Law Students Plug Into Wireless LAN
Students at Hofstra University's School of Law are able to communicate, do research, and collaborate on projects through a wireless data network. Educators are also taking advantage of the network, posting quizzes, syllabi, and other material as well as building Web pages for their courses on it. Data is transmitted to students' notebooks and other wireless devices by radio receivers placed on the walls and corners of the school's law building. The network, which uses the 802.11b standard, cost far less to install than a wired LAN. Students can purchase or borrow the wireless 802.11b cards they need for network access. Enterasys Networks was the vendor Hofstra selected to supply the network.
InformationWeekNecessity is the Mother of VPN Invention
The entire industry is experiencing the growth of virtual private networks (VPNs) as components to enterprise networks. California-based Research, for instance, uses VPN hardware, and the company reports that use of VPN has resulted in $835 million in revenue last year, while Insight Research based in New Jersey expects the data VPN market to triple within the next couple of years. The growth of the market, therefore, is leading towards managed VPN services, which are being adopted by small and mid-size businesses. Larger firms, like NovaStor, already using VPN systems are also turning towards managed technology -- offered by Imperito, for instance -- in order to expand their services. Even though the VPN market is increasing, some industry officials warn that managed technology is still in its early stages.
Communications NewsDelivering Bluetooth
Between now and 2004, United Parcel Service (UPS) intends to spend over $100 million to purchase 50,000 package-tracking scanners and 2,000 wireless LANs that operate on the Bluetooth wireless standard. In October, the company will start testing the new package-tracing system at its Buffalo-N.Y.-based distribution center. According to Dave Salzman, UPS's program manager for information services, UPS intends to gradually expand the field trial over the next 11 months from 50 scanners in Buffalo to over 500 scanners at a number of different locations. The package-tracking system operates on hip-mounted Windows CE terminals from Motorola, which have been code-named Emerald. Deploying Emerald at each of the company's 2000 distribution centers around the world is an important element of UPScan, a company-wide project that will standardize all of UPS's wireless applications on three Windows CE devices. Widespread deployment of Emerald is still at least 12 months away, but standardizing on Emerald will enable the company to replace nine types of devices and seven package-tracking applications that currently run on multiple systems. The company expects Emerald to pay for itself within a year and four months, incorporating anticipated increased uptime, reduced repair time, battery-life improvements, and replacement costs for existing devices. UPS is expected to shortly issue a request for proposals for another device, a handheld terminal that has been given the code-name Ruby, which is intended to replace three different types of handhelds being used at the moment by UPS drivers.
InternetWeekCity Seeks to Extend Wireless Signals
In Chicago, city agencies are examining proposals to create infrastructure that would bring mobile phone signals to locations where it is now almost impossible to get service. Chicago's aviation department, for example, is considering proposals from two companies to wire Midway and O'Hare airports by installing numerous small antennas through the airports, which should boost signal capacity and clarity by a significant amount. While there are currently a number of mobile phone antennas at O'Hare, the majority of wireless phone carriers have to rely on antennas placed on top of a nearby Hilton hotel and other sites on the outskirts of the airport to provide service. Aviation officials are currently examining offers from two companies, Orlando Park, Ill.-based Andrew Corp., and New York-based Concourse Communications Group, to construct airport systems that would provide strong cellular communications coverage at both Midway and O'Hare. Andrew Corp. is also competing with a number of other companies for a contract from the CTA to place antennas in Chicago subway stations and tunnels. For Andrew Corp., which manufacturers antennas, cables, and other equipment for the wireless industry, providing inside infrastructure would represent a new area of business. Andrew Corp. has previously been awarded contracts to supply antenna infrastructure to San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system, the Boston transit system, and a number of other transit systems. The company has also created infrastructure at Midway Airport that allows wireless communications to be used by some workers.
Chicago TribuneRouters Are From Mars, OXCs Are From Venus
The Optical Internetworking Forum has introduced a protocol dubbed the OIF User to Network Interface (UNI) 1.0, which fills in the space between optical networks and data networks and allows an automatic, dynamic call path to be established for IP traffic and services. Avici and Cisco Systems are among the router makers that have announced plans to roll out the UNI in commercial equipment by the end of the year. The UNI undergoes an overlay strategy to set up a common control plan between the data network and optical network, allowing each to be housed in its own independently given domain, according to Esmerelda Swartz, marketing director for Avici. A call path request is transmitted from the router in the data domain to the optical cross connect (OXC) in the optical domain via IP-based resource reservation protocol. Rather than employ the UNI, the call path may be established manually. While this may be sufficient for voice traffic, it is insufficient for IP traffic. OIF members admit the UNI is only an initial step toward significantly cutting provisioning time. Additional steps are necessary because any new provisioning strategy must be incorporated into carriers' back office systems to charge for protocol-provisioned services.
America's NetworkIn Your Future: Computing Power on Demand
Computing power served via a utility model is one of the applications of the future Internet, according to IBM and many in the scientific community. Grid technology is being pioneered by such computing leaders as NASA, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Already, IBM is working in the Netherlands to connect five universities with a computing grid system. Although the company uses grid computing to link its research centers and represents the significant backing grid technology has in the enterprise sector, its development is being done through the open source model, which scientists hope ensures seamless interoperability. In the future, especially with widespread implementation of Internet2 technology, computer users will be able to order computing power from the grid to help solve large mathematical problems. The combination of the super-high-bandwidth Internet2 and readily available supercomputing power promises to deliver applications like streamed high-definition video, which could be used in telemedicine, research collaboration, and distance learning.
E-Commerce TimesHigh Hopes for US High-Speed 'Net Connections
Some 8.6 million households in the United States have high-speed Internet connections, according to Parks Associates. About a third of the households with dial-up Web access hope to change over to broadband in 2002, Parks says. Parks predicts that by the end of this year 11.3 million households will have high-speed Internet access, higher than its previous prediction of 10.7 million. Parks studied 2500 American households for its survey released this month. Other research firms have made similar predictions, according to eMarketer's latest Broadband Report.
eMarketerThe Race Is on to Solve Early Technical Hitches
In Japan, NTT DoCoMo's pioneering third-generation (3G) mobile phone service, Foma, is still having a lot of problems. The 3G wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) service was supposed to provide advanced wireless phone service, with easy downloading of music and video on the go, as well as considerably higher transmission speeds. Instead, however, Foma has been met with a lot of criticism over reported bugs and what some people claim are more serious problems. Some of Foma's problems include a lack of contents, troubled access to DoCoMo's i-mode service, short battery life, and screen-freezing. The major question now is whether these problems are simply easy-to-fix bugs, or whether they represent a basic problem either in the way DoCoMo has built its system or in the W-CDMA standard. For example, Yasumasa Goda, a telecoms analyst at Merrill Lynch in Tokyo, says he believes Foma's problems stem from problems in the W-CDMA standard, and that there is no way the company will fix them in a couple of months. Industry officials also claim that DoCoMo's problems with 3G could be due to the fact that the company is trying to control the entire system on its own, rather than open the system up to other manufacturers. DoCoMo, however, dismisses these concerns, and claims that all it has to do to solve the problems is make some small adjustments to Foma's software.
Financial Times--ITVideo Searching
Researchers are making advancements that will allow people to conduct efficient searches of video footage. AltaVista is among the search engines that can retrieve certain video images. However, the search engines are similar to technology that ABCNews.com uses for searching broadcasts in that users have to use keywords from a transcript to retrieve a specific image. Much of the problem associated with video retrieval results from content providers having amassed their video archives without taking the time to index their video data. Nevertheless, video search and database tools are being developed that will allow users to conduct direct searches of images, without having to use keywords from any text. Researchers at Columbia University have developed software that will allow users to select a static image from a lineup of video clips and will retrieve close matches from video data. A more comprehensive project involving natural-language processing, speech recognition, and image analysis is underway at Carnegie Mellon University. The Informedia Digital Video Library Project has created a digital library of news broadcasts, and a system that can respond to an uttered request for images with frame icons of news clips, as well as use face recognition to deliver video of an individual.
Technology ReviewText Messaging: The End?
In the United Kingdom, text messages sent by mobile phones are expected to top 1 billion this month. While mostly used by teenagers at the moment, growth in text messaging in the future is expected to come from advertising. The remarkable growth of text messaging in 2000 has attracted the attention of marketing departments, which regard text messaging as a new medium through which to reach consumers. Nevertheless, advertisers face a number of problems when it comes to using handsets for marketing purposes. A particular problem is the fact that high-value customers will probably not want to join schemes where they receive text messages in return for incentives. While financially strapped teenagers can easily be attracted with freebies and discounts, harried executives would rather be left alone. For these high-value customers, marketing has to provide a useful service in its own right. For example, Bausch and Lomb use the technology to let wearers of its disposable contact lenses know when they need to order a new batch. One thing everyone seems to be agreed on is that customers should be allowed to opt-in to marketing, rather than have unsolicited messages sent to them. Using an opt-in process, marketers can obtain a lot of detailed demographic information, which allows them to get some useful information on customers' habits, and enables marketers to personalize the messages so customers do not receive unwanted ones.
Financial TimesReport: China Ripe for Mobile Data Explosion
Wireless data services will be an important market in China, says Yankee Group. A recent study predicts that wireless data services will grow to US$5.68 billion by 2005. In addition, mobile data users will reach 112.5 million by 2005, comprising about 40 percent of all wireless subscribers in China. Short message service (SMS) is expected to account for 60 percent of data revenue over the next five years, Yankee Group predicts. And as general packet radio service (GPRS) networks increase, "mobile Internet services will soon be taking off, accounting for about 40 percent of total data revenue by 2005," according to Yankee Group analyst Larry Wan. The study examined the state of SMS, WAP, GPRS, and 3G applications in China, as well as mobile vendors and operators.
Wireless NewsfactorTechnology Rivals Link on Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi, the wireless transmission protocol also known as 802.11b, is increasing its influence as rival Bluetooth technology remains mired in technical problems and a lack of actual hardware support. Microsoft and Intel have both recently joined the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, a consortium of Wi-Fi industry proponents, while still remaining serious supporters of Bluetooth. Microsoft Windows network communications VP Jawad Khaki says Wi-Fi compatibility was added to the new Windows XP release, but that the company will be ready for the new wave of Bluetooth products once those reach the market. Bluetooth manufacturers have said they plan the first rollout of products by the end of the year; Wi-Fi, however, has already established itself as a relatively ubiquitous standard for public wireless terminals in places like Starbucks coffee shops and airport terminals. IBM and Dell have integrated Wi-Fi into their new hardware as well, making it more likely that cash-strapped businesses will choose wireless technology with a proven track record rather than invest in two technologies.
Associated Press"Virtual Private Networks" Give Campus-Network Access to Off-Campus Users
Students, staff, and faculty at the University of Pittsburgh now can access secure portions of the campus network via a VPN set up by a commercial provider. The university is offering the VPN in conjunction with its pool of 800 modems and its proxy servers. But the modems often are backed up during times of heavy traffic and proxy servers have inherent security risks, explains director of computing services Jinx P. Walton. Once logged onto the VPN, users can search the university's email systems and material the library subscribes to. Encryption software provided by the Internet service provider ensures a secure connection.
Chronicle of Higher Education OnlineSending out an SMS
European wireless operators plan to take advantage of the text messaging trend with a new short messaging service that enables customers to "pull" or request certain information via their handsets for a fee. Although push technology has allowed information including sports scores and weather to be sent to customers, wireless operators and content providers view its one-way traffic as a hindrance. While pushing is no great undertaking, pulling shows promise, according to Stanislas Chesnais, Chairman and COO of Netsize, an upstart French company that provides SMS technology to connect content providers and wireless phone companies. SMS allows transmissions of any type of content or service adjusted to the text format. In addition, users could transmit SMS messages to specific numbers to buy digital music downloads, ring tones, and customized phone logos. Chesnais says pull services, which currently comprise roughly 5 percent of Netsize's business, could comprise 80 percent of total revenues by year's end. Push and pull models and other high-end SMS services are being employed in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
TheStandard.comHow the Internet Is Changing Our Lives
The Internet has changed the world by giving people another avenue for selling everything from stocks to suits, providing instant access to a great deal of information, and offering constant communication via email and instant messaging. However, the billions of dollars that companies save in producing goods and in serving the needs of customers is likely the greatest benefit of the Internet. There are 137 million computers in the United States that go online and another 152 million in other parts of the globe, and some observers project that traffic doubles every 100 days. Still, cyber pioneer Jake Winebaum says only 20 percent of the Internet has been invented so far. Experts expect the rest of the world to come online, empowering health officials to create an Internet health network and encouraging activists to seek a global audience for their cause. Other developments could lead to the emergence of an information grid and nanodevices. Still there remains some concern that humans will endow computer technology with so much intelligence and come to depend on it so much that humans will no longer be able to control machines or even to turn them off.
FuturistIs IPv6 Finally Gaining Ground?
The subject of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) continues to be a topic that generates differences in opinion among computer experts. The standard was seen as the solution to the IP address shortage when the Internet Engineering Task Force approved it a few years ago, gaining initial support among vendors such as IBM, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and several Japanese companies. However, users, primarily Internet service providers and network administrators in North America, have been slow to embrace the IPv6 protocol because there is no pressing need to do so as in other parts of the world. In Asia, for example, the explosion in demand for more IP addresses coincides with the proliferation of wireless technology, smart cellular phones, and PDAs in the marketplace. In addition to having more IPv4 (the previous Internet protocol) addresses to work with than their Asian counterparts, ISPs and network administrators in North America have been slow to upgrade PCs, servers, and routers because of the cost and time needed to carry out such a project. What is more, experts such as independent Internet technology consultant Noel Chiappa believe IPv6 has major shortcomings as a next-generation networking solution. Ericsson director of IP technology Svend Nielsen says all IPv4 addresses could be used by 2005 as a result of the demand for wireless devices, forcing users to adopt the IPv6 protocol. Meanwhile, IBM Distinguished Engineer Brian Carpenter says users have to keep in mind that the IPv6 protocol is not something that will make them money immediately, but it will allow the network to continue to grow worldwide.
ComputerA Whole New Internet Is on the Way
Scientists continue to use the Internet2 (I2) network to recreate the construction of the Internet years ago. Essentially, scientists are using I2's high-speed, fiber-optic network to create the next generation of applications and technologies that will impact our lives over the next decade. Over 180 universities use I2 to connect with federal research labs and the research entities of the consortium's 70-plus corporate members, which includes companies like Cisco Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and Qwest. I2 experts see digital libraries, virtual laboratories, new Internet appliances, streaming media, and e-learning as some the areas of concentration over the network. According to I2 Corporate Relations director Jill Arnold, the I2 has a five-year head start over the commercial Internet. Students are also allowed to use I2 for peer-to-peer networking, says University of Maryland Baltimore County CIO Jack Suess. And projects like Abilene, a high-performance backbone network, give private companies an opportunity to create, try out, and scale sophisticated technologies. Suess adds that the use of I2 could proliferate into the public sector through desktop video.
Maryland Daily RecordMETA Report: Room at the Data Center?
Even with predictions of heady growth in the market, data center operators must keep tabs on their long and short-term plans in regards to physical infrastructure and new space-saving technology. Especially with the increase in rack-mounted servers and storage capacity through new technology, administrators need to assess their growth rates in conjunction with available resources. Meta Group estimates that power requirements for data centers will double by 2004, requiring analysis of current environmental capacities such as air conditioning, power, and connectivity. At the same time, form factor technology is predicted to halve the space requirements of processing and storage every 18 months. Lack of cohesive planning could result in limited growth potential, even as the market continues to expand.
IT ManagementSecurity Fears Are Barrier for P2P Networking Take-Off
A study by Frost & Sullivan indicates that peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is gaining acceptance, but network managers need to be convinced that such systems can adequately defend digital assets from piracy. "Significant resources" need to be dedicated toward spreading awareness of P2P security throughout the market, according to Frost & Sullivan research analyst Jarad Carleton. P2P security standards that some corporate firms are using include Pretty Good Privacy and SSL-based security technology. Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems and Intel are either initiating or publicly supporting efforts to create a standard P2P platform. The Frost & Sullivan report estimates that the number of enterprise users with P2P network access will surge from 61,400 now to 6.2 billion in 2007, while market revenues will skyrocket from $42.8 million to $4.53 billion within the same period.
Register Online"Giga" PC Arriving in 2010, Says Intel
Intel forecasts that "giga" PCs with processors capable of 30 GHz of clock speed should hit the market by 2010. The buses, connectivity, and storage of these machines will also be in the gigahertz range. The economic slowdown did not prevent Intel from fulfilling the projected targets in the first half of 2001, says Intel's R.J. Maclang. Intel's Paulo C. Lopez also announced that the Pentium 4 architecture, the foundation of Intel's 32-bit computing platform, should continue for five to six more years. He added that the Pentium 4 should support SDRAM rather than RDRAM by the fourth quarter, and that 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processors should become available to the mainstream computer market by the third quarter of 2002. Lopez said that Intel will allocate $4.2 billion for research and development and $7.5 billion for capital investments this year.
NewsbytesComputers of the Future: Made of Glass?
All the functions of PDAs and even computers could one day be built into a small glass panel. The slow mobility of electrons on glass has thus far limited the complexity of integrated circuits that can be installed on a glass substrate. A new process developed at Fujitsu Laboratories allows engineers to create display crystals with greater mobility at a temperature below 450 degrees Celsius, thus keeping the substrate from melting or warping. "Our objective is making a processor or memory on the glass substrate, so we are now developing some basic components of processors and memory on glass," says Fujitsu engineer Nobuo Sasaki. Directly mounting components onto glass will save significant manufacturing costs. Sasaki estimates that handheld computers constructed out of glass sheets could hit the market as early as 2003.
IDG News ServiceExperts Debate the Future of Storage
Some of the key players in the storage industry got together and participated in a lively panel discussion on the sector's future at siliconindia's latest Tech Factory West event in California. The debate characterized storage as a rocky industry, but one that can benefit the perceptive business leader. The panelists agreed that the industry giants will remain a force to be reckoned with, keeping in mind that disruptive technology will affect their share of the market. The spread of "me too" startup storage companies was dismissed, while each panelist argued that their companies' technologies and ideas would prevail.
SiliconIndia.comInternet2 Starts Again From Tuscany
A spin-off from a University of Pisa laboratory, Metro-Core plans to build out the Internet2 infrastructure for Europe. The startup uses a technology standard that identifies and routes data packages more efficiently over optical networks and will be key to new developments in e-learning and other distance applications in medicine, P2P networking, and Web data storage. Professor Stefano Giordano said there are 20 graduate students working on the project, which will enable Internet transmissions at 640 Gb/s speeds. Through a partnership with Marconi Communications of Britain, Metro-Core will provide their Internet2 management services to providers already operating in Pisa, Italy.
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