It's no secret that I don't very much like this whole private cloud or internal cloud concept... on the basis that while advanced virtualisation technologies are valuable to businesses they are a severe short sell of what cloud computing is ultimately capable of. The electricity grid took over from the on-site generators very quickly and I expect cloud computing to do the same with respect to private servers, racks and datacenters... more
In this article I will explain the motivations behind the SocialDNS Project. I will justify why the DNS system is NOT the phone book of the Internet. More concretely, DNS is not a public directory nor enables search mechanisms over meta-information related to domains. In this line, I will present the advantages of SocialDNS, a naming and directory system that aims to become the phone book of the Web. SocialDNS is NOT another alternative DNS root nor aims to replace the current DNS for resolving domain names. It complements the existing DNS to offer advanced services that are beyond the scope of the existing infrastructure for Web settings. more
I will first begin this post by emphasizing that this article is entirely my personal viewpoint and not to be considered as endorsed by or a viewpoint of my employer or any other organization that I am affiliated with. Neither is this to be considered an indictment of the sterling work (which I personally value very highly) that several people in Microsoft are doing against cybercrime. Microsoft's takedown of 3322.org to disrupt the Nitol botnet is partial and will, at best, have a temporary effect on the botnet itself... more
In a relatively short time, the phrase "in the cloud" has become a term of art when talking about the internet. A quick Google search shows nearly a million uses of the phrase in the past month, a 3x increase from the same period in 2009. But, what does it actually mean to have your web site, your software, your data, or anything else "in the cloud?" "In the cloud" is derived from "cloud computing," which in turn is just a new term for distributed computing, where data-crunching tasks are spread across a variety of different physical processing units. This was common in mainframes in the 1960s, and later the idea of distributing processing across cheap PCs running Linux became popular in the 1990s. more
Back in the early 2000s, several notable Internet researchers were predicting the death of the Internet. Based on the narrative, the Internet infrastructure had not been designed for the scale that was being projected at the time, supposedly leading to fatal security and scalability issues. Yet somehow the Internet industry has always found a way to dodge the bullet at the very last minute. more
I'm curiously puzzled, but not entirely surprised, how a company such as Amazon (NASDAQ: GS) allowed its servers to be interrupted for any length of time due to severe storm damage in northern Virginia this past weekend. Companies using cloud servers are both expectant and dependent on being able to pull information from cloud sources to operate their businesses without interruption. After all, IT professionals have been preaching the security and reliability of the cloud for quite some time to manage large data off-site. Steps for Amazon to repair credibility should be transparent and swift. more
From will they ever learn department, we are once again seeing attempts by incumbent carriers to skirt rules around network neutrality. They tried and failed with UBB. Now they are at it again with "speed boost" technologies. The two technologies at question are Verizon's "Turbo" service and Roger's "SpeedBoost". more
It's easy to look at Amazon SES and sigh. Thousands of low-end customers sending mail from a shared IP pool? Amazon already knows that trick never works! Just one spammer will ruin the reputation of those IP addresses, resulting in ongoing delivery problems for everyone who uses the service. It is possible that Amazon can build the systems and human processes to keep spammers out; certainly sounds like they want to. more
Huawei's Cloud is growing faster than Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, Iain Morris writes. He cites U.S. Senator Tom Cotton on growth in "Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates." Cotton further says: "In addition, Huawei's cloud services revenues reportedly rose by almost 170 percent in 2020. This accelerating revenue stream threatens to undermine U.S. efforts to curtail Huawei's power, influence, and financial strength." I think Cotton is a little high on Huawei Cloud growth... more
"It's in the cloud" has become a phrase we don't think twice about, but less than a decade ago, you might have received some awkward looks using this kind of talk in the boardroom. Cloud-based software applications are heralding the fourth industrial revolution that will eventually lead to the industrial internet of things (IIOT). The reasons for this are because... more
It all started earlier this year in June. I was coding transcripts of the past global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meetings as part of a data mining exercise for DiploFoundation's Geneva Internet Platform (GIP). Pouring over transcript after transcript, the work was tedious, but I was learning a great deal about the Internet governance community as well. My interest was piqued by the conversations, the familiar names I came across, and the multi-stakeholder manifestation of politics, perspectives, and positions. more
"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." -Mark Weiser ...The Internet of Things is a step in this very direction. And like all things new and mysterious, it has its fair share of utopian and dystopian soothsayers; with an almost certain probability that neither of their deterministic predictions will completely come to fruition in the future. more
The success or failure of public cloud services can be measured by whether they deliver high levels of performance, security and reliability that are on par with, or better than, those available within enterprise-owned data centers... IDC forecasts that public cloud IT spending will increase from $40 billion in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016. To provide the performance, security and reliability needed, cloud providers are moving quickly to build a virtualized multi-data center service architecture, or a "data center without walls." more
The European Union's cloud computing strategy couldn't come at a better time as the region lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to cloud computing usage. The EU announced its cloud computing strategy last month and is optimistic it will create new jobs and help boost a struggling economy. An information campaign is necessary if the EU is to overturn the misunderstanding and general lack of knowledge about the cloud. more
Google today launched a long-rumored "Drive" service to allow users store photos, videos, and other digital files in its massive data centers. Available immediately, first five gigabytes of storage per account of Google Drive is free and additional storage will be sold for prices starting at $2.49 per month for 25 gigabytes. more
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