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World's first Bluetooth
networking system
World's first Bluetooth networking system Red-M has started shipping what it says is the world's first Bluetooth wireless Personal Area Network (PAN) -compliant networking system. The system, which centers around the Red-M 3000 access server and 1000 access point, allows buildings to be "irradiated" with a Bluetooth wireless PAN signal, and hooked into a variety of existing data networks, including DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connections. Simon Gaune, Red-M's vice president of business development, told Newsbytes that, since being set up as a wholly owned subsidiary of Madge Networks a year ago, the company's staffing level has gone from 20 to 60. "Now that we're shipping our first Bluetooth system, we're starting to see the number of commercial Bluetooth applications open up," he said. Thanks to this, Gaune said that Red-M has struck a number of partnership deals with third-party companies who will then market the Red-M hardware with their own software into vertical market applications. Red-M's 3000AS incorporates wide area networking (WAN) and local area networking (LAN) interfaces, plus Web page caching, secure firewall and virtual private networking (VPN) functions as standard. In addition, the 3000AS hosts an e-mail and Web server for delivery of local e-mail and Web content to the Bluetooth devices. The Red-M 1000AP access points, meanwhile, can be connected to the 3000AS access server over a standard LAN connection. Red-M's 3000 access server's retail price is $2,995 and the 1000 access point's retail price is $395. Red-M says it expects to start shipping first product to initial customers in early November.
Simplified
unveils strategy to deliver platform-independent broadband solutions Simplified, the leading provider of infrastructure
software for open voice and data services, has announced the industry's first
open solution for broadband cable enabling telephony or data service providers
to offer consumers quick and easy self-installation of high-speed data service.
The Simplified OpenCable(tm) broadband data solution
allows cable providers to deliver Internet-ready, self-provisioning to
end-customers without separate software installation. The solution reduces costs
for cable providers by eliminating on-site installation and drastically reducing
man-hours needed for customer service. With European cable TV operators increasingly regarding
the provision of telecom services as a fundamental element in their overall
business strategy, the market for voice and data communications services over
cable TV networks is expected to experience high growth over the next few years.
Simplified's OpenCable can provide the business solution
cable operators need to provide and manage broadband Internet services as well
as the infrastructure software needed to scale with the expected growth.
Simplified expects to release a solution for managing voice-over-cable networks
early next year.
Akamai streams
ahead with audio and video services Akamai's move is part of a burst of activity in the "managed Internet services" sector, with a host of companies offering different packages of storage, Web traffic and site monitoring, speedy content delivery, and other related services. The surge in interest in this sector has blurred the lines between businesses that have never had clear dividing lines, causing some friction even between customers that use each other's services, such as Loudcloud and GlobalCenter. Akamai's new storage service will offer media companies that produce audio, video or other big files the ability to distribute these around a dozen data centers hosting Akamai servers. The content will be stored in centers closest to where there is demand for the files, the company says. Company executives downplay any overlap with Web hosting companies. They still have good relationships with the big hosting firms, many of which are partners, noted Ravi Sundarajan, Akamai vice president of business development.
Bellsouth
selects Sycamore's optical switches for Floridamix
Ciena
increases channel densities in its DWDM Ciena will introduce 25 Ghz and 12 1/2 Ghz channel spacing on its
MultiWave CoreStream DWDM system, enabling it to significantly increase the
channel count in the long-distance optical transport system to an
industry-leading 16 terabits per second (Tbps).
Commercial availability is expected next year.
Currently, CIENA internally produces all of the 50 Ghz and 100 Ghz fiber
Bragg grating filters used in its DWDM optical transport systems.
Ciena also announced the formation of an in-house manufacturing
capability to produce thin-film dielectric optical filters. These proprietary
designed optical filters are primarily used in optical amplifiers.
Wireless innovations unveiled iConverse of Waltham is announcing a pact with mynetsales.com of Boston to provide wireless access - including voice-powered access through speech recognition technology - to mynetsales's Web-based system for company salespeople to track sales leads and the status of product shipments. And, Quickdot.com, the Waltham startup that has quietly attracted more than 6 million subscribers for its Internet-based short message system, is rolling out a version allowing people to read and reply to posted messages from their cell phones, pagers, and wireless Palm Pilots and similar devices. The three developments reflect how the convergence of two megatrends - US cell phone usage growing to more than 100 million units and the increasing desire for telecommuting among white-collar workers - is driving a wave of wireless-oriented innovation.
3Com
debuts 'Audrey' Internet appliance Audrey works with various Internet service providers and gives consumers access to favorite Web sites. A user can scribble a hand-written message, type or speak a message and send it to the Internet by using a stylus. Audrey features a built in V.90 56K modem and can be set to dial into the Internet several times per day to refresh its Internet channels and download new e-mail. Audrey is also adaptable to broadband connections.
Convergent
Networks enhances voice switch with new optical interfaces The switch can be deployed as an alternative to Class 4/5 circuit switches for provisioning dial-up Internet access. For this application, the high bandwidth interfaces enable carriers to create a fully redundant virtual switch configuration scaling to as many as 320,000 DS-0s, or subscriber ports. In this configuration, the switch's advanced "super hunt group" capabilities roll incoming calls past busy ports until a connection is made, improving customer satisfaction by eliminating blocked calls. The enhanced interfaces, which feature support for both VT1.5 as well as M13 mapping protocols, enable carriers to transport voice calls to a SONET ring. The new enhanced interfaces can also be configured in a 1:6 redundancy scheme, increasing the number of subscribers a carrier can support and the number of simultaneous calls a carrier can process. The new features can be added to the broadband switch with a simple card and software upgrade.
Europeans
approve AOL—Time Warner merger The European Commission, Brussels approved the merger of America Online Inc. (AOL), Dulles, Va., and Time Warner Inc., New York City, after a four-month investigation. Pressure from the EU antitrust authorities prompted Time Warner to scrap plans for a $20 billion merger of its music group with Britain’s EMI record label rather than jeopardize the AOL alliance. The situation facing the European Commission differed greatly from the concerns being weighed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has yet to rule on the matter. U.S. antitrust authorities must reckon with how the domestic entertainment market will look after the combination of the nation’s largest Internet service provider and one of its biggest cable network operators. Because Time Warner has no European cable networks and AOL is not the leading ISP in any European country, the Commission was able to focus on the merged company’s potential to monopolize online music distribution. After AOL agreed to sever its ties with Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate, which held a 50 percent stake in AOL Europe, and Time Warner withdrew its EMI merger application, the European Commission was satisfied that the merged company would not have a stranglehold on the digital music market.
EDS to
run Navy Intranet The U.S. Department of Defense announced on 6 October that the U.S. Navy had awarded a five-year, $6.5 billion contract to build and maintain a seamless information network for the Navy and Marine Corps to Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), Plano, Texas. The contract also includes a three year option period that could bring the value of the deal to $10 billion. The new system, called the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, or NMCI, will tie together what is now a series of incompatible networks that, in some cases, do not allow e-mail attachments to be sent from one shore command to another. NMCI, which will provide voice, data, and video services over a secure private network using Internet transmission standards, will allow top Navy and Marine officers to better control the deployment of troops, the readiness of the fleet, and the ordering of equipment, said Marine Commandant Gen. James L. Jones. Jones noted that, "If we tried to do this ourselves, we’d wind up losing pace with technology by the time we fielded it." The Navy also pointed out that the new, centralized system–which comprises more than 360 000 desktop computers–will cost $400 million less to operate each year ($1.2 billion rather than $1.6 billion) than the web of networks it currently uses.
Dirig
unveils ASP package Dirig Software Inc. is out to prove something. These days applications service providers (ASPs) need all the help they can get showing customers they're worth their fees. That means being able to quantify the value they deliver their clients. The first step toward that is having a method in place to remotely manage their customers' environment that supplies the right level of control and information for both the service provider and their customer. Upstart Dirig unveiled a new version of its xSPress Web-based management software package for ASPs. xSPress adds new role-based views into the customer environment that lets both the client and the service provider track system and application performance. Dirig claims the software can manage any server-based application out of the box. XSPress uses a technique called normal operations detection to set threshold values by sampling an environment to determine what deviates from standard, expected patterns. The application can then log the event, send an alert or actually take action to correct the problem. The software package includes partitioned server capability so administrators can manage multiple customers from a single server. Dirig also rearchitected the management console so administrators can monitor and configure any system or multiple systems on their customer's network from any browser. Given that greater accessibility, the application adds security parameters that let ASPs set connection restrictions by machine, user name or password.
Transmeta chip no
speed demon "With these benchmarks, the results were rather poor compared with a 500MHz Pentium III," said Andreas Stiller, the C'T editor in charge of the testing. Stiller said the score for the Crusoe chip was roughly equivalent to an Intel chip running at half the speed, or a 300MHz Mobile Pentium III. However, Stiller noted that because of the Crusoe chips' unique architecture, the SYSmark tests may have skewed the results in favor of the Pentium chip. The Transmeta chip emulates the Pentium's X86 architecture by translating program instructions on-the-fly into its own internal instruction set, called Very Long Instruction Word. The translation process, which Transmeta calls "code morphing," is a performance bottleneck. But once translated, the code is stored in a special portion of RAM for quick access the next time it is needed, which tends to speed things up again. But Stiller said the SYSmark tests execute each piece of code only once, a situation that benefits the Pentium and is not typical of real world applications. "It is not usual for typical applications," Stiller said. "If you have repetition, you will have much better results for chips like Transmeta." Stiller said he ran a series of low-level memory benchmarks and found that performance of the Crusoe chip doubled and then tripled each time he repeated the test. "It improved by a factor of three," he said. "Maybe with an application it will be a 10, 20, 50 percent improvement in performance, maybe more." In conclusion, Stiller said the Crusoe chip is "a medium performance chip with a good performance-to-power ratio, which is very important for PDAs and ultra thin notebooks."
10-Gigabit
Ethernet technology picks up steam
Media
start-up offers comprehensive content distribution As is apparent from the background of the company's executives, the venture aims to make distribution of content - which the founders perceive more as MP3 files, movies, interactive games rather than just bits and bytes - comprehensive for the entertainment industry and other verticals in need of content distribution help. With that, Metapa enters the ranks of managed service Providers. The company aims to eliminate challenges that non-Internet businesses have when setting up digital media applications. It plans to provide a comprehensive service for new media operation set-up and management. The list of challenges that Metapa plans to address includes distribution of the media to various devices, tracking and managing the delivery of content to a number of various channel providers, providing centralized management of media distribution and more. To pull together the offering, Metapa plans to work with content distribution networks, Web hosters, and third parties. The service is due out in the first quarter of 2001.
Sprint
suffers another tough quarter A slowing market for wireless services caused Sprint PCS Group, the digital and wireless arm of Sprint Corp., to report quarterly earnings only slightly above analysts' lowered expectations. Sprint PCS reported revenue totaling $1.67 billion for the quarter ending Sept. 30, almost double the $844 million reported for the same quarter the previous year. Net losses dropped to $390 million, or 41 cents per diluted share, from a loss of $615 million, or 65 cents per diluted share, a year ago. According to First Call/Thomson Financial, analysts expected a loss of 42 cents for the quarter. While the margin was narrow for the quarter, Sprint PCS reported only 839,000 new subscribers, or a 16% increase, failing to even match the 883,000 figure reported the preceding quarter. And this number is far from Sprint's original forecast of 900,000, which was adjusted in September. Jeffrey Kagan, a telecommunications industry analyst, says Sprint's wireless business is facing the same problems faced by its competitors. "The wireless market is plateauing," Kagan says, "because all the customers are waiting for the new generation of data phones and services."
NEC
launches Bluetooth and wireless LAN products
AMD's
Athlon hits 1.2GHz with Duron 800MHz
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