August 10, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Internet IPv4 address business

We all know we’re running out of IPv4, the old-style Internet Protocol (IP), addresses). If you’re in the network business, you know you need to start switching over to IPv6 soon. What you may not know though is that you can still buy IPv4 address blocks even if your region is officially out of them.

Recently, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the US, Canada, and the Caribbean “implemented Policy ARIN-2011-1: ARIN inter-RIR Transfers. This policy creates the opportunity for organizations to move address space between regions and removes boundaries from the growing IPv4 Transfer market.”

The Internet IPv4 address business. More >

August 9, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Internet is getting faster

The good news, according to Akamai, a high-performance Web and analytics company, is that “the global average connection speed experienced a 14% quarter-over-quarter increase in the first three months of 2012, returning to 2.6 Mbps (Megabits per second.” The bad news is we want much faster connections than we’re getting.

Akamai, in its The State of the Internet, 1st Quarter 2012 report (PDF link, registration required.), now defines “high broadband” as connections to Akamai at speeds of 10 Mbps or greater. In the past, the company defined “narrowband” as connections to Akamai at speeds of 256 Kbps (Kilobits per second) or below, but as connection speeds continue to increase globally, especially in countries with developing infrastructure, the number of connections that Akamai sees at these levels continues to decline so Akamai will no longer be reporting on narrowband adoption.

With those specifications, Akamai found that with a few exceptions, South Korea, the last mile of Internet was getting faster throughout the world.

The Internet is getting faster. More >

August 8, 2012
by sjvn01
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SCO is finally “Dead Parrot” dead

SCO has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to its meet its maker. It’s joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-company. With apologies to Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch, SCO, the company behind a series of foolish anti-Linux lawsuits, is finally really and truly dead.

SCO, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since the fall of 2007, has now gone into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The difference is that in chapter 11 there is some plan, albeit not very rational in SCO’s case, that the company can eventually return to normal business. In Chapter 7, all that’s left is to close and padlock the doors and then sell the furniture.

As Pamela “PJ” Jones, founding editor of Groklaw, a leading intectuall property legal news site, said, “Did you ever think you’d see this day? I confess I did not. I thought SCO, now calling itself TSG, or so they told the world, would never let a outsider trustee come into the picture, which they will have to in Chapter 7.”

In SCO’s case, with 3.7-million in debt and not quite $150-thousand left in cash, there’s really is much left for a trustee to do except to switch out the locks and put up the closed sign

SCO is finally “Dead Parrot” dead. More >

August 8, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to use Google two-factor authentication

Do you really think security is too much trouble? That no one is ever going to bother with your accounts? Ask former Gizmodo employee Mat Honan if he feels that way after his accounts and devices were wiped clean. That could have been you, and it could have been worse. There are several ways to try to protect your online accounts and one of the more important of these is two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication is ancient IT technology. If you’ve ever worked in a shop that required you both to show an ID card and enter a pin to go through a door, you’ve used it. As the name suggests it requires you to both show you know something, typically a password, and have a unique item that identifies you. On the Web, two-factor authentication typically requires you have both a password and a phone with its unique number, which can be used as the item.

Since Google played a role in the Honan case and almost everyone uses some Google service or the other–and Apple doesn’t support two-factor authentication—let’s go over how to turn on Google’s version of two-factor authentication: two-step verification.

How to use Google two-factor authentication. More >

August 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to watch Internet TV across borders

Living in the U.S., one of my greatest regrets is that I can’t watch BBC video with iPlayer . If I were living in the UK, I’d feel the same away about not being able to watch shows on Hulu But, with a Web proxy or a virtual private networks (VPN)s and an Internet Protocol (IP) address in a country where the content is available you can watch these shows.

All of these services block you from watching video by simpling checking to see if your IP address is in the “right” country. Your IP address, under today IPv4 Internet, can place you to a particular neighborhood, so it’s trivial to see if you’re in the proper nation. But, if you use a Web proxy or a VPN with an IP address from the authorized region you’ll look to the video Web servers like you have permission to watch the video.

How to watch Internet TV across borders. More >

August 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Birth and Rise of Ethernet: A History

Nowadays, we take Ethernet for granted. We plug a cable jack in the wall or into a switch and we get the network. What’s to think about?

But it didn’t start that way. In the 60s and 70s, networks were ad hoc hodgepodges of technologies with little rhyme and less reason. But, then Robert “Bob” Metcalfe was asked to create a local area network (LAN) for Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His creation, Ethernet, changed everything.

Back in 1972, Metcalfe, David Boggs, and other members of the PARC team assigned to the networking problem weren’t thinking of changing the world. They only wanted to enable PARC’s Xerox Altos (the first personal workstations with a graphical user interface and the Mac’s spiritual ancestor), to connect and use the world’s first laser printer, the Scanned Laser Output Terminal.

It wasn’t an easy problem. The network had to connect hundreds of computers simultaneously and be fast enough to drive a very fast (for the time) laser printer.

Metcalfe didn’t try to create his network from whole cloth. He used previous work for his inspiration.

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