ACLU: NSA phone dragnet should be killed not amended

The U.S. Congress should kill the section of the Patriot Act that has allowed the National Security Agency to collect millions of phone records from the nation’s residents, instead of trying to amend it, a civil liberties advocate said Friday.Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the NSA to collect phone records, business records and any other “tangible things” related to an anti-terrorism investigation, expires in June, and lawmakers should let it die, said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to approve a bill to amend that section of the anti-terrorism law. The USA Freedom Act would end the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records by narrowing the scope of the agency’s searches, backers of the bill said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ACLU: NSA phone dragnet should be killed not amended

The U.S. Congress should kill the section of the Patriot Act that has allowed the National Security Agency to collect millions of phone records from the nation’s residents, instead of trying to amend it, a civil liberties advocate said Friday.Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the NSA to collect phone records, business records and any other “tangible things” related to an anti-terrorism investigation, expires in June, and lawmakers should let it die, said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to approve a bill to amend that section of the anti-terrorism law. The USA Freedom Act would end the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records by narrowing the scope of the agency’s searches, backers of the bill said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Telecom trade groups, ISPs ask for delay of net neutrality rules

Five telecom trade groups and two broadband providers have asked the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to put a hold on net neutrality rules it recently approved.Seeking a partial stay of the FCC’s rules are trade groups USTelecom, CTIA, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the American Cable Association and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association as well as ISPs AT&T and CenturyLink. The groups asked the FCC Friday to put a hold on its decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, but the requests do not affect the commission’s rules that prohibit blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

#Fail to the chief: When tech trips up presidential candidates

Politics and technology: An uneasy relationshipImage by Happyme22/WikipediaThomas Jefferson was an inventor and Herbert Hoover was an engineer, but other presidents, candidates, and politicians have had a more, shall we say, fraught relationship with technology. Ronald Reagan, for instance, joked into a live microphone about "outlawing Russia forever" at the height of the Cold War in 1984. But with technology becoming an ever more important part of our daily lives, so too will some of the inevitable slew of political gaffes we'll encounter over the next 18 months of campaigning come in tech form. And we here at ITworld promise to keep track of them all! Here's a bunch to get you started; we'll update as more arise, and feel free to let us know if you read about one you think should be included.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Companies must teach employees how to swim in new oceans of data

Take a quick tour through the C-suite of any major corporation today, and there’s a good chance you’ll see some titles that weren’t there a few years ago: chief data officer, chief data scientist, chief analytics officer, to name just a few.Data is the element they all share in common, and it’s affecting more than just the executive ranks.In the business world’s headlong rush to collect as much data about as many things as possible as quickly as it can, a question has been left for later: How do you turn those massive volumes into practical value? Turns out, “later” is now, and there’s a crushing shortage of specialized data scientists. Few companies, meanwhile, even have a plan for bolstering their data talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA shows off 10 engine helicopter/aircraft hybrid drone (video too!)

Pretty cool stuff here. NASA this week said it successfully flew its battery-powered 10 engine drone that can take off like a helicopter and fly like an aircraft.The concept aircraft, known as Greased Lightning or GL-10 could be used for small package delivery, long endurance reconnaissance for agriculture, mapping and other survey applications. A scaled up version could even be used as a four person size personal air vehicle, NASA researchers said.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Potential rival to Google’s Project Ara booted from IndieGoGo

A crowdfunding campaign for a sleek modular smartphone concept has been unceremoniously dumped by IndieGoGo, which shuttered the project’s page on Friday morning.As first reported by ModularAndroid.com, the project page was taken down and all pledges were refunded. A message sent to backers, obtained by that news site, said that Fonkraft “has been suspended due to not meeting our trust and safety standards.”+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Comcast launching 2-gig broadband to trump Chattanooga's municipal gigabit offering + Apple Watch, Samsung Edge glitches anger users, but no outright revolt +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 2.4 GHz Spectrum Congestion Problem and AP Form-Factors

2.4 GHz is a junk band...
2.4 GHz is interference ridden...
2.4 GHz is dead...

You've heard all of these dire warnings about microwaves, bluetooth accessories, cordless phones, baby monitors, lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), which will wreak havoc on your WLAN.

Well, I'm here to tell you that 2.4 GHz issues are self-inflicted. Any by self-inflicted I mean that Wi-Fi is the root cause of your Wi-Fi not working well. And specifically your own Wi-Fi. Poorly designed networks with too many APs blasting out too many signals all stomping on one another.

I'm a stickler for proper design, and is a mantra that I've probably beaten to death by this point. One aspect of proper design is deploying the proper number of radios to meet capacity needs. It's something that I talk about in my presentations on this subject and tweet about as well. Too many radios actually degrades performance due to the negative effects of co-channel interference and airtime utilization on a shared channel. More is decidedly NOT better!

“Most WLAN designs today require a significant amount of
2.4 GHz radios to be disabled.”

Most WLAN designs today require Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—The Impact of the Third Era

Trends in big data and IoT are driving a massive shift towards what we call the Third Era of information technology. Efficient and agile networks are needed to support the scaled-out applications of tomorrow. Ed Henry, an engineer here at Plexxi (also known as @NetworkN3rd) discussed the impact that the Third Era has on the network in a blog post this week. He explores how unprecedented amounts of data will affect network infrastructure, applications, and operations.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Network World: IDC’s state of the network at Interop: Change, or be left behind
By Brandon Butler
The confluence of mobile, social and big data trends are driving a tectonic transformation and businesses that do not change with these trends will be left behind, analysts from research firm IDC said at Interop. IDC says the so-called third platform, which includes those mega-trends of cloud and mobile workloads, will disrupt one-third of leading businesses across all sectors. “The third platform is already fueling a digital transformation across enterprise IT, and the only way IT will succeed is by transforming itself,” said Rohit Mehra, research vice president Continue reading

Not all certificate formats are created equal.

One of my favorite questions: ‘What format do you want that certificate in? Which then forces me to think and try and remember what was so special and different about all the certificate formats again? We’ll start with: PEM – Privacy Enhanced Mail Certificate represented in text format. In a Hex/ASCII format BASE64 encoded DER […]

ALF: Application Layer Fixup

I was talking about “application-layer gateways” on firewalls and NAT boxes with a fellow engineer, and we came to an interesting conclusion: in most cases they are not gateways; they don’t add any significant functionality apart for payload fixups for those broken applications that think carrying network endpoint information in application packets is a good idea (I’m looking at you, SIP and FTP). These things should thus be called Application Layer Fixups or ALFs ;)

iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 5/1/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

  • Jeff Kuehn, CCIE #48275 (Wireless)
  • Diego Monasterios, CCIE #48240 (Routing & Switching)

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!

Microsoft buying company that made stylus for Surface Pro 3

Microsoft will soon own the company that provided the stylus and touch display interface technology for its Surface Pro 3, according to a media report.The company has agreed to acquire Israel-based N-Trig for $30 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.Microsoft already had a minority stake of 6 percent in N-trig, but apparently had been in negotiations to acquire the company for months. In February, Israel's Haaretz newspaper said N-Trig was valued at less than $10 million, while Calcalist -- which originally broke the story of Microsoft looking to acquire the company -- reported that Microsoft would pay at least $200 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch, Samsung Edge glitches anger users, but no outright revolt

Problems with the new Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone have infuriated some early adopters, but they still stay loyal to their favorite brand.Some have taken to user forums and tweets with expletive-deleted missives. This post Wednesday on an Android Central forum by Edge smartphone user Ajay Rivera seemed to summarize recent sentiment: "This was my second device to crap out and [a support rep] still treated me like an *****"Despite such anger, many in the industry dismiss glitches -- and subsequent user furor -- as par for the course with most new products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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