Recently, Verizon was caught tampering with its customer’s web requests to inject a tracking super-cookie . Another network-tampering threat to user safety has come to light from other providers: email encryption downgrade attacks. Read more…
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Why Are ISPs Removing Their Customers’ Email Encryption?
An anonymous reader writes Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
MojoKid (1002251) writes Though solid state drives have a long way to go before they break price parity with hard drives and may never with, at least with the current technology, the gap continues to close. More recently, SSD manufacturers have been approaching 50 cents per GiB of storage. OCZ Storage Solutions, with the help of their parent company Toshiba’s 19nm MLC NAND, just launched their ARC 100 family of drives that are priced at exactly .5 per GiB at launch and it’s possible street prices will drift lower down the road. The ARC 100 features the very same OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 controller as the higher-end OCZ Vertex 460, but these new drives feature more affordable Toshiba A19nm (Advanced 19 nanometer) NAND flash memory. The ARC 100 also ships without any sort of accessory bundle, to keep costs down. Performance-wise, OCZ’s new ARC 100 240GB solid state drive didn’t lead the pack in any particular category, but the drive did offer consistently competitive performance throughout testing. Large sequential transfers, small file transfers at high queue depths, and low access times were the ARC 100’s strong suits, as well as its low cost. These new drives are rated at 20GB/day write endurance and carry a 3 year warranty. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Solid State Drives Break the 50 Cents Per GiB Barrier, OCZ ARC 100 Launched
alphadogg writes “The early Wi-Fi standards that opened the world’s eyes to wire-free networking are now holding back the newer, faster protocols that followed in their wake, Cisco Systems said. The IEEE 802.11 standard, now available in numerous versions with speeds up to 6.9Gbps and growing, still requires devices and access points to be compatible with technologies that date to the late 1990s. But those older standards — the once-popular 802.11b and an even slower spec from 1997 — aren’t nearly as efficient as most Wi-Fi being sold today. As a result, Cisco thinks the 802.11 Working Group and the Wi-Fi Alliance should find a way to let some wireless gear leave those versions behind. Two Cisco engineers proposed that idea last week in a presentation at the working group’s meeting in Los Angeles. The plan is aimed at making the best use of the 2.4GHz band, the smaller of two unlicensed frequency blocks where Wi-Fi operates.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Old-school Wi-Fi Is Slowing Down Networks, Cisco Says
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes, quoting USA Today “The NASDAQ has topped 4000 for the first time in 13 years, but much has changed since then. … Tech investors in 2000 were right about the possibilities of the Internet and mobile computing. But they were dead wrong about which companies would be in the vanguard … The recovery of the NASDAQ has been a complex tale of creative destruction, where old companies that once fueled the index have been pushed aside by new players. Back in 2000, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Oracle, and Sun accounted for 8.9%, 8.5%, 7.1%, 3.6% and 2.6%, respectively, of the value of the NASDAQ composite. Today, companies that were just starting out or didn’t even exist — think Google, Amazon, and Facebook — are in the top 10, accounting for 4.7%, 2.7% and 1.5% of NASDAQ’s value. Microsoft, Cisco and Intel’s weight has fallen sharply. Apple, which wasn’t in the top 10 in 2000, is a behemoth at 7.9%. So is the NASDAQ enjoying a long overdue catch-up with the rest of the market, or is the broad market overpriced, with the NASDAQ being pulled along for the ride? ‘The reality is that the only thing that’s the same from Nasdaq 4000 in 1999 and Nasdaq 4000 in 2013, ‘ says Doug Sandler, ‘is the number 4000.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nasdaq 4000 — This Time It’s Different?
Dawn Kawamoto writes “Cisco’s CEO John Chambers dealt employees a blow Wednesday, saying the networking giant would cut 4, 000 workers from the payroll. Not quite a death blow, but this 5 percent cut could leave some employees gasping. Chambers took the knife to Cisco last year, cutting 2 percent of its workforce.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Cisco Slashes 4,000 Jobs
Belkin has struck a deal to buy Linksys from Cisco, bringing Cisco’s 10-year dalliance with the consumer networking market closer to an end. Cisco’s Linksys division sells routers and wireless access points to consumers, which is in line with Cisco’s overall focus on networking gear but diverges from the company’s core focus on selling to big businesses rather than home users. Cisco has been gradually stepping out of the consumer business—for example, by killing off the Flip camera line and Umi home videoconferencing . Cisco recently engaged Barclays to help sell off the home networking division. Belkin’s purchase of Linksys is expected to close in March 2013, but the companies did not reveal the purchase price. Cisco bought Linksys in 2003 for $500 million. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Cisco to sell Linksys to Belkin, will exit home networking market
Jason Alley The Federal Communications Commission last week said it will add 195MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi’s 5GHz band. This move is designed to relieve congestion in Wi-Fi networks, particularly in areas of widespread simultaneous usage like airports and sports stadiums . It could help your home network too, but not right away—routers available in stores today may not be able to use the new spectrum at all . Finding out definitively whether today’s routers will support the new spectrum is difficult, partly because the FCC still has to issue specific rules governing its use. We’ve hit up router vendors and other industry people to find out whether software updates might let current routers access the new spectrum. While the results were a bit muddled, it seems safe to say no one is guaranteeing today’s routers will get the benefit of the new 195MHz. Even the latest routers supporting the ultra-modern 802.11ac standard may be left behind. Cisco refused to comment at all, telling us only “Cisco has not made any announcements about this so cannot discuss at this time.” Buffalo told us “the chip vendors will need to work on it” and that “they will at least to have to make changes to the hardware driver. … The magnitude of that change will determine if Buffalo is able to use the same hardware.” Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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FCC adds spectrum to Wi-Fi—but you likely need a new router to use it