Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

Wi-Fi vs. LTE could be the start of a mobile rollercoaster

The long fight over LTE networks sharing frequencies with Wi-Fi may be just the first of many battles as device makers and service providers try to make the most of the limited available spectrum.Around the world, regulators and industry are working on how to let different kinds of networks use the same spectrum. The new techniques and policies they use should lead to better mobile performance in some areas, but it’s also likely that wireless performance will fluctuate more as you move around.LTE-U has grabbed headlines because it involves licensed carriers using some of the channels that consumers depend on for Wi-Fi service, which often is free or runs on users' own routers. Wi-Fi supporters cried foul last year after Qualcomm and some U.S. carriers proposed the technology, and it took until last month for the two sides to reach an apparent peace agreement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi vs. LTE could be the start of a mobile rollercoaster

The long fight over LTE networks sharing frequencies with Wi-Fi may be just the first of many battles as device makers and service providers try to make the most of the limited available spectrum.Around the world, regulators and industry are working on how to let different kinds of networks use the same spectrum. The new techniques and policies they use should lead to better mobile performance in some areas, but it’s also likely that wireless performance will fluctuate more as you move around.LTE-U has grabbed headlines because it involves licensed carriers using some of the channels that consumers depend on for Wi-Fi service, which often is free or runs on users' own routers. Wi-Fi supporters cried foul last year after Qualcomm and some U.S. carriers proposed the technology, and it took until last month for the two sides to reach an apparent peace agreement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 enterprise mobile management features in Windows 10

Security and enterprise mobile management (EMM) are big concerns for businesses of all sizes as they scramble to make sure corporate data is secure. And there's no shortage of EMM products, but there are features already baked into your operating system?Microsoft, for example, with its Windows 10 update, Redstone 1 -- officially called the Windows 10 Anniversary Update 1607 -- introduced a slew of new IT friendly features. Here are the six most notable features in the latest update that will get IT celebrating.Windows Information Protection With Windows Information Protection (WIP), previously called enterprise data protection (EDP), IT departments can get a handle on BYOD. It allows you to manage data on enterprise-owned and personal devices to avoid any security issues if a device falls into the wrong hands. Employees won't have to change the devices or apps they use and businesses can have the peace of mind of being able to encrypt and remote-wipe corporate data without affecting personal data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: It’s time to encourage diversity in tech freelancing

It’s no secret the tech industry has a diversity problem. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Pinterest are among the companies that have publicly shared how few of their tech positions are filled by women and minorities.This lack of diversity is a big problem for these companies, affecting their innovation and damaging their culture. One study found that companies with racially diverse leadership teams financially outperform their peers by 35 percent. Diversity boosts the bottom line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MIT event to promote U.S.-China cooperation on machine learning, autonomous vehicles & more

MIT-CHIEF, a not-for-profit student group that promotes cooperation between the United States and China in technology and innovation, is readying its annual conference with a focus on machine learning, new materials and more.The MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (CHIEF) Annual Conference, to be held Nov. 12-13 at MIT, will feature 6 panels and 6 keynote speeches that in addition to the topics cited above, will hit on energy, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and autonomous driving. Speakers will include those from academia and industry, including venture capital firms, and represent outfits such as Microsoft, Stanford University and AutoX.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encrypted communications could have an undetectable backdoor

Researchers warn that many 1024-bit keys used to secure communications on the internet today might be based on prime numbers that have been intentionally backdoored in an undetectable way.Many public-key cryptography algorithms that are used to secure web, email, VPN, SSH and other types of connections on the internet derive their strength from the mathematical complexity of discrete logarithms -- computing discrete logarithms for groups of large prime numbers cannot be efficiently done using classical methods. This is what makes cracking strong encryption computationally impractical.Most key-generation algorithms rely on prime parameters whose generation is supposed to be verifiably random. However, many parameters have been standardized and are being used in popular crypto algorithms like Diffie-Hellman and DSA without the seeds that were used to generate them ever being published. That makes it impossible to tell whether, for example, the primes were intentionally "backdoored" -- selected to simplify the computation that would normally be required to crack the encryption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encrypted communications could have an undetectable backdoor

Researchers warn that many 1024-bit keys used to secure communications on the internet today might be based on prime numbers that have been intentionally backdoored in an undetectable way.Many public-key cryptography algorithms that are used to secure web, email, VPN, SSH and other types of connections on the internet derive their strength from the mathematical complexity of discrete logarithms -- computing discrete logarithms for groups of large prime numbers cannot be efficiently done using classical methods. This is what makes cracking strong encryption computationally impractical.Most key-generation algorithms rely on prime parameters whose generation is supposed to be verifiably random. However, many parameters have been standardized and are being used in popular crypto algorithms like Diffie-Hellman and DSA without the seeds that were used to generate them ever being published. That makes it impossible to tell whether, for example, the primes were intentionally "backdoored" -- selected to simplify the computation that would normally be required to crack the encryption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Datadog on an automation roll, makes support ticket creation seamless

Last week Datadog was in the news trying to attack the market share of monitoring vendor New Relic. While that may seem like industry shenanigans, it marked a very interesting point in time when two vendors, who had previously been happy to compete in a friendly manner, announced all-out warfare and a race for each other’s customer base.New Relic moved strongly into the infrastructure monitoring space, one that it didn’t previously cover, while Datadog made a corresponding move into application monitoring.+ Also on Network World: Infrastructure monitoring products: Users pinpoint the best and worst features +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pradeep’s Principle: Give up on Moore’s Law and embrace automation

It’s arguable that Juniper Networks has been the most successful competitor to Cisco over the past 20 years, and co-founder and CTO Pradeep Sindhu’s vision is the main reason why. Included in that vision is Pradeep’s Principle, which is based on the thesis that we are seeing the end of Moore’s Law. If you’re not familiar with that law, in 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore surmised that the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated circuit would double every year, effectively giving us twice the processing capacity in the same time frame. Sindhu isn’t the only person to say Moore’s Law is coming to an end. Earlier this year, a post on ARS Technica UK made a similar observation. Sindhu extended this thesis to storage and packet switching and stated that the rate of growth for all of these elements has slowed down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

President Obama, NASA desire Mars habitation too

Hot on the heels of Elon Musk and his SpaceX company’s grand plan to inhabit Mars, President Obama and NASA reminded the scientific world it too has a designs to inhabit the red planet – though at perhaps a far more deliberate pace than Musk wants.“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama wrote in an editorial for CNN this week. “The next step is to reach beyond the bounds of Earth's orbit. I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space. These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth -- something we'll need for the long journey to Mars.”To read Continue reading

President Obama, NASA desire Mars habitation too

Hot on the heels of Elon Musk and his SpaceX company’s grand plan to inhabit Mars, President Obama and NASA reminded the scientific world it too has a designs to inhabit the red planet – though at perhaps a far more deliberate pace than Musk wants.“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama wrote in an editorial for CNN this week. “The next step is to reach beyond the bounds of Earth's orbit. I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space. These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth -- something we'll need for the long journey to Mars.”To read Continue reading

Facebook at Work (finally) launches as ‘Workplace’

Facebook at Work, the company's social network for business, has a new name, but it features many of the same tools that 1.71 billion people use every month — without all the ads. Now called simply "Workplace," the service is now publicly available to any organization. Facebook is a dominant force among consumers and marketers, and now it is setting its sights on the enterprise market.  Workplace is free for the first three months, and then Facebook will charge a range of monthly prices, per active user: $3 each for up to 1,000 users, $2 for up to 10,000 users and $1 each for enterprises with more than 10,000 users. Nonprofit organizations and academic institutions will get Workplace at no cost, according to Facebook. In comparison, the popular collaboration service Slack, now a Workplace rival, offers a free app with limited features, and it currently charges $15 per month per active user for its premium offering. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here