Connectivity, Communications & Cloud News - Page 12
Netgear: 11 routers vulnerable to remote hacking
Security researcher Andrew Rollins has discovered 11 different models of Netgear routers that have been vulnerable to remote hacks, with Rollins even warning Netgear about the problem all the way back on August 25, but didn't receive a reply.
Rollins went public with the announcement after waiting 3 months, which saw Homeland Security throwing out a warning a few days ago, and now Netgear is finally in the fold, admitting that it knows about the problem. Netgear has announced the affected models, and will release patches... for some of them.
Here's the list of the affected routers:
Continue reading: Netgear: 11 routers vulnerable to remote hacking (full post)
Engineering milestone: Wi-Fi uses 10,000x less power
How many devices do you have in your house that use Wi-Fi? I'm sure there's at least a few, and if you're like me and many others - you'll have over a dozen devices with Wi-Fi, so when engineers reach a breakthrough with Wi-Fi that uses 10,000x less power - it'll make you sit up and pay attention.
Engineers from the University of Washington have achieved speeds of 11Mbps on the new connection, so it's not breaking speed barriers - but they're working on getting the speeds faster, and faster. The new Wi-Fi transmissions use 10,000x less power than conventional methods, so battery life savings on smartphones and mobile devices will improve by a considerable margin in the future.
One of the engineers, Shyam Gollakota, explains: "We wanted to see if we could achieve Wi-Fi transmissions using almost no power at all. That's basically what Passive Wi-Fi delivers. We can get Wi-Fi for 10,000 times less power than the best thing that's out there".
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AMD announces Radeon Instinct, the beginning of AI
We are in for a wild freakin' ride in 2017, with AMD kicking things off today with the announcement of something radically new: Radeon Instinct. What is Radeon Instinct? There's no easy answer to that, but it is the next big thing in cloud computing - something being touted as the machine intelligence era.
Back in the 1960s, the big thing at the time were the massive main frames that would take up entire buildings, requiring radical amounts of cooling and physical space - while not providing much power (compared to the insane amounts of data crunching power we have now).
In the 80s and 90s it shifted to client-server operations, and then in the last 15 years we've seen a massive shift towards cloud computing.
Continue reading: AMD announces Radeon Instinct, the beginning of AI (full post)
New HDMI 2.0b spec announced by format working group
Ahead of next month's CES event in Las Vegas, the HDMI forum, which consists of the major players from consumer electronics companies, mobile devices and cable manufacturers have ratified a major update to the HDMI cable specification, dubbed version 2.0b.
In an announcement today, the HDMI forum revealed the update to the format includes the following capabilities:
While some of these features were enabled in earlier specifications by individual manufacturers, the ratification by the working group should mean improved functionality throughout the sector. Thankfully, the updates is also fully backwards compatible with the HDMI 2.0a specification, with no need to purchase new cables to unlock the new features. Expect to see more about HDMI 2.0b at next month's CES event in Las Vegas.
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This is the first ever Internet message sent
A variety of apps are used today to send tens on billions of messages every day. We use chat apps, like Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat, and WhatsApp, to communicate with our friends, family, and colleagues.
On this day, October 29th, 1969, 47 years ago, the first ever electronic message had been sent. The message was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline trough ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet.
At the time, ARPANET was used for testing new network technologies, and it connected many universities and research centers. The first two nodes of the ARPANET were the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute, between which the first ever message exchange took place.
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Google pauses its Fiber rollout, fires 9% of Fiber staff
After a pretty successful rollout of uber-fast internet access, Google has announced it has plans to "pause" the expansion of its Fiber rollout into 10 more cities, as well as a 9% cull in Fiber staff.
Google's current Fiber customers will not be affected, but those that were expecting the high-speed Fiber goodness to hit their neighborhood will not want to even read the end of this sentence. The confirmed rollouts in San Francisco, Irvine, Huntsville and San Antonio are all unaffected, but the planned Fiber rollout for Chicago, Dallas, Portland, Tampa and San Diego will have residents disappointed.
The reason behind Google's sudden "pause" in its Fiber rollout? Google said it needed to "stay ahead of the curve" in providing gigabit internet service, with the company recently acquiring high-speed wireless ISP, Webpass. If we end up seeing Google push into providing high-speed internet access wirelessly, it would explain why it stopped the future Fiber rollouts because physical hardware being installed all across the US is expensive compared to a new wireless system.
Continue reading: Google pauses its Fiber rollout, fires 9% of Fiber staff (full post)
Nokia tests 52Gbps fiber internet in South Korea
I feel like a king with my 100Mbps fiber connection, and when I talk to friends like Ryan Shrout over at PC Perspective who has 2Gbps fiber - I can't help but feel like I'm about to cry. First world problems aside, Nokia has teamed with SK Broadband to test a new broadband service capable of bursting up to 52.2Gbps.
SK Broadband needed to use multi-dwelling units (MDUs) from HFR and Nokia's universal next generation passive optical network (PON) technology. SK Broadband and Nokia used the following tech:
SK Broadband's network division boss Yoo Ji-chang explained: "As a new era looms that demands gigabit Internet, ultra high definition video and virtual and augmented reality services, SK Broadband will establish a network infrastructure that provides the best customer value. Following the world's first commercialization of an ADSL service and the two-pair LAN cable 500M service, we will establish a top-class optical Internet platform to create the best gigabit broadband service environment for our customers".
Continue reading: Nokia tests 52Gbps fiber internet in South Korea (full post)
5Gbps Ethernet on the way, will use your old cables
Over the last couple of weeks I've been complaining that my 1Gbps network connection to my NAS was too slow, as I was only transferring to and from my Thecus and QNAP NAS at 100MB/sec - well, 5Gbps networking is on the way, promising 500MB/sec.
The new 5Gbps Ethernet standard has been finalized, with IEEE 802.3bz ready for the job - soon, at least. We've been sitting at a wall for a while now on gigabit ethernet, because 10GbE requires much more expensive cables in the form of fiber optic, or more expensive Cat6a or Cat7 cabling. It's not backwards compatible with previous standards, as well as routers, switches, and network cards for 10GbE networking being much more expensive than the normal GbE products.
This is where the new 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T standards step up, both "specifically created to use 10GbE signaling, but at a rate that would be compatible with existing runs of Cat5e and Cat6 cable out to 100 meters. The 2.5Gbps standard can run on Cat5e out to 100 meters, while the 5Gbps standard requires Cat6 cable to run 100 meters. Both should be far easier - and cheaper - to bring to market than current 10GbE technologies", reports ExtremeTech.
Continue reading: 5Gbps Ethernet on the way, will use your old cables (full post)
Google's 4K-ready Chromecast Ultra teased at just $69
Google is mere days away from unveiling its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, as well as their new Andromeda operating system which is said to be an infusion of Chrome OS and Android, and could be the next big thing which will be ready in 2017.
The upcoming hardware-focused media event should see a bunch of new devices unveiled by Google, with notorious leaker Evan Blass teasing the Chromecast Ultra. Google's purported Chromecast Ultra is a 4K-ready device, which will have the same form factor as the current Chromecast, but it not features a "G" insignia, with the Chromecast logo removed.
The new 4K-ready Chromecast rocks a physical button, which could be used as a reset button, or an on/off switch. Google will reportedly be shipping the new 4K-powered Chromecast Ultra in October, for just $69.
Continue reading: Google's 4K-ready Chromecast Ultra teased at just $69 (full post)
1Tbps fiber optic tested, could become a reality soon
As I type this, I'm connected to a 100/40Mbps fiber connection with the National Broadband Network (NBN) here in Australia. It's one of the fastest connections you can get, but 1Gbps seems like a distant goal for most people - and now we're already hearing about 1Tbps connections.
Recently, Nokia Bell Labs with the help of Deutsche Telekom and the Technical University of Munich have teased 1Tbps connectivity in a field trial that involved "real conditions" like varying channel conditions and traffic levels. The difference here was a new modulation technique called Probabilistic Constellation Shaping.
Engadget reports that instead of using "all the networking's constellation points (the "alphabet of the transmission") equally, like typical fiber, it prefers those points with lower amplitudes -- the ones that are less susceptible to noise. That helps transmissions reach up to 30 percent further, since you can adapt the transmission rate to fit the channel. It's so effective that the team got close to the theoretical peak data speeds possible for the fiber connection".
Continue reading: 1Tbps fiber optic tested, could become a reality soon (full post)