Google’s self-driving cars hitting the streets of California

The first self-driving cars built by Google are heading to public roads for the first time.A “few” of the prototype vehicles Google has developed will appear on the streets of Mountain View, California, this summer, the company said Friday. Until now, those vehicles have been tested and driven on private property.“Safety drivers” will go along for the ride, but they’ll only take control “if needed,” using a removable steering wheel and brake and accelerator pedals, according to the company.The initial prototype Google showed in May of last year lacked manual controls and only had a power button, but the company promised that later versions would include these components.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Envisioning a day in the future cloud-connected world

The very term "cloud" refers to any computing resource not in your current building. There is cloud storage, computing, and various applications ranging from the success of Salesforce online apps to the map you used on your phone (or watch) this morning.The Internet is now synonymous with the The Cloud. Let's dream about the cloud a little bit.Your JourneyYour body token was read by an RFID scanner as you walked in the door to the (train station, airport, building complex entrance) where it authorized you to go inside, noted you have $20 to spend on food in the (canteen, restaurant, company cafeteria), and that you can use the (company self-driving car, network terminals, network itself to Grade 51, doors to all red/green/black restrooms with unlimited toilet paper) and are permitted to exit any door.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spec showdown: HTC’s J Butterfly flies past its One M9

Unless you live in Japan, get ready to feel jealous: HTC on Thursday announced a new and impressive J Butterfly that is only available there. Here is how it compares to the One M9, currently the most advanced smartphone from HTC available globally.Both smartphones are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor and have 32GB of integrated storage, but a review of the specs shows a number of opportunities HTC missed with the One M9, which started shipping in March.ScreenThe One M9 has a 5-inch screen and the Butterfly’s screen measures 5.2 inches. But the newcomer has a 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution compared to 1080 x 1920 pixels on the One M9. That puts the Butterfly on par with competitors like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and LG’s G4. To go along with all those pixels, the Butterfly also has a bigger battery. You can say what you like about whether the higher resolution is necessary, but One M9 is at a distinct disadvantage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Better than best effort — Rise of the IXP

In my last post I talked about how the incentive models on the Internet keep ISPs from managing peering and backbone capacity in a way that supports reliable communication in the face of ever growing volume of rich media content. If you haven't done so, please read that post before you read this one.

It's clear that using an ISP for business communication comes with the perils associated to the "noisy neighbor" ebb and flow of consumer related high volume data movement. Riding pipes that are intentionally run hot to keep costs down is a business model that works for ISP, but not for business users of the Internet. Even with business Internet service, customers may get a better grade of service within a portion of an ISP's networks, but not when their data needs to traverse another ISP which they are not a customer of. There is no consistent experience, for anyone.

However there is an evolving solution to avoid getting caught in the never ending battle between ISP and large consumer content. As the title of this blog gives away, the solution is called an Internet eXchange Point (IXP).

IXPs are where the different networks that make up Continue reading

BlackBerry CEO/Twitter latecomer on how he got @JohnChen handle: ‘Beats me…very lucky’

There are more John Chens on Twitter than a patient person can count, yet when Blackberry CEO John Chen started tweeting just a week ago he had somehow managed to secure the coveted and unique-among-Chens Twitter handle of @JohnChen.How?As anyone who has ever signed up for an email or social media account knows, you can never get your own name plain and simple unless you’re an earliest of early adopters or you have a highly uncommon name. You Browns, Smiths, Johnsons -- and Chens -- know this better than most.Twitter has been around for nine years now and if you enter the name John Chen into its people search you can scroll page after page of John Chens for as long as you’re willing to scroll. Their Twitter handles, however, are all @JohnChenPlusANumber or @JohnMiddleInitialChen or some other variation involving underscores or a nickname.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 5/15/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert students who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

Denys Monteiro, CCIE #48536 (Wireless)
Travis Bugh, CCIE #48508 (Wireless)
Manojkumar Chandrasekaran, CCIE #15387 (Wireless)
Rodrigo Espinha, CCIE #8847 (Data Center)

This Week’s Testimonials

Travis Bugh CCIE #48508 (Wireless)
I made the investment of getting the iPexpert Workbooks and Videos to prepare for my CCIE Wireless lab attempt. Their materials prepared me for the actual lab through well thought out mock labs that simulated the real environment you will be facing. Coupled with the video series for precise explanations on what you need to know, and I had the recipe for my own success in the wireless lab.

Denys Monteiro CCIE #48536 (Wireless)
I am very happy to announce that I passed my CCIE Wireless LAB. I would like to thank iPexpert which gave me great study material.

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!

Worth Reading

For whatever reason, we seem to have moved into the “summer doldrums” a bit early this year. Emails seem to just not being answered for weeks — if ever — several friends have emailed me in the last week or two ago asking if it was just them, or if the IT industry was going crazy. All that said, though, there is still a lot going on in the world of IT.

Geoff Huston — if you don’t follow the rantings of Geoff, you really should — makes a point I wish I’d thought of first. The Internet of Things isn’t necessarily a security risk so much as it’s just a stupidity risk. He uses the example of millions of smaller home based devices being shipped with hard coded IP addresses that impact time and DNS servers to make the point that once things are deployed, they don’t tend to be touched. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He calls it the Internet of Stupid Things.

Along those same lines, I saw an article this week about how Microsoft is threatening the end of the world (or some such) because they’re ending support for Windows 2003 server. The Continue reading

Nuage Announces Underlay/Overlay Event Management Platform

Nuage Networks Logo

During the ONUG event I met with Dimitri Stiliadis, the Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Nuage Networks, who was excited to tell us about the latest product release, the Virtualized Services Assurance Platform (VSAP).

Virtualized Services Assurance Platform

The history of Nuage products has been fairly straightforward; they began with a virtualized networking solution targeted at data centers. More recently, Nuage Networks announced an expansion of that product into the branch office space. What was missing though, was a good way to monitor and manage the complex environment that was built, from underlay to overlay, from the WAN all the way to from virtual switch. When failures occur, they can be difficult to track down or, worse, you are flooded with alerts and left to figure out which ones are actually important, and which ones are the true root cause. To that end, Nuage Networks’ VSAP aims to provide visibility of the network and event correlation so that you can see what might be affected by a given network event.

VSAP is composed of two main components:

Route Monitor

The Nuage Route Monitor uses route protocols to peer with the production network in the data center, backbone, and anywhere else Continue reading

Sally Beauty confirms second payment card breach

Sally Beauty Holdings has confirmed that hackers broke into its payment systems and stole customer card data. About a year ago the retail chain suffered a similar intrusion.The company launched an investigation in early May after receiving reports of unusual activity involving payment cards used at some of its stores. While it now has sufficient evidence to confirm an illegal intrusion, the company declined to comment on the breach’s scope until the forensics investigation is complete.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wi-Fi Design and Capacity Planning Webinars, May 19th and 21st

Please consider attending webinars I'll be hosting on Wi-Fi design and capacity planning next week with Aruba Networks. I'll be talking about the key aspects to WLAN performance and the approach that I take to integrating coverage and capacity into a holistic design, as well as tools you can use to monitor WLAN performance after deployment to maintain a high-performing network and plan for growth.

These won't be traditional marketing webinars. If you're like me, you get invited to (and avoid) many webinars because they are too sales oriented and lack relevant engineering content. This isn't that. The goal of these webinars is to provide practical, real-world concepts and methods to help you design better Wi-Fi networks. Everyone deserves better Wi-Fi, right?

Register here:

U.S. Webinar - May 19th at 11am PDT / 2pm EDT

EMEA Webinar - May 21st at 15:00 GMT

10 utterly wonderful technologies you shouldn’t buy yet

Worth the waitTechnology marches ever onward, becoming smaller, more powerful, and more revolutionary by the day. It’s all too easy to succumb to the madness drowning in the flood of daily tech news. Octa-deca-mega core processors! Cutting-edge displays you have to see to believe! Tech that makes everything from your coffee pot to your doorbell smart!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slammed by phone rivals, Sharp pins hopes on in-car displays

Struggling display manufacturer Sharp, reeling from fierce competition in smartphones, will push automakers to incorporate vehicle dashboards that have gestural commands, thin bezels and other next-generation features.It’s hoping cars will be controlled, in part, through high-resolution displays that can fit any two-dimensional surface area, such as dashboard panels with rounded contours.The company has shown off the wavy screens for cars and consoles in recent months, and has tried to woo automakers to use them. Under the firm’s new medium-term strategy, the push has taken on greater urgency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

China pushes for big jump in Internet speeds

China’s government is pressing for faster Internet access speeds and lower prices, two moves that aim to boost the number of its citizens going online.On Friday, all three of China’s telecommunications operators announced plans to lower broadband and data plan costs for consumers. This came a month after China’s premier Li Keqiang said the country needed to do more to expand Internet access.China has the world’s largest Internet-connected citizenry at over 649 million users, but that’s still less than half of the country’s population. And average Internet speeds in China are 3.4 megabits per second(Mbps), far lower than the U.S. where average access speeds reach 11.1 Mbps, according to Akamai Technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why and Where Ring topology is used ?

Ring topology is used mostly for economical reason. It is very common topology in the service provider access, and it is not so uncommon in Aggregation and Core ( Backbone ) networks as well. Long haul links are expensive thus in order to provide last mile connectivity in the Service Provider access domain, nodes might… Read More »

The post Why and Where Ring topology is used ? appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, May 15

Google is ready to put its prototype self-driving cars on the roadGoogle said Friday that its prototype self-driving car will leave the test track and hit the local roads around Mountain View, California, this summer. Speed is capped at 25 miles per hour, and safety drivers will be onboard, a blog post stressed, with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal so they can take over driving if necessary.Upstarts Xiaomi, Micromax pressure established smartphone playersSmartphone manufacturers Micromax in India and Xiaomi in China are shaking up the high-growth low end of the market with their latest launches, and even if the devices don’t go on sale around the world, their impact will be felt globally. The impressive specs and aggressive pricing of the Micromax Yu Yuphoria and the Xiaomi Mi 4i are putting pressure on phone makers Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility to step up their efforts in the segment for sub-$200 smartphones, as they reset customer expectations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, May 15

Push and Pull Based Control Plane Mechanisms

Control plane packets are used to build a communication path between the networking devices. In some cases control plane is used to advertise and learn the endpoints. Imagine a network which consist of these networking devices, in order to crate a graph or tree among them for bridging or routing purpose, control plane protocols are used.… Read More »

The post Push and Pull Based Control Plane Mechanisms appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Build Your Development or Lab Environment with Ravello Systems

When preparing for my Simplifying Application Workload Migration workshop (coming in webinar format in autumn) I tried to find a solution that would allow me to recreate existing enterprise virtual network infrastructure in a cloud environment. Soon I stumbled upon Ravello Systems, remembered hearing about them on a CloudCast.net podcast, and got in touch with them to figure out whether they could help me solve that challenge.

It turned you might use Ravello Systems’ solution to implement disaster recovery, but I got way more excited about the possibility to use their solution for labs or testing. To learn more about that, listen to Episode 32 of Software Gone Wild.

Listen to the podcast

To push electric cars, Seoul rolls out portable chargers with RFID

Seoul is trying to put one of the world’s highest concentrations of electric vehicles (EVs) on its roads with a project that would let drivers charge their vehicles in residential parking lots and other everyday locations.The city is planning to give out electric charger cables fitted with RFID readers that would allow drivers to recharge their batteries through standard power outlets at 100,000 locations—a huge increase from current numbers.Central to the project is a charger cable called the EV-Line, developed by Gyeonggi-based Power Cube. The cable has an RFID reader than can scan an RFID tag attached to power outlets in parking lots for apartments, offices and elsewhere. It also has a 3G wireless module.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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