Newer Wi-Fi’s faster, but it needs a fast wire behind it

The next time you want to complain about slow Wi-Fi, think about saving your vitriol for wires instead.So-called gigabit Wi-Fi, or 802.11ac, is slowly starting to show up in homes, buildings and public hotspots, but it’s not delivering a gigabit to smartphones, according to an analysis by research company OpenSignal. That’s partly because of how wireless works and how the newest technology is being rolled out, but it also reflects the performance of the wired networks that Wi-Fi taps into.OpenSignal used its free connection-monitoring app, running on thousands of smartphones, to learn what kinds of Wi-Fi networks users were on and what kind of speed they were getting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Colt to Offer Cloud Management Services From Siaras

It provides a cloud of clouds, says Siaras.

Verizon strike taking trickle-down toll on business customers

With the strike by Verizon union members now in its fourth week – and no settlement appearing near -- frustrations born of service delays and cancelations remain primarily the bane of consumers, although business customers are also taking on collateral damage, some of which may not be visible to the untrained eye.That’s the view of David Rohde, a longtime industry watcher and senior consultant at TechCaliber in Washington D.C.“Customers are asking their Verizon (Enterprise) account teams for, you name it – an inventory of current services, a next response to a bid for new services, a network management request that can’t otherwise be handled automatically – and the answer is coming back very frequently that those people aren’t around right now so you’re going to have to wait,” Rohde writes in a recent blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon strike taking trickle-down toll on business customers

With the strike by Verizon union members now in its fourth week – and no settlement appearing near -- frustrations born of service delays and cancelations remain primarily the bane of consumers, although business customers are also taking on collateral damage, some of which may not be visible to the untrained eye.That’s the view of David Rohde, a longtime industry watcher and senior consultant at TechCaliber in Washington D.C.“Customers are asking their Verizon (Enterprise) account teams for, you name it – an inventory of current services, a next response to a bid for new services, a network management request that can’t otherwise be handled automatically – and the answer is coming back very frequently that those people aren’t around right now so you’re going to have to wait,” Rohde writes in a recent blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

State of EMV report: Fraud rises before a fall

The switchover to EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chipped credit cards is well underway. According to a new report from research and advisory firm Aite Group, sponsored by device intelligence and fraud prevention company iovation, 81% of credit cards in the U.S. will be EMV capable by the end of 2016. And the increased adoption of the more secure cards is fueling an increase in counterfeit fraud.Wait. What?You read it right. “As the U.S. migration to EMV progresses, the combination of continued strong growth in e-commerce, ready availability of consumer data and credentials in the underweb, and disappearing counterfeit fraud opportunity will create a perfect storm that will result in a sharp rise in CNP (card-not-present) fraud,” said Julie Conroy, research director at Aite Group. Conroy went on to say, “CNP fraud is already on the rise, and the problem will get worse before it gets better."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

State of EMV report: Fraud rises before a fall

The switchover to EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chipped credit cards is well underway. According to a new report from research and advisory firm Aite Group, sponsored by device intelligence and fraud prevention company iovation, 81% of credit cards in the U.S. will be EMV capable by the end of 2016. And the increased adoption of the more secure cards is fueling an increase in counterfeit fraud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 3

RPi pleasureImage by WikimediaA few months ago we published the Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 1, followed by the Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 2, and today, for your continuing RPi pleasure, we have Part 3, with nine more operating systems to choose from!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Data Tiering and NVM

In short, much higher capacity, at one fifth of the cost of DRAM – but this is paid for with increased read latency (4x) and reduced write bandwidth (8x). The higher capacity and lower cost characteristics are very attractive for in-memory workloads when using NVM as a DRAM replacement/complement. -via the morning paper

The post Worth Reading: Data Tiering and NVM appeared first on 'net work.

Analytics comes to IT service management

To help the IT function better understand the data it generates, real-time IT management specialist ManageEngine today took the wraps off its new self-service IT analytics solution, Analytics Plus."One of the things that we've realized and our customers have realized is that, ironically, as big data has become a major talking point and major point of interest for customers, IT has lagged in that area in terms of using analytics solutions to better understand and optimize IT management," says Raj Sabhlok, president of ManageEngine, a division of Zoho.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 companies that can help you fight phishing

According to the most recent Verizon data breach report, a phishing email is often the first phase of an attack. That's because it works well, with 30 percent of phishing messages opened, but only 3 percent reported to management.But when employees are trained on how to spot phishing emails, and then get tested with mock phishing emails, the percent who fall victim decreases with each round.Of course, it's impossible to get to a zero response rate. The criminals are becoming extremely clever with their messages. Fortunately, it's not necessary. If enough employees forward phishing emails to security, then the company becomes aware that it is the target of a campaign, and be prepared to deal with those messages that do slip through.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 companies that can help you fight phishing

According to the most recent Verizon data breach report, a phishing email is often the first phase of an attack. That's because it works well, with 30 percent of phishing messages opened, but only 3 percent reported to management.But when employees are trained on how to spot phishing emails, and then get tested with mock phishing emails, the percent who fall victim decreases with each round.Of course, it's impossible to get to a zero response rate. The criminals are becoming extremely clever with their messages. Fortunately, it's not necessary. If enough employees forward phishing emails to security, then the company becomes aware that it is the target of a campaign, and be prepared to deal with those messages that do slip through.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft plugs 300M Windows 10 devices, reiterates July end to free upgrade

Microsoft today said that 300 million "active devices" are running Windows 10, a boost of 30 million, for an increase of 11%, in the last five weeks.The Redmond, Wash. company also warned customers that the Windows 10 free upgrade offer would end July 29, and urged them to grab the deal before it vanishes."Time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on July 29 and we want to make sure you don't miss out," said Yusuf Mehdi, a senior executive in the Windows and devices group, in a post to a company blog Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pivotal raises $253M led by Ford, Microsoft

Pivotal, the platform as a service company spun out from VMware and EMC three years ago, today announced plans to close a series C financing round worth $253 million led by Ford, Microsoft and its existing investors GE and its two parent companies.Pivotal is one of the leading vendors behind the Cloud Foundry PaaS, the commercialized version of the open source project. Cloud Foundry provides an environment for developers to build applications; it provisions the infrastructure needed to run and scale them.Perhaps most interesting about the announcement are the new investors: Ford and Microsoft. Ford follows GE as an investor in the company, indicating its heavy use of CF and its desire to ensure the company’s future viability and success. Ford last week launched FordPass, a consumer platform that the company says was built with Pivotal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 products Intel could cut in its reshuffle

Intel had some wild product ideas that were duds, like the OnCue TV streaming service, WiMax, and smartphone chips. Now, more products are likely to be axed as the company looks to a post-PC world.The chipmaker promised last month to review and cut some products as part of a restructuring plan that included laying off 12,000 employees. The Atom smartphone chips were the first to go while Intel redirects resources to profitable products in areas like servers, 5G connectivity, gaming PCs, and hybrid devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Long Future Ahead For Intel Xeon Processors

The personal computer has been the driver of innovation in the IT sector in a lot of ways for the past three and a half decades, but perhaps one of the most important aspects of the PC business is that it gave chip maker Intel a means of perfecting each successive manufacturing technology at high volume before moving it over to more complex server processors that would otherwise have lower yields and be more costly if they were the only chips Intel made with each process.

That PC volume is what gave Intel datacenter prowess, in essence, and it is …

The Long Future Ahead For Intel Xeon Processors was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Interop 2016: Startups Tackle Complexity

Why passwords fail end users

At the 2016 Interop show, Network World got a quick demo of Keeper Security's password management and vault app. The company's CEO, Darren Guccione, also explained why most password methods fail end users, and whether biometrics (beyond the fingerprint) will ever catch on as an authentication method.

Pivotal Raises $253M, With Ford & Microsoft Investing

So much for a quick Pivotal IPO.

Methods hackers use to attack DNS

At 2016 Interop, Cloudmark Engineering Director Angela Knox talks with Network World about several different ways that hackers go after DNS as part of other malicious attacks. Knox explains the methods for DNS ID hacking, spoofing, cache poisoning, exfiltration/tunneling, and DNS amplification.

Disruption in the Networking Hardware Marketplace

SDN is a step toward the next frontier of cloud services, IoT, big data, and mobility.