18/05/2010
Last mile copper loops are largely considered a dead-end technology; fiber-to-the-home and coaxial cable systems offer much more headroom, so much so that even the recent National Broadband Plan lamented that most Americans would soon have only zero or one options for truly high-speed broadband. DSL users would remain stuck in the slow lane.
But DSL is not quite dead, and new research out of Bell Labs has resulted in a new speed record: 300Mbps.
So is DSL's future so bright that it needs to wear shades? We wouldn't invest in the shades just yet. This 300Mbps demo requires the DSL user to be within 400 meters of the local node; when the distance is extended to 1km, top speeds decline to 100Mbps. For those further away from the access point, as many in America are—my own home is twice that distance—these top speeds will be substantially lower.
Still, it's far better than the 6Mbps top speed AT&T offers me now (some AT&T U-verse customers can now get up to 24Mbps), but the new technology has other issues. Foremost among them: it requires the bonding of two DSL lines to each home.
This sort of "channel bonding" has long been used in DOCSIS cable systems and has been tested in the lab on DSL, but it never quite seems to make it to market in a big way.
To hit these high speeds, Bell Labs used channel bonding, vectoring (technology that avoids crosstalk interference between wires), and an analog "phantom mode." Phantom mode "involves the creation of a virtual or 'Phantom' channel that supplements the two physical wires that are the standard configuration for copper transmission lines," according to the lab.
Combine all these technologies together, use a pair of DSL lines, and test in the lab, and you get 300Mbps. The technology may be attractive to telcos who prefer to milk the value of their copper networks without springing for a more substantial fiber-optic upgrade.
Gee Rittenhouse, head of Research at Bell Labs, made this point, saying, "What makes DSL Phantom Mode such an important breakthrough is that it combines cutting edge technology with an attractive business model that will open up entirely new commercial opportunities for service providers, enabling them in particular, to offer the latest broadband IP-based services using existing network infrastructure."
You probably have a mobile phone with a Bluetooth radio in it, and you may have a Wi-Fi network as well. Soon, you could be using a third wireless networking technology in your house.
It's called ZigBee, and it eventually might find its way into more devices than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combined.
In the near term, you're likely to see it show up in the smart meters that utilities have begun to use and in the remote controls of high-end televisions. In the not-too-distant future, you could be using ZigBee networking to control the lights in your home, monitor your elderly parent's health or turn off your air conditioner during periods of peak energy use when no one's home.
"ZigBee is regarded as a fairly robust, good technology for many applications," said Sam Lucero, an industry analyst at ABI Research, a technology research firm.
ZigBee operates over the same 2.4 GHz frequency range as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Unlike those technologies, though, ZigBee transmits at much lower data rates. It's made for sending simple commands, such as turning on a TV, or small bits of data, such as whether a door is locked.
Thanks to the low data rate, ZigBee tends to use far less power than other networking technologies. The battery life of a ZigBee device can often be measured in years, rather than hours in the case of Wi-Fi or days with Bluetooth.
Also, ZigBee's standard utilizes mesh networking, which allows ZigBee devices to automatically connect with and transmit data through one another without having to go through a central gateway like a router.
ZigBee has been around for about seven years. To date, though, it's primarily been used in commercial and industrial settings in alarm and monitoring systems and in expensive houses for custom-installed home-automation systems.
But the technology's backers -- and analysts who follow the industry -- think it's about to hit the mainstream.
The number of ZigBee radio chips shipped has been doubling every year in recent years, hitting 20 million last year, said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, a nonprofit standards body that helps oversee and promote the technology. The group, whose members include Intel, Marvell and Cypress Semiconductor, expects 100 million ZigBee chips to be shipped this year.
Part of that expected growth is driven by power companies. To better track and potentially regulate in-home energy use, PG&E and other utilities are installing millions of smart meters in California and around the country.
All three major power vendors in California plan to include ZigBee radios in their meters, Heile noted. So you may already have a ZigBee-capable device if PG&E has recently upgraded your meter.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, has recommended that the technology be included in such meters nationwide.
That agency and other ZigBee backers envision it being used to create so-called home-area networks. Such a network might link a thermostat, major appliances and outlets to the smart meter, allowing consumers to closely monitor and control the energy use of particular devices. It could also allow a power company to turn down the air-conditioning in many of their customers' homes at once -- with their customers' permission, of course -- to help prevent a power outage.
ZigBee "has a good chance to be one of the primary technologies in the home for smart-energy management," said Lisa Arrowsmith, a market analyst with IMS Research, which focuses on the electronics industry. "There's a lot of enthusiasm among utilities in the U.S. to proceed down the ZigBee route."
But ZigBee is also likely to start making its way into consumers' homes via their televisions. TV and other consumer electronics manufacturers are developing new remote controls that use ZigBee and other radio-frequency (RF) technologies in place of infrared emitters and sensors.
Infrared is a line-of-site technology that doesn't work if someone or something is in the way, or if you have your remote pointed in the wrong direction. In contrast, an RF remote will work in any direction. And because its signal will pass through obstacles, you could hide ugly or bulky devices like set-top boxes and stereo equipment in a cabinet or another room and still be able to control them.
The advantage of using ZigBee over other RF technologies is that it uses so little power you may need to replace your television before you would have to swap out the batteries in your remote, said Cees Links, who helped develop the Wi-Fi standard and is now CEO of Green Peak, which designs ZigBee chips.
What's more, ZigBee technology could eventually lead to a universal device to control not only your TV, but everything from your automatic window blinds to your thermostat -- and monitor how much energy you're using at the same time.
Links and other industry figures expect the first ZigBee remotes to hit the market later this year, likely as a premium feature of higher-end televisions.
The consumer electronic industry "will move to RF remote controls," said Craig Mathias, an analyst at Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless technologies. "That is absolutely going to happen."
But Mathias and others caution that ZigBee is competing against a number of other wireless and wired technologies, and there's no guarantee that it will eventually win out. Some manufacturers already use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in their remote controls. Technologies such as Z-wave and X10 and network-connected power outlets are also being used for home automation and monitoring.
For home area networks, "I don't think there's going to be a clear winner," Arrowsmith said.
Even if ZigBee does emerge as the dominant technology, it could be many years before consumers have more than one or two ZigBee devices in their homes, because the appliances that are likely to use it get replaced infrequently.
"Are you going to trade in your fridge so you can control it by remote?" says Ken Dulaney, a mobile technology analyst with Gartner, a market research firm.
More information: http://www.zigbee.org/
Through a new course posted online for free, the Stanford School of Engineering and NVIDIA Corp. will give a big boost to programmers who want to take advantage of the substantial processing power of the graphics processing units used in today's consumer and professional graphics cards.
Beginning today, the school's Stanford Center for Professional Development will make recorded lectures of the computer science course CS 193G: Programming Massively Parallel Processors with CUDA available through Stanford on iTunes U. A direct link to the course that includes slides and support materials can be found through Stanford Engineering Everywhere, the school's free course website.
The 10-week course covers parallel programming in lectures and readings, but also with hands-on exercises and projects employing NVIDIA's CUDA architecture, which exposes the parallel processing hardware of graphics processing units (GPUs) to industry standard programming languages.
"Until recently, it was very difficult to write programs to harness the computational power of GPUs for anything other than drawing pictures," said Andrew Ng, associate professor of computer science. "CUDA has made it much easier to apply this hardware to other problems, and now GPUs are used for such applications as DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and even robotic control."
Because they have many processing cores that can carry out a large number of computations at the same time, GPUs can run many applications 10 to 100 times faster than traditional processing hardware, said Ng, who oversees the new course. The instructors are NVIDIA engineers Jared Hoberock and David Tarjan.
"The Stanford School of Engineering is pleased to add another complete course to its portfolio of free and easily accessed education offerings," said Andy DiPaolo, senior associate dean in the School of Engineering and executive director of the Stanford Center for Professional Development. "Starting a few years ago with courses available through Stanford Engineering Everywhere and followed by hundreds of hours of free programs including the popular iPhone programming course, we continue to make engineering education available anywhere, anytime and on-demand."
The course runs through June 1, when enrolled students will present their final projects. Lectures are posted for the general public about a week after they are delivered at Stanford and will remain available after the campus course has ended. People taking the course online cannot earn Stanford credit and should not expect that they will be able to interact with the instructors.
Provided by Stanford University (news : web)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Most people don't understand how their broadband Internet connection works, they just know when it doesn't. When that happens, they do one of two things: consult the tech wizard in their house, or call their Internet provider.
But what if regular people had information about how their Internet connections were performing at their fingertips? What if they could easily give priority to uploads or downloads on one computer over another, making sure their kids’ YouTube antics don’t interfere with their work? They may soon be able to do just that.
Marshini Chetty, a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, details her efforts in testing Microsoft Research’s Home Watcher system and talks a bit about another system she's designed and is currently testing, called Kermit. The Home Watcher research will be presented at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, being held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, April 10-15.
Q: What is Home Watcher?
Marshini Chetty: Homewatcher is a system, designed by the Computer Mediated Living and Systems & Networking groups at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, that I tested in the UK as part of a summer internship. It runs on Windows machines to allow you to monitor the bandwidth usage of each machine on your home network. We tested it using six households, with a total of 24 people in all. Three of them had teenagers, one was a married couple and two of them had roommates.
With Home Watcher, it’s a central display that allows you to see the uploads and downloads of each machine in your house. So in the display, each of these little blobs represents a computer in your house. And up on the top, these are the uploads and downloads for each machine. So these little blobs bounce up and down on a little graph, showing you how much bandwidth they’re using.
So you can see, this guy (in yellow) is using a lot compared to these other three. It’s downloading a lot more. And then here (in orange) you can see no one’s really doing much downloading. And you can also drag these ellipses up and down to limit someone. So you could say, “Oh this person is downloading a lot. Let me take them down so they can’t download as much.”
Q: Sounds simple enough.
Marshini Chetty: The idea with this system is that it’s meant to be made so anyone can use it, whereas most other networking tools are designed for someone who’s very technically oriented. It’s for one machine that is the central machine that would monitor everyone else. This is more like a household tool, like a thermostat, but just for your network.
Q: What were you trying to learn?
Marshini Chetty: So the idea was, you have all this information that people can’t access - what happens if you make it visible? How do they react to that? If you actually show them who the bandwidth hogs are in their house, what happens? How does that change how they understand things? Does it help them troubleshoot the network? So that’s how the collaboration with Microsoft Research started.
I was hoping to learn if you make things more visible, does that actually change what people can do? Does it give them more power? Does it empower the people who aren’t as technical. And yeah, then people were able to say, through the study, “Oh this uses more bandwidth than I thought,” or, “Oh this doesn’t really use bandwidth.” Something else they were able to see was, “Oh no one is using my computer, but something is going on.” And that gave them the idea that there are other processes happening on the computer even when no one’s using it.
Q: What did you find?
Marshini Chetty: We found that making this information more visible and accessible to people actually engaged them and helped them learn about what was going on. In other words, even though networking is technical, if you give it to people in a way they can understand, the average person can understand something about bandwidth.
When we started off the study I asked people, “What is bandwidth?” Some people didn’t know what that was. When we ended the study, people who didn’t know anything about bandwidth before the study were saying, “Oh, I’m gonna limit your bandwidth now and, YouTube uses this…,” things that they just wouldn’t have said before the study. They were able to learn that and it was nice to confirm it.
What was surprising was, even though we’re providing a very strict set of information, we’re not showing you URLs that people are going to, nothing privacy violating, people were still worried about what they can infer about the data. So, you have kids saying things like, “Okay, I don’t necessarily know that I want people in the house to be able to confirm that I am the bandwidth hog.” Or, roommates saying, “Well, does this mean I have to pay more for bandwidth, because I’m the one using a lot?” So, even though it’s very basic, people worry about how they’re being presented in the system. How are other people going to read them?
And then, there are the control issues. Who gets to be in control? Is it something like a thermostat, where anyone can change it? In this case, it’s directly linked to someone’s activity on the Internet so it’s not quite the same. So those were the two major things. How to represent yourself in the system and then who gets to control it.
It raised a lot of questions, like where should you put a tool like this in the house, should it have a password? Who’s going to control it? Is it Mom and Dad? Is it one master roommate?
Q: Did you find that the use of Home Watcher was mainly limited to the guru in the family?
Marshini Chetty: This is actually another goal of mine, to empower people who are not the guru to get involved in networking so they don’t have to depend on that person if that person isn’t there and the Internet goes down. In some cases it was the guru that we signed up, so they were more interested in it. But in other cases, it wasn’t. So, it definitely seemed to appeal to a broader variety of people. Another thing with Home Watcher is I think the computer is very scary to some people. It’s just so complicated and so on. So taking it out and making it a separate appliance made it easier. It’s like, “Oh I can just do these few things.”
Q: How is your system, Kermit, different from Home Watcher?
Marshini Chetty: Because it’s getting its data from the router, anything that connects to the Internet shows up on Kermit - iPhones, iPads, PS3s, Macs, Windows machines, you name it. It also shows you who’s online, who’s hogging the bandwidth and how much bandwidth each computer on the network is using. The main difference is that it also shows you an estimated speed that you’re getting from your provider. Also, Kermit can run on any computer in the home network and you can control it from any home computer. I’m currently testing it in eight households to find out more about the politics of visibility and control.
Provided by Georgia Institute of Technology 07/04/2010
[Content of this article is sourced from www.gizmodo.com]
Not many companies produce technology innovations quiet like Apple. To a point that it is no longer about setting a trend, but it's about making history itself. An Apple product provides a sense of awe at a glance. It touches us, and reaches out to us. A technology welcomed right into our closes sanctuary much the same as a treasured family heirloom. "Gadget" is a word often used loosely, like how mobile communication and the internet changed our life forever. Apple elevates the on-boarding of technology to the next level within human history. Those same incorporated principals of good design, is not exclusive only to product development I believe. We all can learn and apply those same "pure-common-sense" even to the development of Telco Services.... Why not? iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and now.... iPad places the right justification for the betterment of the Internet and brings it closer into our living room. Read on... 10 principals, clear and effective...
Apple's iPad embodies Dieter Rams' famous Ten Principles for Good Design, the ten commandments that every company should follow before manufacturing any product. It feels like the future in your hands. But it could be better.
The iPad is the culmination of Jon Ive's quest for the ultimate industrial design, a search for the minimal minimalism, reducing an entire mobile computer to just a screen with no keyboard—a slice of glass, aluminum, silicon, copper, and gold, following the Gospel of Rams.
But the final product has some problems, some related to marketing choices, some related to manufacturing decisions.
The Principles of Good Design Test
Good design is innovative
The concept of a touch screen device that eliminates the need for mice is not new, but the iPad uses innovation on touchscreen technology manufacturing to have a larger size at a price affordable enough for a mass consumption product. This advancement provides with its core functionality, allowing for a new generation of applications with enough power and functionality to replace a laptop.
Good design makes a product useful
Its function defines its form, a simple screen to present the actual tools. In fact, its design enables the product to be.
Good design is aesthetic
The iPad is beautiful. The black, glass and the aluminum, its proportions, the sightly curved back and integrated bezel, which makes it look and feel thinner than what it actually is.
                   
Good design helps us to understand a product
The iPad is self-explanatory: The moment you turn it on, the interface pops up and takes centre stage, inviting you to slide your finger, to click. There's no need to learn a new language to interact with the computer. The home button only takes one press to realize what it does. The same is true with the power, volume, and screen orientation lock. Each element of its design has an unequivocal function.
Good design is unobtrusive
No other Apple product has met Rams' Commandment as completely as the iPad. Rams said that well designed products are "neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained," allowing for self-expression. This is exactly what this mobile computer does.
Good design is honest
There are no artificial additions in this machine. Everything in it is function-driven, and no decoration makes the product look any different from what it really is.
Good design is long-lasting
While it feels like a device from the future, its design is timeless. I can imagine it in a set of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 and it would look at home. I can leave it on a wooden desk inside a baroque palace, and it would blend just fine. Captain Picard can bring it to the bridge of the Enterprise, and it would feel natural in his hands.
Good design is consequent to the last detail
Every detail in the iPad is designed with its function in mind. One example is the iPad's bezel, which makes possible to hold the product firmly and securely without the hands getting over the user interface and confusing the touchscreen.
Good design is concerned with the environment
Unlike the original iPhone, and according to Apple, the iPad is recyclable and uses green materials all around: Arsenic-free display glass, Bromide Fire Retardant free, mercury-free LCD display, and no PVC.
Good design is as little design as possible
In Rams' words, good design is purity and simplicity. I can't imagine this kind of product getting purer and simpler than this.
Wouldn't you agree, the principals above falls right into the current Malaysia backyard as we search for our right HSBB application. Remember, all these investments gotta last.... 22/12/2009
Egads, you see that? 42.78Mbps over a wireless data card! Not just any card, mind you, it's presumably the new Samsung 4G card running on TeliaSonera in Sweden and Norway, the world's first commercial LTE network launched on Monday. TeliaSonera bundles the 4G service with 30GB of data for just 599kr (85$) per month. That 5.3Mbps upload and 37ms ping aren't too shabby either. Not exactly the theoretical 100Mbps down / 50Mbps up provided by the LTE spec, but not AT&T either.
IEEE will push next 802.11 to 1Gbps speeds, two-letter designations in 2012
By Tim Stevens  posted Dec 8th 2009 10:02AM
WiFi, you've come a long way, baby. Since those groovy days of plain 'ol 802.11, to your first single-letter designation, all the way up to your latest 802.11n ratification you've gotten faster, broader, and almost everywhere. Best of all, you've still got room to grow. If all goes well and Cusack's documentary doesn't prove accurate in 2012 you'll grow to 802.11ac, delivering a blistering 1Gbps and beyond. That's more wireless bandwidth than we'd know what to do with right now, but we'll find a way to use it. We always do. Together. 24/11/2009
Wireless technology that's been touted as the best hope for providing high-speed Internet access to rural communities is about to get its first true test. The first "white space" wireless network will use unused portions of TV spectrum to distribute broadband access to residents of Claudville, VA.
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Low-cost access: A worker checks the antenna for a new "white space" network that will cover a service area with one-fifteenth of the nodes that traditional Wi-Fi would require.
Credit: Spectrum Bridge |
Advocates for rural broadband say that high-speed Internet access is needed to improve healthcare and education in isolated communities. Others simply don't want their communities left behind while urban areas access ever more services over the Internet.
But bringing broadband to rural areas is easier said than done. Roger Hayden, director of the Claudville Computer Center and chairman of the Patrick County Broadband Task Force, said at a press conference Wednesday that in 2004, he called every carrier he could find, and none was willing to deliver a high-speed wired Internet service to Claudville. In the years since, local officials have been looking for another way to get better access.
Three months ago, they began planning for the construction of a "white space" network, which takes advantage of empty fragments of the TV spectrum scattered between used frequencies. This is a cheaper way to provide wireless broadband access in areas without a lot of existing infrastructure. But the FCC requires that such a network include technology that prevents it from interfering with existing broadcasts.
TV stations have traditionally broadcast over wireless frequencies that carry information longer distances. For example, the spectrum between 512 megahertz and 698 megahertz, originally allotted to analog TV channels 21 to 51, offers longer range than conventional Wi-Fi, which operates at 2.4 gigahertz. With the ongoing transition from analog to digital broadcasts, more unused TV frequencies are opening up than ever.
Until late last year, it was illegal to operate over these unused frequencies. But in November 2008, new FCC regulations opened those portions of spectrum, with the provision that deployments follow strict requirements not to interfere with existing uses.
Hayden and others got in touch with Spectrum Bridge, a company based in Lake Mary, FL, that has been developing technology for white-space networks. To build the network, fiber-optic cable had to be laid to reach one location in Claudville. Beyond that, the wireless signal over white-space frequencies travels about 1.5 miles away from the router, says Spectrum Bridge CTO Peter Stanforth. That signal strength means that the network can cover the same area with one-tenth to one-fifteenth of the nodes of traditional Wi-Fi. Another long-range wireless technology, WiMax, operates on licensed spectrum, making it more expensive to implement.
To avoid conflict with existing usage of the spectrum, Spectrum Bridge maintains a database that tracks which chunks of spectrum are being unused in which areas. Devices on Claudville's network will contact the company's database, reporting their location, and will be told what frequency to use to connect. Customers access the network as they would any Wi-Fi hotspot 24/10/2009MOBILE CHIPMAKER Qualcomm has warned that speed increases in mobile data technology need to be propped up by denser networks. Qualcomm chief executive Paul Jacobs said at the CTIA show in San Diego that the wireless industry is already pushing the limits of technology to increase mobile web speeds over the wireless airwaves. He said that the radio wave has been about as optimised as it is going to get and cannot get faster. Any future speed increases will come from operators using a lot more network hardware than in today's networks. Jacobs believes that the future will be femtocells, or short range networks in subscribers' homes and offices. He said that he can get eight to 10 times improvement in user experience by building up a dense network and managing the interference between the large scale wireless network and these femto networks. 25/08/2009A girl reads an online news portal on her mobile phone. The European Union on Tuesday announced an 18 million euro (25 million dollar) investment in an "ultra high-speed" internet system to underpin the next generation of mobile services. The European Union announced Tuesday an 18 million euro (25 million dollar) investment in an "ultra high-speed" internet system to underpin the next generation of mobile services."
Europe's research know-how will continue to set the tone for the development of mobile services and devices around the globe, just as we did in the past decades with the GSM standard," promised EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding. The funding will be released on January 1 next year for research on what is known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced technology, the high end of the fourth generation of mobile technology which should offer users "mobile internet speeds up to a hundred times faster than current 3G networks," according to the European Commission.
The new LTE technology, not the advanced version which the EU will fund, is currently being trialled by mobile operators in Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Britain and is expected to be commercially available in Sweden and Norway in the first half of next year. That will provide mobile internet speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, 10 times faster than the 3G mobile networks. "LTE technologies will turn mobile phones into powerful mobile computers. Millions of new users will get ultra high-speed internet access on their portable devices, wherever they are," Reding enthused.
LTE Advanced promises lower prices and mobile broadband speeds up to one gigabit (thousand megabits) per second. This would allow excellent mobile access to televisions and video-on-demand systems for example. Between 2004 and 2007, the EU gave 25 million euros to LTE development. leading to the first blueprint for an LTE-based network infrastructure. The 18 million euros will go to the enhanced version, LTE Advanced. Next month the commission will open negotiations on the details with project consortia, including the flagship ARTIST4G which united 4G industry and researchers from Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. The new projects are expected to begin in January. LTE uses radio spectrum more efficiently, enabling mobile networks to benefit from the "digital dividend" and use frequencies freed by the switchover from analogue to digital TV.
Overall, from 2007-2013 the EU will invest more than 700 million euros on researching future networks. Leading mobile operators and manufacturers around the world such as Orange, T-Mobile, Ericsson, and Nokia have already committed to using the LTE standard. By 2013, operators worldwide are expected to invest nearly six billion euros in LTE equipment, according to market analysts. |
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