IDG Contributor Network: Smartphones are about to become network hubs

Here's the quandary with smartphones: despite featuring copious radios within, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi over both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, 4G LTE, Near Field Communication (NFC), and so on, the radios with the most propensity for delivering media don't work together.The two Wi-Fi bands found in today's smartphones generally aren't used at the same time. The issue has been related to needing two antennas connected at the same time for the different bands. It's because the frequencies used have very different characteristics.New routersThis dual-band limitation is about to change, for a couple of reasons.Firstly, the newest routers, or wireless access points, that are being sold are already kitted with the two radios and antennas configured to work together at the same time. I wrote about a few of these monsters recently in a post titled "Is it time to move to beamforming 802.11ac?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Internet.org hopes to reach 100 countries in a year, up from six now

BARCELONA -- Internet.org, which is already offering free Internet service in six countries, has ambitious plans to connect to 100 countries in the next year."We like big, ambitious goals at Facebook," said Chris Daniels, head of Internet.org in a discussion with several reporters at Mobile World Congress (MWC).Facebook and several partners founded Internet.org two years ago; it is already serving 7 million customers in Columbia, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, India and Zambia. Many of those who were originally connected for free are now paying some fee for more advanced data services.Daniels, a vice president at Facebook in charge of Internet.org, said the conversion of free Internet users to paying customers is critical to the carriers who provide the Internet infrastructure that makes the service possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Microsoft Azure beats Amazon and Google for mobile development

In the last year I've reviewed six MBaaS (mobile back end as a service) platforms: FeedHenry, Kinvey, Parse, AnyPresence, Appcelerator, and Appery.io. I also briefly examined the MBaaS platforms associated with Pivotal CF and IBM Bluemix in my reviews of those PaaS (platform as a service) offerings. All of these MBaaS platforms run on some kind of public cloud, and some can be installed on-premise or in hybrid cloud configurations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Attackers clone malware-laden copies of popular apps

Criminal hackers have hacked/cloned most of the top 100 paid apps and top 20 free apps for Android and iOS, according to data from Arxan’s State of Mobile App Security report, 2014. These attackers use the infected apps to gain entry to the enterprise in order to compromise its most treasured information.And with the movement toward doing networking in software, the ability to enable micro-segmentation to add policy-based traffic analysis and filters between any pair of endpoints is becoming an additional security option, which enterprises should consider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Flappy apps give users the angry bird

Sadistic software switchersSadistic software switchers have been known to swap in malicious versions of these seven popular mobile apps.RELATED: Attackers have cloned malware-laden copies of the most popular apps your employees useTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Net neutrality will put U.S. behind Europe, Cisco’s Chambers says

U.S. net neutrality rules will help Europe take the lead in broadband, Cisco CEO John Chambers says.The regulations approved last week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will slow down broadband deployment, Chambers said at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. Instead of focusing on net neutrality, the government should aim for more available broadband, he said.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Follow all the stories from Mobile World Congress +"Sometimes, if you're not careful, your regulatory goals can slow down your end goals," Chambers said. He praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying she's kept Germany focused on fast Internet access for every citizen. The U.S. led in the Internet era until about 2010 but in a few years will be behind the major European countries, India and China, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Momentum grows around Microsoft’s Windows 10 for phones

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS hasn’t taken the world by storm, but its successor, Windows 10, is off to an encouraging start even before its release.Only a handful of Windows 10 handsets were on display on the show floor of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, but with some device and chip makers announcing their intentions to support Windows 10 on smartphones, that could translate to many more handsets becoming available by year end. Microsoft has said that Windows 10 will provide a more consistent user experience across smartphones, tablets and PCs. A technical preview of the OS is already available, with the final version expected to reach handsets later this year. Some handsets, but not all, running Windows Phone 8.1 will be upgraded to Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, March 4

Alibaba opens its cloud for business in U.S.Alibaba is set to compete for cloud services with Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure with a new data center in California, the first outside China for the Aliyun subsidiary. It is initially targeting low-hanging fruit: the U.S. operations of Chinese companies. But its use of proprietary technology may be a turnoff for prospective customers who are wary of cloud lock-in.IBM plugs its OpenPower servers into the cloudIBM wants to show that its Power processors are a good alternative to Intel’s x86 chips in the cloud market, so it’s rolling out an infrastructure-as-a-service using OpenPower servers. The SoftLayer division is starting the Power move with a data center in Texas but will later roll out the service worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Budget smartphones shine at Mobile World Congress

Budget smartphones from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and up-and-comer Alcatel OneTouch have improved to such an extent that the question whether or not to buy one of the latest high-end smartphones is tougher than ever before. The launches of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge from Samsung Electronics and the One M9 from HTC didn’t disappoint. However, it wasn’t expensive flagship smartphones like those that dominated in Barcelona, but smartphones that cost US$300 or less unlocked. Even with such cheaper phones, manufacturers are increasingly focusing on looks. A company that has succeeded in this regard is Sony, with its Xperia M4 Aqua. The product has a plastic frame and back, instead of glass and metal, but Sony has chosen materials that still look good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

China says new cybersurveillance proposal follows US security practices

China is scratching its head over why the U.S. is opposing a new anti-terror law relating to cybersurveillance when the U.S. and other countries have also requested that tech companies hand over data to help stop terrorists.On Wednesday, China’s parliamentary spokeswoman tried to play down the impact the proposed legislation might have on foreign tech businesses, in the face of U.S. fears it would require companies to hand over sensitive data to the country’s government.The anti-terror law is still under review, but if passed, it would require tech companies to give encryption keys to the authorities, and create “back doors” into their systems for government surveillance access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free Online Introduction to SDN and Network Automation Training

Want to know more about SDN and network automation/programmability, but don’t know where to start? Why don’t you try the free Introduction to SDN and Network Automation training available on ipSpace.net – you’ll get seven hours of high-quality content that will help you understand where it might make sense to use SDN technologies in your network and what SDN, OpenFlow, NFV, NETCONF, Ansible, YAML, Jinja and a few other acronyms are all about.

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Alibaba enters US cloud market, signaling global ambitions

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is making a push into the U.S. cloud computing market, where it’s expected to run into competition from Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft.Alibaba subsidiary Aliyun is already the biggest cloud player in its home market, and on Wednesday, it opened a data center in California, its first data center outside of China.The U.S. business will first focus on attracting Chinese enterprises based in the country, before it expands to international customers in this year’s second half, Alibaba said in a statement.No doubt Alibaba will face intense competition in the U.S., where Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are major players. But opening the data center in Silicon Valley sends another message that it wants to be a global company, said Charlie Dai, an analyst with Forrester Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Introducing Redistribute Neighbor

The existing landscape

Are we feeding an L2 addiction?

One of the fundamental challenges in any network is placement and management of the boundary between switched (L2) and routed (L3) fabrics. Very large L2 environments tend to be brittle, difficult to troubleshoot and difficult to scale. With the availability of modern commodity switching ASICs that can switch or route at similar speeds/latency, smaller L3 domains become easier to justify.

There is a recent strong trend towards reducing the scale of L2 in the data center and instead using routed fabrics, especially in very large scale environments.

However, L2 environments are typically well understood by network/server operations staff and application developers, which has slowed adoption of pure L3-based fabrics. L3 designs also have some other usability challenges that need to be mitigated.

This is why the L2 over L3 (AKA “overlay” SDN) techniques are drawing interest; they allow admins to keep provisioning how they’re used to. But maybe we’re just feeding an addiction?

Mark Burgess recently wrote a blog post exploring in depth how we got here and offering some longer term strategic visions. It’s a great read, I highly encourage taking a look.

But taking a step back, let’s explore Continue reading

Apple, like Google, to hire full-time security guards in Silicon Valley

Apple will replace a number of contract security positions with direct hires for its Silicon Valley operations, amid widespread demands from contract workers like drivers and security guards for better working conditions at tech companies.The move by Apple comes in the wake of growing concerns about inequality in Silicon Valley, arising largely from the gentrification and high-costs in the area driven by the influx of hi-tech employees.In October, Google said it would employ on its payroll security guards, rather than have them placed by a contractor, shortly after a report in August by community labor organization Working Partnerships USA that highlighted the poor working conditions of janitors, security guards and other contract staff, supplied by third-party companies, that are used extensively by tech companies in the valley.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM plugs OpenPower servers into SoftLayer cloud

IBM will roll out a cloud computing service next quarter using OpenPower-based servers, continuing an effort to expand the market for Power processors and challenge Intel in hyperscale data centers.The company’s SoftLayer division will provide an infrastructure-as-a-service offering using OpenPower systems in the second quarter, initially from a data center in Dallas, Texas, it said Wednesday. It will roll out the service worldwide at a later date.IBM kicked off its OpenPower initiative about two years ago. Its goal is to license its Power architecture to other server makers, who can use it to design systems targeted at online service providers like Google and cloud providers like Amazon Web Services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Drive-by attack relies on hacked GoDaddy accounts

Hundreds of hacked domain name accounts registered through GoDaddy are being used as part of a highly effective campaign using the Angler exploit kit to infect computers with malware.The attackers are using the accounts to create subdomains that shuttle Web surfers to websites hosting Angler, wrote Nick Biasini, an outreach engineer with Cisco Systems.The owners of the accounts are usually unaware of the activity, which Cisco calls “domain shadowing,” since they may rarely log into their accounts. Hundreds of GoDaddy accounts that have several thousand domain names assigned to them have been compromised, Biasini wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber buys deCarta to improve mapping and arrival estimates

Uber is acquiring deCarta, a mapping and location company that could help Uber to develop new types of services and also ensure its drivers show up on time.DeCarta, headquartered in San Jose, California, holds a variety of data pertaining to mapping, local search and turn-by-turn navigation. Location services in cars from GM and Ford have been powered by deCarta’s technology, as well as devices from Samsung and Blackberry.Now, Uber is buying the company for an undisclosed sum. It will allow Uber to improve services like UberPool and also give its users more accurate estimated times of arrival.UberPool lets several people share the same ride, with multiple pick up and drop off points, so it involves more complex routing data than a regular Uber ride. But regular rides could benefit too, if deCarta’s technology can help Uber drivers know exactly where they’re supposed to pick you up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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