networking
Latest
RuBee protocol overcomes RFID shortcomings
Just when you thought you were safe from RFID-snooping technology, a new contactless transmission system comes along that promises to make your lead-lined wallet obsolete, thanks to its ability to transmit data though metal and liquid (not sure about liquid metal though). The IEEE has just tasked a working group with finalizing the specs on the so-called RuBee protocol, which uses magnetic -- as opposed to radio -- signals in order to transfer information, making it useful for so-called "harsh environments" where RFID chips fail, such as retail locations where shoplifters line their bags with aluminum foil to fool anti-theft systems. While RuBee's similar transmission range and cost would make it seem like a no-brainer replacement for current RFID applications, its relatively slow speed makes it unsuitable for tracking the numerous, moving products in a typical warehouse. RuBee-enabled devices will also have the advantage of transmitting data directly to the Internet, and with backers like Sony, HP, IBM, Best Buy, and Tesco, you can bet that we'll be hearing more about this tech in the coming year.[Via The Inquirer]
IEEE source: draft 802.11n timeline slipping yet again
More bad news for MIMO fans (if there is such a thing): Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Net News is reporting that an IEEE member has informed him of a delay in the timetable for expected approval of the final draft of the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, from sometime this summer to late fall or even early winter. Fleishman's source claims that Task Group N received around 12,000 comments on the proposed draft -- compared to the 2,000-some that most drafts generate -- which is yet another bad sign following the group's earlier failure to garner even a simple majority in favor of the current proposal, much less the 75% supermajority needed for passage. With draft approval seemingly several months off at the least, it could be a year or even a year and a half before a final 802.11n standard is ratified, meaning that those folks who are already snatching up pre-N gear will have to wait even longer to find out if their hardware ends up being compatible.[Via Ars Technica]
Virtual Networking in WoW
ZDNet has a video report today on a group of CEO's and venture capitalists who have taken their business into the virtual realm, holding meetings & networking in World of Warcraft. The piece doesn't cover much that we haven't heard on the subject before, but it's a good example of the growth of virtual worlds & the directions they might take in the future. Alas, ZDNet doesn't have one of those nifty embedable video players, so click here to see the show...
IEEE "Task Group N" rejects first 802.11n draft proposal
In a move that came as little surprise to those who know how these things work, but that will still probably hurt manufacturers who've been releasing MIMO-enabled networking peripherals for the last few months, the IEEE 802.11 working group tasked with creating a next-gen WiFi standard has recently rejected the first draft of the highly-anticipated 802.11n. Not only did the first 802.11n draft fail to capture the 75% supermajority needed for passage, it couldn't even muster a regular majority among "Task Group N," which is a troubling development for those consumers who have already gone out and purchased pre- or draft-N gear from Linksys, Netgear, and the like. As we've reported in the past, some manufacturers had warned -- and independent testing corroborated -- that draft-N gear could negatively effect current 802.11b/g products already on the market, by hogging the available 2.5GHz bandwidth and causing performance issues on existing WLANs. Still, taken in a historical perspective, rejection of the first draft of a proposed 802.11x specification is not uncommon, and actually seems to be the rule, rather than the exception, in the life-cycle of these multi-year, multi-party standards talks.
Japanese researchers invent completely transparent material
In a breakthrough that could benefit fields as diverse as networking, photography, astronomy, and peeping, science-types at Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research have unveiled their prototype of a glass-like material that they claim to be 100% transparent. Unlike normal glass, which reflects some of the incoming light, the new so-called metamaterial --composed of a grid of gold or silver nanocoils embedded in a prism-shaped, glass-like material -- uses its unique structural properties to achieve a negative refractive index, or complete transparency. Although currently just a one-off proof-of-concept (pictured, under an electron microscope), mass-produced versions of the new material could improve fiber optic communications, contribute to better telescopes and cameras, or lead to the development of completely new optical equipment.
Linksys touts draft 802.11n gear interoperability
Despite earlier concerns voiced by chipset manufacturer Airgo that draft 802.11n gear will "degrade" or "disable," current 802.11b/g networks, Linksys claims that it has tested and approved its upcoming suite of draft-n routers and adapters for interoperability with current products on the market. Since 802.11n relies on the multiple channel MIMO technology to deliver higher bandwidths, there has been some speculation that pre-N networks would dominate the spectrum designated for 802.11 communications, even though the draft specification specifically requires so-called mixed mode operation. While it's certainly reassuring to know that Linksys has been working with multiple vendors to ensure that current WiFi gear will perform at "peak levels" in the presence of 802.11n signals, the real test will come when we start seeing actual real-world deployment of these speedy new networks.
Software lets neighbors securely share WiFi bandwidth
Instead of fighting about property lines and whose dog is keeping everyone up at night, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign want you and your neighbors to get together and share your WiFi signal in a method that supposedly delivers better performance to each individual user. Assistant computer science professor Haiyun Luo and graduate student Nathanael Thompson of the school's Systems, Wireless, and Networking Group have released a free download that analyzes local airwaves and exploits unused bandwidth from one network to complement ones experiencing heavy usage, but always gives users priority access to their own signal. Part of the two-year-old PERM project, the application uses flow-scheduling algorithms to determine bandwidth allocation, and has so-far undergone testing on Linux clients and with Linksys routers. Security is obviously a key concern in such a sharing setup, so PERM developed the software to both "preserve a user's privacy and security, and mitigate the free-riding problem."[Via PCWorld]
SEEMesh and WiMA come together on 802.11s mesh networking
In a move all but totally shocking to these jaded writers, two wireless standard groups, SEEMesh (backed by Intel, Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and TI) and the Wi-Mesh Alliance (backed by Nortel, Philips, and Thomson, among others) have actually come together in peace and love to combine their proposals for the IEEE 802.11s mesh networking standard into one single draft. Now, we all know how wack tech forums can delay standards ratifications -- or sometimes circumvent the process from occurring entirely -- which is why it's so nice that these guys took 802.11n's lead, kissed, made up, and came together to put the technology before the royalties. Oh, so what exactly is the 802.11s mesh networking standard do, you ask? It's a few things to a lot of companies, but it'll first be a boon to metropolitan WiFi networks, so base-stations will have a standard method of communications both to nodes (802.11a/b/g) and to each other (802.11s) when moving around data. Of course, that doesn't help cities that have already rolled out WiFi, but pre-S gear getting sold to cities rolling out in the near future could probably be expected to cut costs and increase speed to nodes.
MultiSwitch hub will allow LAN-less USB sharing
Sharing USB devices is about to get a lot simpler thanks to a new hub powered by technology from chip developer SMSC, which will allow two computers to access up to four shared devices without the need to set up a local area network. Called the MultiSwitch hub, this device creates a proprietary behind-the-scenes network, allowing USB-equipped printers, cameras, hard drives, and other peripherals to be accessed by any combination of desktop, laptop, HTPC, or game console -- with both machines able to interact with the devices simultaneously, according to the developer. PC OEMs are supposedly working on MultiSwitch-enabled chips for distribution this fall, with the resulting consumer electronics products expected to hit stores early next year.
Danish server admin exposes D-Link's "NTP vandalism"
It seems that incompetence on the part of the coders who write network hardware manufacturing giant D-Link's router firmware, and possibly even more insidious willful ignorance at higher levels of the company, may force Denmark's only networked time server to permanently shut down its vital public service. Apparently thousands of Danish servers use Poul-Henning Kamp's pro bono publico NTP server to sync their own clocks -- which is hosted for free by the Danish Internet Exchange (DIX) with the understanding that it is restricted to server-level access, but whose address D-Link hard coded into their device firmware without ever having asked Kamp's permission. The traffic from D-Link devices consists of well over 75% of the packets that the server handles, and has caused DIX to hit Kamp with an $8,800 per year connection fee that may mean the end of the free service and extra work for those thousands of Danish admins, not to mention the embarrassment Danes will have to face when mocked for living in an NTP-free technological backwater (despite their army's snazzy MP3 pillows). Kamp claims that although D-Link is well aware of the issue (they've since updated some, but not all, of the firmware on their site), but instead of fixing their mistake and encouraging customers to upgrade their firmware, the company simply offered Kamp an unspecified amount of "hush" money that doesn't even cover his most direct expenses. Hey D-Link, please drop us a press release if and when you decide to address this issue, because we think your "NTP vandalism" isn't very cool.[Via The Inquirer]
Why your school doesn't want boot camp
A trend I'd like to see go the way of the dodo: every time Apple introduces something new that doesn't seem to appeal to the average home user, the net lights up with wild speculation that it's for the education market. Most of the time it's not, and Boot Camp is no exception. The reaction to Boot Camp from MacEnterprise and other education and business Mac communities has not been positive. It's ranged from "wait and see" to "why me?" with most of the responses at the "why me?" end. Boot Camp is, in the words of University sysadmin and TUAW reader Jason Young, quite possibly "any IT staff member’s worst nightmare come true." And here are just a few of the reasons I think he's right:First, we live in a very imperfect world. Heterogeneous networks are messy, messy things. Sure there are protocols for Active Directory, Open Directory, LDAP, DHCP, etc., but vendors do one of two things: fail to implement the spec properly, or add a bunch of proprietary bells and whistles that aren't part of the spec, are technically add-ons, but still seem to mysteriously cause hardware or software to fail when they aren't present. Throw a couple of DNS forwarding issues, some CISCO equipment and maybe a Radius server into the mix, and things get ugly fast. What's the admins final line of defense against complete network chaos? Hardware addressing. Figure out what hardware is sitting at which MAC address, and build policies based on that. It's not ideal, but it's the the way the real world works. If you can't predict the OS type from the MAC, your job becomes 10 times harder in a flash.Second, nobody actually wants to reboot. It's time consuming, stressful on the hardware, and just generally not too much fun. It also means getting users in the habit of interacting with the firmware, which is something sane sysadmins want to avoid at all costs. What admins, and others, want is real virtualization. Not dual booting. Not emulation and compatibility layers. Real virtualization. When Apple delivers that, there will be partying in the streets.Third, there's no support and it doesn't look like there's ever going to be. Unlike the rest of us peons, large education and enterprise clients spend a lot of money on premium AppleCare services. They have reps who know them by name, and part of what makes Macs appealing is that you call one number and get integrated hardware and OS support. If Apple won't support Windows, dual booting will mean buying a second support contract for the same machine. hat more than negates the cost benefit of a single machine solution. Beige boxes are cheap and procurement already has contracts with HP and Dell. There is, of course, a potential for third parties here to step up and become Apple Authorized Resellers offering pre-configured machines with support, but that's a niche market. Most organizations that buy Macs want to deal directly with Apple.And then for education tech support, there's the added fun of personal machines that people use to connect to the network....Individual admins, of course, are thrilled. Being able do dual boot, say, a MacBook Pro means only needing one machine to administer everything. But supporting it for users? That's a different story.
Lair off-screen trailer looked good at GDC
Stills and screenshots can only do so much to convey how good a game looks. Here's an off-screen video presentation of Lair recorded from GDC, showing off the Factor 5 game in action (or, should we say, motion).You might recognize some of the animation from videos seen elsewhere, but it was nice to catch the newer footage of a dragon wireframe model meticulously rendered with layers of musculature and skin, too.If that's not enough for ya, you can always just listen in to the audio, which features a young lady from Washington asking questions of a developer with the hope of getting hired. Consider this a lesson in networking.[Via GameBrink]
Winshortcutter allows Macs to use .lnks
Ah the glories of a multi-platform office. The best of both worlds, yes? Well, maybe not. Since Apple was nice enough to fix the whole "I need to buy 3rd party apps to network two machines," the next big frontier (for me) has been getting a bunch of Window-centric items to somehow behave properly on the Mac. It's bad enough that Web Outlook is totally crippled on the Mac. I've been dealing a bit with these .lnk files, Windows shortcuts, that don't work on Macs. Enter WinShortcutter, which fixes this nicely, and it's free to boot. I like that. Winshortcutter adds contextual menus and a Service for working with Windows shortcuts, so you're almost never without recourse when encountering the things. Now if there was some way to make John Welch's list happen... Oh, and the good folks behind WinShortcutter, Lobotomo Software, also make a fun port of Adventure for OS X. If you're feeling nostalgic for the text games of days gone by, check it out (also free).
MySpace and gaming: the power of social networks
The social world of MySpace seems a far cry from gaming, but as games become more socially focused, the two are converging--Alice, at Wonderland, muses on a MMO that would combine the social power of MySpace with MMO dynamics. A lot of the emerging social technologies on the Web--from social bookmarking to photo sharing--could easily translate into a game world, and as a commenter on Alice's post points out, Second Life already achieves some of the same goals as the MySpace network.With games and MySpace intertwining in new and unusual ways, perhaps MyMMOG isn't as far off as it sounds.
