networking

Femtocell and Small Cell is touted as an ideal solution for cutting mobile costs and boosting indoor network coverage. For mobile devices, it promises to offers faster data connections and fewer dropped calls, and improved mobile voice quality. Despites their benefits these devices have show slow take up from residential and small businesses. However, according to a report titled “Small Cells and Femtocells Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2013 to 2019”, this is about the change.

Over the next  ten years connected LED lighting has to potential to be the most promising vertical market segment in IoT (Internet of Things) market, this is according to research firm Berg Insight. According to Berg Insight, “The global shift from inefficient traditional light bulbs to energy saving LED technology is creating a massive window of opportunity for adding connectivity to the next generation of lighting systems”.

Some of us have not changed our home gateway router from the day we had our broadband installed, and that might be many moons ago.  If you are one of those persons, maybe it’s time to consider upgrading gateway router.  You might ask why you should if it’s working fine? Which is a perfectly and valid question and I can think of two reasons why you should: Better security and better speed.  My plan is to make it easy for you because I have done the search, the check and the test of some of the latest and best routers so that it will help you to make an informed decision when you go to buy your router.

Earlier this month the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a warning about the risks of having our connected devices being hacked. They have also made some suggestions on how we can protect our privacy, home and business from hackers. Google also recently released one of these recommendations on how to secure our home wireless network. The FBI suggested nine things we can do, which I think are easy for anyone to do.

It’s just over a year now that Samsung acquired SmartThings, and to show us what they have been doing with SmartThings since the acquisition, they were at IFA in Berlin. At the show, they launched an upgraded version of the SmartThings Hub with a new design and a more powerful processor to support video monitoring; now called the “Smarthub” and a range of sensors.  They have also used the opportunity to announce products for the UK connected homes.

Intel has announced the release of a number of processor technologies that will improve the speed of home gateway devices and allow service providers to boost the speed of their backend systems.  The new chipsets include the Intel AnyWAN GRX550 for xDSL and Fibre home gateways, Intel Puma 7 SoC for cable gateways and Intel Visual Compute Accelerator for Xeon based servers.

NETGEAR has released and upgraded version of its Nighthawk high performance VDSL Modem Router with the Nighthawk X4S AC2600. Nighthawk X4S has a dual-core 1.4GHz processor and built-in DSL modem, it’s the first DSL modem router on the market to support the latest Wave 2 WiFi technology with Quad-Stream on both bands as well as Multi-User MIMO-capability. Families with multiple Internet-enabled devices connecting simultaneously to DSL broadband will want to upgrade their WiFi router to the Nighthawk X4S to be able to enjoy its blazing-fast WiFi speeds, extended range, and overall improved streaming and gaming.

According to a recent survey, approximately 5 million households in Germany will be equipped with a smart home system by 2020. That means that the number of connected homes will increase by almost 900 per cent within a few years. One of the main reasons for the predicted surge is that the current solutions are often still quite expensive and don’t offer the security end users are looking for. However, now that more and more companies have started to develop new systems that aim to match the user’s needs, the demand for smart home systems is growing rapidly.