Here’s how slow your laptop’s USB Type C port could be

USB Type C is the intriguing new port that began appearing in laptops, tablets, phones, and other devices well over a year ago, but we had no real way test its throughput performance until now. Thanks to Sandisk’s Extreme 900, we’re finally able to push that tiny reversible port to its limits. To do that I gathered up no fewer than eight laptops equipped with USB Type C ports, and threw in a desktop PCIe card for good measure too.What your USB-C port isn't telling you USB Type C is supposed to be a universal standard, but it’s just universally confusing. A USB Type C port can run at either 5Gbps or 10Gbps and still be labeled USB 3.1 by the laptop maker. USB Type C even technically supports USB 2.0 speeds at a pathetic 480Mbps. So when you see a USB Type C port, the only assumption you can make is that its transfer speeds can vary from as low as 480Mbps to as high as 10Gbps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 Android apps developers will love

Android apps for app buildersWhen it comes to tablet apps, iPad vs. Android comparisons spark spirited debate. In the area of apps for developers, the Android tablet apps are more often free and less polished. On the other hand, there are plenty of Android tablet apps that will help developers in one way or another. While Android takes a lot of flack for “fragmentation,” in many ways it is now less fragmented than iOS from the viewpoint of a developer. It’s straightforward to create a single Android app that will work properly on a large range of devices, measured in operating system level, CPU power, available memory, and device size. On iOS, developers often find themselves writing separate iPhone and iPad apps in order to optimize both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to protect digital identity in an IoT world

Identity protectionImage by ThinkstockThe IoT security battle is lost if you’re uncertain that the person or thing on the other end of an online transaction is actually who or what it claims to be. Most IoT attacks occur when malicious actors are able to replace an authentic sensor with a compromised device, or when unauthorized remote access is gained and transmits a false signal to a device. To prevent these kinds of attacks, digital identity must establish effective online trust for all connected devices and people in an IoT interconnected ecosystem. This kind of online trust is achieved by implementing a comprehensive approach to digital identity and access management.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to protect digital identity in an IoT world

Identity protectionImage by ThinkstockThe IoT security battle is lost if you’re uncertain that the person or thing on the other end of an online transaction is actually who or what it claims to be. Most IoT attacks occur when malicious actors are able to replace an authentic sensor with a compromised device, or when unauthorized remote access is gained and transmits a false signal to a device. To prevent these kinds of attacks, digital identity must establish effective online trust for all connected devices and people in an IoT interconnected ecosystem. This kind of online trust is achieved by implementing a comprehensive approach to digital identity and access management.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP’s new Chromebook 13 has features to match top-line Windows PCs

HP's new Chromebook 13 offers some of the latest technologies that the company is also putting in its top-line Windows PCs.The new laptop is just 12.9-millimeters thick and has a 13.3-inch display that shows images at a 3200 x 1800 pixel resolution. That is the highest-resolution screen ever in Chromebooks, an improvement from the 2560 x 1700 pixel display on Google's Chromebook Pixel.The Chromebook 13 weighs 2.86 kilograms, and is the first with Intel's Skylake-based Core M processor, which focuses more on battery life than performance. HP claims the Chromebook 13 delivers 11.5 hours of battery life.It has a metallic finish, giving it a premium look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Paying ransomware is what ills some hospitals

Ransomware has become a major threat to the U.S. healthcare industry this year. The high-profile attacks that involved Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles, MedStar Health in Washington, D.C., and other healthcare systems are just the tip of the iceberg. Over half of hospitals surveyed recently by HIMSS Analytics and Healthcare IT News said they had been hit by ransomware attacks in the past year. Another 25 percent were unsure whether such attacks had occurred. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Paying ransomware is what ills some hospitals

Ransomware has become a major threat to the U.S. healthcare industry this year. The high-profile attacks that involved Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles, MedStar Health in Washington, D.C., and other healthcare systems are just the tip of the iceberg. Over half of hospitals surveyed recently by HIMSS Analytics and Healthcare IT News said they had been hit by ransomware attacks in the past year. Another 25 percent were unsure whether such attacks had occurred. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Announcing Support for HTTP/2 Server Push

Last November, we rolled out HTTP/2 support for all our customers. At the time, HTTP/2 was not in wide use, but more than 88k of the Alexa 2 million websites are now HTTP/2-enabled. Today, more than 70% of sites that use HTTP/2 are served via CloudFlare.

CC BY 2.0 image by Roger Price

Incremental Improvements On SPDY

HTTP/2’s main benefit is multiplexing, which allows multiple HTTP requests to share a single TCP connection. This has a huge impact on performance compared to HTTP/1.1, but it’s nothing new—SPDY has been multiplexing TCP connections since at least 2012.

Some of the most important aspects of HTTP/2 have yet to be implemented by major web servers or edge networks. The real promise of HTTP/2 comes from brand new features like Header Compression and Server Push. Since February, we’ve been quietly testing and deploying HTTP/2 Header Compression, which resulted in an average 30% reduction in header size for all of our clients using HTTP/2. That's awesome. However, the real opportunity for a quantum leap in web performance comes from Server Push.

Pushing Ahead

Today, we’re happy to announce HTTP/2 Server Push support for all of our customers. Server Push enables websites and Continue reading

Beware: CCIE University Steals and Cheats

With more than 13 years of IT related experience, I have spent my past few years using my passion in IT to teach Cisco network design concepts such as CCDE, CCDP and CCDA to help Cisco exam takers get successfully certified. Through my work, https://orhanergun.net/ not only became one of the most recognized and well […]

The post Beware: CCIE University Steals and Cheats appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Are ARM Server Chips Xeon Class, And Does It Matter?

We have often opined that ARMv8 processors would struggle to meet Intel Xeon chips head-on until they got a few microarchitecture revisions under their belts to improve per-core performance and until they narrowed the manufacturing gap to 14 nanometers or 16 nanometers, or perhaps even 10 nanometers.

But it looks like ARM server chip maker Applied Micro is aiming to do just that with its X-Gene 3 chip, which we profiled last November when its architecture was announced. Applied Micro has reached for this lofty goal before, with its X-Gene 1 and X-Gene 2 processors, but it appears that

Are ARM Server Chips Xeon Class, And Does It Matter? was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Government worst of all industries in cybersecurity, says report

“Government, we have a problem”—to paraphrase the crew of the 1970 moon flight reporting back on Apollo 13’s technical fault. But it sounds about right to describe, in one line, the somewhat frightening state of U.S. government infrastructure—including that of NASA, which is the worst of the federal agencies—exposed recently in a report.Network infrastructure weaknesses and vulnerabilities abound, according to SecurityScorecard.The tip of the iceberg appears to be the now-famous 2015 Office of Personnel Management loss of 21 million people’s Social Security numbers and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Government worst of all industries in cybersecurity, says report

“Government, we have a problem”—to paraphrase the crew of the 1970 moon flight reporting back on Apollo 13’s technical fault. But it sounds about right to describe, in one line, the somewhat frightening state of U.S. government infrastructure—including that of NASA, which is the worst of the federal agencies—exposed recently in a report.Network infrastructure weaknesses and vulnerabilities abound, according to SecurityScorecard.The tip of the iceberg appears to be the now-famous 2015 Office of Personnel Management loss of 21 million people’s Social Security numbers and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Smartphone shipments dip as iPhone ‘fatigue’ sets in and China reaches saturation

The global smartphone market saw its first year-on-year decline in the first quarter of this year, with both Samsung Electronics and Apple shipping fewer phones, according to a research firm.Global smartphone shipments fell 3 percent annually to 334.6 million from 345 million units in the first quarter of 2015, Strategy Analytics said late Wednesday.It attributed the decline to slowing smartphone growth because of increasing saturation in major markets like China and consumer caution about the future of the world economy.Apple reported Tuesday that the number of smartphones it sold worldwide fell by 16 percent to 51.2 million units in its fiscal second quarter ended March 26. The company saw a 26 percent year-on-year decline in revenue from Greater China, its second largest market. The revenue drop in mainland China was less at 11 percentTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here