Tag Archive for 2012

| May 15, 2012
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Internet of Things

Internet of ThingsThe Internet of Things is a world where everything can be both analog and digitally approached. It reformulates our relationship with objects – things- as well as the objects themselves.  Any object that carries an RFID tag relates not only to you but also through being read by an RFID reader nearby, to other objects, relations or values in a database. In this world, you are no longer alone, anywhere.

The Machines Are Talking a Lot

The Machines Are Talking a LotCisco’s Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2011-2016 reports that Internet traffic continues to grow at unprecedented rates. Cisco says that the second leading source of internet traffic will be the Internet of Things devices.

The networking giant says the source will be from machine-to-machine communications, or “M2M.” Brian Bergstein at MIT‘s Technology Review says to think of sensors in cars and in appliances, surveillance cameras, smart electric meters, and devices still to come, monitoring the world and reporting to each other and to centralized computers what they’re detecting. The chart below, reprinted from the Cisco report, shows just how extreme the jump in machine-to-machine communications could be. Cisco says M2M will grow, on average, 86 percent a year, reaching 508 petabytes a month, or half a billion gigabytes by 2016.

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New ARM chip for Internet of Things

ARM logoARM (ARMH), the semiconductor company whose chip technology powers most modern smartphones, has come up with a chip for the Internet of things (IoT). Om Malik at GigaOM reports that the Cortex-M0+ is an energy-efficient chip, optimized for use in everything from connected lighting to power controls to other home appliances. In a press release, the company explains:

The 32-bit Cortex-M0+ processor … consumes just 9µA/MHz … around one-third of the energy of any 8 or 16-bit processor available today, while delivering much higher performance …[to] enable the creation of smart, low-power microcontrollers to provide … wirelessly connected devices, a concept known as the ‘Internet of Things.’

At GigaOM’s Mobilize 2011 event ThingM CEO Mike Kuniavsky said that “ubiquitous network connectivity, cloud-based services, cheap assembly of electronics, social design, open collaboration tools, and low-volume sales channels create an innovation ecosystem that is the foundation for an Internet of things.”

GigaOM says Freescale and NXP (NXPI), both are major suppliers to the automotive and home automation industries have signed up for the new ARM Internet of Things chip technology. Freescale and NXP have locations in the Farmington Hills, MI area.

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A new chip for the Internet of Things

Atheros logoOm Malik at GigaOm recently noted that Atheros, a division of Qualcomm (QCOM) launched a new very low power consuming Wi-Fi chip. The AR4100P, is focused on the “Internet of Things.” He predicts that soon, there might be Wi-Fi in everything around us, including Samsung’s (005930) Wi-Fi-enabled washing machines, which Malik wrote about earlier.

According to the blog, the new “highly integrated 802.11n single-stream Wi-Fi system-in-package with integrated dual IPv4 IPv6 networking stack” is focused on smart home and building controls and appliances. Atheros and other chip companies such as ARM are betting that the Internet of Things will prove to be a new giant market opportunity.

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The new Atheros chip also includes an IPv6 stack as well as 802.11n to give end-to-end control of your home appliances.

Related articles
  • Marvell chip makes appliances and LED lights ‘smart’ (ces.cnet.com)

The Web Connected Smelly Robot

olly logoThe Internet of Things now has smell-o-vision from Olly. Olly takes services on the Internet and delivers their pings as smell according to his website. Whether it’s a tweet or a like on Instagram, Olly will be sure to let your nose know about it. Mint Foundry, a graduate design lab at Mint Digital dedicated to exploring the potential of web-connected objects developed Olly.

It is possible to change Olly’s smells in an instant. It has a removable section in the back which can be filled with any smell you like. It could be essential oils, a slice of fruit, your partner’s perfume, or even a drop of gin.

Olly is stackable, so if you have more than one, you can assign each one to a different service with a different smell. Connect one to Twitter and another to your calendar. Before you know it, you’ll have a networked Internet smell center claims the website.

Olly is not yet in production, but Mint is glad to offer the source files to anyone who’s got a 3D printer and a nose for adventure.

 

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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| May 12, 2012
Comments Off on Apple Spoofs ‘Ghostbusters’

Apple Spoofs ‘Ghostbusters’

Apple Spoofs 'Ghostbusters'NetworkWorld posted a long-lost version of an internal Apple video, “BlueBuster.” The video is a spoof of the classic movie Ghostbusters. Chris C. Anderson at the Huffington Post explains that Apple (AAPL) spoofed “Ghostbusters” in a parody music video based on Detroit born Ray Parker’s song “Ghostbusters.” “Bluebusters” was intended as an internal promotional rallying cry in which Apple defeats the global domination aspirations of “Blue” aka IBM (IBM).

As Paul McNamara at Network World’s Buzz Blog points out, “It was clear that the metaphor of Apple as the liberator of the office worker wasn’t confined to the famous 1984 commercial.”

Steve Jobs BluesbusterAs prophetic as the theme of this video has turned out to be, we can’t help but grimace at a young Jobs decked out in a Macintosh inspired Ghostbusters Uniform. Aside from a resemblance to Harold Ramis, Apple CEO Steve Jobs doesn’t make much more of a splash in the video. And yes, Apple managed a “Bluebusters” spoof that ran the full 4:20 of the song.

 

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 at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 10, 2012
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What Happened to the Paperless Office?

What Happened to the Paperless Society?The Economist wonders whatever happened to the “paperless office”? Thirty years ago computers were hailed as the beginning of the paperless office era. In 1980 The Economist recommended that firms trying to improve productivity “reduce the flow of paper, ultimately aiming to abolish it”.

Unfortunately not many people listened to The Economist. Since they extolled the virtue of a paperless office, global paper consumption has increased by half.

Paper consumption

The average American uses almost six 40-foot trees a year in paper. Gizmodo says don’t feel too bad. The EU bureaucracy in Brussels pushed the Belgian paper consumption to a whopping 8.5 trees per person. The equivalent to four Rockefeller Center Christmas trees.

Paperless office research says

The trend will not change. A report from ITnewsLink reports that more than half of Americans think the U.S. will never go paperless. Pollster Poll Position conducted a national survey to see if Americans think the U.S. could ever be a paperless society.

Poll Position researchPoll Position’s research found that 56% of Americans said they don’t think the U.S. would ever be a paperless society. Only 20% said yes, one day we’ll all go paperless. 24% of Americans were undecided or had no opinion on the question.

Other Poll Position finding

  • 63% of the 18-29 age group said the U.S. would never be a paperless society and 23% said we could be a paperless society.
  • 56% of men and women said we could never be a paperless society.

You can still vote in their online companion poll.

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I think that in an era of computers, Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire and Apple (AAPL) iPad tablet computers, iPhones and Google (GOOG) Android smartphones that paper consumption would decrease. Apparently it takes more than buzzwords like “paperless” and “green” to make a difference.

Related articles
  • The Paperless Office? (Going Green) (whattheythink.com)

 

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 at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| May 8, 2012
Comments Off on Unknown Malware Rampant in Enterprise Networks

Unknown Malware Rampant in Enterprise Networks

Unknown Malware Rampant in Enterprise NetworksUnknown malware plague enterprise networks according to network security company Palo Alto Networks. Help Net Security reports that Palo Alto Networks found hundreds of unique, previously unknown malware samples on live networks. Palo Alto Networks conducted the research with their new WildFire malware analysis engine.

DarkReading says that the cloud-based WildFire analysis engine found that seven percent of all unknown files analyzed contained malware. WildFire is a new service recently announced by Palo Alto Networks that integrates in-line firewalling with automated cloud-based malware analysis. Over a three-month period of analyzing unknown files from the Internet entering enterprise networks,the firm discovered more than 700 unique malware samples, 57 percent of which had no coverage by any antivirus service or were unknown by Virus Total at the time of discovery. Out of all the new malware identified, 15 percent also generated malicious or unknown outbound command and control traffic.

The firewalls identify unknown and potentially malicious files by executing them in a virtual cloud-based environment to expose malicious behavior even if the malware has never been seen in the wild before. Wade Williamson, Senior Security Analyst at Palo Alto Networks says, “WildFire is taking sandbox technology out of the lab and applying it to a real product … customers can detect and protect themselves against malware using the hardware that they already have deployed today.”

automatically generates new signaturesFor malicious files, Palo Alto Networks automatically generates new signatures for both the file itself and for any traffic generated by the malicious file. These signatures are then distributed with regular signature updates, as well as providing the user with actionable analysis of exactly how the malware behaves, who was targeted, and what application delivered the threat.

“I think we were all a bit surprised by the volume and frequency with which we were finding unknown malware in live networks,” the Senior Security Analyst said. “Unknown malware often represents the leading edge of an organized attack, so this data really underscores the importance of getting new anti-malware technologies out of the lab and into the hands of IT teams who are on the front lines. The ability to detect, remediate and investigate unknown malware needs to become a practical part of a threat prevention strategy in the same way that IPS and URL filtering are used today.”

MalwarePalo Alto Networks found that a variety of web applications distributed zero-day malware, in addition to the traditional HTTP web-browsing and email traffic commonly associated with malware distribution. WildFire was able to identify specific phishing campaigns based on their affinity for particular applications. One attacker used AOL Mail and another used the Hotfile file hosting service as the delivery vector.

“It’s important to note this because many enterprises only inspect email or FTP traffic for malware but do not have the ability to scan other applications. Applications that tunnel within HTTP or other protocols can carry malware that will be invisible to a traditional anti-malware solution,” said Williamson. “These are examples of the big reasons why a lot of malware gets missed – most enterprises only focus on scanning their corporate email application. To control this problem we need to expand our view to other applications, pull the traffic apart, and go a level deeper in to find out if there’s a file transfer happening.”

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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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| May 3, 2012
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DT Does 512 Gbps Data Transmission

DT Does 512 Gbps Data TransmissionDeutsche Telekom set a new data transmission speed record. They set the record by pumping 512 Gigabits per second over 456 miles. DT used a single 100 GHz wavelength channel over optical fiber according to at GigaOm. The Berlin-based T-Labs OSIRIS (Optically Supported IP Router Interfaces) research project sent 512 Gbps down each channel of a production network from Berlin to Hannover and back again. The usable data rate was 400 Gbps, overhead takes up the rest.

What is DWDMSince each fiber strand can carry up to 48 wavelengths in the case of the T-Labs system. T-Labs’ new tech should mean a staggering 24.6 Tbps (terabytes per second) max throughput for each optical fiber. “When using all of the channels of an optical fiber … the new process permits a throughput of up to 24.6 Tbit/s (24,600,000,000,000 bit/s) to be attained on the maximum of 48 available channels,”  T-Labs Manager Heinrich Arnold told TechWeek Europe. GigaOm says that “a collection of 3,696 CDs could thus be transferred over a single optical fiber at the same time” using the new technique.

T-Labs says existing networks don’t need cable replacements to take advantage of the new speeds The firm achieved the new bandwidth record by using new technologies developed with Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). The new AlcaLu gear was installed in the terminal stations at either end of the fiber.

QAM 16The BBC says that much of the speed gain came through improvements to the software used for forward error correction (FEC). TechWeek Europe says DT also used other creative transmission technologies. They used two carrier frequencies, two polarization planes, 16-QAM quadrature amplitude modulation. “You can imagine it as squeezing and tilting the entire set-up around to get more capacity out,” Mr. Arnold told the BBC.

But there are still an awful lot of copper-based networks in existence, The high value of copper makes copper-based networks vulnerable to copper theft. Also, despite advances in Copper such as ADSL2+ and VDSL2 (which I wrote about here and here) fiber is a much more “future proof” material.

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Ronnie Reagan thumbs up for high speed data

Ronnie thumbs up for high-speed data

Do the screaming hot network happy dance, the usable per-channel bit-rate is 400 Gbps, 4x the maximum bit-rate in today’s 100 Gbps per channel state-of-the-art networks, which is a huge capacity boost. This is more than double the 186 Gbps record set by researchers in the US and Canada last year (Which I wrote about here). This tech will most likely be deployed by the Telco’s and Cableco’s who need to support an FTTx strategy, it’s gonna be a long time until these speeds reach most enterprises.

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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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