Stephen Lawson, Author at NetworkingNexus.net

Stephen Lawson

Author Archives: Stephen Lawson

AllSeen’s merger with OCF brings IoT closer to common ground

Two of the main IoT standards groups have merged, probably bringing consumers closer the day when your lights, your refrigerator, and the power company can all talk to each other.On Monday, the Open Connectivity Foundation and the AllSeen Alliance announced they would merge under the OCF name. The two groups include companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, Cisco Systems, GE Digital, and Haier -- possibly a critical mass of IoT component and product makers. OCF's scope even extends beyond home IoT into some industrial technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi vs. LTE could be the start of a mobile rollercoaster

The long fight over LTE networks sharing frequencies with Wi-Fi may be just the first of many battles as device makers and service providers try to make the most of the limited available spectrum.Around the world, regulators and industry are working on how to let different kinds of networks use the same spectrum. The new techniques and policies they use should lead to better mobile performance in some areas, but it’s also likely that wireless performance will fluctuate more as you move around.LTE-U has grabbed headlines because it involves licensed carriers using some of the channels that consumers depend on for Wi-Fi service, which often is free or runs on users' own routers. Wi-Fi supporters cried foul last year after Qualcomm and some U.S. carriers proposed the technology, and it took until last month for the two sides to reach an apparent peace agreement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi vs. LTE could be the start of a mobile rollercoaster

Cable and telecom are rivals again with new IoT networks

Comcast and the biggest U.S. carriers are taking their long-running rivalry to the internet of things.The country's largest cable company and telecommunications giants, Verizon and AT&T, have been fighting each other for years in home broadband, business internet service and wireless access. Now they're set to compete over LPWANs, the low-power, wide-area networks that could connect many of the IoT devices of the future.On Wednesday, Comcast said it would launch trials of one LPWAN technology, LoRa, with an eye to deploying networks across the markets it covers in the next 18 to 30 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5G will need small cells, so Nokia is sending in the drones

If you want 5G, there’s a good chance you'll need a small cell nearby to deliver it. Putting up that cell may be hard because of a host of problems, but Nokia Bell Labs thinks it can solve some of them with drones and tiny solar panels.Nokia's F-Cell is an experimental LTE small cell that doesn't need any wires. It gets power from solar panels on its surface and communicates with the carrier's core network over a high-speed wireless connection. No one even needs to climb up on a roof to install it: The company recently delivered an F-Cell to the roof of one of its buildings in Sunnyvale, California, using a drone.F-Cells won’t start showing up everywhere tomorrow, but anything to speed up small-cell deployment could make a big difference when 5G starts going live in 2020. The next generation of cellular will probably require dense networks of small cells to deliver the gigabit speeds being promised, and carriers will face both legal and technical hurdles when they try to put them up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s IoT blockchain service gets ready to set sail

A massive DDOS attack and weaknesses in critical systems have put security concerns front and center in the internet of things. IBM thinks a technology best known from the world of bitcoin could lock down at least one use of IoT.The company is using blockchain technology to ensure that everything’s in order with IoT transactions. Just as a public blockchain makes bitcoin transactions traceable and verifiable, the private, cloud-based system that IBM will operate for enterprises will verify non-monetary interactions between some devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US carriers will look to LTE-U tests to protect Wi-Fi

The biggest U.S. carriers planning to deploy controversial LTE-Unlicensed technology expect to use gear that’s been tested for coexistence with Wi-Fi, their executives said Wednesday.Speakers from Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA said they expect all the LTE-U devices they use to be vetted through a test plan created by the Wi-Fi Alliance. They also anticipate that gear based on a related technology, LAA (Licensed Assisted Access), will be certified through tests for that system.That’s good news for anyone worried about LTE networks using some of the same frequencies that carry Wi-Fi traffic. The WFA test plan, despite being developed with input from those carriers and other LTE-U backers, was harshly criticized before its completion last week. Backers of LTE-U, including Verizon and Qualcomm, have demonstrated their own coexistence tests. When it released the plan, WFA warned that anything but the full test suite would be inadequate to ensure that LTE-U devices would be fair to Wi-Fi.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bringing IoT data into public clouds is getting easier

The formidable processing power and analytical tools available in public clouds could make industrial IoT more effective and less expensive. But bringing IoT data into the cloud takes more than a network connection.On Tuesday, two companies moved to help enterprises adapt their IoT data for popular cloud services. OSIsoft introduced its PI Integrator for Microsoft Azure, and Particle announced a custom integration with Google Cloud Platform.While some large enterprises with sensitive IoT data do all their analytics in-house, public clouds offer greater scale and better security than many organizations can achieve on their own, MachNation analyst Dima Tokar said. And more advanced analytics, including better error correction, in some cases can give enterprises the same insights with fewer sensors, he said. Trading hardware for software -- especially the cloud-based kind -- typically means savings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bringing IoT data into public clouds is getting easier

GE, Bosch and open source could bring more IoT tools

Partnerships that could shape the internet of things for years are being forged just as enterprises fit IoT into their long-term plans.A majority of organizations have included IoT as part of their strategic plans for the next two to three years, IDC said last week. No one vendor can meet the diverse IoT needs of all those users, so they're joining forces and also trying to foster broader ecosystems. General Electric and Germany's Bosch did both on Monday.The two companies, both big players in industrial IoT, said they will establish a core IoT software stack based on open-source software. They plan to integrate parts of GE's Predix operating system with the Bosch IoT Suite in ways that will make complementary software services from each available on the other.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Companies say IoT matters but don’t agree how to secure it

A majority of enterprises say the internet of things is strategic to their business, but most still take a piecemeal approach to IoT security.Those results from a global IDC survey conducted in July and August reveal both the promise and the growing pains of IoT, a set of technologies that may help many industries but can’t simply be plugged in. The 27-country survey had more than 4,500 respondents, all from organizations with 100 or more employees.For 56 percent of enterprises, IoT is part of their strategic plans for the next two or three years, IDC analyst Carrie MacGillivray said on a webcast about the results. But the state of adoption varies widely among industries. Manufacturing companies are investing the most in the technology, with retail and financial services – especially insurance – also on the cutting edge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Citigroup is cutting costs by making storage simpler

Citigroup is using software-defined storage to build an infrastructure that could last 25 years – while generations of hardware come and go.The financial services company needs to transform its storage architecture to deal with growing and changing demands, says Dan Maslowski, global head of storage and engineered systems. By simplifying its architecture, Citigroup expects to slash its operational expenses, which make up most of its storage costs.Citigroup’s need for storage is growing so fast that if costs don’t go down, the company’s spending on storage might eat up its entire IT budget in a few years, Maslowski told an audience at the Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Cisco-Salesforce deal means collaboration will come to you

The hardest thing about adopting an enterprise collaboration platform can be adoption itself – getting employees to actually start up the new software and then turn to it whenever they need to communicate.Putting the software inside something that workers already use is one way to drive adoption and also make the communication tools more valuable. Cisco Systems knows this, and on Thursday the company announced a strategic alliance with Salesforce, its second big partnership in that direction after its headline-grabbing Apple iOS integration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Wi-Fi and LTE-U live together? The tests are ready

The moment of truth has arrived for a hotly contested project to make sure LTE and Wi-Fi can share the same frequencies.On Wednesday, the Wi-Fi Alliance released a test plan for LTE-Unlicensed products, which would bring 4G cellular to unlicensed spectrum bands that Wi-Fi users depend on. The group also said it is qualifying an independent lab where LTE-U vendors can take their equipment for testing.LTE-U could give smartphones and other cellular devices more frequencies to use, potentially bringing better service to more users in crowded areas. But some makers and operators of Wi-Fi gear, including cable operators using Wi-Fi to compete with mobile carriers, warn that the new technology could crowd out Wi-Fi and hurt its performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Industrial IoT is inching toward a consensus on security

IoT is complex, fast-growing and often intertwined with systems that govern things like water and power. That makes IoT security a critical requirement, but it’s one that’s not necessarily well understood.The Industrial Internet Consortium, a group that includes some of the biggest players in the internet of things, took action on Monday to clear the air. It rolled out the IISF (Industrial Internet Security Framework), a set of best practices to help developers and users assess risks and defend against them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Self-driving cars won’t make us more productive

Self-driving cars are raising hopes that we’ll get a lot done when we don’t have to drive anymore. According to a University of Michigan study, that’s about as likely as a parent finishing two memos and a big presentation while taking a teen-age learner out to drive.The average U.S. driver spends an hour a day in their car, but the study concluded that for 62 percent of Americans, freeing up that driving time won’t make them any more productive. And the findings suggest riding in a self-driving car may be a white-knuckle nightmare of nerves, car sickness, unsafe seats and flying gadgets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Violin, still pushing flash speeds, looks to the cloud

In flash storage these days, it takes more than speed to win over many enterprises.Violin Memory, an early player in enterprise flash, made strides more than a decade ago with storage arrays that outran spinning-disk systems for applications that needed data fast. Then the giants of the data center got into the game, and enterprises started looking at flash for their primary storage instead of targeted uses.That leaves Violin catching up. It’s added data services like replication and deduplication – the company calls its suite of integrated services the most complete in flash storage – and on Wednesday the company is announcing what it calls the industry’s highest performance all-flash array for primary storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT keeps pushing analytics closer to the edge

As the internet of things starts to generate data from far-flung sensors and automate remote equipment, it doesn’t always make sense to house all the intelligence for these systems in data centers. The alternative is edge computing, where smaller systems located on site in factories or other facilities can make sense of IoT data and act on it. Edge computing components like gateways can shorten response times or just filter out sensor readings that don’t matter so they won’t burden the network. But how to build edge computing systems and write their software, like so much else in IoT, is still a work in progress. The constraints on things like size and power are unique to this new field.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 5G mobile challenge: Selling a dream

At this week’s CTIA Super Mobility show, it took someone from outside the mobile business to point out what could be a nagging question: Why, exactly, do we need the faster speeds of 5G wireless?Keynote speeches at CTIA, the main annual event for U.S. mobile operators, are heavy on futuristic applications and urgent calls for more spectrum and new networks to make those dreams real. On Wednesday, CTIA President and CEO Meredith Attwell Baker said U.S. carriers would need hundreds of megahertz of additional frequencies to meet mobile demands over the next decade.But on the same stage Thursday, when Broadcast.com founder, Dallas Mavericks owner and entertainment mogul Mark Cuban was asked what’s missing in the wireless business, he answered without hesitation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ireland to Europe: No, Apple doesn’t owe us

Ireland will join Apple in appealing the European Commission’s finding that Apple owes the country more than US$14 billion in back taxes.The Dail, Ireland’s parliament, voted 93 to 36 late Wednesday night to file an appeal against the ruling, which came out last week. The government is now set to ask the EC to reverse its ruling, which said Ireland’s tax treatment of Apple from 2003 to 2014 was illegal and distorted competition.Ireland could stand to gain €13 billion ($14.5 billion) in tax revenue from the ruling, but government officials and lawmakers said imposing the tax would hurt the country’s reputation as a good place to do business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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