A casual reflection on the last few years in the evolution of the wireless network provides us all the insights necessary to reason that there is at least one final frontier coming down the road. Who can deny that the last few years have been owned by the cloud, virtualization and softwarization (if that is even a word!). Edge Computing too, which is really nothing more than the pushing of all of these concepts deep into places in the network where they have never been before. Fog computing is another term (created by Cisco) for something similar but driven in its genesis more bottom up from the many Internet of Things use cases. The bigger trend is obvious; network intelligence is distributing but where will it, can it go, beyond this?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows users who work in tight spaces and looking for a small form factor workstation with multiple display ports and solid processing power have a new contender to check out: the new ThinkStation P320 Tiny.The workstation lives up to its name: At 1.4 x 7.1 by 7.2 inches, it's the smallest workstation on the market that is ISV (independent software vendor) certified, according to Rob Herman, the general manager of Lenovo's workstation business unit.The ISV certification is important. "We don't consider a machine to be a workstation unless it has ISV certification," according to Lloyd Cohen, an analyst with IDC.The U.S. government uses the same definition for workstations and for non-government users, software certifications mean that you can run CAD and CAM programs, for example, without worrying about crashing, Cohen noted. That's important if you're working on a complex design.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Swedish rail line can now collect fares by scanning its customers for embedded biometric chips. The primary benefit is the elimination of a physical ticket -- plus it’s harder to lose. It sounds futuristic, but my dogs have been sporting embedded chips for over a decade.If you think about it, physical tickets are kind of a silly. They are a surrogate for the person. The practice of scanning a ticket, instead of a person, was likely established when there just weren’t many viable alternatives. Technology now offers a more direct approach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The initial efforts to bring ARM-based processors in the data center were not terribly successful. Calxeda crashed and burned spectacularly after it bet on a 32-bit processor when the rest of the world had moved on to 64-bits. And HPE initially wanted to base its Project Moonshot servers on ARM but now uses Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron.That’s because the initial uses for ARM processors were low-performance applications, like basic LAMP stacks, file and print, and storage. Instead, one company has been quietly building momentum for high performance ARM processors, and it’s not Qualcomm.Cavium, a company steeped in MIPS-based embedded processors, is bringing its considerable experience and IP to the ARM processor with its ThunderX server ecosystem. ThunderX is the whole shootin’ match, an ARMv8-A 64-bit SoC plus motherboards, both single and dual socket. In addition to hardware, Cavium offers operating systems, development environments, tools, and applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Future computer systems need to be significantly faster than the supercomputers around today, scientists believe. One reason is because analyzing complex problems properly, such as climate modeling, takes increasing work. Massive quantities of calculations, performed at high speed, and delivered in mistake-free data analysis is needed for the fresh insights and discoveries expected down the road.Limitations, though, exist in current storage, processing and software, among other components.The U.S. Department of Energy’s four year $48 million Exascale Computing Project (ECP), started at the end of last year for science and national security purposes, plans to overcome those challenges. It explains some of the potential hiccups it will be running into on its Argonne National Laboratory website. Part of the project is being studied at the lab.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In July of last year, I believe that became the first to publicly suggest that Avaya should divest of the company’s data networking business. The one-year anniversary of my ”Cajun redux?” post is approaching and in a coincidence, around this same time Avaya will complete the sale of that part of the company to Extreme Networks. With this confluence of milestones, in this post will ask, does this signify a new day for Avaya or will, at some point down the road, we again be struck with that strange feeling of déjà vu?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Scentsy, a $500 million manufacturer and seller of wickless candles, got an early look at what Cisco and some analysts are saying could be the next big thing in the network industry: Intent-based networking.“I think this could be a pretty big shift in terms of the paradigm of network management,” says Kevin Tompkins, network architect at the company. “We’re getting away from managing individual devices and into having a central, globally managed policy, all controlled from one place that pervades through the network.”+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Cisco brings intent based networking to the end-to-end network +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
iClever's BoostStrip IC-BS01 travel power strip turns one solitary outlet in the airport, hotel, train or plane into 2 surge protected AC outlets and 4 USB ports. Equipped with iClever’s SmartID technology, this power strip offers a max 24W/4.8A USB output while it recognizes your device and safely optimizes max output. The typical list price of the BoostStrip is $49.99, but right now it's currently discounted 60% to just $19.99 on Amazon, where it's averaging 4.5 stars from over 100 reviewers. See this deal on Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We frequently hear that we can’t have privacy and security; sadly, that is often still the case as an audit of over 1,000 top websites analyzed for security and privacy practices showed an alarming trend for the third year in a row. The Online Trust Alliance said, “Sites either qualify for the Honor Roll or fail the Audit. In other words, sites increasingly either take privacy and security seriously and do well in the Audit, or lag the industry significantly in one or more critical areas.”There is good news and bad news coming out of the audit (pdf). The good news is that 52 percent of websites, the highest percent in nine years of the annual analysis, qualified for the OTA’s Honor Roll. The flipside is that 46 percent of the websites failed the audit; of those, bank did the worst.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you believe the reviewers on Amazon, you may not find a better sounding pair of earbuds at this price point, which at the current 23% discount is just $7.68. The ErgoFit earbuds from Panasonic are designed to fit comfortably and securely in your ear, isolating outside noise while delivering great sound with a wider frequency range than most comparable buds. The earbuds come in various colors and features a generous 3.6 ft. cord that easily fits through or around your clothes, coats and bags. The ErgoFit earbuds average 4.5 stars from over 48,000 people on Amazon (read reviews) which lends some credibility to Panasonic's claim that the earbuds deliver dynamic, crystal clear sound while successfully blocking ambient noise. Its typical list price has been reduced 23% to just $7.68.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
OwnBackup is a cloud-to-cloud backup and restore vendor that aims to provide secure, automated, daily backups of SaaS and PaaS data. Founded by well-regarded recovery, data protection and security experts, OwnBackup is a Salesforce partner and ranks highly on the Salesforce AppExchange.As well as the usual backup and recovery options, OwnBackup has a broader take on what backup really means and offers data comparison and restoration tools to offer more granular control in the broader backup and recovery space.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fog computing and fog networking could fill the latency and range gap in the internet of things (IoT.) For the last couple of years, researchers have been reporting on developments in fog’s role in completing IoT’s ubiquitous connectivity. It is similar to cloud computing architectures but it brings the cloud to the edge to meet the different demands of IoT.The underlying concept is the cloud for some real-time IoT services could be too slow because the quality of service (QoS) specifications for the IoT application exceeds the cloud’s QoS. The solution is to move the cloud out into the network.RELATED: IoT catches on in New England fishing town
Low latency and QoS is important in IoT use cases like self-driving vehicles and controlling robots and other control applications that require minimum latency to synchronize, supervise, control and initiate machine actions. Range is important when connecting devices over long distances where hubs and gateways are not locally available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber is now a driverless vehicle, after CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down Tuesday.Kalanick had already decided to take an indefinite leave of absence from the company, but now he's leaving for good. The move came at the request of the board of directors, The New York Times reported Wednesday.The company has already lost Kalanick's right-hand man, Senior Vice President of Business Emil Michael, following a number of gaffes including his suggestion that the company target a journalist who had been investigating the company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo is taking on Dell EMC and HPE with its biggest portfolio refresh since it acquired IBM's x86 server business three years ago, offering a lineup of servers, switches, SAN arrays and converged systems intended to show that it's a serious contender in the data center and software-defined infrastructure market.The product launch, staged in New York Tuesday, was the first major event for Lenovo's Data Center Group, in business since April. Lenovo wants to be a global player not only for the enterprise data center but also in hyperscale computing.Lenovo is tied for third in server market share with Cisco and IBM, well behind HPE and Dell EMC, according to IDC, and has a particularly steep uphill battle ahead in North America.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo is taking on Dell EMC and HPE with its biggest portfolio refresh since it acquired IBM's x86 server business three years ago, offering a lineup of servers, switches, SAN arrays and converged systems intended to show that it's a serious contender in the data center and software-defined infrastructure market.The product launch, staged in New York yesterday, was the first major event for Lenovo's Data Center Group, in business since April. Lenovo wants to be a global player not only for the enterprise data center but also in hyperscale computing.Lenovo is tied for third in server market share with Cisco and IBM, well behind HPE and Dell EMC, according to IDC, and has a particularly steep uphill battle ahead in North America.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SD-WANs have garnered a tremendous amount of interest from companies both large and small as they can significantly lower the costs and complexity of running a WAN. As businesses migrate applications to the cloud, they are increasingly embracing the cost advantages of broadband connectivity to connect users to applications. This is being driven not only by the high cost of private WAN circuits, but because backhauling applications’ traffic to the data center is negatively impacting application performance, resulting in frustrated users and sub-optimal productivity. The combination of high costs and poor performance seem like a perfect recipe for market disruption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The European Commission wants to make it easier for lightweight drones to fly autonomously in European airspace -- with logistics, inspection services and agricultural businesses set to benefit.Last Friday, the Commission unveiled a plan to improve the safety of drones flying at low altitude.It wants to introduce a consistent set of rules across the EU for flying drones in "U-space," its name for regulated airspace under 150 meters in altitude.Simpler regulations will be welcomed by multinational businesses such as gas giant Engie, which is developing drones for tasks such as pipeline or building inspection or for cleaning the insulators on high-voltage overhead power lines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not just the folks at AMD who hope that that the company's Epyc server processor, officially launched Tuesday, will break Intel's stranglehold on the data-center chip market.Enterprise users, web hosting companies and hyperscale cloud providers all want competition and choice in server chips to curb costs and fuel innovation."OEMs have been looking for an alternative to Intel for a long time, and with Intel having 98 percent market share I can say that there's absolutely a need, from the OEM point of view and the channel point of view," said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy.Judging from specs, performance benchmarks and memory features as well as the supporting voices from software and hardware makers in the data center ecosystem, Epyc has the best shot of any chip to hit the market in years at putting a crack in Intel's dominance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you run a command in the background on a Linux system and then log out, the process you were running will stop abruptly. If you elect to run the command with a no-hangup command, on the other hand, it will continue running and will store its output in a file.Here's how this works. The nohup command instructs your process to ignore the SIGHUP signal that would normally shut it down. That allows you to leave time-consuming processes to complete on their own without you having to remain logged in. By default, the output of the command you are running will be left in a file named nohup.out so that you can find your data the next time you log in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“Fast” seems like a simple concept, on the surface. Go fast enough and you can win races, even highly competitive ones like Formula 1 auto racing. But it takes a complex, sophisticated IT setup to get to the necessary level of fast, according to the CIO of Red Bull Racing, Matt Cadieux.In particular, the extensive IoT deployment that the team uses to squeeze the maximum performance out of its cars is key to success, Cadieux saidThe carNaturally enough, it all starts with the car. F1 cars are essentially very light-weight, low-flying aircraft, mating an engine capable of around 600 horsepower with a fiberglass body and spindly chassis weighing in at about 1,500 pounds. They can get from zero to 100mph in an incendiary four seconds, corner like waterbugs, and keep drivers relatively safe even from collisions at the blistering speeds that F1 races can reach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here