The global partnership announced Wednesday between Telefonica and IoT specialist Sigfox could ensure the latter’s long-term success while accelerating the overall growth of LPWANs (low-power, wide-area networks).Telefonica said it will integrate Sigfox’s energy-sipping, low-data-rate radios into millions of devices used for things like smart metering and asset tracking. The Spain-based mobile carrier operates in 21 countries across Europe and Latin America, so the deal should significantly expand Sigfox’s footprint. It’s talking with customers about possible large-scale rollouts across both regions, including Spain, Germany, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to roll back some net neutrality regulations that require broadband providers to inform customers about their network management practices.The Republican-controlled FCC on Thursday suspended the net neutrality transparency requirements for broadband providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers. Critics called the decision anticonsumer.The transparency rule, waived for five years in a 2-1 party-line vote Thursday, requires broadband providers to explain to customers their pricing models and fees as well as their network management practices and the impact on broadband service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Currently discounted 33% and selling for just $19.99, the NETGEAR N300 WiFi Router with external antennas (WNR2020) offers high-performance wireless speeds of up to 300 Mbps, and for the current price is a good consideration for the internet needs in your second home, apartment, dormitory, or as a drop-in replacement of your legacy router. It also features external 5dBi antennas for improved WiFi coverage and Push 'N' Connect for easy WiFi connections. The scheduled WiFi on/off button allows for convenient power savings by scheduling times for WiFi to be turned off. It's currently rated 4 out of 5 stars from over 7,600 customers (read recent reviews here) on Amazon, where its been recently discounted 33% to a very reasonable $19.99. See the discounted N300 Wi-Fi router from Netgear on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) said it would begin offering testing and standards conformance services 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet products.The broad testing services safeguard that Ethernet products and services are interoperable and will help customers boost network speed up to five times without requiring cabling infrastructure changes.The Ethernet Alliance in September wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon was named the "undisputed leader" for U.S. wireless coverage and network reliability for the second half of 2016 at the city, state and national levels, based on millions of field tests conducted by RootMetrics.Verizon benefited from its LTE-Advanced service started in summer of 2016, which provided a significant boost to Verizon's download speeds, RootMetrics said in a report released Thursday.Separately, Verizon announced on Wednesday that it will deliver 5G wireless service to pilot customers in 11 cities by mid-2017. Those cities include Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Seattle and Washington.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If your computer’s been hacked, Dale Drew might actually know something about that.He's CSO (chief security officer) at Level 3 Communications, a major internet backbone provider that's routinely on the lookout for cyberattacks on the network level. The company has linked more than 150 million IP addresses to malicious activity worldwide.That means all of those IP addresses have computers behind them that are probably involved in distributed denial-of-service attacks, email spam, or breaches of company servers, Drew said.Hackers have managed to hijack those computers to "cause harm to the internet," but the owners don't always know that, Drew said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Broadcom will unload the Ruckus Wireless Wi-Fi business for US$800 million when it takes over Brocade Communications Systems later this year.
The buyer, Arris International, is a maker of video and broadband equipment, including cable modems and set-top boxes with Wi-Fi inside. As part of the deal, it will also acquire Brocade’s ICX business, which makes data center, campus and carrier Ethernet switches.
Ruckus makes Wi-Fi gear primarily for enterprises and service providers. Brocade acquired Ruckus last April for $1.2 billion in a bid to expand its enterprise networking business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Richard McKinney set out to migrate the Department of Transportation (DOT) to Microsoft Office 365, he got a valuable lesson in shadow IT, one that could serve as a cautionary tale for other government leaders as they look to upgrade and consolidate their systems.McKinney, who only recently stepped down as CIO at DOT, had been leading a turnaround mission at the department since his arrival, but when it came time for the Office 365 rollout, he quickly discovered how chaotic the situation was, with hundreds of unauthorized devices running undetected on the sprawling network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To keep private Wi-Fi networks secure, encryption is a must-have -- and using strong passwords or passphrases is necessary to prevent the encryption from being cracked. But don’t stop there! Many other settings, features and situations can make your Wi-Fi network as much or even more insecure as when you use a weak password. Make sure you’re not leaving your network vulnerable by doing any of the following.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data. It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel's Atom was mostly known as a low-end chip for mobile devices that underperformed. That may not be the case anymore.The latest Atom C3000 chips announced on Tuesday have up to 16 cores and are more sophisticated than ever. The chips are made for storage arrays, networking equipment, and internet of things devices.The new chips have features found mostly in server chips, including networking, virtualization, and error correction features.Networking and storage devices don't require a lot of horsepower, so the low-power Atom chips fit right in. Only a handful of Intel server chips have more than 16 cores, but the number of Atom cores means the chip can handle more streams of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the many whiz-bang features promised in 5G is a new way of connecting millions of small, low-powered IoT devices. But there's no need to wait: Two forms of LTE tuned for IoT have entered a market that's already heating up with rapidly expanding specialist networks.The new standards, LTE-M and NB-IoT, were completed last year and will share the spotlight at Mobile World Congress next week with an array of network miracles envisioned for the next generation of cellular, due for commercial launches in 2020.As major carriers now upgrade LTE to serve IoT applications, more companies are likely to find available LPWANs (low-power, wide-area networks) in the areas where they want to deploy IoT. The new technologies add to a list of options some enterprises can already buy. They're here just in time for enterprises to start comparing networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With every new generation of smartphone, LTE connections get faster. That's because the devices have faster modems that can transfer data at unprecedented download speeds.The top modem providers are Intel and Qualcomm, whose cellular chips are used in the iPhone. On Tuesday they both announced modems that will push LTE connections to speeds well over those of regular home internet connections.Qualcomm unveiled the X20 LTE chipset, which can transfer data at speeds of up to 1.2Gbps. Intel announced the XMM 7560 LTE modem, which can download data at speeds of up to 1Gbps.However, cellular networks aren't yet designed to handle such fast speeds. One exception is Telstra, an Australian telecommunications company, which has launched a gigabit LTE service for commercial use in that country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of Raspberry Pi's weaknesses is a lack of wireless technologies, which limits its communications capabilities with other devices. One new chipset from Qualcomm could help fill that gap.The QCA4020 chipset packs in Bluetooth Low Energy 5, ZigBee 3.0, WiFi 802.11n, and OpenThread wireless communications protocols.The chipset is like a mini-developer board -- an integrated chipset with an ARM-based CPU. It can be used to create smart home or industrial devices.It can also serve as a wireless access point for Raspberry Pi and other developer boards used to make smart gadgets, drones, robots, and industrial devices. It has a number of connector protocols and can work with Arduino boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Broadband internet has opened up almost unlimited possibilities for commerce, distance learning, civic participation, and knowledge sharing. But we are only scratching the surface of what's to come.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
When you get involved in the actual wiring of networks, one of the things you find yourself checking over and over is whether Ethernet ports are actually live along with do they connect to DHCP, is the Internet visible, and so on. Typically you’ll grab your laptop, plug it in and run a few tests but while this works, you might describe it as “sub-optimal” because how often have you tried to do exactly this in a ceiling void? In a cramped comms cupboard? Somewhere in the bowels of a rack? In every one of those situations it’s just time consuming and annoying to have to fiddle around and juggle with your laptop. The Netool network port analyzer aims to be a better tool for doing exactly this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the latest vendor to identify a faulty clocking component of its products that can cause them to crash and not recover.
HPE joined Cisco and Juniper in identifying the problem, even going so far as to tap the widely-suspected Intel-based clock element as the cause.
In a statement the company said:“To the best of our knowledge, our customers are not experiencing failures due to the Intel C2000 chip, which is deployed on a limited number of our products. We remain committed to assuring the highest quality experience from our solutions and are proactively working with Intel to mitigate any future risk and impact on our customers.”
Unlike Cisco and Juniper however, HPE did not identify its affected products nor offer any details as to what customers can do with them should the problem occur.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software Defined Networking vendor Versa this week added support for IPv6 to its SD-WAN and security packages.According to Kumar Mehta, founder and CDO of Versa Networks by supporting IPv4 and IPv6 for SD-WAN and SD-Security, customers will have the flexibility to design their WAN under IPv4 today and protect it from obsolescence as they switch over to IPv6 in the future.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In its quarterly financial results announcement this week, Cisco said it had set aside $125 million to help cover the cost of replacing networking gear impacted by a fatal clock component.
Cisco was the first vendor to post a notice about the clock technology problem earlier this month saying the fatal glitch includes some of the company’s most widely deployed products, such as certain models of its Series 4000 Integrated Services Routers, Nexus 9000 Series switches, ASA security devices and Meraki Cloud Managed Switches. Clock components are critical to the synchronization device functions.
+More on Network World: Cisco: Faulty clock part could cause failure in some Nexus switches, ISR routers, ASA security appliances+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Swedish network giant Ericsson will have a lot of prospective 5G equipment to show to gearheads at Mobile World Congress later this month, but the future cloud capabilities it demonstrates may be just as important for a subscriber’s experience.In addition to fast broadband speeds, Ericsson’s technologies for next-generation networks will be able to guarantee enterprises the same type of service around the world and shift applications to the edge of a network to shrink transmission delays, the company said in an MWC preview on Wednesday.Those concepts aren’t brand new, but building the back-end infrastructure to support them – much of it defined by software – is part of the ongoing move toward true 5G deployments coming around the end of this decade.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here