Just about everyone wonders whether they are getting the Internet connection speed they are paying for. EasyStreet has a handy speed tester located at our data center. It is handy for checking the bandwidth between your location and EasyStreet. Beyond EasyStreet, bandwidth becomes the wild, wooly world of Tier 1 backbone providers, exchanges, BGP routing, peering relationships and all matters technical. It is very difficult to get a big picture of how the Internet is doing. Help is on the way…
Veteran Internet architect Vint Cerf, a Google VP and chief Internet evangelist, recently announced a project called Measurement Lab. The M-Lab website aims to collect information from around the world to develop a comprehensive picture of how, exactly, the Internet is working.
It appears that many people want to know. Since the announcement, many of the related websites under M-Lab have been struggling with excessive load. Regardless, the project bodes well for better understanding of how the Internet works.
Want to know where the top CIOs are really spending their IT dollars — assuming they have any IT dollars to spend?
Some insights are in a recent IDG Research Services tally of major corporations done for AT&T. They found that the top three technologies that companies are most likely to invest in during the next 18 months are:
1. Wireless networking
2. Business continuity planning, and
3. Remote access
This correlates closely, IDG says, with CIOs’ “perceived benefits for productivity, collaboration and innovation.”
Next on the list were investments in compliance, encryption and VoIP.
“Surprisingly, the more hyped technologies show only average investment potential,” says IDG. “For example, VoIP may have rated low for future investments because companies have already deployed it. And the terms ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘unified communications’ are relatively new and could be too nebulous for some respondents.”
Least likely investments in the next 18 months are RFID and utility computing.
Some of us may remember a couple of decades ago when small groups of zealots banded together in “MUGs” to worship each new Macinstosh model, OS release, and the ground Steve Jobs walked on.
Brace yourself. A new messiah is on the horizon and Its name is Google. A prophet named Matt MacPherson has come out of Canada to proclaim the Church of Google “because Google is the closest thing to a god that humans can know and understand.”
True, MacPherson is having a lot less trouble proving the existence of his god than some other religions. Plus, his church has a clearly visible Satan figure. “Microsoft is not limited by Google’s corporate philosophy that a company can make money without being evil,” says the Church of Google FAQ.
For more than you’d ever want to know about the Church of Google, Googlism, or to learn the prayers and commandments — better yet, to actually join it — simply click here.
Related to Greg’s previous post, this ITWorld article tells the tale of an undercover spammer/scammer working for the FBI. It took this guy, Keith Mularski, three years to gain administrative control of the DarkMarket “carder” site. Even after he was exposed as an FBI agent, some of Mularski’s carder buddies refused to believe the reports. “These guys trusted me so much that even after the Wired article came out exposing me, for two days afterwards people were reaching out to me on ICQ thinking that it was a hoax and making sure I was alright.” Click here to read the entire article.
You think crime doesn’t pay? It seems the Internet’s shadow economy is booming, and it’s making life more hazardous for anyone who relies on the web. And that’s just about all of us. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that cybercrime is now bigger than illegal drug trafficking. The feds put it at $105 billion a year and still growing.
A senior architect at IT security provider MessageLabs, Maksym Schipka, recently laid out how so much money can trade hands with just the viruses, spyware and trojans known as malware.
A new malware program sells for upward from $250, and for a mere $25 a month, you can get updates to ensure your new malware avoids detection. The unscrupulous buyer can then use a botnet – a network of infected computers belonging to innocent people – to spam millions of emails or send hundreds of thousands of trojan attacks or host a malicious website. Now the buyer can sit back and watch stolen data and identities roll in.
“A full identity sells for around $5,” Schipka says. “This includes full name and address, a passport or drivers-license scan, credit card numbers and bank account details. Credit card numbers sell for between two and 5 percent of the remaining credit balance on the cards in question.”
All in all, it’s a disturbing picture of an economy complete with division of labor, price competition and marketing, says Schipka’s report, all of it “accelerated to Internet speed and carried out online.”
