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| January 8, 2013
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Open Source Wireless for Detroit

Open Source Wireless for DetroitDetroit is the proving grounds for a new open source wireless network technology called Commotion. According to FierceWireless, Commotion is a new wireless mesh-networking platform being deployed across Detroit by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute (OTI).

DetroitThe OTI has completed the first phase of construction of the wireless testbed in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, where Commotion connects low-income apartment buildings, community centers, churches, and businesses. FierceWireless says the prototype open-source network allows neighbors to communicate with one another and can potentially distribute Internet access to local residents, the group says. “The Detroit wireless network … will put control of the Internet into the hands of its users,” said OTI Director Sascha Meinrath. “The partners OTI works with in Detroit are not only self-provisioning connectivity for local residents, they’re proofing out technologies that support free, safe, ubiquitous communications around the globe.”

put control of the Internet into the hands of its usersStacey Higginbotham at GigaOM reports the new stack has technologies such as Serval, which would enable the handsets to recognize the Commotion network, Tor, a program that can hide where a user is coming from and OpenBTS, an open source base station that runs software that can interface between VoIP networks and GSM radios.

The OTI release on the news notes that more than half of Detroit residents do not have Internet service at home due to the cost of service and a lack of investment in infrastructure by Internet service corporations.

GigaOM also notes that the public release of Commotion follows a funding round for a company called Open Garden, which is pursuing a similar mesh network creation software. Meanwhile, Range Networks has been formed to support the OpenBTS standard and deliver a “network in a box” that runs the OpenBTS software and allows users to make voice calls anywhere in the world.

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fed's are using Detroit as a proving ground for technologies designed to help take down dictatorshipsAm I the only one that sees the irony that the Fed’s are using Detroit as a proving ground for technologies designed to help take down dictatorships? According to the OTI press release, the U.S. Department of State is funding the Detroit Commotion project to test the potential of the technology in third world places like Egypt or Syria or Detroit.

Don’t worry, we are the government and we are here to help.

Do you think Open Source Wireless for Detroit will work?

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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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| October 2, 2012
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Texas School ID Cards Track Students

Updated 07-27-13 According to Chron, Northside Independent School District Texas spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said the microchip-ID program turned out not to be worth the trouble.

Family claimed the RFID tag is “the mark of the beast”Updated 01-19-13 The student lost her lawsuit against the district. The student and her family had sued the district, claiming that her first amendment rights were being violated (she claims the RFID tag is “the mark of the Beast”), but the school removed the RFID chip from her ID and the court found that that was a reasonable accommodation.

Updated 12-02-12 A self-described teen-aged Anonymous hacker claims to have hacked the website of Texas’s Northside Independent School District in support of a student who refuses to wear an RFID ID badge according to the San Antonio Express-News. The district’s site was never compromised, Northside spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said.

In a statement posted on Twitter, the teenaged hacker wrote: “Now it is your school and your rules, but you seen what I did to your website, and have a simple deal for you, weather you accept it or not, is up to you,” the statement reads. “If you still want to do this tracking idea on the students, at least have a meeting with each and every students parents, so they know what is going on.”

Updated 11-21-12 It is not surprising to me that Wired is reporting that the school district is being sued over the program. According to Wired, the family claims that the student refuses to wear the badge because it signifies Satan.

Texas School ID Cards Track StudentsA Texas school district is putting tracking chips into new, mandatory student IDs to keep tabs on students’ whereabouts while on campus. According to Sophos’ Naked Security blog, Texas’s Northside Independent School District‘s John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School are performing a pilot test of the technology.

Sophos logoFOX 29 TV in Texas reports that students will be required to wear the cards on a lanyard around their necks and will be charged a fee for losing them. Their location will be beamed out to electronic readers throughout the campuses.

The one-year pilot program, which will cost the district $261,000, is also expected to increase attendance, and could bring an extra $2 million to the district in state funding as a result, District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said. He stated that the program will be re-evaluated next summer.

RFID chipIn a letter to parents, school administrators stated that the ID cards will store no personal information and that they’ll work only on school grounds. “Think how important this will be in the case of an emergency,” the letter reads. “In addition, the ‘smart’ student ID card will be used in the breakfast and lunch lines in the cafeteria and to check out books from the library. Because all students will be required to wear their ‘smart’ ID, staff will be able to quickly identify Jay students inside the school.”

FoxNews reports that a coalition of privacy and civil liberties organizations and experts have called for a moratorium on the technology, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

RFID tags eveywhereThe Sophos blog reports that some parents are protesting, comparing the tags to RFID tags used to track cattle. Steven Hernandez, a father of a student who attends the school and the only local parent to attend a protest late last month, told KSN News that the new badges amount to “a spy chip”.

His daughter, Andrea, a sophomore, told KSN that she’s decided to wear her old photo ID even though students were told the new micro-chip ID is mandatory: “It makes me uncomfortable. It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

Northside ISD’s Gonzalez rejected that criticism, saying the pilot program and the “smart” ID cards have been used successfully in Houston’s Spring Independent School District for at least the past five years. “This is non-threatening technology,” he said. “This is not surveillance.”

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Chip readerThere is a great deal of bluster around this article on the blog. Look around people, your passports and driver’s licenses have RFID tags. What about proximity card readers? Have you checked the Visa in your wallet? Isn’t near field communications (NFC) the hot topic in the VC world?

I will bet a cookie that some of the same folks blustering about ID tags also favor gutting public education funding, yet the object to efforts to increase alternate sources of revenue for Texas schools by using chips in student ID cards.

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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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| April 5, 2012
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Power over Ethernet 802.3af

Power over Ethernet 802.3afA client recently asked what happened to the network design rule of thumb which said do not install data cables anywhere near electrical cables? The fear of cross-talk, interference, and corruption of the data traffic seems to have disappeared with Power over Ethernet (PoE). He rightly pointed out that now it seems OK to mix data and power in the same cable going to a networked device. 

Read part 2 here.

Plain Old Telephone SystemPoE is similar in principle to the way that the copper wire pair that carries your POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) telephone signals into your house also carries enough electricity (48v DC) from the telco Central Office to power the phone’s core elements of the headset, dial, and ringer. Power over Ethernet’s development started with early implementations of Voice over Internet Protocol VoIP)phone systems. VoIP pioneers did not have a telco CO to power the phones and powering the VoIP phones with wall warts proved unreliable. The phones stopped working when unplugged from the wall or if the building lost power.

In 2000 Cisco (CSCO) developed the first successful technique of putting 48v DC on the LAN data cable along with the data traffic. This proprietary system allowed Cisco to overcome customer objections to wall warts and sell a lot of VoIP systems.

Cisco logoCisco’s original PoE equipment was capable of delivering up to 10W per port. The endpoint and the Cisco switch negotiated the amount of power to be delivered based on a power value in the proprietary Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). The Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) will send a Fast Link Pulse (FLP) on the transmit pair. The Powered Device (PD) connects the transmit line to the receiving line via a low pass filter. And thus the PSE gets the FLP in return. Cisco’s original PoE implementation is not software upgradeable to the IEEE 802.3af standard. Cisco manufactured many IP phones and WLAN access points devices that were not compliant with the IEEE 802.3-2005 Clause 33 including:

Cisco pre-standard IP phones
7985G7960G7940G7910G7910G + SW
7912G7905G7902G7970G
Cisco IEEE 802.3af and pre-standard IP phones
7970G7961G7906G7941G
7911G7962G
The Cisco 7936 Conference Phone does not support any LAN based power and requires a Cisco power injection adapter
Source

Throughout 2001 and 2002, other VoIP and Wireless Access Point (WAP) vendors saw Cisco’s success and developed their own proprietary (and often non-interoperable) powering systems. As more proprietary systems were developed the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognized the need to standardize PoE. The IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Committee assigned PoE technology to a new working subcommittee called 802.3af. The IEEE working group’s charge was to create a standardized version of the Power Over Ethernet so that any manufacturer who wanted to could make their products PoE ready. The IEEE working group took commentary from 2001 to 2003 and released the ratified IEEE 802.3af-2003 Power over Ethernet standard in June 2003 which added clause 33 to the IEEE 802.3 standard

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 Ethernet CommitteeThe 802.3af document describes how PoE systems should work.  The standard defines two types of PoE equipment, Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) and the Powered Device (PD). Power Sourcing Equipment sends the power out over the LAN cabling system to the Powered Device. The PSE would send out a maximum of 15.4 watts DC per link to each device, (limited to standard Ethernet distances). 12.95 watts are assumed to be available at the PD because some power is lost in the cable.

The nominal voltage is 48 V, over two of the four available pairs on a Cat. 3/Cat. 5e cable. “Phantom power” is used to allow the powered pairs to also carry data. This permits PoE to be used with 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX, which use only two of the four pairs in the cable, but also with 1000BASE-T (gigabit Ethernet), which uses all four pairs for data transmission. This is possible because all versions of Ethernet over twisted pair cable specify differential data transmission over each pair with transformer coupling; the DC supply and load connections can be made to the transformer center-taps at each end. Each pair thus operates in “common mode” as one side of the DC supply, so two pairs are required to complete the circuit. The polarity of the DC supply may be inverted by cross cables; the powered device must work with either pair: spare pairs 4-5 and 7-8 or data pairs 1-2 and 3-6. Polarity is required on data pairs and ambiguously implemented for spare pairs, with the use of a bridge rectifier. (Source)

VOIP devicesPower Sourcing Equipment can be in two form factors. A PSE can be implemented as an endspan which is an Ethernet switch with powered ports (a PoE enabled switch) or midspan which is a power hub that is used along with a non-powered switch the end-user already has in place. PD’s can receive PoE equally well from either type of PSE per the standard. The decision to use an endspan or a midspan is left up to the end-user.  The end device can use either powering technique.

The Powered Device (PD) is a network device like VoIP phones, Wireless Access Points, and IP cameras. which are capable of taking the power off the LAN cable, through the RJ-45 (8P8C) connector and using it to power itself. Some pre-standard PoE devices are incompatible with 802.3af equipment. More PoE ready PD’s are available every year  PoE ready end devices can reduce installation costs by as much as 90% over traditional powering techniques.  Among the newer PoE PD’s devices on the market or coming soon are IP Paging, Speaker Systems, POS Terminals, Door and Gate Security hardware, Public Information signs, Building Access, Temperature Control Systems, Stage Lighting, and Computers. These newer PD’s were pushing 802.3af to its limits and the IEEE began work to evolve the standard. This power limitation prevented “high power” devices that required up to 30W to be supported via the industry-standard PoE solution.

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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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| March 6, 2012
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Top Wireless Predictions for 2012

Top 10 Wireless Predictions for '12 from Juniper ResearchUK-based Juniper Research published a year-end list of predictions for the mobile and wireless industry for 2012. A copy of the report can be downloaded from Juniper Research, with registration here. Are they on-target or off-the-wall?

Recession Likely to Hit Smart Device SalesRecession Likely to Hit Smart Device Sales. Juniper Research says the continued recession will hurt smartphone and tablet sales. They believe tablet sales will be hurt more than “must-have” smartphones.

They say cash-strapped consumers may opt for the lower-priced tablets. This could benefit players such as Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire or ARCHOS (ALJXR) ARNOVA branded devices rather than an Apple (AAPL) iPad. eReaders are most likely to be the hardest hit according to the report.

The Year of the Quad-Core Processor2012 – The Year of the Quad-Core Processor. ASUS (2357) was the first to release Quad-Core Processor. The new chip appeared n November 2011, It ran on the Eee Pad Transformer Prime with the newly launched NVidia (NVDA) Tegra 3 chip. Qualcomm (QCOM) has also added a quad-core chip to their Snapdragon line. Juniper Research expects more to come.

Quad-core processors offer improved performance and increased battery life. The performance boost comes from being able to multi-task more efficiently. It ensures that music will keep playing smoothly while the user is playing games or taking pictures. The power savings come from being able to keep those cores at a relatively low clock speed.

Quad-core processors will allow developers to add more realistic effects, getting ever closer to the elusive console-quality experience. The Tegra 3 even allows for controller support and mirroring to a 3D TV. Javascript and Flash will also run faster allowing web developers to create more graphics and script-heavy apps and pages.

Windows 8 OS to Fuel Nokia RevivalWindows 8 OS to Fuel Nokia Revival Disrupt Tablet Market.  Microsoft’s (MSFT) next OS will be compatible with both Intel and ARM architectures.  Windows 8 will run on both PC and mobile devices. The research firm believes Windows 8 will create a huge ecosystem of devices from smartphones to desktops for app developers to target. Juniper Research expects Microsoft to gain market share in the tablet space, as it replaces the non-tablet-optimized Windows 7. And, with Nokia (NOK) transitioning its existing (smartphone) and new products (likely to include a tablet) to Microsoft’s platform, the Finnish giant will be fighting back after spending several years losing market share to Google (GOOG) Android and Apple iOS devices.

High Profile Malware Attacks on Mobile Devices2012 to see High Profile Malware Attacks on Mobile Devices. There have been many malware attacks targeted at mobile devices. However, these attacks have been relatively small-scale. This is unlikely to continue. Cyber-criminals will not be able to pass up the opportunity that consumer smartphones and tablets will present. Juniper Research anticipates that 2012 will see several high-profile, international attacks on various mobile OSs. Consumers at large must bed aware of the pressing need to protect their smart devices by installing security software.

Cloud Mobility to Drive Collaborative CommunicationsCloud Mobility to Drive Collaborative Communications – The BYOD trend driven by the consumerization of enterprise IT will increase according to the research firm. Specifically, Juniper Research believes that 2012 will see a substantial increase in the number of enterprises moving to develop and deploy mobile-centric, social business strategies.

Other predictions from Juniper Research include:

  • The London 2012 Olympics will boost mobile advertising and M-Gambling, and kickstart NFC.
  • Mobile Coupons to drive the mCommerce market despite economic stagnation.
  • MEMsaccelerometers and gyroscopes to transform the sensor market for mobile devices.
  • Social Gaming will become a major mobile play with the introduction of synchronous gaming.
  • Online, Mobile and Physical will begin to fuse into one retail market.

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I’ll come back to these predictions at the end of the year and see which predictions were on target or off in space somewhere.

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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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| February 7, 2012
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Data Centers To Go Wireless

Data Centers To Go Wireless

MIT’s Technology Review reports researchers from IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), and the University of California, Santa Barbara have come up with a way to improve data transmission in data centers. Heather Zheng, associate professor of computer science at UCSB who led the research says wireless is the answer to the in-rack cabling mess usually found in data centers. In their paper (PDF), the researchers say that transmitting data wirelessly within a data center would be simpler than rewiring data for tech titans like Google (GOOG), Facebook, or Twitter.

Line-of-sight connections

WiFi radio wavesThe earlier challenge for multi-gigabit wireless in the data center was it required a line-of-sight connection to be useful. Achieving the required data center speed could not happen in the maze of metal racks, HVAC ducts, and electrical conduits that make up most data centers.

TR reports that the researcher’s solution is to bounce 60-gigahertz Wi-Fi signals off the ceiling, which could boost data transmission speeds by 30 percent. Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm points out that this could result in data transfers up to 500 Gigabits per second. She says current Ethernet cables in data centers are generally 1, 10, or maybe 40 gigabits per second.

60-gigahertz Wi-Fi for servers

Data center ceiling WiFiMs. Zheng and colleagues used 60-gigahertz Wi-Fi, which has a bandwidth in the gigabits-per-second range and was developed for high-definition wireless communications according to TR. However, it has its limitations, says Ms. Zheng. To maximize the bandwidth and reduce interference between signals, it needs to use 3D beamforming to focus the beams in a direct line of sight between endpoints. “Any obstacle larger than 2.5 millimeters can block the signal,” she says in the TR article.

One way to prevent the antennas from blocking each other would be to allow them to communicate only with their immediate neighbors, creating a type of mesh network. But that would further complicate efforts to route the data to the proper destinations, Professor Zheng told TR. Bouncing the beams off the ceiling directly to their targets not only ensures direct point-to-point communication between antennas but also reduces the chances that any two beams will cross and cause interference. “That’s very important when you have a high density of signals,” she says.

Flat metal plates placed on the ceiling offer near-perfect reflection. “You also need an absorber material on the rack to make sure the signal doesn’t bounce back up,” says Ms. Zheng.

Wireless can add 0.5 terabytes per second

Data centerAccording to Technology Review, the UCSB team worked with Lei Yang from Intel Labs in Oregon and Weile Zhang at Jiao Tong University in Xi’an, China, to simulate a 160-rack data center to see how the system might work. “Our simulation shows that wireless can add 0.5 terabytes per second,” she says.

IBM is also looking into using wireless technology in data centers, Scott Reynolds, a researcher at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, who has been developing 60-gigahertz systems told TR. “These data centers are just choked with cables,” he says. “And so every time you want to reconfigure one it’s very labor-intensive and expensive.” But one problem with turning to wireless transmission, he adds, is that “you need to have hundreds of these wireless data links operating in a data center to be useful.” Since 60-gigahertz Wi-Fi has only four data channels, it’s important to configure the beams so they don’t interfere with each other.

Mark Thiele, the EVP of data center technology at Switch Communications‘ SuperNAP data center, told GigaOm that the research is worth following as low-latency networking inside the data center can be a bottleneck today for applications that range from financial trading to trying to move gigantic data sets around.

TR reports Ms. Zheng and her colleagues are now working on building a prototype data center to put their solution into practice.

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Cable mess under a raised floorHaving just done a small data center cleanup, the idea is appealing. We pulled out 2 generations of cabling, IBM Type 1, and a bunch of Cat 3 multi-pair out from under the deck.

Ms. Higginbotham says the choice of 60 GHz for the data center is a smart move. Intel is pushing 60GHz for consumer use, under the WiGig brand (I wrote about WiGig in 2010 here). This means the chips would be cheap.

Some of the possible security issues raised by running Wi-Fi in the data center are tempered by using the 60Ghz range. She says if you are worried about someone standing outside the data center trying to eavesdrop on the data you are transmitting the 60Ghz, signals deteriorate rapidly.

Of course, change is hard and data center guys are going to have to learn wireless and top-of-rack switches would have to get radio cards installed. The Wi-Fi reflective panels would have to be installed on the ceiling of the data center and the servers would need a signal-absorbing surface so the Wi-Fi signals don’t continually bounce around the data center.

Just if you are confused about WiGig, Wi-Fi, and IEEE, EETimes says, “WiGig forged a deal with the Wi-Fi Alliance so its 60 GHz approach can be certified as a future generation of Wi-Fi. The group has aligned its technical approach with the existing IEEE 802.11ad standards effort on 60 GHz.”

Now if only they could do wireless electricity……..

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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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