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| Live Webcast: Telecoms 2.0 - Where is telecoms heading? |
| UK telecoms is at a crossroads. IT managers face new demands to enable flexible working, deliver converged networks and provide support for multiple applications employing voice, video and media rich technologies. To deliver this, telcos talk about Next Generation Networks: but how does this buzzword translate into delivering the applications required to drive business forward? In this webcast, our panel of experts will review where we are with next generation telecoms in the UK, working through the concept of 'Telecoms 2.0': - Realising the potential of Next Generation Networks - why it isn't just about the technology? - What attributes should firms be looking for in their telco partner? - Is the relationship between telco provider and customer changing? - What things need to happen to make next generation services a reality? - You say you want the supplier to change. Do you want to change too? - What is Telecoms 2.0? |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:39:01 -0700 |
| Make your next hire based on past behaviors, not personality |
| When you're interviewing job applicants, do you search for traits such as hardworking, confident, and dependable? In this brief introductory chapter from The Truth About Managing People, 2nd Edition, author Stephen P. Robbins explains that traits aren't necessarily good predictors of future job performance -- but past behavior is. Title: The Truth About Managing People, 2nd Edition Author: Stephen P. Robbins Chapter 1: "Forget traits; It's Behavior That Counts!" " ISBN-13: 978-0-13-234603-0; Copyright 2008 by FT Press. Used with permission of the publisher. For more information, please visit InformIT. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:35:00 -0700 |
| Accelerating Virtualized Environments with Wide-Area Data Services (WDS) |
| Is your organization grappling with the performance challenges of virtualization and IT consolidation? Download this white paper and discover how wide-area data services (WDS) can help deliver the benefits of virtualization and IT consolidation (reduced IT complexity, lower costs, improved resource utilization, and data protection) while addressing the challenges of application performance and information availability across the WAN. Furthermore, the paper discusses the simplified IT administration and improved resource management benefits WDS solutions yield. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:11:12 -0700 |
| Talent shortage? How to win with what you've got |
| If you're not finding the talent you need in this super-competitive market, Vince Thompson suggests you look in another direction: toward the staff you already have. As he explains in this FT Press article, you may be able to turn your "losers" into "winners" with a little bit of effort. Copyright 2007 by Financial Times Prentice Hall. Used with permission of the publisher. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:26:03 -0700 |
| A look at how the digital explosion is affecting your world |
| Digital technologies have already had a dramatic impact on how we create and share information -- and we're just getting started. This chapter from Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion offers a look at the risks and opportunities made possible by new technologies and discusses seven "truths about bits," such as "Nothing goes away" and "Bits move faster than thought." Title: Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion Authors: Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, Harry Lewis Chapter 1: "Digital Explosion: What Is Happening and What Is at Stake?" ISBN-13: 978-0-13-713559-2; Copyright 2008 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Used with permission of the publisher. For more information, please visit InformIT. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:22:57 -0700 |
| Testing Ethernet Networks for the ATLAS Data Collection System |
| This paper reports recent work on Ethernet traffic generation and analysis. The paper uses Gigabit Ethernet NICs running customized embedded software and custom-built 32-port Fast Ethernet boards based on FPGAs to study the behavior of large Ethernet networks. The traffic generation software is able to accommodate many traffic distributions with the ultimate goal of generating traffic that resembles the data collection system of the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Each packet is time stamped with a global clock value and therefore one is able to compute an accurate measure of the network latency. Various other information collected from the boards is displayed in real time on a graphical interface. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:43:44 -0700 |
| The Ethernet Speaker System |
| If one wishes to distribute audio in a large room, building, or even a campus, one needs multiple speakers. These speakers must be jointly managed and synchronized. The Ethernet Speaker (ES) system presented in this paper can be thought of as a distributed audio amplifier and speakers, it does not "Play" any particular format, but rather relies on off-the-shelf audio applications (e.g., mpg123 player, Real Audio player) to act as the audio source. This paper covers all three elements, discussing design considerations, experiences from the prototype implementations, and the plans for extending the system to provide additional features such as automatic volume control, local user interfaces, and security. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:42:38 -0700 |
| The Convergence of Ethernet and Ethernot: A 10-Gigabit Ethernet Perspective |
| Off late, a vast number of interconnect technologies such as InfiniBand, Myrinet and Quadrics have been introduced into the System-Area Network (SAN) environment; the primary driving requirements of this environment being high-performance and a feature-rich interface. Ethernet, on the other hand, is already the ubiquitous technology for Wide-Area Network (WAN) environments. Traditionally, SAN technologies had been shut off from the WAN environment due to their incompatibility with the existing Ethernet compatible infrastructure. Similarly, Ethernet has traditionally not been considered a SAN interconnect due to its close to order-of-magnitude performance gap compared to other SAN interconnects such as InfiniBand, Myrinet and Quadrics (informally called Ethernot networks). |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:41:33 -0700 |
| Detecting Duplex Mismatch on Ethernet |
| IEEE 802.3 Ethernet networks, a standard LAN environment, provide a way to auto-negotiate the settings of capacity (10, 100, or 1000 Mb/s) and duplex (full- or half-). Under certain conditions described below, the auto-negotiation protocol fails to work properly. The resultant configuration problem, duplex mismatch, appears to be common; when this problem occurs, the connectivity is impaired, but not completely removed. This can result in performance problems that are hard to locate. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:40:28 -0700 |
| RF Over Ethernet for Wireless Infrastructure |
| Existing interconnects between RF and processing hardware have been tightly integrated at a system bus level or have incorporated proprietary network hardware, usually tied to the particular data being transported. This paper describes a system taking advantage of commodity Gigabit Ethernet to provide a flexible sample interconnect. Using off the shelf hardware provides flexibility at low cost allowing a choice of network topologies and equipment vendors. The soft real time solution deals well with Ethernet jitter and unreliability, which has traditionally prevented its use in real time systems. The solution is general in nature, allowing for a variety of data content in many applications, including baseband interconnects, distributed antennas and signal processing clusters. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:39:25 -0700 |
| An Overview of EtherNet/IP: An Application Layer Protocol for Industrial Automation |
| This paper presents an overview of Ethernet/IP (EIP), a high-level industrial application layer protocol for industrial automation applications. Built on the standard TCP/IP protocol suite, EIP uses all the traditional Ethernet hardware and software to define an application layer protocol that structures the task of configuring, accessing and controlling industrial automation devices. Ethernet/IP classifies Ethernet nodes as predefined device types with specific behaviors. The set of device types and the EIP application layer protocol is based on the Control and Information Protocol (CIP) layer used in both Devicenet and Controlnet. Building on these widely used protocol suites Ethernet/IP for the first time provides a seamless integrated system from the sensor-actuator network to the controller and enterprise networks. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:38:22 -0700 |
| Design Alternatives for a High-Performance Self-Securing Ethernet Network Interface |
| This paper presents and evaluates a strategy for integrating the Snort network intrusion detection system into a high-performance programmable Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC), considering the impact of several possible hardware and software design choices. While currently proposed ASIC, FPGA, and TCAM systems can match incoming string content in real-time, the system proposed also supports the stream reassembly and HTTP content transformation capabilities of Snort. This system, called LineSnort, parallelizes Snort using concurrency across TCP sessions and executes those parallel tasks on multiple low-frequency pipelined RISC processors embedded in the NIC. LineSnort additionally exploits opportunities for intra-session concurrency. The system also includes dedicated hardware for high-bandwidth data transfers and for high-performance string matching. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:37:19 -0700 |
| The Performance of Ethernet Under a Combined Data/Real-Time Traffic |
| This paper investigates the performance of an IEEE802.3 shared-bandwidth hub under a mixed data/real-time traffic load. For the regular data nodes an exponentially distributed packet length with a Poisson arrival is assumed. For the video sources, MPEG encoded video sources at 30 frames per second is assumed. The paper used simulation to study the network performance under the above-mentioned load. The paper used 2 different protocols, the standard IEEE802.3 and PCSMA, which is suitable for real-time traffic. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:36:14 -0700 |
| Ethernet as Transport Technology of Choice in Campus Ring Environments |
| The demand for more bandwidth is clearly driven by IP-based applications and consequently service providers are looking at infrastructures best support such applications. It has become clear that a packet-centric infrastructure is preferred and it is therefore displacing technologies like SONET, ATM and Frame Relay due to the high cost and lack of flexibility associated with these legacy technologies. Ethernet is rapidly becoming the transport technology of choice in access and metro networks because a worldwide deployment in LANs together with standardization has driven the price down considerably. A Campus network is a good example of a network where an Ethernet solution makes the most sense. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:34:06 -0700 |
| A Network on Chip Based Gigabit Ethernet Router Implemented on an FPGA |
| This paper shares the experiences gained from implementing an FPGA-based gigabit Ethernet router based on the SoCBUS network on chip architecture. The main reason for this project has been to test the SoCBUS architecture in a real design in order to investigate the performance and possible shortcomings. Another reason is to evaluate how SoCBUS performs in an FPGA. The results highlights several areas where the FPGA implementation of SoCBUS can be improved. |
| Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:33:03 -0700 |