Data Center

Which Way Does Your Data Flow?

Data may be moving to the cloud, but understanding the physical geography underlying the cloud is becoming increasingly critical. October's decision by the European Court of Justice, striking down key portions of the Safe Harbor rules that some companies had relied on to legally transfer personal data between Europe and the U.S., was only the latest example of the regulatory uncertainty involved in cross-border data flows. While Internet companies have begun to address challenges at the static geographic points where data is resident, understanding the actual paths that data travels is an important and sometimes overlooked part of the compliance analysis.

A Bend in the River: ICANN Should Prepare for a 2 °C World

Toward the end of last week, the world waited with bated breath for the outcome of the 21st annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The meeting, commonly called COP 21, was held in Le Bourget, Paris, from November 30 to December 12; a bit too soon after the terrorists attacks on Paris earlier in November. COP 21 was important because COP 15 in Copenhagen (2009) failed to arrive at a global consensus...

Regulation and Reason

Imagine living in a country where it was necessary to register with your community government by providing a copy of one of the following... This may be necessary in perhaps a large number of nations. However, as a United States citizen and resident, I was quite surprised when my local community issued the request. I investigated and found much to my dismay, that my community in fact was required by regulation to survey its residents on a biennial basis.

Future Network Forum to Be Held in Nanjing in December 2015

Between December 10th and 11th 2015, the China Future Network Development and Innovation Forum, jointly hosted by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Nanjing Municipal Government, is scheduled to be held in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The forum will be jointly organized by Jiangsu Future Networks Innovation Institute and Beijing Internet Institute, with the theme of "Building future network test facilities and promoting network development & innovation", and it will invite nearly a hundred industrial experts at home and abroad, to establish a platform marked by security, innovation, openness, cooperation where the policy, industry, academics, and application are integrated.

Correcting Federal Databases: A Procedural Guide

Federal databases, such as those being compiled by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, contain data about many people and businesses. Although some of this data may be protected personal information (PPI), there is also extensive information in federal databases that is publicly disseminated via the internet. If the information is wrong, it has the potential to be a vector of tortious mischief.

ICT Sectors Are Merging Into a New Wholesale Platform for the Networked Economy

There certainly is a lot of interest in the IoT (personal devices) and M2M (industrial applications) market. But what we are seeing is only what is happening on the surface. Most of the IoT and M2M activities are taking place unseen. For example, all new electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes, game consoles) are now IoT devices. Wearable technology has also become a thriving part of the IoT industry, with an ever-broadening range of possible uses and devices, including smart watches, glasses, clothing items, skin patches, and even implants for health monitoring.

Cloud Versus Dedicated Data Centers: Rumble in the Virtual Jungle

Cloud or dedicated? That's the question companies face each time they need new storage space or resources -- is it better to build local or host off site? Both tech segments are performing strongly, with the global data center blade server market to reach more than $15 billion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate of 10.25 percent and cloud computing sitting on a $16 billion market that's only trending up thanks to increased public and hybrid adoption. In other words, it's virtual war: Who wins the battle?

So You’ve Got Some Big Data, but Now What?

As Internet connection continues on a steady path of becoming a ubiquitous commodity in mature markets, we saw an eruption of big data tracking and analysis software in 2014. But what are operators going to do with all this new information? And how can they turn data into revenue? To start with, providers need more than just a data measurement tool. They need a solution that can analyze real-time data and then automate processes to optimize their networks and improve their subscribers' experiences.

The IETF’s *Other* Diversity Challenge: An Update

Last June I wrote an article titled "The IETF's Other Diversity Challenge" where I discussed the positive steps the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is taking to increase the diversity of its participants and raised a potentially overlooked demographic: Network Operators. That essay was a problem statement of sorts, and I was long ago taught that you should only raise problems that you have a solution for, or are at least willing to help solve.

A Cynic’s View of 2015 Security Predictions - Part 2

Every year those in the security industry are bombarded with various cyber security predictions. There's the good, the bad and the ugly. Some predictions are fairly ground breaking, while others are just recycled from previous years -- that's allowed of course if the threats still stand. In part one of my predictions I looked at the malware threats, so let's take a look at big data and the cloud for part two.