Service orchestration is important, but there's a lot more to it than being able to allow customers to quickly self-provision connections and bandwidth. Orchestration should also mean being able to rapidly detect and resolve connection problems.I read a lot about service orchestration, and the top vendors and industry organizations that talk to me about it are manifold. There's the MetroEthernet Forum (MEF), with its Third Network, and Lifecycle Service Orchestration vision. There are companies like CENX, Cyan, and Tail-f (now part of Cisco). All too often, the messages are good, but repetitive: Customers are sick of waiting weeks or months for new connections. They want to be able to do their own moves, adds, and changes. They want to have MPLS service or Carrier Ethernet to have the agility of, say, the ubiquitous Internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has approved a bill that would add new requirements before a government agency ends its oversight of ICANN, the coordinator of the Internet’s domain name system.The goal of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act is to safeguard Internet users and ensure a smooth transition away from U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) oversight of ICANN’s key domain-name functions, supporters said.Wednesday’s voice vote approving the DOTCOM Act in the Internet subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sends the bill to the full committee for action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAN DIEGO – Reflecting on a two-decade tenure as Cisco CEO marked by enviable success, John Chambers says he wishes the company could have moved faster.
“Mistakes that I’ve made [have been] when I haven’t moved fast enough” into new market opportunities, Cisco’s outgoing CEO said to a room full of reporters during an open-ended question-and-answer session at the Cisco Live conference in San Diego. “Or I moved too fast without process behind it.”
It was perhaps Chambers’ last meeting with the press as CEO given that he will step down in late July. Incoming CEO Chuck Robbins shared the stage and fielded questions along Chambers. (See How Chambers kept a high profile.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Do Apple’s deals with music labels break antitrust laws?
There were murmurs in advance of the Apple Music debut this week that Apple was using the industry power it wields via iTunes to pressure music labels not to permit any free tier streaming through rivals like Spotify. Now it’s been confirmed that the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut are looking into just that issue, and whether Apple may have run afoul of antitrust law in hammering out its deals.
North Korea threatens U.S. with cyberattacksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to permanently extend a 17-year moratorium on taxing Internet access and other online services.By voice vote on Tuesday, the House agreed to pass the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, which would prohibit states from taxing Internet access and from levying any new taxes that target Internet services but have no offline equivalent. The bill would prohibit taxes on bandwidth or email, for example.Congress has passed temporary moratoriums since 1998, and the current moratorium is set to expire Oct. 1.The House action sends the bill to the Senate. Some senators have resisted calls for a permanent tax moratorium in recent years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Communications and Regulators Association of Southern Africa (CRASA) is teaming up with Ericsson to encourage countries in the region to adopt national broadband policies and lay the groundwork for the growth of Internet services.CRASA serves nations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which are generally considered to lack the necessary expertise to formulate policies that could foster the growth of broadband services.In addition to accelerating the deployment of Internet services, CRASA’s initiative, if successful, could curb the high cost of broadband in the region, said Edith Mwale, a telecom analyst at Africa Center for ICT Development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two years after the first leaks by Edward Snowden about U.S. surveillance programs, the country’s tech companies are still worried about a backlash from other governments.Several foreign governments continue to push policies requiring that data generated in their countries be stored within their borders, said Yael Weinman, vice president of global privacy policy at the Information Technology Industry Council.“We’ve all heard the metaphor—data is the new oil,” Weinman said at the Techonomy Policy conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. “Barriers to cross-border data-flows make doing business today ... much more difficult.”The first surveillance leaks from Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, came out two years ago, and the impact of the surveillance programs was part of the backdrop for several debates at the conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At the Computex show in Taipei last week, Microsoft outlined its plans for the Internet of Things (IoT) and how both Windows 10 and Azure will play a part in the strategy.The IoT news was just one of many announcements made as part of a bigger keynote by Nick Parker, corporate vice president of the OEM Division at Microsoft, who was joined by Tony Prophet, corporate vice president for Windows and Search Marketing, and Roanne Sones, general manager of Windows Engineering.Prophet discussed Microsoft's goal of having 1 billion devices running Windows 10 in the next two to three years. The first partner in that ambitious project is Toshiba, which will build "next-generation Windows- and Azure-powered IoT solutions."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple shares a wealth of news on its big day, but few surprisesOnce a year, Apple holds its Worldwide Developers Conference, and the tech world gets a boatload of updates from the company. The ship’s not quite as leak-proof as it used to be, though, so there were few surprises in the mix. Tim Cook and company unveiled:— Apple Music, a streaming service, and an Internet radio station called Beats One;— an update to iOS 9 that features multitasking, a new, improved Siri and an actual “news” app;To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
No screen, apparently, is too small for video, even the one on Apple’s Watch.Twitter’s popular Vine mobile video app will come to Apple’s Internet-connected wrist gizmo later this year. During Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice president of technology, demoed some new functions, including video, that will be possible on the second version of the Watch’s operating system, which arrives in the fall.During the demo, he showed a video of someone clinking drinking glasses on the Vine app. Vine later posted on its Twitter feed that its app would arrive on the Apple Watch later this year. Vine’s app lets people record and share looped videos up to six seconds in length.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The mobile industry is trying to shoot down another law requiring cellphone radiation warnings.CTIA sued the city of Berkeley, California, on Monday, taking aim at a law passed in May that would force cellphone retailers to post a notice about safety from radiofrequency radiation emitted by handsets. CTIA, the main trade group for U.S. mobile operators, says the law will force its members to pass on an inaccurate message that they don’t agree with.Just a few years ago, CTIA successfully fought a similar law in nearby San Francisco. That law required phone sellers to disclose the emissions produced by each model. The disputes are part of a smoldering debate over whether phones and other wireless devices give off radiation that may be harmful to humans. CTIA, and the Federal Communications Commission, say there is no evidence of a health risk from approved devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAN DIEGO -- Cisco this week announced a plan to embed security throughout the network – from the data center out to endpoints, branch offices, and the cloud – in an effort to avoid pervasive threats.Cisco says the strategy, announced at this week’s Cisco Live conference, will give customers the ability to gain threat-centric security required for the digitized business and the Internet of Everything. The company sees IoE as a $19 trillion opportunity over the next decade while cybercrime is itself a $450 billion to $1 trillion business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If your image of the Google cafeteria is a bunch of portly coders tucking into steak and lobster every night, think again: Silicon Valley’s cream of the crop is going on a diet.To the list of perks you’re missing out on at the famous workers’ paradise, you can now add healthier food. But don’t worry, the planet wins, too. For the last year and a half, Google’s food department has been on a mission to cut down on meat.“A more balanced, plant-centric diet is good for the environment and is good for your health,” said Michiel Bakker, director of the Global Food Program at Google. “So if we can move more people to eat less meat and to enjoy more vegetables, the rest will follow.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After a backlash from critics, PayPal seems to be reconsidering a plan to give itself unilateral permission to ping its users with robocalls and text messages.The controversy started when PayPal recently indicated in proposed amendments to its user agreement and privacy policy its intention to engage in this type of communication with its customers. There, it also stated that the only opt-out recourse for those in disagreement with its plan would be to close their accounts.The plan drew attention from critics who, in blogs and on social media, questioned the prudence and legality of the new policy, which is slated to go into effect July 1. If the changes are adopted, PayPal would be able to make autodialed and prerecorded calls, and send text messages using any telephone number account holders have provided to PayPal or that the company has “otherwise obtained.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Officials of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week awarded two contracts worth a total of nearly $24 million to develop new networking and security technologies at the WAN edge.Raytheon BBN Technologies and Vencore Labs’ Applied Communication Sciences research program pretty much evenly divided the money which DARPA expects will develop technologies that “bolster the resilience of communication over IP networks solely by instantiating new capabilities in computing devices within user enclaves at the WAN edge.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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.
Organizations are excited about the business value of the data that will be generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). But there’s less discussion about how to manage the devices that will make up the network, secure the data they generate and analyze it quickly enough to deliver the insights businesses need.
Software defined networking (SDN) can help meet these needs. By virtualizing network components and services, they can rapidly and automatically reconfigure network devices, reroute traffic and apply authentication and access rules. All this can help speed and secure data delivery, and improve network management, for even the most remote devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Living inside a machine is "definitely a possibility," according to a British neuroscientist. Dr. Hannah Critchlow,of Cambridge University, says that if a computer could be built to recreate the 100 trillion connections in the brain, it would be possible to live within programs.Critchlow's statement, at the Hay Festival, was reported by the Telegraph and Metro newspapers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Home automation horror stories!Image by ThinkstockBreathless is the prose that's usually deployed to describe our Jetsons-like future of automated homes, smart appliances, and the IoT (Internet of things). When all of our gadgets and doohickeys are networked, online, and talking with one another, we'll enter a new golden age of efficiency and comfort ... or so we're told, principally by those selling said gadgets and doohickeys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here