Archive for December 7, 2010

| December 7, 2010
Comments Off on More Wi-Fi Patent Legal Wrangling

More Wi-Fi Patent Legal Wrangling

TMore Wi-Fi Patent Legal Wranglinghe wireless patent wars wage on. Ericsson, (ERIC) the Swedish telecommunications giant has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against a number of companies for alleged patent infringement of its IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi products reports CENS.com. CENS.com says the businesses named in Ericsson’s lawsuit include:

The CENS.com article says the lawsuit involves all WLAN (wireless local area network) devices either incorporating chipsets supplied by:

or OEM products made by:

Foxconn logoTech Connect reports that Ericsson claims, the companies named are offering products that violate one or more of the following WLAN patents (number/title):

  • 6,466,568 – ‘Multi-rate radiocommunication systems and terminals’
  • 5,771,468 – ‘Multi-purpose base station’
  • 6,519,223 – ‘System and method for implementing a semi-reliable retransmission protocol’
  • 6,330,435 – ‘Data packet discard notification’
  • 6,772,215 – ‘Method for minimizing feedback responses in ARQ protocols
  • 6,424,625 – ‘Method and apparatus for discarding packets in a data network having automatic repeat request’
  • 6,173,352 – ‘Mobile computer mounted apparatus for controlling enablement and indicating the operational status of a wireless communication’
  • 5,987,019 – ‘Multi-rate radiocommunication systems and terminals’
  • 5,790,516 – ‘Pulse shaping for data transmission in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed system’

D-Link logoEricsson requested the infringing companies to compensate its losses and asked the court to ban the sales of the infringing products. D-Link told CENS.com they cannot give any comment because the company had not received any file from the court. But it will not affect the sales of its products. Acer told CENS.com that its legal department had received the related notice and has started judicial procedures.

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I have covered other WLAN patent suits here and here. While I’m no patent lawyer, what this says to me is that the WLAN market is starting to level off and firms are looking for “other” ways to make some money without producing products. A business tactic fresh from the 1980s.

I also noticed that this suit between a European firm (Ericsson) and Asian firms (Acer, Netgear, and D-Link) was brought in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. This seems to be a favorite place for firms to sue each other, I wonder if anyone has ever investigated why this court is so popular for alleged patent troll cases.

One of the things that we instituted a while ago, in our RFP’s and contract’s is a clause that requires the VAR and the manufacturer to hold the end-user harmless in regards to patent suits the VAR or manufacturer may get entangled in.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: wi-fi | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| December 4, 2010
Comments Off on U.S. Running Out Of IPv4 Addresses

U.S. Running Out Of IPv4 Addresses

U.S. Running Out Of IPv4 AddressesInformationWeek says IPv4 addresses will run out by the end of 2011. The plethora of mobile devices and an increase in Internet services to the home have led to a shortage of Internet addresses, which could run out by the end of 2011 according to InformationWeek. “We now face an exhaustion of IPv4 addresses,” Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said in the meeting, Reuters reported. There’s only room for 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses and the U.S. owns more than 90 percent of public IP addresses globally. The U.S. has used about 94.5 percent of its public IP addresses.

smartphones are depleting the supply of available addressesThe recent surge in tablet computers like the Apple iPad and Research in Motion Blackberry smartphones are depleting the supply of available addresses. The remaining 5.5 percent of the IPv4 addresses will be distributed among the Regional Internet Registries by next summer Reuters reported. New IP-based technologies such as LTE and WiMax have also contributed to the dwindling number of IPv4 addresses. M2M devices and smart technologies in consumer products like refrigerators, dishwashers, and vehicles also decrease the number of addresses available. “Fortunately, IPv6 will support 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses,” Strickling is quoted in Reuters, and appealed to businesses to widely roll out and integrate IPv6.

The reason is that IPv6 is a much longer address, but it makes up a lot more possible numbers, said Todd Day, industry analyst, Mobile & Wireless Communications, Frost & Sullivan. “It’s similar to a phone number with many digits, so it’s like having a longer phone number.” Switching to IPv6 could be costly for businesses and the technology might not integrate well with what they are using. “Ultimately you have equipment that has to be replaced in order to support IPv6, you have software changes and upgrades in other pieces of equipment and testing and actual implementation costs,” Day said.

In spite of the challenges, the new protocol has its advantages, he said. “There are definitely a lot of benefits to IPv6,” Day said. “In the bigger picture, it allows for more security, video and voice streaming, and better quality of service.“

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This is not a U.S.-specific problem as InformationWeek would have their readers believe. This is a worldwide problem. John Curran President and CEO of ARIN pointed out in the article, “some other countries have already set their IPv4 depletion / IPv6 adoption plans.” Of course not in the US, there are so many other important issues for the Feds to worry about, like the noise level of TV commercials.

This gadget has been developed by Takashi Arano, Intec NetCore

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| December 1, 2010
Comments Off on Huge MacOS Patch Sets Record

Huge MacOS Patch Sets Record

Huge MacOS Patch Sets RecordApple Computers (AAPL) recently released a mega update that addresses 134 vulnerabilities in MacOS X. The incremental update weighs in at 650 megabytes, which PCMagazine’s Larry Seltzer is quoted as describing as “possibly unprecedented proportions.”  According to the Washington Post‘s Rob Pegoraro, the actual download size varies depending on different machines, up to  977.2 megabytes.

Apple logogTony Bradley of PCWorld compared the Mac OS X update with Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, and claims that “To surpass 134 vulnerabilities, you have to combine six months’ worth of Patch Tuesdays from June through November.” To be fair, the massive MacOS update includes 55 updates related to Adobe Flash. Vulnerability expert (and multi Pwn2Own winner) Charlie Miller is clearly not impressed. In a tweet sent late Wednesday, he wrote “Apple releases huge patch, still miss all my bugs. Makes you realize how many bugs are in their code (or they’re very unlucky).”

What is in the mega MacOS patch?

The mega MacOS update patches a handful of long outstanding vulnerabilities, one from 2008 and 7 from 2009. The update also includes fixes to common UNIX software such as X11, PHP, and OpenSSL. Apple included more than two dozen non-security issues, many of them stability or reliability problems.  The 10.6.5 upgrade also fixed a problem with some HP printers connected to wireless networks, added support for encrypted transfers of files to Apple’s online storage service, and improved the reliability of connections to Microsoft Exchange servers.

Mac users can read more about MacOS X v10.6.5 and Security Update 2010-007 here.

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The consumerization of IT has hit my workplace with iPad’s and Macs working their way in as “special projects.” This latest patch from Apple shows the firm’s attention to security. Despite the fanboyz believes, the Mac isn’t more secure than Wintel. The simple fact is, breaking into Macs probably has not ranked very high on the to-do list of cyber-criminals given the smaller number of Mac users when compared with the number of machines running Windows. The second fact is that Apple is slow with security updates. The mega update addressed some MacOS problems that are over two years old.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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