Sensor Fusion for Public Space Utilization Monitoring in a Smart City (pdf) is simply the best read for IoT product designers, developers and implementers. It steps through designing a system to measure space utilization in a city — the trade-offs made in sensor selection and calibration, power source selection, network design, data cleaning and normalization, and data processing. The methodology can be generalized for designing any IoT network. The paper is nothing less than a perfect case study about how to build an IoT network.RELATED: 8 tips for building a cost-effective IoT sensor network The most interesting aspects of the paper by Billy Pik Lik Lau, Nipun Wijerathne, and Chau Yuen of the Singapore University of Technology and Design and Benny Kai Kiat Ng of Curtin University is how they matched the sensors to acquire the data at the right resolution to estimate space utilization and built a test bed, minimizing a wide range of implementation issues. To measure space utilization, meaning how populated a space is over multiple time intervals, they chose sound and motion sensors and the fusion of the two. The methodology applied in this paper could be adapted to other sensor types.To read this Continue reading
SanDisk has discounted some cards today on Amazon. Their Ultra 32GB microSDHC UHS-I card with Adapter is currently listed for $11.19, which is $0.61 cheaper than the 16GB model. Today they've also priced the 64GB model at $17.99, 128GB for $36.99, and 200GB for $62.99. See these discounts on Amazon, today only.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A friend recently reminded me of a useful option that can add a little caution to the commands that I run with the Linux find command. It’s called -ok and it works like the -exec option except for one important difference — it makes the find command ask for permission before taking the specified action.Here’s an example. If you were looking for files that you intended to remove from the system using find, you might run a command like this:$ find . -name runme -exec rm {} \; Anywhere within the current directory and its subdirectories, any files named “runme” would be summarily removed — provided, of course, you have permission to remove them. Use the -ok command instead, and you’ll see something like this. The find command will ask for approval before removing the files. Answering y for “yes” would allow the find command to go ahead and remove the files one by one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A decade ago, one of the big knocks on Cisco was that its products were difficult to deploy and often even harder to manage. Over the past few years, though, particularly since Chuck Robbins took the helm as CEO, the company has been laser focused on making its products simpler to operate.It’s important to understand that making products easy to use is actually much more difficult than those that are hard to use. As an example, Cisco’s network-intuitive, intent-based networking solution enables the operations for the campus network to be fully automate, dramatically cutting the operational overhead required by network engineers.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: What is intent-based networking? This week, Cisco is bringing the benefits of intent-based networking to the data center with the 3.0 version of its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) software-defined networking (SDN) product. The latest release of ACI will increase network automation, simplify operational tasks and make it easier to secure agile workloads regardless of whether they are in containers, in virtual machines, on bare metal or in on-premises data centers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This is probably the cheapest price you're going to pay right now for these bulbs. At $49.97 for a 4-pack, you're paying $12.49 per bulb. A very solid discount over the typical list price. Automate your lighting experience with Philips Hue and control your lights from home or away. Create light schedules from the Philips Hue App and never come home to a dark house. Install the LED lights as you would install ordinary bulbs and pair them with the Hue Bridge, which allows you to control smart-bulb-equipped lamps and overhead lights via the Philips Hue App. The box includes four Philips Hue White A19 Energy Star Certified Standard light bulbs, a manual, and a two-year warranty. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As the IoT reshaped how companies did their business and how consumers purchased their beloved products, it was simultaneously revolutionizing the field of information security. Many IoT observers contend that not enough has been done to keep it secure, however, and today’s experts are increasingly pointing out that one key facet of IoT security is often forgotten: smart consumers.So how exactly should smart consumers play a role in IoT security, and how can today’s top companies, governments, and IoT-advocates help educate consumers to make better decisions? A brief look at the crucial next step in securing the internet of things shows that creating a generation of smart consumers won’t be easy, but it will certainly be worth the investment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Technologies like content delivery networks, cloud compute and storage, container schedulers, load balancers, web application firewalls, DDoS mitigation services and many more make up the building blocks that serve the online applications of organizations today. But the entry point to every one of those applications is an often-ignored bit of infrastructure: DNS. As the internet has mushroomed in size and traffic, DNS has adapted to become a critical factor in application delivery. Organizations that rely on content delivery networks (CDNs) can work with their DNS provider(s) to create a CDN strategy that best serves them and their customers.CDN: the what and the why A CDN’s job is what it sounds like: deliver content such as images, video, html files and javascript from a network of distributed systems to end-users. CDNs have been around for about as long as Managed DNS companies. Akamai is usually considered the first serious CDN player, and the company rose to prominence during the first dot-com boom. Generally, CDNs deliver content over HTTP or HTTPS, the web protocols, although there are occasionally use cases like video delivery where other protocols come into play.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please Continue reading
This post is an excerpt from a talk I gave at the Reality Virtually Hackathon that makes a similar comparison between virtual reality and augmented reality and the Mac. It holds true for the Internet of Things (IoT) and every emerging technology.Many IoT devices makers build on proprietary platforms. Proprietary hardware is an advantage during the emergence of a new platform — until it is not. A proprietary platform protects intellectual property from reverse engineering because the software is tied to the hardware and it can be tuned for performance.Custom-designed hardware performs better — until it doesn’t. For example, when supercomputers, video bridges and CAD simulators were first introduced, all took advantage of custom, proprietary hardware to gain time to market. Now mature products, almost all the supercomputer, video bridge and CAD simulator suppliers use x86 and Nvidia platforms because these they have open ecosystems that add capabilities and value while reducing cost. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This 76-piece repair kit contains everything you need to work on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, stereo, or anything else that requires precision instruments. Everything from screwdrivers, to a suction cup to a plastic spudger, whatever that might be. This kit is highly rated and a #1 best seller on Amazon, where its typical list price of $69.99 has been reduced 63% to $25.99. See this deal now on Amazon .To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Set yourself free from wires and cords with Bluetooth 4.1 and CVC Noise Cancellation 6.0 technology with these sweatproof sport earbuds from ToaTronics. Pair in a few seconds with your smartphone, tablet, or music player, and let your favorite music and podcasts drive you forward. With wireless audio range of 33 ft, you can roam around the house with uncompromised sound quality. aptX proprietary audio compression technology increases the Bluetooth data transmission rate so you can enjoy the purest high-fidelity music and sound. Weighting only 0.6 oz and coming with interchangeable ear buds and hooks, the headset will stay comfortable on your ears even when you are moving around. And with 5 hours of play time and sweat-proof design, you can take it for a good work out, knowing the headset will remain stable as you sweat it out. The typical list price on these earbuds have been discounted 60% down to just $19.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A year ago, IDC told us that 68 percent of organizations have adopted cloud for enterprise applications—and that it’s not just about cost, but about revenue increases as well. That study also says that 73 percent of respondents, who spanned both IT and line-of-business users, have a hybrid cloud strategy in place.But when you dig further into those numbers, you’ll find that to most those respondents, “hybrid” means “subscribing to multiple external cloud services.” This can mean some applications in a portfolio run on one cloud while others run on a different cloud. To another 47 percent of those surveyed, “hybrid” means “using a mix of public cloud services and dedicated assets,” which conjures an image of a database running on-site sending data to a web or application server on a public cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“I don’t drink water, period. I live in Los Angeles and the water I get from the tap is lackluster, in terms of quality.”If someone said this, what is the first thought that comes to mind (assuming the person isn’t wearing hemp clothing and has their hair in dreadlocks)?“Have you tried using a water filter?” … is what you and I would probably ask, right?After you read below, this will be the same thing you say when you hear someone say, “VoIP isn’t a good fit for our company because we only have one ISP in the area, and the connection is shaky, at best.”Your response will be “Have you tried using SD-WAN to fix your call quality?”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The rise of SD-WANs has raised an interesting debate. Is the internet good enough to replace a private network for an enterprise WAN?A decade ago, no one would have even considered this, but broadband speeds have increased and more things have moved to the cloud. Also, SD-WAN technology allows for dynamic path selection, which protects the WAN from outages so companies can use multiple broadband connections instead of something like MPLS.Global SD-WAN vendor Aryaka recently examined this question in its “State of SD-WAN Connectivity” report (registration required), which measured and compared data transport from the same pairs of locations using both the internet and over Aryaka’s own global private network. The test run was a randomly created 100 KB file, and connect time and transfer time were captured. The application response time was then calculated as the sum of these two metrics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most enterprises are in the process of evaluating how the Internet of Things (IoT) will affect their organization, especially how devices targeted at the Enterprise of Things (EoT) will be deployed.Indeed, companies that deploy “things” need to worry about security, manageability, longevity/availability and robustness — unlike consumers who generally don’t concern themselves with such things. I recently discussed what I see as a real lack of focus on IoT security from a device perspective. What I’d like to discuss now is the need make it easier to deploy and manage devices, especially those focused on enterprise deployments. This can be relatively easily accomplished by creating a unique unalterable identity for each device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprises are getting hooked on “everything-as-a-service” and the revolution that ripped through the data center is rapidly encompassing network infrastructure. As more and more IT assets rely on cloud computing, IT decision makers need to make sure their networks aren’t becoming obstacles to achieving business objectives.According to the State of the CIO Survey 2017, “IT investments are being directed toward business initiatives such as improving customer experience (40%), transforming existing business processes (40%), increasing operational efficiency (35%), and growing the business (33%).”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There are a lot of commands available on Linux for looking at network settings and connections. In today's post, we're going to run through some very handy commands and see how they work.One very useful command is the ifquery command. This command should give you a quick list of network interfaces. However, you might only see something like this -- showing only the loopback interface: $ ifquery --list lo If this is the case, your /etc/network/interfaces file doesn't include information on network interfaces except for the loopback interface. You can add lines like the last two in the example below -- assuming DHCP is used to assign addresses -- if you'd like it to be more useful.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two new spending reports paint a rosy picture for some IT vendors, but it isn’t looking so great for the traditional players.At Gartner’s Symposium & ITxpo last week, the firm released a report stating the global IT market is expected to reach $3.7 trillion next year, a 4.3 percent increase over the $3.5 billion expected for this year.Spending on traditional data center hardware and systems is expected to stay flat, continuing a trend we’ve seen for a while now as businesses ramp up spending on three on-demand services: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and communication as a service (CaaS).Also on Network World: Report confirms on-premises data center spending declined "The IT buying landscape is changing: Digital business transformation is an effort to create connected, platforms and new industry revenue streams," analyst John-David Lovelock wrote in the report. "Organizations that are not creating new digital business models or new ways to engage constituents or customers are falling behind. Those vendors that do not move more quickly than their clients will be left behind." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Few things have propelled the IoT’s dizzying growth in recent years as much as machine learning and the innovators who are pushing it. Independent, intelligent machines that can comb through data to make their own decisions are, to some, the only reason such phenomenon as the IoT can exist in the first place. So what are the top three ways in which machine learning has and will shape the IoT?Whether it’s inspiring human creativity, surpassing human efficiency, or paving the way for even newer technologies to themselves break through and reshape the IoT, machine learning is the fuel that’s driving the IoT forward into the 21st century. Here’s how:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The amount of data being created today is expected to increase ten-fold in less than a decade, it’s also anticipated that enterprises will produce around 60% of global data by 2025[1]. However, while the amount of data may be growing exponentially, the intelligence gleaned from it is not. Instead, companies can be subject to a barrage of unstructured data delivered at high velocity from a variety of different sources with limited ability to convert it into actionable insight. As a result, enterprises risk useful information getting lost amidst the sheer volume of noise.This is set to be further compounded by the widespread adoption of IoT technologies in both consumer and enterprise markets. The proliferation of IoT sensors, mobile devices and digital services, combined with advent in big data technologies and broadband networks increase the volume, velocity and variety of data traversing the connected world. This means that businesses that collect relevant data that flows through their corporate networks and the connected world are sitting on an abundance of data, which will only increase. Mission contextual analysis of this data can provide invaluable insight to corporations in a variety of areas and improve business outcomes. For example, gleaning insight Continue reading
Old habits die hard, especially when it comes to buying network gear and accessories based on long-standing procurement practices. While it may seem easier to sustain the status quo, doing so can expose you to undue costs created by manufacturer price-gouging practices.Case in point: Optical transceivers, which Gartner says accounts for 10 to 15 percent of enterprise network capital spending. This may not seem like a big budget buster, but huge markups on optics is the subject of a new Gartner report, entitled “How to Avoid the Biggest Rip-Off in Networking.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here