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Because Our Future Depends On It

Esther is a youth leader passionate about gender, digital literacy, and grassroots advocacy. She is founder of the SAFIGI Outreach Foundation and President of Digital Grassroots.

She is also a 2019 IFF Community Development fellow, a 2019 Engineers Without Borders Canada Kumvana fellow, a Mozilla Open Leader, an Internet Society 2017 Youth@IGF fellow, an open knowledge advocate, and a champion for capacity building of youth and girls.

Esther graduated summa cum laude in multimedia journalism, and is a contributor on Impakter.com and Africa.com.  She is an emerging African writer, working on her debut fantasy novel and does photography in her free time.

Born in 1994, about the same time Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium and a commercialized Internet started to take form, the Internet has inextricably shaped my life and career.

At 16 years old, I got my first job at an Internet café. I had taught myself to type, and that was all I needed to teach people that they couldn’t just guess a password if they had not already set up an email account. Many young people in developing nations are still grappling to learn the computer (it’s Continue reading

io_submit: The epoll alternative you’ve never heard about

io_submit: The epoll alternative you've never heard about

My curiosity was piqued by an LWN article about IOCB_CMD_POLL - A new kernel polling interface. It discusses an addition of a new polling mechanism to Linux AIO API, which was merged in 4.18 kernel. The whole idea is rather intriguing. The author of the patch is proposing to use the Linux AIO API with things like network sockets.

Hold on. The Linux AIO is designed for, well, Asynchronous disk IO! Disk files are not the same thing as network sockets! Is it even possible to use the Linux AIO API with network sockets in the first place?

The answer turns out to be a strong YES! In this article I'll explain how to use the strengths of Linux AIO API to write better and faster network servers.

But before we start, what is Linux AIO anyway?

io_submit: The epoll alternative you've never heard about
Photo by Scott Schiller CC/BY/2.0

Introduction to Linux AIO

Linux AIO exposes asynchronous disk IO to userspace software.

Historically on Linux, all disk operations were blocking. Whether you did open(), read(), write() or fsync(), you could be sure your thread would stall if the needed data and meta-data was not ready in disk cache. This usually isn't Continue reading

Poor data-center configuration leads to severe waste problem

All of the monstrous data centers popping up globally are having multiple negative impacts on the planet, the EPA notes.First, there is the obvious effect, power consumption. Data centers account for 3 percent of the global electricity supply and consume more power than the entire United Kingdom.But beyond that is the waste caused by disposal. With Amazon and the like deploying more than a million physical servers per year globally, the old server equipment they replace have to go somewhere. The same goes for your old servers.[ Read also: Chip-cooling breakthrough will reduce data-center power costs | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] E-waste 70 percent of toxic waste The EPA estimates e-waste, disposed electronics, now accounts for 2 percent of all solid waste and 70 percent of toxic waste, thanks to the use of chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, as well as hazardous chemicals such as brominated flame retardants. A lot of that is old servers and components.To read this article in full, please click here

Poor data-center configuration leads to severe waste problem

All of the monstrous data centers popping up globally are having multiple negative impacts on the planet, the EPA notes.First, there is the obvious effect, power consumption. Data centers account for 3 percent of the global electricity supply and consume more power than the entire United Kingdom.But beyond that is the waste caused by disposal. With Amazon and the like deploying more than a million physical servers per year globally, the old server equipment they replace have to go somewhere. The same goes for your old servers.[ Read also: Chip-cooling breakthrough will reduce data-center power costs | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] E-waste 70 percent of toxic waste The EPA estimates e-waste, disposed electronics, now accounts for 2 percent of all solid waste and 70 percent of toxic waste, thanks to the use of chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, as well as hazardous chemicals such as brominated flame retardants. A lot of that is old servers and components.To read this article in full, please click here

Why does Mellanox have four potential suitors?

It looks like Microsoft is looking to give itself the gift of networking in the form of an acquisition — Mellanox. But it may have to get in line.An Israeli financial publication called TheMarker reports that Microsoft not only has an interest in acquiring the network chip maker, but it also has reportedly engaged Goldman Sachs to handle negotiations. The rumors first popped up before Christmas, and understandably there has been little activity since.But Microsoft may not be the only vendor looking to grab Mellanox. Data Centre Dynamics in the U.K. reported last month that three other firms — Xilinx, Intel, and Broadcom — could also be interested in acquiring the company. As far back as October, CNBC was reporting that Mellanox was looking for a buyer.To read this article in full, please click here

Why does Mellanox have four potential suitors?

It looks like Microsoft is looking to give itself the gift of networking in the form of an acquisition — Mellanox. But it may have to get in line.An Israeli financial publication called TheMarker reports that Microsoft not only has an interest in acquiring the network chip maker, but it also has reportedly engaged Goldman Sachs to handle negotiations. The rumors first popped up before Christmas, and understandably there has been little activity since.But Microsoft may not be the only vendor looking to grab Mellanox. Data Centre Dynamics in the U.K. reported last month that three other firms — Xilinx, Intel, and Broadcom — could also be interested in acquiring the company. As far back as October, CNBC was reporting that Mellanox was looking for a buyer.To read this article in full, please click here

Whither Network Engineering? (Part 2)

In the first post of this series at the turn of 2019, I considered the forces I think will cause network engineering to radically change. What about the timing of these changes? I hear a lot of people say” “this stuff isn’t coming for twenty years or more, so don’t worry about it… there is plenty of time to adapt.” This optimism seems completely misplaced to me. Markets and ideas are like that old house you pass all the time—you know the one. No-one has maintained it for years, but it is so … solid. It was built out of the best timber, by people who knew what they were doing. The foundation is deep, and it has lasted all these years.

Then one day you pass a heap of wood on the side of the road and realize—this is that old house that seemed so solid just a few days ago. Sometime in the night, that house that was so solid collapsed. The outer shell was covering up a lot of inner rot. Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argues this is the way ideas always go. They appear to be solid one day, and then Continue reading

Emerging Technologies: Bridging the Digital Gap in Africa

With all the excitement about the role of technology in contributing to social change and improved development outcomes across Africa, it is easy to forget that only 11% of the world’s Internet subscribers are Africans, while only 35.2% of Africans use the Internet. An effective science and innovation system in any country, and globally, I believe, depends on strong basic research and higher education infrastructure. In addition to knowledge production, basic research facilities, development of human resources, and applications are critical. But in the course of conducting, applying, and managing research, both researchers and managers of research and innovation have information needs. These needs must be satisfied in order for the scientists and the science innovation system to function effectively.

My recent participation at the 13th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris as a Youth@IGF Fellows brought me closer to the realization that technology has really increased the speed and reach of information everywhere – and now to communities in Africa.

Africa is leapfrogging information and communication technology development, which is also fueled by mobile broadband, but there are also worrying trends, such as a growing the digital divide between men and women, and between urban and rural areas.

Continue reading

Zimbabwe Chapter Meetup on IoT: Converse / Create / Collaborate

On December 6th 2018, the Internet Society Zimbabwe Chapter held an Internet of Things (IoT) meetup supported by the Beyond the Net Small Grants, a programme intented to assist the Internet Society Chapters with financial support to organize initiatives that contribute to the development of their communities.

An exciting convening brought together Zimbabweans with a keen interest in solving some of the pressing issues facing the country using IoT. The meetup was a drive by the Zimbabwe Chapter to create a platform for conversations around IoT security and the potential benefits of Internet-connected devices. More so, it sought to harness innovation potential by creating a space for IoT creativity and collaboration. It ran under the tagline “Converse/Create/Collaborate.”

The meetup was engineered on the basis that in order to push the IoT Security agenda forward there is need to use a multistakeholder approach. The first section of the meetup was a conversation on the subject matter through a keynote presentation and a panel discussion. Solomon Kembo gave the keynote talk and really set the pace on what IoT was and how it would solve most of our challenges in society. He also talked about the IoT projects that the Continue reading

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