst Godfrey Chua said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Think your meeting’s important? 25 years ago, this one spawned Wi-Fi
If you're reading this story over Wi-Fi, thank a department store designer.It was retail remodeling that spurred NCR, a venerable cash-register company, to find out how it could use newly opened frequencies to link registers and mainframes without wires. Its customers wanted to stop drilling new holes in their marble floors for cabling every time they changed a store layout.In 1985, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to leave large blocks of spectrum unlicensed and let vendors build any kind of network they wanted as long as they didn't keep anyone else from using the frequencies. NCR jumped at the chance to develop a wireless LAN, something that didn't exist at the time, according to Vic Hayes, a former engineer at the company who's been called the Father of Wi-Fi. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Think your meeting’s important? 25 years ago, this one spawned Wi-Fi
If you're reading this story over Wi-Fi, thank a department store designer.It was retail remodeling that spurred NCR, a venerable cash-register company, to find out how it could use newly opened frequencies to link registers and mainframes without wires. Its customers wanted to stop drilling new holes in their marble floors for cabling every time they changed a store layout.RELATED: WiFi blocking debate far from overIn 1985, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to leave large blocks of spectrum unlicensed and let vendors build any kind of network they wanted as long as they didn't keep anyone else from using the frequencies. NCR jumped at the chance to develop a wireless LAN, something that didn't exist at the time, according to Vic Hayes, a former engineer at the company who's been called the Father of Wi-Fi. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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For future wearables, the network could be you
People who wear networked gadgets all over their bodies may someday become networks themselves.Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have found a way for wearables to communicate through a person's body instead of the air around it. Their work could lead to devices that last longer on smaller batteries and don't give away secrets as easily as today's systems do. The proliferation of smartphones, smart watches, health monitoring devices and other gear carried close to the body has led to so-called personal area networks that link the gadgets together and provide a path to the Internet through one that has a Wi-Fi or cell radio. Today, those PANs use short-range over-the-air systems like Bluetooth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco’s pay package for CEO Robbins is a sweet deal
Cisco will pay incoming CEO Chuck Robbins a higher salary than outgoing chief John Chambers made in fiscal 2014.Robbins will make US$1.15 million in salary in fiscal 2016, which began this week, and he could earn another $2.59 million based on performance under Cisco’s Executive Incentive Plan. Add in as much as $13 million in stock grants, and Robbins could bring in more than $16.7 million for his first year at the helm.By contrast, Chambers got $1.1 million in salary and a smaller basic percentage bonus under the Executive Incentive Plan in fiscal 2014, according to the company’s proxy statement issued last September. Chambers was a 20-year veteran at the helm of the company and was also chairman of the board. He’s now stepped back to become executive chairman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco’s pay package for CEO Robbins is a sweet deal
Cisco will pay incoming CEO Chuck Robbins a higher salary than outgoing chief John Chambers made in fiscal 2014.Robbins will make US$1.15 million in salary in fiscal 2016, which began this week, and he could earn another $2.59 million based on performance under Cisco’s Executive Incentive Plan. Add in as much as $13 million in stock grants, and Robbins could bring in more than $16.7 million for his first year at the helm.By contrast, Chambers got $1.1 million in salary and a smaller basic percentage bonus under the Executive Incentive Plan in fiscal 2014, according to the company’s proxy statement issued last September. Chambers was a 20-year veteran at the helm of the company and was also chairman of the board. He’s now stepped back to become executive chairman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Someday your phone may stop an oncoming car
Self-driving cars will try to avoid robot pedestrians in a simulated city as part of an effort to make real-world streets safer.M-City, a test facility that the University of Michigan opened this month in Ann Arbor, packs a range of street configurations and road conditions into a 32-acre (13-hectare) facility for testing emerging automotive technologies. The site includes stoplights, traffic circles, gravel and brick roadways and movable building facades. It will play host to some of the testing for vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) detection systems that Verizon Communications hopes to turn into a commercial reality.V2P uses DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications), the same radios as vehicle-to-vehicle technology that could prevent crashes between cars that approach each other unexpectedly around a blind corner. In the pedestrian safety system, the smartphones people carry would talk to specialized radios in cars or even just to drivers’ phones. Those wireless exchanges are part of a broader effort to prevent vehicle accidents that killed 30,000 people per year in the U.S., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency estimates 14 percent of those accidents involve pedestrians.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Qualcomm to cut thousands of jobs, may split company in two
Qualcomm will lay off about 15 percent of its workforce and may separate its chip and patent businesses in a major realignment of the company.The action is designed to cut annual costs by about $1.4 billion. Qualcomm will cut back its investments in new product areas and focus those efforts on data centers, small cells and the Internet of Things.MORE: Biggest tech industry layoffs of 2015, so farThe mobile technology juggernaut is also shaking up its board of directors as part of an agreement with investment company Jana Partners. Jana, which owns a chunk of Qualcomm's stock, has pressured the company to spin off its chip division from its patent licensing business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cell service at US airports varies from first class to middle-seat coach
Need something to watch on a flight? You can download an episode of your favorite show in less than a minute and a half on Verizon Wireless at Atlanta’s airport—or spend 13 hours doing the same over T-Mobile USA at Los Angeles International.The comparison of 45-minute HD video downloads illustrates the wide variation in cellular service at U.S. airports, which RootMetrics laid out in a report for the first half of 2015 that’s being issued Thursday. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is the best place to go mobile and Verizon covers airports best overall, but just like security lines and de-icing delays, it all depends.RootMetrics tested mobile data connections using all four major carriers at the 50 busiest airports in the country, checking not just for speed but for how long it took to get on and how well the connection stayed up. The tests took place in well-used places like ticketing, baggage claim and terminal gates. RootMetrics didn’t test voice service or Wi-Fi networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cell service at US airports varies from first class to middle-seat coach
Need something to watch on a flight? You can download an episode of your favorite show in less than a minute and a half on Verizon Wireless at Atlanta’s airport—or spend 13 hours doing the same over T-Mobile USA at Los Angeles International.The comparison of 45-minute HD video downloads illustrates the wide variation in cellular service at U.S. airports, which RootMetrics laid out in a report for the first half of 2015 that’s being issued Thursday. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson is the best place to go mobile and Verizon covers airports best overall, but just like security lines and de-icing delays, it all depends.MORE: Hottest network & computing startups of 2015 To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Qualcomm plans cuts, may spin off assets
Qualcomm will cut costs by about $1.4 billion per year and study the possible sale of assets as part of a company realignment.The mobile technology juggernaut is also shaking up its board of directors as part of an agreement with investment company Jana Partners. Jana, which owns a chunk of Qualcomm’s stock, has pressured the company to spin off its chip division from its patent licensing business.The realignment was announced as Qualcomm reported its profit fell by nearly half in the April-to-June quarter on revenue that declined by 14 percent from a year earlier.“The changes we are announcing today are designed to enable us to right-size our cost structure and reposition Qualcomm for improved financial and operating performance,” CEO Steve Mollenkopf said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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To Cisco-backed Sensity, lights are just IoT waiting to happen
Cisco Systems is tightening its relationship with Sensity Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that wants buildings and cities now adopting LED lighting to embrace the Internet of Things.Sensity makes sensors and computers designed to be integrated with LED lights that can go into existing outdoor light fixtures. With Sensity’s gear, the fixtures can do more than light up the streets and parking lots where they’re installed. Its cameras, thermometers and other sensors can tell a lot of stories about what’s going on under the lights. Parking, security and pedestrian traffic are key applications.As lighting owners move to LED to save energy, Sensity wants to usher them into the age of IoT and data analysis. It estimates there are about 4 billion outdoor light fixtures around the world and most will be converted to LED over the next 10 to 15 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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To Cisco-backed Sensity, lights are just IoT waiting to happen
Cisco Systems is tightening its relationship with Sensity Systems, a Silicon Valley startup that wants buildings and cities now adopting LED lighting to embrace the Internet of Things.Sensity makes sensors and computers designed to be integrated with LED lights that can go into existing outdoor light fixtures. With Sensity’s gear, the fixtures can do more than light up the streets and parking lots where they’re installed. Its cameras, thermometers and other sensors can tell a lot of stories about what’s going on under the lights. Parking, security and pedestrian traffic are key applications.As lighting owners move to LED to save energy, Sensity wants to usher them into the age of IoT and data analysis. It estimates there are about 4 billion outdoor light fixtures around the world and most will be converted to LED over the next 10 to 15 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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United’s woes show what’s hard about networking
United Airlines grounded its planes for about an hour on Wednesday, reportedly because of a router failure. That’s a wide path of destruction for one piece of equipment, but it’s the kind of hazard that comes with networking, where each piece is always linked to everything else.The grounding, which started around 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, caused delays across United’s routes and stranded passengers. It came on the same day that a computer-related outage halted trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and just weeks after another technology-related service interruption at United.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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United’s woes show what’s hard about networking
United Airlines grounded its planes for about an hour on Wednesday, reportedly because of a router failure. That’s a wide path of destruction for one piece of equipment, but it’s the kind of hazard that comes with networking, where each piece is always linked to everything else. The grounding, which started around 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, caused delays across United’s routes and stranded passengers. It came on the same day that a computer-related outage halted trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and just weeks after another technology-related service interruption at United.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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United’s woes show what’s hard about networking
United Airlines grounded its planes for about an hour on Wednesday, reportedly because of a router failure. That’s a wide path of destruction for one piece of equipment, but it’s the kind of hazard that comes with networking, where each piece is always linked to everything else. The grounding, which started around 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, caused delays across United’s routes and stranded passengers. It came on the same day that a computer-related outage halted trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and just weeks after another technology-related service interruption at United.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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EMC sells Syncplicity to focus on core storage business
EMC is selling its Syncplicity file-sharing and collaboration business to private investment company Skyview Capital for an undisclosed sum.EMC bought Syncplicity in May 2012 in response to the growth of mobile computing and bring-your-own-device policies in enterprises. Syncplicity is one of a host of cloud-based file services, including Box, Dropbox and Google Drive, that have emerged in the past few years. It’s available for iOS and Android as well as PC operating systems.In the three years it owned Syncplicity, EMC adapted the system so enterprises could use it for access to data in their own storage systems. The company also added central controls over how specific types of files could be shared and with whom.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Juniper, Ruckus join hands with an eye on mobile growth
The alliance between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless announced on Tuesday underscores the importance of Wi-Fi in enterprises, where employees increasingly work and access cloud applications on mobile devices.Juniper and Ruckus say they’re joining forces to build integrated wired and wireless infrastructures while keeping their technologies open and standards-based. The companies focused on enterprises in announcing the partnership, but they will also integrate technologies for service-provider networks, Ruckus Vice President of Corporate Marketing David Callisch said.As Wi-Fi gets faster and more workers use laptops and other portable devices, more enterprises see wireless as a real alternative to traditional ethernet LANs, said Gartner analyst Tim Zimmerman. Some networks based on IEEE 802.11ac theoretically can deliver more speed than Gigabit ethernet, and the second wave of that technology now emerging will offer more than 6Gbps on the top end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IMT-2020 is the future of mobile — but you can keep calling it 5G
There’s finally something real to 5G: a name.The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has decided to call the next-generation cellular system IMT-2020. That name may have a hard time catching up with “5G,” a tag that’s been applied to just about every future mobile technology in the works: Googling “5G mobile” brings up 12.9 million results. But it’s a clear sign of progress toward the concrete. Where there’s a bureaucratic-sounding numeric acronym, can a formal standard be far behind?The ITU now has an answer to that question, too. It’s set a timeline that calls for the standard to be finished in 2020. Hence the name, which follows in the footsteps of IMT-2000 (3G) and IMT-Advanced (4G).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here