Like smartphones, IoT communications going long distance

The world's newest mobile telecoms network went into operation this week, but it's not for smartphones. The network, built by South Korea's SK Telecom, is dedicated to gadgets that connect to the so-called internet of things.Today, most of those devices communicate over Bluetooth or WiFi, which are low power but short range, or over conventional cellular, which has better coverage but is more expensive and consumes more power.The Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) network built in South Korea is deployed over the unlicensed 900MHz spectrum, and is based on specifications from the LoRa Alliance.SK Telecom has set up an IoT data plan much like smartphone contracts. The cheapest plan is priced at 350 Korean Won (US$0.30) for 100KB of data transfers, and it is targeted at metering and monitoring services. The most expensive plan is targeted at real-time monitoring, and is priced at 2,000 Korean Won (US$1.75) for 100MB of data.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

As Windows 10 free deal nears end, growth slows slightly

Windows 10 growth slowed slightly last month but remained robust enough to push the nearly-one-year-old OS over the 21% share bar, according to new data from metrics vendor Net Applications.In June, Windows 10 powered 21.3% of all Windows PCs, a 1.9-point increase over May. Net Applications measures user share -- an estimate of the percentage of the global personal computer inventory that runs a particular operating system -- by tallying unique visitors to clients' websites.June's gain was less than May's impressive 2.2-point jump, but still the third-largest, one-month increase since August 2015.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10 With less than a month left before the free Windows 10 upgrade offer expires, the OS is on pace to post a user share mark of 23% of all Windows PCs by the end of July. If so, Windows 10 will have bested Microsoft's 12-month uptake record holder: Windows 7 clawed its way to 20% in its inaugural year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft gives businesses a free tool for online meetings

Microsoft is giving small businesses a new way to hold meetings online with the launch of a free Skype Meetings product that's aimed at providing professional communication tools for free.Skype Meetings is free to use, and people can launch meetings for up to 10 people during their first 60 days of using it. After that, they're limited to only hosting meetings for three or fewer people. Those meetings can take advantage of a bunch of features, including the option to bring in participants using a hyperlink and present a PowerPoint slide deck live.The new service is something of a gateway drug to try and get people hooked on Skype for Business. That's why Microsoft imposed its user limit restrictions -- super-small businesses can use Skype Meetings without paying, and growing companies are encouraged to buy an Office 365 subscription to hold big meetings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Your Docker Agenda for July

Weren’t able to attend DockerCon 2016 last month? Don’t worry, there are several DockerCon recap meetups scheduled this month all over the world!

Have you signed up yet for the Docker 1.12 Hackathon? Teams of up to three individuals will hack the new features included in Docker 1.12 including Swarm Mode, cryptographic node identity, service API, and built-in routing mesh to win some awesome prizes. Submissions are due by July 25th so register your team today and start hacking!

Take a look at this month’s agenda including Docker trainings and meetups in your community.

Continue reading

Geek-themed Meme of the Week: photo fail

I realize this meme features the advice mallard and not the confession bear, but here goes anyway: I am a lousy photographer, so I have no doubt that the following advice from a Redditor is spot-on. Reddit I am even lousy at taking selfies, which is why I’m particularly proud of this one that shows my son Max and me being photobombed by Abe Lincoln.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple to encourage organ donation with upcoming iOS 10 update

As part of Apple's longstanding commitment to improving user health, the company will reportedly encourage iOS users to become organ donors when it rolls out an update to its Health app once iOS 10 is released to the public later this year.Once available, user's will be able to seamlessly sign up via the Donate Life America's organ donation registry. That Apple would choose to include such an option isn't at all surprising given that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was himself saved by an organ donation late in life when he was the recipient of a liver transplant.+ Also on Network World: 20 reasons to get excited about iOS 10 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fearing surveillance, man allegedly shot at Google and set self-driving car ablaze

A man who told police he feared surveillance by Google has been arrested and charged with arson after one of the company's self-driving cars was destroyed in an attack in June.Raul Murillo Diaz of Oakland was stopped by police after Google security spotted him driving around the company's headquarters campus in Mountain View, California, just after midnight on June 30. They became suspicious because his car matched that spotted at the scene of several attacks on the company over the preceding six weeks.The first, on May 19, saw several Molotov cocktails thrown at a Google Street View vehicle that was parked in a company lot in Mountain View. The resulting fire didn't damage the car because the bottles bounced off it, but the ground nearby was burnt.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raspberry Pi roundup: The Raspberry Baron takes to the skies; big talk about voice; thin client scuttlebutt

In possibly the coolest news for aviation geeks who cover the technology sector – so, you know, basically just the author of this article – a former University of Cincinnati doctoral candidate has created a Raspberry Pi-powered AI that can fly simulated fighter aircraft.ALPHA, according to retired Col. Gene Lee, is “the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I’ve seen to date.” Lee, according to the University of Cincinnati magazine that originally publicized the research, has yet to defeat ALPHA in simulated aerial combat.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD:Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi OSes +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A requiem for Facebook Paper

You’ve probably never used Facebook Paper, the social networking giant’s beautiful and innovative newsreader for iOS. And now you’ll never get the chance because Facebook has removed Paper from the App Store and will shutter it completely on July 29.That’s not surprising because even after debuting to well-deserved critical acclaim in 2014, Paper never got a big promotional push and never achieved widespread popularity. It didn’t help that Facebook’s Creative Labs, the team behind Paper, was shut down late last year. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ericsson Partners with Global Operators on IoT and 5G

Ericsson will be sole infrastructure provider for transcontinental 5G network.

BGP Code Dive (2)

Now that you have a copy of BGP in Go on your machine—it’s tempting to jump right in to asking the code questions, but it’s important to get a sense of how things are structured. In essence, you need to build a mental map of how the functionality of the protocol you already know is related to specific files and structure, so you can start in the right place when finding out how things work. Interacting with an implementation from the initial stages of process bringup, building data structures, and the like isn’t all that profitable. Rather, asking questions of the code is an iterative/interactive process.

Take what you know, form an impression of where you might look to find the answer to a particular question, and, in the process of finding the answer, learn more about the protocol, which will help you find answers more quickly in the future.

So let’s poke around the directory structure a little, think about how BGP works, and think about what might be where. To begin, what might we call the basic functions of BGP? Let me take a shot at a list (if you see things you think should be on here, Continue reading

FBI faults Clinton’s personal email system, but doesn’t recommend prosecution

Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FBI faults Clinton’s personal email system, but doesn’t recommend prosecution

Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google is working to make every website viewable in VR

Reading your favorite website may be a whole new experience in the near future. As part of its Chromium project Google is apparently working at bringing virtual reality support to its browser.According to Google’s François Beaufort, the Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev channels have a setting that “allows users to browse the web while using Cardboard or Daydream-ready viewers.”There’s an an experimental flag found at chrome://flags/#enable-vr-shell that enables a browser shell for VR. He offered a peak at how this could look with 360-degree videos. Virtual reality is likely to gain wider traction with Google’s browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The new internet domains are a wasteland

The many new DNS top-level domains (TLDs) were heralded as a way to take pressure off the older DNS TLDs. It seems, however, the new TLDs are almost uniformly the source of spammers and malware launchers.There might be valid web resources in the new TLDs. They seem rarely referenced beyond a handful of sites, though, as .com, .org, .net and even .co have common usage aside from country-specific addresses such as .us, .uk, .de, .jp, etc.But .xyz? Spam. I get about four dozen spam emails from that domain most days. The .click TLD? I’ve gotten about 400 embedded malware emails from there so far this year. Then there’s .xxx, .website and dozens of other new TLDs that are nothing more than difficult-to-block and nearly-impossible-to-kill spam/malware sources. It’s frustrating, and admins don’t have much chance to stanch the spam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The new internet domains are a wasteland

The many new DNS top-level domains (TLDs) were heralded as a way to take pressure off the older DNS TLDs. It seems, however, the new TLDs are almost uniformly the source of spammers and malware launchers.There might be valid web resources in the new TLDs. They seem rarely referenced beyond a handful of sites, though, as .com, .org, .net and even .co have common usage aside from country-specific addresses such as .us, .uk, .de, .jp, etc.But .xyz? Spam. I get about four dozen spam emails from that domain most days. The .click TLD? I’ve gotten about 400 embedded malware emails from there so far this year. Then there’s .xxx, .website and dozens of other new TLDs that are nothing more than difficult-to-block and nearly-impossible-to-kill spam/malware sources. It’s frustrating, and admins don’t have much chance to stanch the spam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

So you want to be a better network engineer? …

Then you need to read the book Daniel Dib and I just published on LeanPub. It’s called Unintended Features.. From the Introduction:

So you’ve decided you want to be a network engineer—or you’re already you a network engineer, and you want to be a better engineer, to rise to the top, to be among the best, to… Well, you get the idea. The question is, how do you get from where you are now to where you want to be? This short volume is designed to answer just that question. If you’re expecting a book on technology, then you’re in the wrong place. Instead, this is a book about how to build a career in networking technology, including topics such engineering culture, being intentional about your education, thinking skills, and some basic skills you’ll want to develop.

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Who's Hiring?

• Software Engineer (DevOps). You are one of those rare engineers who loves to tinker with distributed systems at high Continue reading

Worth Reading: Live streaming to 800,000 users

Fewer companies know how to build world spanning distributed services than there are countries with nuclear weapons. Facebook is one of those companies and Facebook Live, Facebook’s new live video streaming product, is one one of those services. -High Scalability

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How auto repair chain accelerates networking with SD-WAN

Businesses needing broadband connectivity while rapidly expanding are finding an alternative to traditional wide area network infrastructure. Service King Collision Repair Centers, for example, is using software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) to support new auto repair centers, a move that has helped reduce the company's operational costs even as it grows its footprint across 23 states. Service King's CIO Derek Kramer. Service King's store locations have grown to more than 300 todayfrom 100 in 2012, necessitating rapid adoption of new network connectivity, says CIO Derek Kramer. Service King had relied on MPLS for several years but this no longer proving efficient as the chain expanded. "MPLS [Multiprotocol Label Switching] has done well, but can it grow as quickly as we're growing?" Kramer says. "We found more times than not that was a challenge."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here