IDG Contributor Network: IoT devices-as-a-service through Angaza’s SMS based installment payment plan

Can rent-to-buy plans make IoT devices affordable for thousands who need them, but can't afford to buy one?Solar panels can help African farmers with lighting and power, but are often out of reach. How can the purchase price be split into small installment payments that are manageable. How can IoT enable such a business model? How can low-cost devices communicate when both cellular and radio based transmitters aren't viable? How are such devices distributed and payments collected across a vast continent?Angaza’s approach combines IoT devices enabled with SMS based installment payments. BackgroundAround 1.2 billion people live without access to electricity. Off-grid energy appliances and services can address this issue, especially in developing countries. The Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) expects the off-grid energy and appliance market to be a $50 billion per year opportunity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Who controls the Internet?

Who controls the Internet? How much influence do they have? And what would happen if one of those parties launched an attack or was compromised and used to launch an attack? Previous works have looked at the individual core services, but this paper focuses on their inter-dependencies along attack propagation paths. —the morning paper

The post Worth Reading: Who controls the Internet? appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Donald Trump uses an iPhone with a single app: Twitter

Among the many things we know about Donald Trump, his love of Twitter is perhaps his most comical passion. Whereas previous Presidents and even current politicians tend to tweet sparingly, Trump has a deep affinity for the social networking app and is prone to firing off tweetstorms and incendiary tweets at any given time. In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, for example, Trump made headlines when he went after former Miss Universe Alicia Machado on Twitter at 3 in the morning.Given Trump's love for all things Twitter, it remained unclear if Trump would continue his Tweeting ways once assuming the Oval Office. At the time, many people speculated that the responsibilities of being President, not to mention the strict security guidelines the President has to follow with respect to electronic devices, would result in Trump effectively kissing his Twitter stardom goodbye. Not to fear, Trump hasn't slowed down his tweeting since becoming President earlier this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Logistics in Application Path of Neural Networks

Accurately forecasting resource demand within the supply chain has never been easy, particular given the constantly changing nature of the data over periods of time.

What may have been true in measurements around demand or logistics one minute might be entirely different an hour, day or week later, which can throw off a short-term load forecast (STLF) and lead to costly over- or under-estimations, which in turn can lead to too much or too little supply.

To improve such forecasts, there are multiple efforts underway to create new models that can more accurately predict load needs, and while they have …

Logistics in Application Path of Neural Networks was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Rackspace Acquires TriCore Solutions, Names Eazor as CEO

Its new CEO comes from EarthLink, where he led the company's acquisition by Windstream.

Cisco to network engineers: Get comfortable with software. It’s here to stay

The shift to software-defined networks (SDN) was the catalyst to usher in a whole new way of running networks—and that’s through software. Some may argue that network engineers have been using software for decades, as every good router jockey had a laptop filled with scripts and templates that could be cut and pasted into the command line interface. This ad hoc model is highly error prone and not scalable, which is why human error still accounts for much of the downtime with respect to networks. Historically, Cisco hasn’t exactly helped its customers be more proficient with software. Oh sure, it had programs such as the Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP) that were targeted at developers, but what about the network engineer? The person who wants to do his job more efficiently? For that audience, Cisco didn’t have an answer. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco to network engineers: Get comfortable with software. It’s here to stay

The shift to software-defined networks (SDN) was the catalyst to usher in a whole new way of running networks—and that’s through software. Some may argue that network engineers have been using software for decades, as every good router jockey had a laptop filled with scripts and templates that could be cut and pasted into the command line interface. This ad hoc model is highly error prone and not scalable, which is why human error still accounts for much of the downtime with respect to networks. Historically, Cisco hasn’t exactly helped its customers be more proficient with software. Oh sure, it had programs such as the Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP) that were targeted at developers, but what about the network engineer? The person who wants to do his job more efficiently? For that audience, Cisco didn’t have an answer. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDN Hires Intel Storage Guru for New CTO Position

The move reflects the growing demand for software-defined storage.

Less Is More – Why The IPv6 Switch Is Missing

At Cloudflare we believe in being good to the Internet and good to our customers. By moving on from the legacy world of IPv4-only to the modern-day world where IPv4 and IPv6 are treated equally, we believe we are doing exactly that.

"No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind." - Taylor Swift (whose website has been IPv6 enabled for many many years)

Starting today with free domains, IPv6 is no longer something you can toggle on and off, it’s always just on.

How we got here

Cloudflare has always been a gateway for visitors on IPv6 connections to access sites and applications hosted on legacy IPv4-only infrastructure. Connections to Cloudflare are terminated on either IP version and then proxied to the backend over whichever IP version the backend infrastructure can accept.

That means that a v6-only mobile phone (looking at you, T-Mobile users) can establish a clean path to any site or mobile app behind Cloudflare instead of doing an expensive 464XLAT protocol translation as part of the connection (shaving milliseconds and conserving very precious battery life).

That IPv6 gateway is set by a simple Continue reading

Accedian’s SkyLight Brings NFV to Performance Monitoring

Providers like Telefonica rely on the product to maintain network visibility.

Chef Updates Automation Platform for Cloud and Containers

The updates will integrate functions across various enterprise-focused platforms.

New, faster Internet protocol for disasters proposed

The Internet isn’t fast enough, or bandwidth capacious enough for data-intensive emergency traffic during disaster response such as in hurricanes and earthquakes, scientists think. Video streams of flood scenes, say, along with laser mapping theoretically helps responders quickly allocate resources, but it gets bogged down along with other responder traffic, video chats and social media during the incidents.Multi Node Label Routing (MNLR) is a new protocol that will solve this reliability problem by routing responder data through a “high-speed lane of online traffic,” says an article in Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) University News. Researchers at the school have developed the tech.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New, faster Internet protocol for disasters proposed

The Internet isn’t fast enough, or bandwidth capacious enough for data-intensive emergency traffic during disaster response such as in hurricanes and earthquakes, scientists think. Video streams of flood scenes, say, along with laser mapping theoretically helps responders quickly allocate resources, but it gets bogged down along with other responder traffic, video chats and social media during the incidents.Multi Node Label Routing (MNLR) is a new protocol that will solve this reliability problem by routing responder data through a “high-speed lane of online traffic,” says an article in Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) University News. Researchers at the school have developed the tech.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: New, faster Internet protocol for disasters proposed

The Internet isn’t fast enough, or bandwidth capacious enough for data-intensive emergency traffic during disaster response such as in hurricanes and earthquakes, scientists think. Video streams of flood scenes, say, along with laser mapping theoretically helps responders quickly allocate resources, but it gets bogged down along with other responder traffic, video chats and social media during the incidents.Multi Node Label Routing (MNLR) is a new protocol that will solve this reliability problem by routing responder data through a “high-speed lane of online traffic,” says an article in Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) University News. Researchers at the school have developed the tech.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Big Data will enable better network and application intelligence in 5G

We are fortunate to live in an exciting time where multiple technological leaps are occurring. Specifically, I am thinking of the mobile industry transition from 4G to 5G, and the cross-industry IT paradigm shift to the Big Data approach. The 5G standards community is already planning to support the collection and transmission of massive amounts of data. This is one of its key requirements pillars in the area of supporting the IoT. What is left, however, is for the 5G community to ensure that the other component of Big Data, namely support for network and application intelligence, is also baked into the 5G architecture. Otherwise, 5G may become simply a pipe for Big Data passing between devices and the cloud infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Postcards from the network edge

I was recently invited to participate on a panel at a major IT conference, where questions from the audience provided an interesting window into the top issues that networking professionals are dealing with as part of their organizations’ digital transformation.Every enterprise, it seems, is planning a cloud strategy.  On closer inspection, most are already using the cloud in the form SaaS ERP and CRM applications like Salesforce, NetSuite, etc. These applications have performed well enough on top of traditional, legacy networks.However, newer, more multi-dimensional cloud applications are forcing businesses to look for ways to make their networks more agile. One of these is Microsoft Office 365.  Microsoft is aggressively investing in their infrastructure to provide a superior experience for users. Nevertheless, the enterprise network, and more specifically the wide area network (WAN), remains one of the biggest impediments to providing an on-premise caliber quality of experience for cloud applications. Finding the most efficient exit to Office 365 and best performance server are usually the culprits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Postcards from the network edge

I was recently invited to participate on a panel at a major IT conference, where questions from the audience provided an interesting window into the top issues that networking professionals are dealing with as part of their organizations’ digital transformation.Every enterprise, it seems, is planning a cloud strategy.  On closer inspection, most are already using the cloud in the form SaaS ERP and CRM applications like Salesforce, NetSuite, etc. These applications have performed well enough on top of traditional, legacy networks.However, newer, more multi-dimensional cloud applications are forcing businesses to look for ways to make their networks more agile. One of these is Microsoft Office 365.  Microsoft is aggressively investing in their infrastructure to provide a superior experience for users. Nevertheless, the enterprise network, and more specifically the wide area network (WAN), remains one of the biggest impediments to providing an on-premise caliber quality of experience for cloud applications. Finding the most efficient exit to Office 365 and best performance server are usually the culprits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CNCF Takes CNI Container Interface Standard Under its Wing

CNCF support for CNI could give it a leg up against Docker Inc.'s CNM.

InfoVista ABCs of APIs Webinar Q&A: SDN+NFV-Driven Evolution of Performance Assurance Architectures

Thanks to all who joined us for the InfoVista ABCof APIs Webinar: SDN+NFV-Driven Evolution of Performance Assurance Architectures, where the award-winning multi-vendor discussed API, and proof of concept for multi-operator networking-as-a-service featuring LSO concepts within the context of SDN and NFV. After the webinar, we took questions from the audience but unfortunately ran out of time before we... Read more →

Patent Troll Battle Update: Doubling Down on Project Jengo

Jengo Fett by Brickset (Flickr)

We knew the case against patent trolls was the right one, but we have been overwhelmed by the response to our blog posts on patent trolls and our program for finding prior art on the patents held by Blackbird Tech, which we’ve dubbed Project Jengo. As we discuss in this post, your comments and contributions have allowed us to expand and intensify our efforts to challenge the growing threat that patent trolls pose to innovative tech companies.

We’re SIGNIFICANTLY expanding our program to find prior art on the Blackbird Tech patents

In a little over a week since we started the program, we’ve received 141 separate prior art submissions. But we know there’s an opportunity to find a lot more.

We’ve been impressed with the exceptionally high quality of the submissions. The Cloudflare community of users and readers of our blog are an accomplished bunch, so we have a number of searches that were done by expert engineers and programmers. In one case that stood out to us, someone wrote in about a project they personally had worked on as an engineer back in 1993, which they are convinced is conclusive prior art Continue reading