Category Archives: Business

Verizon FiOS claimed public utility status to get government perks

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The FCC classifies broadband (such as FiOS) as an information service under Title I of the Communications Act, resulting in less strict rules than the ones applied to common carrier services (such as the traditional phone system) under Title II. But since both services are delivered over the same wire, Verizon FiOS is able to reap the benefits of utility regulation without the downsides.

via Report: Verizon FiOS claimed public utility status to get government perks | Ars Technica.

“The companies’ affiliates have acted together and have taken control of the customer-funded wires and networks, which are Title II, in multiple ways that allow the company to control both the end-user connection—speed, access, and use of the Internet—as well as the competitor side of attaching to the wire and delivering services to the end users,” Kushnick wrote in an e-mail. “We will be asking for the FCC to open the networks to all forms of competition because customers paid for it and they are Title II, and because the affiliate companies have created a bottleneck that controls the wires and blocks competitors.”

On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google

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The truth is more likely that it’s less to do with his site and more to do with Google seeing a pattern of what it considers to be unnatural linking by the publishers it is contacting. As Haughey guesses, it’s more likely that MetaFilter is “collateral damage,” with the damage being the annoying link removal requests rather than any real distrust of the site. That’s especially since its ranking drop seems to well predate these requests.

But it is worrisome, especially when Haughey writes about how much care apparently goes into trying to ensure all links are relevant:

via On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer.

Earn respect. That’s your best defense if things go south with Google. It’s also your best offense for doing well in Google

Google Fiber Blog

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Bringing fiber all the way to your home is only one piece of the puzzle. We also partner with content providers (like YouTube, Netflix, and Akamai) to make the rest of your video’s journey shorter and faster. (This doesn’t involve any deals to prioritize their video ‘packets’ over others or otherwise discriminate among Internet traffic — we don’t do that.)

via Google Fiber Blog.

Don’t celebrate OpenStack’s success just yet

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Media, content creation, and life sciences struck Stitt as good examples for where OpenStack enjoys stronger greenfield adoption. Those areas revolve around the generation of entirely new data, rather than the manipulation of existing data; everything newly created can simply be deployed fresh into OpenStack.

It’s hard to ignore the overall enthusiasm around OpenStack — the near-doubling of attendance to 4,500 at this year’s summit is a sign of how interest is mushrooming. And the overarching presence of Red Hat shows how it’s working to make itself as synonymous with OpenStack as it did with Linux — but the existence of other vendors all vying for attention also raises a cautionary note that, open source notwithstanding, the OpenStack market runs the risk of becoming as fragmented and contentious as Linux itself.

via Don’t celebrate OpenStack’s success just yet | Openstack – InfoWorld.

Observations of an Internet Middleman

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That leaves the remaining six peers with congestion on almost all of the interconnect ports between us. Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfil the requests their customers make for content.

Five of those congested peers are in the United States and one is in Europe. There are none in any other part of the world. All six are large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market. In countries or markets where consumers have multiple Broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers.

via Observations of an Internet Middleman | Beyond Bandwidth.

Shouldn’t a broadband consumer network with near monopoly control over their customers be expected, if not obligated, to deliver a better experience than this?

Democratizing the Datastore

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No matter how you slice it, the database market is massive and evolving. It’s also a market that has received a disproportionate share of VC investment, with VCs plowing funding into a long list of database related market segments including: NoSQL, Hadoop, graph databases, open-source SQL, cloud-based databases, visualization, etc. But for all of that innovation, the process of setting up and running very large database remains either expensive or complicated. Expensive because large databases still often require expensive hardware and/or licenses. Complicated because setting up a massive cluster of commodity machines to run a database requires a ton of administrative work and expertise that not a lot of people have. It’s this administrative complexity that Crate is out to eliminate – and that’s the real story behind the investment: the democratization of database cluster management. Crate’s real claim to fame is that it allows developers – any developer – to easily set up a massively scalable data store on commodity hardware with sub-second query latency simply and within minutes.

via Democratizing the Datastore: Why we invested in Crate | Yankee Sabra Limey.

Drones On Demand

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Supposing you can make the whole thing safe, then it might stand a chance. The app could summon a drone using its GPS for location and the internet to communicate with the drone. This means the drone has to have a good internet connection and a satellite link seems like the best option, but the technology for this isn’t easy to get right.

via Drones On Demand.

Dropbox’s Next Chapter: Corporate Customers, IPO, Condi Rice, and Eddie Vedder

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Many corporations altogether forbid the use of Dropbox (including Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg Businessweek). Security software maker Symantec (SYMC) posts online instructions on how clients can block Dropbox, while Citrix (CTXS), which provides a competing product, found Dropbox to be one of the most blacklisted applications by companies in a 2012 report. Even businesses that use Dropbox often do so with caution. “It’s extremely convenient to share marketing materials,” says Markus Ament, chief product officer of Taulia, a five-year old cloud-computing startup. “We try to avoid using Dropbox for sensitive data. Right now, we’re not taking any chances.”

via Dropbox’s Next Chapter: Corporate Customers, IPO, Condi Rice, and Eddie Vedder – Businessweek.

Ubiquiti Networks, Inc.

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Ubiquiti Networks (NASDAQ: UBNT) is closing the digital divide by building network communication platforms for everyone and everywhere. With over 10 million devices deployed in over 180 countries, Ubiquiti is transforming under-networked businesses and communities. Our leading edge platforms, airMAX™, UniFi™, airFiber™, airVision™, mFi™ and EdgeMAX™ combine innovative technology, disruptive price performance and the support of a global user community to eliminate barriers to connectivity.

via About Us | Ubiquiti Networks, Inc..

Ubiquiti is a competitor of Ruckus wireless.  Here’s an interesting review using some of Ruckus’ products.

Another competitor is Xirrus.  And also Aruba and of course Cisco.