Ian Anderson

The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education, OP-TEC, is a consortium of two-year colleges, high schools, universities, national laboratories, industry partners, and professional societies funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. The participating entities of OP-TEC have joined forces to create secondary-to-postsecondary as well as returning adult “pipelines” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and to empower two-year colleges to prepare technicians in optics and photonics.

<a href="http://www.op-tec.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education</a>, OP-TEC, is a consortium of two-year colleges, high schools, universities, national laboratories, industry partners, and professional societies funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. The participating entities of OP-TEC have joined forces to create secondary-to-postsecondary as well as returning adult “pipelines” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and to empower two-year colleges to prepare technicians in optics and photonics.

Ten Minutes with OP-TEC Webmaster Ian Anderson

Hacking Car Anti-collision Systems, August 28, 2016 A group of researchers presenting at this month’s Def Con hacker conference showed how they were able to trick Tesla's sophisticated anti-collision sensors to make a car hit an object it would normally detect in its path. Before we start on the cars – you went to Def Con this year Mike – how was it? So let’s get to the cars now – who did this research? The group consisted of Chen Yan, a PhD student at Zhejiang University, Jianhao Liu, a senior security consultant at Qihoo 360, and Wenyuan Xu, a professor at Zhejiang University and The University of South Carolina. So can you give a quicker overview of what they did? They discovered methods for "quieting" sensors to diminish or hide obstacles in a car's path, "spoofing" them to make an object appear farther or closer than it actually is, and jamming, which, Yan said, renders the sensor useless as it's "overwhelmed by noise." Could this be done now? I mean, if someone is driving a Tesla or any other car with this kind of sensor technology, should they be concerned? It's important to note that the demonstration was a proof-of-concept that did not mimic real-world conditions today. Researchers were working on cars that were usually stationary with what was sometimes very expensive equipment. They noted that the "sky wasn't falling." But the experiment suggests that theoretically, a few years from now, somebody could make a device that could jam certain sensors in a nearby car. Can you talk about these sensors a little more? There are a number of sensors on a Tesla Model S that are used for a variety of functions. It has radar to detect objects in front of it, GPS for location tracking, and cameras to detect speed limit signs and lane markings, for example. As the talk showed, many of these things can be tricked by a determined attacker. Is it just Tesla people need to be concerned about? Much of their presentation focused on the Tesla Model S, but they also successfully jammed sensors on cars from Audi, Volkswagen, and Ford. So what kinds of systems were they jamming? Cars with ultrasonic sensors Cars with parking assistance The Tesla Model S with self-parking and summon Let’s talk a little more about what they were able to demonstrate. In a video demonstrating an attack, the researchers jammed sensors in the rear of the Model S, so the car did not know it was about to hit a person standing behind it. In another, they "spoofed" its Autopilot to trick it into thinking it would drive into something that was not actually there. You mentioned they talked about using lasers – can you give any details? They also used off-the-shelf lasers to defeat the onboard cameras, and, in one of the most low-tech demonstrations, they wrapped objects up in cheap black foam that rendered them invisible to the car's sensors. What kind of feedback did they get from the manufacturers? Yan said after the talk that Tesla reacted positively when they disclosed their research, and it was researching ways to mitigate these types of attacks. "They appreciated our work and are looking into this issue," he said. So, in summary what are the auto makers concerned about after this presentation?  Realistic issues of automotive sensor security Big threat to autonomous vehicles (present and future) Attacks on ultrasonic sensors Attacks on Millimeter Wave (MMW) Radars Attacks on cameras Attacks on self-driving cars  Where can people get the full Deaf Con presentation? It's available at Def Con’s website  https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20presentations/DEFCON-24-Liu-Yan-Xu-Can-You-Trust-Autonomous-Vehicles.pdf Reference:  http://www.businessinsider.com/defcon-tesla-jamming-spoofing-autopilot-2016-8

Hacking Car Anti-collision Systems, August 28, 2016 A group of researchers presenting at this month’s Def Con hacker conference showed how they were able to trick Tesla's sophisticated anti-collision sensors to make a car hit an object it would normally detect in its path. Before we start on the cars – you went to Def Con this year Mike – how was it? So let’s get to the cars now – who did this research? The group consisted of Chen Yan, a PhD student at Zhejiang University, Jianhao Liu, a senior security consultant at Qihoo 360, and Wenyuan Xu, a professor at Zhejiang University and The University of South Carolina. So can you give a quicker overview of what they did? They discovered methods for "quieting" sensors to diminish or hide obstacles in a car's path, "spoofing" them to make an object appear farther or closer than it actually is, and jamming, which, Yan said, renders the sensor useless as it's "overwhelmed by noise." Could this be done now? I mean, if someone is driving a Tesla or any other car with this kind of sensor technology, should they be concerned? It's important to note that the demonstration was a proof-of-concept that did not mimic real-world conditions today. Researchers were working on cars that were usually stationary with what was sometimes very expensive equipment. They noted that the "sky wasn't falling." But the experiment suggests that theoretically, a few years from now, somebody could make a device that could jam certain sensors in a nearby car. Can you talk about these sensors a little more? There are a number of sensors on a Tesla Model S that are used for a variety of functions. It has radar to detect objects in front of it, GPS for location tracking, and cameras to detect speed limit signs and lane markings, for example. As the talk showed, many of these things can be tricked by a determined attacker. Is it just Tesla people need to be concerned about? Much of their presentation focused on the Tesla Model S, but they also successfully jammed sensors on cars from Audi, Volkswagen, and Ford. So what kinds of systems were they jamming? Cars with ultrasonic sensors Cars with parking assistance The Tesla Model S with self-parking and summon Let’s talk a little more about what they were able to demonstrate. In a video demonstrating an attack, the researchers jammed sensors in the rear of the Model S, so the car did not know it was about to hit a person standing behind it. In another, they "spoofed" its Autopilot to trick it into thinking it would drive into something that was not actually there. You mentioned they talked about using lasers – can you give any details? They also used off-the-shelf lasers to defeat the onboard cameras, and, in one of the most low-tech demonstrations, they wrapped objects up in cheap black foam that rendered them invisible to the car's sensors. What kind of feedback did they get from the manufacturers? Yan said after the talk that Tesla reacted positively when they disclosed their research, and it was researching ways to mitigate these types of attacks. "They appreciated our work and are looking into this issue," he said. So, in summary what are the auto makers concerned about after this presentation? <ul> <li>Realistic issues of automotive sensor security</li> <li>Big threat to autonomous vehicles (present and future)</li> <li>Attacks on ultrasonic sensors</li> <li>Attacks on Millimeter Wave (MMW) Radars</li> <li>Attacks on cameras</li> <li>Attacks on self-driving cars</li> </ul> Where can people get the full Deaf Con presentation? It's available at Def Con’s website <a href="https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20presentations/DEFCON-24-Liu-Yan-Xu-Can-You-Trust-Autonomous-Vehicles.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2024/DEF%20CON%2024%20presentations/DEFCON-24-Liu-Yan-Xu-Can-You-Trust-Autonomous-Vehicles.pdf</a> Reference: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/defcon-tesla-jamming-spoofing-autopilot-2016-8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://www.businessinsider.com/defcon-tesla-jamming-spoofing-autopilot-2016-8</a>

Hacking Car Anti-collision Systems [19:08]

Q: Could you tell us a little about how this research began? A: Actually in 2013 Flavio Garcia, a computer scientist at University of Birmingham, and a team of researchers were about to reveal a vulnerability in the ignition of Volkswagen cars that allowed them to start the car and drive off without a key. This vulnerability was present in millions of VWs. Q: You say “about to reveal”? A: Yes, they were sued, which delayed the publication of the work for 2 years. They used that time to continue their research into vulnerabilities with VW cars. Q: So did they find anything new? A: They sure did. The paper they just published identifies flaws not only with the ignition system, but also with the keyless entry system. Q: How many cars are we talking about? A: The researchers claim that every Volkswagen sold since 1995 is affected. The estimate is nearly 100 million cars! Q: Which cars are affected? A: There are two distinct attacks – one impacts Audi and Škoda cars; the other Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Fiat, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, and Peugeot. Q: Do they provide any details of the attack? A: They use radio hardware to intercept signals from the victim’s key fob, using the intercepted signals to clone the key. They started with software defined radio connected to a laptop, but have moved to a small $40 setup that includes an Arduino board with an attached radio receiver. Q: How concerned should we be? A: Of the two attacks, the one targeting Volkswagen cars is most concerning because (1) there is no indication to the drivers that they’ve been compromised, (2) one a single button press needs to be intercepted. Q: Why is the security weak? A: It turns out that millions of Volkswagen vehicles share a single cryptographic key. Using the hardware we described earlier, researchers capture another key unique to the target vehicle that is transmitted every time the button on the key fob is pressed. By combining these two key, the researchers can clone the key fob. A single interception and the car is “owned”. Q: So it’s that easy? A: Not quite that easy. A few caveats. The attacker has to be within 300 feet of the car. The shared key is not quite universal. The shared key may change based on the model of the car and the year. Also, the internal components where the shared is extracted from may be different. Q: So the key’s not universal. That’s good, right? A: Yes, except that the 4 most common keys are used in nearly all the 100 million Volkswagen’s sold in the past 20 years. Q: So should listeners sell their Volkswagens? A: No, not yet. The researchers have not revealed where the shared key is stored, but a determined hacker could reverse engineer the keys and publish or sell them. And a newer locking system, used in the VW Golf 7 and other models, uses unique - not shared - keys and it his immune to these attacks. Q: You mentioned that there are two attacks. What’s the second? A: The second technique exploits flaws in a common cryptographic scheme called HiTag2 that is used in millions of vehicles. Q: How does this attack work? A: The hardware setup is similar to the previous attack. One big difference is that you don’t need to extract any internal keys from the car. You do have to intercept more codes from the target key fob - eight codes specifically. These codes include a rolling code number that changes with every button press. Q: Sounds a lot like cracking a WEP key on a wireless network. A: It is. In fact, the researchers suggest jamming the key fob so that the driver has to repeatedly press the button. Essentially generating more traffic to capture. Similar to a so-called replay attack used to help speed up the cracking of WEP keys. Q: Why not just updated the encryption scheme? A: It turns out the HiTag2 crypto system is hard coded into chips made by semiconductor company NXP. According to NXP HiTag2 is a legacy security algorithm - 18 years old. Since 2009, they have introduced new, more advanced algorithms, but car makers have been slow to transition to these new chips. Q: So attackers can unlock the car. Can they steal the car? A: While these attacks focus on the key fob and unlocking the car. Other research - even these researchers previous work - focuses on exploiting vulnerabilities in the ignition system and bypassing so-called immobilizer systems that are intended to prevent the car being driven without the key fob present. Combining these attackers, it would be possible to steal the car. In fact, there is already evidence of sophisticated digitally-enable car thieves using mysterious “black box” devices to steal cars. Q: So what should car owners do? A: Car owners can’t fix the vulnerabilities, so there’s little they can do to avoid these sort of attacks. If you’re concerned about someone cloning your key fob (1) don’t leave valuables in the car, (2) avoid using the key fob at all.

Q: Could you tell us a little about how this research began? A: Actually in 2013 Flavio Garcia, a computer scientist at University of Birmingham, and a team of researchers were about to reveal a vulnerability in the ignition of Volkswagen cars that allowed them to start the car and drive off without a key. This vulnerability was present in millions of VWs. Q: You say “about to reveal”? A: Yes, they were sued, which delayed the publication of the work for 2 years. They used that time to continue their research into vulnerabilities with VW cars. Q: So did they find anything new? A: They sure did. The paper they just published identifies flaws not only with the ignition system, but also with the keyless entry system. Q: How many cars are we talking about? A: The researchers claim that every Volkswagen sold since 1995 is affected. The estimate is nearly 100 million cars! Q: Which cars are affected? A: There are two distinct attacks – one impacts Audi and Škoda cars; the other Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Fiat, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, and Peugeot. Q: Do they provide any details of the attack? A: They use radio hardware to intercept signals from the victim’s key fob, using the intercepted signals to clone the key. They started with software defined radio connected to a laptop, but have moved to a small $40 setup that includes an Arduino board with an attached radio receiver. Q: How concerned should we be? A: Of the two attacks, the one targeting Volkswagen cars is most concerning because (1) there is no indication to the drivers that they’ve been compromised, (2) one a single button press needs to be intercepted. Q: Why is the security weak? A: It turns out that millions of Volkswagen vehicles share a single cryptographic key. Using the hardware we described earlier, researchers capture another key unique to the target vehicle that is transmitted every time the button on the key fob is pressed. By combining these two key, the researchers can clone the key fob. A single interception and the car is “owned”. Q: So it’s that easy? A: Not quite that easy. A few caveats. The attacker has to be within 300 feet of the car. The shared key is not quite universal. The shared key may change based on the model of the car and the year. Also, the internal components where the shared is extracted from may be different. Q: So the key’s not universal. That’s good, right? A: Yes, except that the 4 most common keys are used in nearly all the 100 million Volkswagen’s sold in the past 20 years. Q: So should listeners sell their Volkswagens? A: No, not yet. The researchers have not revealed where the shared key is stored, but a determined hacker could reverse engineer the keys and publish or sell them. And a newer locking system, used in the VW Golf 7 and other models, uses unique - not shared - keys and it his immune to these attacks. Q: You mentioned that there are two attacks. What’s the second? A: The second technique exploits flaws in a common cryptographic scheme called HiTag2 that is used in millions of vehicles. Q: How does this attack work? A: The hardware setup is similar to the previous attack. One big difference is that you don’t need to extract any internal keys from the car. You do have to intercept more codes from the target key fob - eight codes specifically. These codes include a rolling code number that changes with every button press. Q: Sounds a lot like cracking a WEP key on a wireless network. A: It is. In fact, the researchers suggest jamming the key fob so that the driver has to repeatedly press the button. Essentially generating more traffic to capture. Similar to a so-called replay attack used to help speed up the cracking of WEP keys. Q: Why not just updated the encryption scheme? A: It turns out the HiTag2 crypto system is hard coded into chips made by semiconductor company NXP. According to NXP HiTag2 is a legacy security algorithm - 18 years old. Since 2009, they have introduced new, more advanced algorithms, but car makers have been slow to transition to these new chips. Q: So attackers can unlock the car. Can they steal the car? A: While these attacks focus on the key fob and unlocking the car. Other research - even these researchers previous work - focuses on exploiting vulnerabilities in the ignition system and bypassing so-called immobilizer systems that are intended to prevent the car being driven without the key fob present. Combining these attackers, it would be possible to steal the car. In fact, there is already evidence of sophisticated digitally-enable car thieves using mysterious “black box” devices to steal cars. Q: So what should car owners do? A: Car owners can’t fix the vulnerabilities, so there’s little they can do to avoid these sort of attacks. If you’re concerned about someone cloning your key fob (1) don’t leave valuables in the car, (2) avoid using the key fob at all.

Lock It and Still Lose It [24:11]

References:  http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2016/07/15/beginners-guide-pokmon-go/87133450/  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/19/hacker_46_months_db_breach/

References: <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2016/07/15/beginners-guide-pokmon-go/87133450/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2016/07/15/beginners-guide-pokmon-go/87133450/</a> <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/19/hacker_46_months_db_breach/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/19/hacker_46_months_db_breach/</a>

Intro To Pokemon Go [31:14]

Title: 4K Ultra High Definition Television  Introduction High definition has meant 1080p (1,920 by 1,080) resolution for years now, and it's ready for an upgrade. That's where 4K, also called ultra high-definition, or UHD, television comes in. 4K is finally a mature, accessible technology. In this podcast we take a close look at UHD 4K technology referencing a PC Magazine post.   Updates  First some continued bad news on the security front … Businesses pay $100,000 to DDoS extortionists who never DDoS anyone – Dan Goodin  http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/businesses-pay-100000-to-ddos-extortionists-who-never-ddos-anyone/ Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections – Dan Goodin  http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/3-million-servers-are-sitting-ducks-for-crypto-ransomware-infection/ Now for a little good news … Petya Ransomware's Encryption Defeated and Password Generator Released – Lawrence Abrams  http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/petya-ransomwares-encryption-defeated-and-password-generator-released/  http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/experts-crack-nasty-ransomware-that-took-crypto-extortion-to-new-heights/ NSA Launces 2016 GenCyber Camps https://www.gen-cyber.com Questions: What Is 4K? How Is 4K Different Than 1080p?  What if you have a 4K TV but not any 4K content? What About HDR? What 4K TVs Are Out There Now? Is There Even Any 4K Content You Can Watch? Do You Need 4K?  Reference: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412174,00.asp

Title: 4K Ultra High Definition Television  Introduction High definition has meant 1080p (1,920 by 1,080) resolution for years now, and it's ready for an upgrade. That's where 4K, also called ultra high-definition, or UHD, television comes in. 4K is finally a mature, accessible technology. In this podcast we take a close look at UHD 4K technology referencing a PC Magazine post. Updates  First some continued bad news on the security front … Businesses pay $100,000 to DDoS extortionists who never DDoS anyone – Dan Goodin <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/businesses-pay-100000-to-ddos-extortionists-who-never-ddos-anyone/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/businesses-pay-100000-to-ddos-extortionists-who-never-ddos-anyone/</a> Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections – Dan Goodin <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/3-million-servers-are-sitting-ducks-for-crypto-ransomware-infection/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/3-million-servers-are-sitting-ducks-for-crypto-ransomware-infection/</a> Now for a little good news … Petya Ransomware's Encryption Defeated and Password Generator Released – Lawrence Abrams <a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/petya-ransomwares-encryption-defeated-and-password-generator-released/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/petya-ransomwares-encryption-defeated-and-password-generator-released/</a> <a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/experts-crack-nasty-ransomware-that-took-crypto-extortion-to-new-heights/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/experts-crack-nasty-ransomware-that-took-crypto-extortion-to-new-heights/</a> NSA Launces 2016 GenCyber Camps <a href="https://www.gen-cyber.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.gen-cyber.com</a> Questions: What Is 4K? How Is 4K Different Than 1080p?  What if you have a 4K TV but not any 4K content? What About HDR? What 4K TVs Are Out There Now? Is There Even Any 4K Content You Can Watch? Do You Need 4K?  Reference: <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412174,00.asp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412174,00.asp</a>

4K Ultra High Definition Television [22:37]

Questions we try to answer in the podcast: 1. What is the difference between an Engineering Technologydegree and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering? 2. Can you also get an AS or AAS degree in EngineeringTechnology at a Community College? 3. What is the career path for an Engineering Technology degreeholder versus a Bachelor of Science in Engineering? 4. What should you be doing in high school if you are interestedin an Engineering Technology or Bachelor of Science in Engineeringdegree? 5. What courses will you likely take in college if you pursue anEngineering Technology degree? 6. What courses will you likely take in college if youpursue a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree? 7. What interests are common to engineering technology degreeand engineering bachelor of science degree pursuers? Reference: https://floridapolytechnic.org/engineering-technology-degree/

Questions we try to answer in the podcast: 1. What is the difference between an Engineering Technology degree and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering? 2. Can you also get an AS or AAS degree in Engineering Technology at a Community College? 3. What is the career path for an Engineering Technology degree holder versus a Bachelor of Science in Engineering? 4. What should you be doing in high school if you are interested in an Engineering Technology or Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree? 5. What courses will you likely take in college if you pursue an Engineering Technology degree? 6. What courses will you likely take in college if you pursue a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree? 7. What interests are common to engineering technology degree and engineering bachelor of science degree pursuers? Reference: <a href="https://floridapolytechnic.org/engineering-technology-degree/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://floridapolytechnic.org/engineering-technology-degree/</a>

Engineering Technology and Engineering Degrees – What is the Difference [20:30]

Intro On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started a three-year process of making our mobile internet even faster and better. The government is buying underused TV airwaves and selling it to mobile carriers for billions of dollars. These radio waves—also known as spectrum—will shape mobile US connectivity as streaming video continues to swallow up bandwidth across the country and as we inch closer to 5G internet speeds. In this podcast, we discuss the auction process. Updates Ransomware Evolution is Really Bad News ­ - Angela Alcorn Recently, 10 hospitals in Maryland operated without access to their central network because their domain servers were locked by a ransomware known as Samsam http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ransomware-evolution-is-really-bad-news-microsoft-edge-will-intelligently-pause-flash-tech-news-digest/ Victims paid more than $24 million to ransomware criminals in 2015 — and that's just the beginning – Dan Turkel The DOJ revealed that the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) had received nearly 7,700 public complaints regarding ransomware since 2005, totaling $57.6 million in damages. Those damages include ransoms paid — generally $200 to $10,000, according to the FBI — as well as costs incurred in dealing with the attack and estimated value of data lost. In 2015 alone, victims paid over $24 million across nearly 2,500 cases reported to the IC3. http://www.businessinsider.com/doj-and-dhs-ransomware-attacks-government-2016-4  Adobe issues emergency update to Flash after ransomware attacks – Jim Finkle Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) issued an emergency update on Thursday to its widely used Flash software for Internet browsers after researchers discovered a security flaw that was being exploited to deliver ransomware to Windows PCs. The software maker urged the more than 1 billion users of Flash on Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux computers to update the product as quickly as possible after security researchers said the bug was being exploited in "drive-by" attacks that infect computers with ransomware when tainted websites are visited. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-adobe-systems-cyber-ransomware-idUSKCN0X502K Spectrum How about the auction, What’s spectrum? The way it is being used here, by the FCC - Spectrum is really just a fancy term for radio waves, a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. What’s going on with T-Mobile? T-Mobile wants to stop that from happening, saying AT&amp;T and Verizon already control three-fourths of low-band frequencies. Who else is interested in spectrum? Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network, Google (?) How is this auction being setup? TV broadcasters by Tuesday April 5 must have made official their intentions to accept the FCC's opening price for the rights to the spectrum they currently use for digital TV broadcasts.  Who is bidding and how much money are we talking about? AT&amp;T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Dish Network, etc Can you describe the spectrum being auctioned and what will be done with it? The FCC expects that bidders will provide new wireless services using that spectrum, which is in the 600 MHz band and currently used for UHF TV channels. The characteristics of UHF that make it good for TV also work well for wireless communications and data delivery -- the waves can travel great distances and pass through buildings. So what happens if a TV station sells its spectrum? TV broadcasters have the choice of moving to a lower-frequency spot on the spectrum, sharing signals with a neighboring station or giving up broadcasting altogether. Does the FCC know which stations are going to sell? While some stations have made their intentions to participate in the reverse auction public, the FCC is not able to announce what percent of the 1,800 eligible TV stations are involved, because of confidentiality protections within the 2012 Congressional action that led to the auction. What if a station sells? Are they out of business? As the FCC reorganizes spectrum allocations after the auction, some TV channels may need to be reassigned during the 39-month transition period. Any reassignment requires that the FCC preserve stations' current audience and geographical reach. For more information about the incentive auction, visit the FCC web site http://www.fcc.gov/ You mentioned some big provider names – can you give more details? Currently, the top four nationwide providers - Verizon, AT&amp;T, Sprint and T-Mobile - combined hold more than 80% of available wireless spectrum. AT&amp;T is expected to spend at least $10 billion on the auction, with Verizon to spend from $8 billion to $10 billion, and T-Mobile between $6 billion and $10 billion. Zino did not estimate Comcast or Dish's spending. Why do we need more spectrum? Video takes up 50 percent of all US mobile data and will likely grow to 70 percent in 2021, which is when this rearranged spectrum will go into use. Because video requires more over-the-air bandwidth than other types of data, these bigger lanes will open up the possibility for applications we haven’t even thought of yet. These lower-frequency bands will play a role in 5G. In much the same way that 700 MHz paved the way for America’s world-leading deployment of 4G, so could 600 MHz accelerate U.S. deployment of 5G.” How fast will 5G go? 5G standards have yet to be defined. In October 2014, Samsung Electronics set the first record by achieving a wireless speed of 7.5Gbps in tests at its DMC R&amp;D Centre at Samsung Electronics in Suwon, South Korea. But in November 2014, the record was beaten by the University of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), which was founded by a host of telecoms industry partners, including Fujitsu, Aircom, BT, Samsung, Telefonica, Vodafone, Aeroflex and Rohde &amp; Schwarz, as well as the BBC. 5GIC achieved a speed of 0.8 terabits (800Gbps) in its tests. Then on 25 February 2015, it beat its own record by hitting 1Tbps, which is currently the world record. How about 5G distance? So far, the most impressive test has been that of Huawei and NTT DoComo, who achieved mobile internet speeds of 3.6Gbps outdoors across the city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province, China in October 2015. Will there be enough participation? Good question, there's some concern that not enough stations planned to participate in this latest auction. Only one in ten broadcasters expressed an interest in selling its spectrum in discussions in advance of the auction, according to tech consulting firm the Envisioneering Group. Time will tell. Bits and Bytes Why The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam  – Andy Greenberg FBI Director James Comey gave a speech this week about encryption and privacy, repeating his argument that "absolute privacy" hampers law enforcement. But it was an offhand remark during the Q&amp;A session at Kenyon College that caught the attention of privacy activists: "I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera." http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/08/473548674/why-the-fbi-director-puts-tape-over-his-webcam The Senate’s Draft Encryption Bill Is ‘Ludicrous, Dangerous, Technically Illiterate’ – Martin Kaste On Thursday evening, the draft text of a bill called the “Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016,” authored by offices of Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr,  was published online by the Hill.1 It’s a nine-page piece of legislation that would require people to comply with any authorized court order for data—and if that data is “unintelligible,” the legislation would demand that it be rendered “intelligible.” In other words, the bill would make illegal the sort of user-controlled encryption that’s in every modern iPhone, in all billion devices that run Whatsapp’s messaging service, and in dozens of other tech products. http://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy-nightmare/ SpaceX Landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEr9cPpuAx8

Intro On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started a three-year process of making our mobile internet even faster and better. The government is buying underused TV airwaves and selling it to mobile carriers for billions of dollars. These radio waves—also known as spectrum—will shape mobile US connectivity as streaming video continues to swallow up bandwidth across the country and as we inch closer to 5G internet speeds. In this podcast, we discuss the auction process. Updates Ransomware Evolution is Really Bad News ­ - Angela Alcorn Recently, 10 hospitals in Maryland operated without access to their central network because their domain servers were locked by a ransomware known as Samsam <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ransomware-evolution-is-really-bad-news-microsoft-edge-will-intelligently-pause-flash-tech-news-digest/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ransomware-evolution-is-really-bad-news-microsoft-edge-will-intelligently-pause-flash-tech-news-digest/</a> Victims paid more than $24 million to ransomware criminals in 2015 — and that's just the beginning – Dan Turkel The DOJ revealed that the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) had received nearly 7,700 public complaints regarding ransomware since 2005, totaling $57.6 million in damages. Those damages include ransoms paid — generally $200 to $10,000, according to the FBI — as well as costs incurred in dealing with the attack and estimated value of data lost. In 2015 alone, victims paid over $24 million across nearly 2,500 cases reported to the IC3. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/doj-and-dhs-ransomware-attacks-government-2016-4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.businessinsider.com/doj-and-dhs-ransomware-attacks-government-2016-4</a> Adobe issues emergency update to Flash after ransomware attacks – Jim Finkle Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) issued an emergency update on Thursday to its widely used Flash software for Internet browsers after researchers discovered a security flaw that was being exploited to deliver ransomware to Windows PCs. The software maker urged the more than 1 billion users of Flash on Windows, Mac, Chrome and Linux computers to update the product as quickly as possible after security researchers said the bug was being exploited in "drive-by" attacks that infect computers with ransomware when tainted websites are visited. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-adobe-systems-cyber-ransomware-idUSKCN0X502K" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.reuters.com/article/us-adobe-systems-cyber-ransomware-idUSKCN0X502K</a> Spectrum How about the auction, What’s spectrum? The way it is being used here, by the FCC - Spectrum is really just a fancy term for radio waves, a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. What’s going on with T-Mobile? T-Mobile wants to stop that from happening, saying AT&amp;T and Verizon already control three-fourths of low-band frequencies. Who else is interested in spectrum? Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network, Google (?) How is this auction being setup? TV broadcasters by Tuesday April 5 must have made official their intentions to accept the FCC's opening price for the rights to the spectrum they currently use for digital TV broadcasts.  Who is bidding and how much money are we talking about? AT&amp;T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, Dish Network, etc Can you describe the spectrum being auctioned and what will be done with it? The FCC expects that bidders will provide new wireless services using that spectrum, which is in the 600 MHz band and currently used for UHF TV channels. The characteristics of UHF that make it good for TV also work well for wireless communications and data delivery -- the waves can travel great distances and pass through buildings. So what happens if a TV station sells its spectrum? TV broadcasters have the choice of moving to a lower-frequency spot on the spectrum, sharing signals with a neighboring station or giving up broadcasting altogether. Does the FCC know which stations are going to sell? While some stations have made their intentions to participate in the reverse auction public, the FCC is not able to announce what percent of the 1,800 eligible TV stations are involved, because of confidentiality protections within the 2012 Congressional action that led to the auction. What if a station sells? Are they out of business? As the FCC reorganizes spectrum allocations after the auction, some TV channels may need to be reassigned during the 39-month transition period. Any reassignment requires that the FCC preserve stations' current audience and geographical reach. For more information about the incentive auction, visit <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/fcc-initiatives/incentive-auctions/consumer-q-and-a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the FCC web site</a> <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.fcc.gov/</a> You mentioned some big provider names – can you give more details? Currently, the top four nationwide providers - Verizon, AT&amp;T, Sprint and T-Mobile - combined hold more than 80% of available wireless spectrum. AT&amp;T is expected to spend at least $10 billion on the auction, with Verizon to spend from $8 billion to $10 billion, and T-Mobile between $6 billion and $10 billion. Zino did not estimate Comcast or Dish's spending. Why do we need more spectrum? Video takes up 50 percent of all US mobile data and will likely grow to 70 percent in 2021, which is when this rearranged spectrum will go into use. Because video requires more over-the-air bandwidth than other types of data, these bigger lanes will open up the possibility for applications we haven’t even thought of yet. These lower-frequency bands will play a role in 5G. In much the same way that 700 MHz paved the way for America’s world-leading deployment of 4G, so could 600 MHz accelerate U.S. deployment of 5G.” How fast will 5G go? 5G standards have yet to be defined. In October 2014, <a href="http://www.samsung.com/uk/news/local/samsung-electronics-sets-5g-speed-record-at-7-5gbps-over-30-times-faster-than-4g-lte" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Samsung Electronics set the first record</a> by achieving a wireless speed of 7.5Gbps in tests at its DMC R&amp;D Centre at Samsung Electronics in Suwon, South Korea. But in November 2014, the record was beaten by the University of Surrey's <a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/5gic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">5G Innovation Centre (5GIC)</a>, which was founded by a host of telecoms industry partners, including Fujitsu, Aircom, BT, Samsung, Telefonica, Vodafone, Aeroflex and Rohde &amp; Schwarz, as well as the BBC. 5GIC achieved a speed of 0.8 terabits (800Gbps) in its tests. Then on 25 February 2015, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/5g-researchers-achieve-1tbps-record-connection-speed-uk-1489525" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">it beat its own record by hitting 1Tbps</a>, which is currently the world record. How about 5G distance? So far, the most impressive test has been that of Huawei and NTT DoComo, who <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/5g-speeds-3-6gbps-achieved-by-huawei-ntt-docomo-first-ever-large-scale-field-test-1523606" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">achieved mobile internet speeds of 3.6Gbps outdoors</a> across the city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province, China in October 2015. Will there be enough participation? Good question, there's some concern that not enough stations planned to participate in this latest auction. Only one in ten broadcasters expressed an interest in selling its spectrum in discussions in advance of the auction, according to tech consulting firm the Envisioneering Group. Time will tell. Bits and Bytes Why The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam  – Andy Greenberg FBI Director James Comey gave a speech this week about encryption and privacy, repeating his argument that "absolute privacy" hampers law enforcement. But it was an offhand remark during the Q&amp;A session at Kenyon College that caught the attention of privacy activists: "I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera." <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/08/473548674/why-the-fbi-director-puts-tape-over-his-webcam" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/08/473548674/why-the-fbi-director-puts-tape-over-his-webcam</a> The Senate’s Draft Encryption Bill Is ‘Ludicrous, Dangerous, Technically Illiterate’ – Martin Kaste On Thursday evening, the draft text of a bill called the “Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016,” authored by offices of Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr,  was published online by the Hill.1 It’s a nine-page piece of legislation that would require people to comply with any authorized court order for data—and if that data is “unintelligible,” the legislation would demand that it be rendered “intelligible.” In other words, the bill would make illegal the sort of user-controlled encryption that’s in every modern iPhone, in all billion devices that run Whatsapp’s messaging service, and in dozens of other tech products. <a href="http://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy-nightmare/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy-nightmare/</a> SpaceX Landing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEr9cPpuAx8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEr9cPpuAx8</a>

FCC Spectrum Auction 2016 [32:00]

On March 31st, 2016 the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team or US-CERT released alert TA 16-091A titled “Ransomware and Recent Variants”. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects a computer and restricts users’ access to it until a ransom is paid to unlock it. Already in 2016, destructive ransomware variants such as Locky and Samas were observed infecting the computers of individuals and businesses – even hospitals and healthcare facilities. The purpose of this Alert is to provide further information on ransomware, its main characteristics, its prevalence, variants that may be proliferating, and how users can prevent and mitigate against ransomware. References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware) https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-091A 

On March 31st, 2016 the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team or US-CERT released alert TA 16-091A titled “Ransomware and Recent Variants”. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects a computer and restricts users’ access to it until a ransom is paid to unlock it. Already in 2016, destructive ransomware variants such as Locky and Samas were observed infecting the computers of individuals and businesses – even hospitals and healthcare facilities. The purpose of this Alert is to provide further information on ransomware, its main characteristics, its prevalence, variants that may be proliferating, and how users can prevent and mitigate against ransomware. References: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)</a> <a href="https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-091A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-091A</a>

What You Need to Know About Ransomware [32:04]

We’ve hear the term “big data” used a lot lately. The term itself makes us thing about lots and lots of information. Sure there’s lots of information but what most important to an organization is what is done with the data. In this podcast we take an introductory look at what big data is, discuss how it is being used, and refer to an excellent document at SAS.com

We’ve hear the term “big data” used a lot lately. The term itself makes us thing about lots and lots of information. Sure there’s lots of information but what most important to an organization is what is done with the data. In this podcast we take an introductory look at what big data is, discuss how it is being used, and refer to an excellent document at <a href="SAS.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SAS.com</a>

Big Data Introduction

As part of a National Science Foundation grant received by the Educational Development Corporation in Massachusetts, Mike and I have been involved with a group of small business social media experts from around the country defining a step-by-step social media process for Social Technology Enabled Professionals. These small business people build, maintain, manage and leverages online social networks to engage with customers, business partners, employees and key influencers with the goal of building organizational success.  In this podcast, we cover part one of the first duty and discuss some of the tasks involved.  

As part of a National Science Foundation grant received by the Educational Development Corporation in Massachusetts, Mike and I have been involved with a group of small business social media experts from around the country defining a step-by-step social media process for Social Technology Enabled Professionals. These small business people build, maintain, manage and leverages online social networks to engage with customers, business partners, employees and key influencers with the goal of building organizational success.  In this podcast, we cover part one of the first duty and discuss some of the tasks involved.

Conducting Social Media Research Part 1 [16:48]

National Center for Telecommunications Technologies Director Gordon F Snyder Jr and Mid Atlantic Institute for Telecommunications Technologies Director Mike Qaissaunee take a weekly look at the Networking, Information and Communications Technologies and how they affect the world of business, industry and education.

Gordon And Mike's ICT Podcast

Mike and Gordon discuss current topics.  Referenced Links: Seinfeld clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia02fGpUQfU Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Courses-Can-Offer-Easy/132093/ Facebook Will Disappear by 2020, Says Analyst http://mashable.com/2012/06/04/analyst-facebook-disappear/ Museum of Endangered Sounds http://savethesounds.info/ The Mechanics and Meaning of That Ol' Dial-Up Modem Sound http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-mechanics-and-meaning-of-that-ol-dial-up-modem-sound/257816/#.T8kgIfaSL7k.twitter An Honest Review of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FWF2X2CYKJ1/ See You Later WiMAX http://www.gordostuff.com/2012/06/see-you-later-wimax.html

Mike and Gordon discuss current topics.  Referenced Links: Seinfeld clip <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia02fGpUQfU" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia02fGpUQfU</a> Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Courses-Can-Offer-Easy/132093/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Courses-Can-Offer-Easy/132093/</a> Facebook Will Disappear by 2020, Says Analyst <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/06/04/analyst-facebook-disappear/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://mashable.com/2012/06/04/analyst-facebook-disappear/</a> Museum of Endangered Sounds <a href="http://savethesounds.info/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://savethesounds.info/</a> The Mechanics and Meaning of That Ol' Dial-Up Modem Sound <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-mechanics-and-meaning-of-that-ol-dial-up-modem-sound/257816/#.T8kgIfaSL7k.twitter" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-mechanics-and-meaning-of-that-ol-dial-up-modem-sound/257816/#.T8kgIfaSL7k.twitter</a> An Honest Review of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FWF2X2CYKJ1/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FWF2X2CYKJ1/</a> See You Later WiMAX <a href="http://www.gordostuff.com/2012/06/see-you-later-wimax.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.gordostuff.com/2012/06/see-you-later-wimax.html</a>

Bits and Bytes - Disappearing Facebook, Online Cheating, 4G and Dial-Up Modems [37:43]

Rumors are that Apple is planning on incorporating support for the new faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi specification into products this year. In this podcast we discuss the 802.11ac and other wireless specs. We discuss the following questions: - So, what’s the deal with this 802.11ac?  - These 802 dot whatever standards - where do they come from? - So this 802.11ac is considered non-finalized. what does that mean? - I seem to get interference from things like wireless home phones. I know spectrum is involved.  - So if I set my access point to run at 5GHz, will all my devices work? What do i need to understand to make it work? - What about range? You mentioned range limitations at 5 GHz. - Are there any ways to extend the range? I’ve heard about something called MIMO. - You mentioned 802.11a which is pretty old. Is the use of 5 GHz new? - When will we see 802.11ac products on the market? - What kinds of products from Apple? What are people saying? - What do you mean when you say potentially for the mobile devices? Along with the Superbowl!

Rumors are that Apple is planning on incorporating support for the new faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi specification into products this year. In this podcast we discuss the 802.11ac and other wireless specs. We discuss the following questions: - So, what’s the deal with this 802.11ac? - These 802 dot whatever standards - where do they come from? - So this 802.11ac is considered non-finalized. what does that mean? - I seem to get interference from things like wireless home phones. I know spectrum is involved. - So if I set my access point to run at 5GHz, will all my devices work? What do i need to understand to make it work? - What about range? You mentioned range limitations at 5 GHz. - Are there any ways to extend the range? I’ve heard about something called MIMO. - You mentioned 802.11a which is pretty old. Is the use of 5 GHz new? - When will we see 802.11ac products on the market? - What kinds of products from Apple? What are people saying? - What do you mean when you say potentially for the mobile devices? Along with the Superbowl!

The Need for Speed: 802.11ac – 5th Generation Gigabit WiFi [18:40]

In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, including:  - The Jesters denial of service attack on the Westboro Baptist Church website. - How one might prevent such attacks - The seizure of domain names by the Department of Homeland Security - The treatment of Bradley Manning - Google and bugs in Flash - A 16-year old girl that may have hacked HBGary  - Skype and encryption data leaks and, finally - How the events in Japan may effect iPad2 availability. Layer 7 Denial of Service attacks: th3j35t3r's assault on Westboro Baptist Church Website Continues https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/12400-Assault-on-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Website-Continues.html Live Performance Report for Westboro Church Website: four sites held down 24 days from a single 3G cellphone:  http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/graph?site=www.godhatesfags.com Defense techniques: Protecting a Web server with a Load-Balancer  http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/proj15-haproxy.html Protecting a Web server with mod_security (a Web Application Firewall) http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p16-mod-security.html Protecting a Web server with iptables (a firewall) http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p5x-iptables-layer7.html Westboro Spoof for a Good Purpose http://www.godhatesjapan.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DHS siezure of domain names: Web seizures trample due process  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/ars-interviews-rep-zoe-lofgren.ars -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bradey Manning's Continuing Abuse in Captivity Ellsberg on Obama’s View that Manning’s Treatment is “Appropriate” http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/ellsberg-obama-manning WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/13/crowley -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Google and Flash Bugs Google first to patch Flash bug with Chrome update http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214689/Google_first_to_patch_Flash_bug_with_Chrome_update -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Anonymous" Hacker Speaks Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?  16 years old, and in hiding for a felony http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/03/16/is-this-the-girl-that-hacked-hbgary/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skype Encryption Leaks Data Uncovering spoken phrases in encrypted VoIP conversations http://www.cs.unc.edu/~fabian/papers/oakland08.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shortages of Apple's iPad and iPhone to bleed into June quarter -- caused by Japan's disasters http://www.hackinthebox.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=40531&amp;mode=thread&amp;order=0&amp;thold=0

In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, including:  - The Jesters denial of service attack on the Westboro Baptist Church website. - How one might prevent such attacks - The seizure of domain names by the Department of Homeland Security - The treatment of Bradley Manning - Google and bugs in Flash - A 16-year old girl that may have hacked HBGary  - Skype and encryption data leaks and, finally - How the events in Japan may effect iPad2 availability. Layer 7 Denial of Service attacks: th3j35t3r's assault on Westboro Baptist Church Website Continues <a href="https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/12400-Assault-on-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Website-Continues.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/12400-Assault-on-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Website-Continues.html</a> Live Performance Report for Westboro Church Website: four sites held down 24 days from a single 3G cellphone:  <a href="http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/graph?site=www.godhatesfags.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/graph?site=www.godhatesfags.com</a> Defense techniques: Protecting a Web server with a Load-Balancer  <a href="http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/proj15-haproxy.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/proj15-haproxy.html</a> Protecting a Web server with mod_security (a Web Application Firewall) <a href="http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p16-mod-security.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p16-mod-security.html</a> Protecting a Web server with iptables (a firewall) <a href="http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p5x-iptables-layer7.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://samsclass.info/124/proj11/p5x-iptables-layer7.html</a> Westboro Spoof for a Good Purpose <a href="http://www.godhatesjapan.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.godhatesjapan.com/</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DHS siezure of domain names: Web seizures trample due process  <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/ars-interviews-rep-zoe-lofgren.ars" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/ars-interviews-rep-zoe-lofgren.ars</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bradey Manning's Continuing Abuse in Captivity Ellsberg on Obama’s View that Manning’s Treatment is “Appropriate” <a href="http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/ellsberg-obama-manning" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/ellsberg-obama-manning</a> WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/13/crowley" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/13/crowley</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Google and Flash Bugs Google first to patch Flash bug with Chrome update <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214689/Google_first_to_patch_Flash_bug_with_Chrome_update" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214689/Google_first_to_patch_Flash_bug_with_Chrome_update</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Anonymous" Hacker Speaks Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?  16 years old, and in hiding for a felony <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/03/16/is-this-the-girl-that-hacked-hbgary/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/03/16/is-this-the-girl-that-hacked-hbgary/</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skype Encryption Leaks Data Uncovering spoken phrases in encrypted VoIP conversations <a href="http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Efabian/papers/oakland08.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.cs.unc.edu/~fabian/papers/oakland08.pdf</a> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shortages of Apple's iPad and iPhone to bleed into June quarter -- caused by Japan's disasters <a href="http://www.hackinthebox.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=40531&amp;mode=thread&amp;order=0&amp;thold=0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.hackinthebox.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=40531&amp;mode=thread&amp;order=0&amp;thold=0</a>

The Jester and DoS, Preventing Attacks, Seizure of Domain Names and Other Topics [32:30]

We talk with Sam Bowne from City College of San Francisco about how a man tracked down Anonymous and paid a heavy price, Stuxnet, The Jester and how U.S. Chamber lobbyists solicited and used hackers.  Links:How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy pricehttp://goo.gl/5Gkyy  US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponentshttp://goo.gl/zI9gp  US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Firm To Investigate Opponents’ Families, Children http://goo.gl/uyWB8

We talk with Sam Bowne from City College of San Francisco about how a man tracked down Anonymous and paid a heavy price, Stuxnet, The Jester and how U.S. Chamber lobbyists solicited and used hackers.  Links:How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price <a href="http://goo.gl/5Gkyy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/5Gkyy</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/lobbyists-chamberleaks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents</a><a href="http://goo.gl/zI9gp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/zI9gp</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/10/chamberleaks-target-families/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Firm To Investigate Opponents’ Families, Children</a> <a href="http://goo.gl/uyWB8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/uyWB8</a>

Anonymous, Barr, Stuxnet and Soliciting Hackers [29:20]

In this podcast we discuss Erik Eckel's 10 Best IT Certifications for 2010 post along with Mike's recent blog posts on IT certifications.

In this podcast we discuss <a href="http://www.globalknowledge.com/articles/generic.asp?pageid=2770&amp;country=United+States" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Erik Eckel's 10 Best IT Certifications for 2010</a> post along with <a href="http://q-ontech.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mike's recent blog posts</a> on IT certifications.

The 10 Best IT Certifications [35:00]

On Monday (5/2/10) Mike Q and I recorded a  podcast titled Cloud Computing Technologies. The podcast references a  couple of Infoworld.com documents that I think you will  find interesting:  A  short white paper written by Eric Knorr and Galen Gruman titled What does  Cloud Computing Really Mean A 21-page document titled Cloud Computing Deep Dive Report  This Deep Dive report  breaks down cloud computing into 11 categories and goes into more detail  than the shorter white paper. What's really interesting is the  categories are different in each document. You can see where the  confusion lies when it comes to defining what cloud computing is. Here's  the 11 cloud technologies we discuss:  Storage-as-a  -service Database-as-a-service Information-as-a-service Process-as-a-service Application-as-a-service (a .k .a .  software-as-a-service) Platform-as-a-service Integration-as-a-service Security-as-a-service Management-/governance-as-a-service Testing-as-a-service Infrastructure-as-a-service  We also discuss the CloudCamp event (great places to get info and meet people involved in cloud  technologies) we hosted at Springfield Technical  Community College last month and how you can get information on  CloudCamps in your area.

On Monday (5/2/10) <a href="http://q-ontech.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mike Q</a> and I recorded a podcast titled Cloud Computing Technologies. The podcast references a couple of <a href="http://infoworld.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Infoworld.com</a> documents that I think you will find interesting: <ul> <li>A short white paper written by Eric Knorr and Galen Gruman titled <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031?page=0,0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What does Cloud Computing Really Mean</a></li> <li>A 21-page document titled Cloud <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/cloud-deepdive?idglg=ifwsite_editinline&amp;source=ifwprm_CODE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Computing Deep Dive Report</a></li> </ul> This Deep Dive report breaks down cloud computing into 11 categories and goes into more detail than the shorter white paper. What's really interesting is the categories are different in each document. You can see where the confusion lies when it comes to defining what cloud computing is. Here's the 11 cloud technologies we discuss: <ol> <li>Storage-as-a -service</li> <li>Database-as-a-service</li> <li>Information-as-a-service</li> <li>Process-as-a-service</li> <li>Application-as-a-service (a .k .a . software-as-a-service)</li> <li>Platform-as-a-service</li> <li>Integration-as-a-service</li> <li>Security-as-a-service</li> <li>Management-/governance-as-a-service</li> <li>Testing-as-a-service</li> <li>Infrastructure-as-a-service</li> </ol> We also discuss the <a href="http://cloudcamp.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CloudCamp</a> event (great places to get info and meet people involved in cloud technologies) we hosted at <a href="http://www.stcc.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Springfield Technical Community College</a> last month and how you can get information on CloudCamps in your area.

Cloud Computing Technologies [23:26]

In this podcast we take a look at the emergence of broadband and wireless technologies over the past 20 years.  Mike: What lead to this podcast? Gordon: It was an email from a colleague of ours - Mark at the MATEC NSF center. Here’s what he said:  I  was reading this PC Magazine article on why Apple stayed with AT&amp;T (not happy about that since AT&amp;T really stinks in Phoenix on coverage – if I remember correctly, one of the worst coverages and signals here.  In fact, Sprint is really the only company that works well by the mountains (where I live and work).  But the article stated:  CDMA, the way Verizon and Sprint are doing it, is a dead end. Apple hates dead-end technologies. They look forward, not back. Remember how they got rid of floppy disks earlier than any other PC manufacturer? The current CDMA technology that Sprint and Verizon use still has some years of life left on it, but it's not where wireless is heading.  Ok, so CDMA is dead.  But what is 4G?  And is all 4G using GSM?  Sprint is starting to advertise here of their 4G network.  I know 4G is faster.  But where is wireless going?  Is Sprint’s 4G the same as all the other’s 4G.  Ok, so hopefully this is a blog topic for you, but if not, I think you for the time on your answers.  Oh yeah, any idea when AT&amp;T would go to 4G?  Have a great day,               Mark from Arizona  Before we tried to answer Mark's questions we thought it would be a good idea to take a look first at where we’ve been over the past 20 years or so with a follow-up podcast on 4G technologies.

In this podcast we take a look at the emergence of broadband and wireless technologies over the past 20 years. Mike: What lead to this podcast? Gordon: It was an email from a colleague of ours - Mark at the MATEC NSF center. Here’s what he said: I  was reading this PC Magazine article on why Apple stayed with AT&amp;T (not happy about that since AT&amp;T really stinks in Phoenix on coverage – if I remember correctly, one of the worst coverages and signals here.  In fact, Sprint is really the only company that works well by the mountains (where I live and work).  But the article stated: CDMA, the way Verizon and Sprint are doing it, is a dead end. Apple hates dead-end technologies. They look forward, not back. Remember how they got rid of floppy disks earlier than any other PC manufacturer? The current CDMA technology that Sprint and Verizon use still has some years of life left on it, but it's not where wireless is heading. Ok, so CDMA is dead.  But what is 4G?  And is all 4G using GSM?  Sprint is starting to advertise here of their 4G network.  I know 4G is faster.  But where is wireless going?  Is Sprint’s 4G the same as all the other’s 4G. Ok, so hopefully this is a blog topic for you, but if not, I think you for the time on your answers.  Oh yeah, any idea when AT&amp;T would go to 4G? Have a great day,              Mark from Arizona Before we tried to answer Mark's questions we thought it would be a good idea to take a look first at where we’ve been over the past 20 years or so with a follow-up podcast on 4G technologies.

Emerging Broadband Technologies With A Wireless Focus [25:44]

In this podcast we discuss the emerging threat of steganography in voice over IP. This is really interesting - is it something that is already happening?Currently, this seems to be confined to research labs. The primary reference for this podcast is an IEEE Spectrum article by three professors - Józef Lubacz, Wojciech Mazurczyk &amp; Krzysztof Szczypiorsk - at Warsaw University of Technology. This is part of their ongoing research, as part of the Network Security Group, to identify emerging threats and develop countermeasures. Before we delve into this new topic, lets provide the audience with a little background. First what is steganography - sounds like a dinosaur?Yeah - the Stegosaurus. I'm not sure how or if the two are related; we'll leave that one for the Paleontologists in the audience. Steganography is something that has been around a long time - some say as far back as 440 BC. While encryption takes our message and scrambles it, so that an unintended recipient cannot read it, steganography attempts to hide or obscure that a message even exists. The researchers refer to steganography as "meta-encryption." Another useful analogy they use is to refer to the secret message and the carrier within which it is hidden. Can you give us some examples?If we start in ancient times, we can point to examples of shaving a messengers head, tattooing a message on their head, letting the hair grow back and sending them off. Other examples include using invisible ink or even writing on boiled eggs with an ink that penetrates the shell and can be read by peeling the egg. Simon Singh's "The Code Book" is a great read that details the history of encrypting and obscuring information.  What about some more modern examples?When we refer to modern steganography we are usually referring to digital steganography. Digital steganography takes advantage of digital data by (for example) hiding a message within  images, audio, or video files. In this case the image, audio or video file is the carrier. The larger the file (image, audio or video) the larger message it can carry. The researchers contend that a single 6-minute mp3 audio file, say roughly 30 megabytes in size, could be used to conceal every play written by Shakespeare.  So how does this work?Say you and I wanted to communicate using steganography. We would each download one of the hundreds of freely available stego apps. You would take a fairly innocuous image file, use the software to embed a message into that file, and send me the altered file. To anyone else, this would just look like a photo you're sharing with a friend, but because I know there's a hidden message, I open with the same stego app and read the hidden message. You could also add a password to further protect the message. So how do we stop this?This is a specialized field called "steganalysis." The simplest way to detect a hidden message is to compare the carrier file - our innocuous image - to the original. A file that is larger than the original is a red flag. This of course presupposes that you have access to the original file. In most cases, this will not be the case, so instead, we look for anomalies. Is the audio file significantly larger than a 3-minute audio file should be? We can also use spectrum analysis or look for inconsistencies in the way the data has been compressed.  How would spectrum analysis help?Some steganography techniques try to take our digital data and modify the least-siginificant bit. In our digital data the LSB often just shows up as noise and doesn't effect the image, audio, or video quality. A spectrum analyzer would help us to compare the "noise" in an unaltered sample and to try and identify anomalies. Wow - that's scary stuff. What about Voice over IP[is this part OK]?Voice over IP or ("voype") is a transmission technology that enables us to deliver voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet. This is an alternative to using the traditional PSTN or public switched telephone network for voice communications. In VoIP, we take our analog voice signal convert it to a digital signal and "chop" it up into smaller pieces called IP packets. These packets are sent over our data network and reassembled at the destination.  To understand packet-switched networks, consider the US Postal system – our packets are analogous to postal letters or parcels, numbered, sent across a network and re-assembled at the receiving end. Packets do not follow the same path from source to destination and may even arrive out of sequence. In VoIP, it's more important that we transmit our data quickly, so we forego the numbering or sequencing.  So what about this new class of steganography?One of the disadvantages of existing techniques is the size limitation of the carriers. If someone tries to put to large a message into an audio file, it becomes easier to detect. With VoIP, our message is hidden among the packets - even bits - of voice data being transmitted. In a sense, older technologies used a digital file as the carrier, while these new, emerging techniques use the communication protocol itself as the carrier. The size of the hidden message is only limited by the length of the call. While detecting a hidden message in a physical file is not trivial, the difficulty of finding a hidden message increases an order of magnitude when there is no physical file to examine. The researchers are calling this new class of steganography - "network steganography."So how does network steganography work?The researchers have developed three methods that all manipulate the IP or Internet Protocol and take advantage of the fact that this is a connectionless and unreliable protocol. Network steganography exploits errors (data corruption and lost packets) that are inherent in the Internet Protocol. What are the three methods?The three methods or flavors of network steganography that the researchers have developed are:   LACK or Lost Audio Packet Steganography HICCUPS or Hidden Communication System for Corrupted Networks, and Protocol Steganography for VoIPBriefly, LACK hides a message in packet delays, HICCUPS disguises a message as noise, and Protocol Steganography uses unused fields in the IP protocol to hide information. So let's talk a little bit more about each - first LACK.VoIP traffic is very time sensitive - if a voice packet (about 20 milliseconds of conversation) is delayed, we can continue our conversation without significantly effecting the call quality. Once the delayed packet does arrive at the receiver, it's already too late; the packet is useless and is either dropped or discarded. That's the way VoIP is designed to work. LACK intentionally delays some packets and adds the "steganograms" in these intentionally delayed packets. To an unintended recipient, these packets appear to be late and are discard, but to the party you're communicating with they are retained and decoded to extract a hidden message. LACK is a simple technique that is hard to detect. What about HICCUPS?HICCUPS works on wireless local area networks and takes advantage of corrupted packets. Normally, in a wireless network, we check for corrupted data by examining the checksum of a received packet. If the checksum doesn't match what we expect, we discard the packet. HICCUPS hides our message - the steganograms - in these seemingly "corrupted" packets. Unintended recipients will discard these packets, but our cohort knows to look for these "corrupted" packets and to retain and examine them. This method is difficult to use, because it requires a NIC card that can generate incorrect checksums. It is also difficult to detect. Okay what about Protocol Steganography?Here, we're hiding our message in the actual header fields of the IP packet. In particular, we're hiding information in unused, optional or even partial fields. To make it even harder to detect, we could use fields that frequently change. So, should we be worried?I don't think so. The majority of the steganography applications seem to be focused on altering images, which appears to be the easiest form of steganography. While the techniques these researchers have developed are technically feasible, I'm not sure that they're easily implemented. There has been lots of speculation regarding terrorist organizations using steganography to communicate however, no one has been able to document that this has actually happened. That said, I have no doubt that these groups are exploring ways to mask their communications and that the NSA has developed and uses a wide arrays of tools and countermeasures for steganography. 

In this podcast we discuss the emerging threat of steganography in voice over IP. This is really interesting - is it something that is already happening?Currently, this seems to be confined to research labs. The primary reference for this podcast is an <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/vice-over-ip-the-voip-steganography-threat/0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IEEE Spectrum article</a> by three professors - Józef Lubacz, Wojciech Mazurczyk &amp; Krzysztof Szczypiorsk - at Warsaw University of Technology. This is part of their ongoing research, as part of the Network Security Group, to identify emerging threats and develop countermeasures. Before we delve into this new topic, lets provide the audience with a little background. First what is steganography - sounds like a dinosaur? Yeah - the Stegosaurus. I'm not sure how or if the two are related; we'll leave that one for the Paleontologists in the audience.  Steganography is something that has been around a long time - some say as far back as 440 BC. While encryption takes our message and scrambles it, so that an unintended recipient cannot read it, steganography attempts to hide or obscure that a message even exists. The researchers refer to steganography as "meta-encryption." Another useful analogy they use is to refer to the secret message and the carrier within which it is hidden. Can you give us some examples? If we start in ancient times, we can point to examples of shaving a messengers head, tattooing a message on their head, letting the hair grow back and sending them off. Other examples include using invisible ink or even writing on boiled eggs with an ink that penetrates the shell and can be read by peeling the egg. Simon Singh's "The Code Book" is a great read that details the history of encrypting and obscuring information.  What about some more modern examples? When we refer to modern steganography we are usually referring to digital steganography. Digital steganography takes advantage of digital data by (for example) hiding a message within  images, audio, or video files. In this case the image, audio or video file is the carrier. The larger the file (image, audio or video) the larger message it can carry. The researchers contend that a single 6-minute mp3 audio file, say roughly 30 megabytes in size, could be used to conceal every play written by Shakespeare.   So how does this work? Say you and I wanted to communicate using steganography. We would each download one of the hundreds of freely available stego apps. You would take a fairly innocuous image file, use the software to embed a message into that file, and send me the altered file. To anyone else, this would just look like a photo you're sharing with a friend, but because I know there's a hidden message, I open with the same stego app and read the hidden message. You could also add a password to further protect the message. So how do we stop this? This is a specialized field called "steganalysis." The simplest way to detect a hidden message is to compare the carrier file - our innocuous image - to the original. A file that is larger than the original is a red flag. This of course presupposes that you have access to the original file. In most cases, this will not be the case, so instead, we look for anomalies. Is the audio file significantly larger than a 3-minute audio file should be? We can also use spectrum analysis or look for inconsistencies in the way the data has been compressed.  How would spectrum analysis help? Some steganography techniques try to take our digital data and modify the least-siginificant bit. In our digital data the LSB often just shows up as noise and doesn't effect the image, audio, or video quality. A spectrum analyzer would help us to compare the "noise" in an unaltered sample and to try and identify anomalies.  Wow - that's scary stuff. What about Voice over IP[is this part OK]? Voice over IP or ("voype") is a transmission technology that enables us to deliver voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet. This is an alternative to using the traditional PSTN or public switched telephone network for voice communications. In VoIP, we take our analog voice signal convert it to a digital signal and "chop" it up into smaller pieces called IP packets. These packets are sent over our data network and reassembled at the destination.  To understand packet-switched networks, consider the US Postal system – our packets are analogous to postal letters or parcels, numbered, sent across a network and re-assembled at the receiving end. Packets do not follow the same path from source to destination and may even arrive out of sequence. In VoIP, it's more important that we transmit our data quickly, so we forego the numbering or sequencing.  So what about this new class of steganography? One of the disadvantages of existing techniques is the size limitation of the carriers. If someone tries to put to large a message into an audio file, it becomes easier to detect. With VoIP, our message is hidden among the packets - even bits - of voice data being transmitted. In a sense, older technologies used a digital file as the carrier, while these new, emerging techniques use the communication protocol itself as the carrier. The size of the hidden message is only limited by the length of the call. While detecting a hidden message in a physical file is not trivial, the difficulty of finding a hidden message increases an order of magnitude when there is no physical file to examine. The researchers are calling this new class of steganography - "network steganography." So how does network steganography work?The researchers have developed three methods that all manipulate the IP or Internet Protocol and take advantage of the fact that this is a connectionless and unreliable protocol. Network steganography exploits errors (data corruption and lost packets) that are inherent in the Internet Protocol. What are the three methods? The three methods or flavors of network steganography that the researchers have developed are: <ul> <li>LACK or Lost Audio Packet Steganography</li> <li>HICCUPS or Hidden Communication System for Corrupted Networks, and</li> <li>Protocol Steganography for VoIP</li></ul>Briefly, LACK hides a message in packet delays, HICCUPS disguises a message as noise, and Protocol Steganography uses unused fields in the IP protocol to hide information. So let's talk a little bit more about each - first LACK. VoIP traffic is very time sensitive - if a voice packet (about 20 milliseconds of conversation) is delayed, we can continue our conversation without significantly effecting the call quality. Once the delayed packet does arrive at the receiver, it's already too late; the packet is useless and is either dropped or discarded. That's the way VoIP is designed to work. LACK intentionally delays some packets and adds the "steganograms" in these intentionally delayed packets. To an unintended recipient, these packets appear to be late and are discard, but to the party you're communicating with they are retained and decoded to extract a hidden message. LACK is a simple technique that is hard to detect. What about HICCUPS? HICCUPS works on wireless local area networks and takes advantage of corrupted packets. Normally, in a wireless network, we check for corrupted data by examining the checksum of a received packet. If the checksum doesn't match what we expect, we discard the packet. HICCUPS hides our message - the steganograms - in these seemingly "corrupted" packets. Unintended recipients will discard these packets, but our cohort knows to look for these "corrupted" packets and to retain and examine them. This method is difficult to use, because it requires a NIC card that can generate incorrect checksums. It is also difficult to detect. Okay what about Protocol Steganography? Here, we're hiding our message in the actual header fields of the IP packet. In particular, we're hiding information in unused, optional or even partial fields. To make it even harder to detect, we could use fields that frequently change. So, should we be worried? I don't think so. The majority of the steganography applications seem to be focused on altering images, which appears to be the easiest form of steganography. While the techniques these researchers have developed are technically feasible, I'm not sure that they're easily implemented. There has been lots of speculation regarding terrorist organizations using steganography to communicate however, no one has been able to document that this has actually happened. That said, I have no doubt that these groups are exploring ways to mask their communications and that the NSA has developed and uses a wide arrays of tools and countermeasures for steganography.

Vice over IP: Embedding Secret Messages in Online Conversations [24:05]

Maybe "decibel" is not part of your normal vocabulary but it is a termwe all occasionally read or hear used. Typically it has to do withnoise levels - we use decibels to describe loud or soft sounds. USgovernment research even suggests a safe exposure sound limit of 85decibels for eight hours a day. We frequently hear the term but - haveyou ever wondered what a "decibel" really is? We take a look in this podcast.

Maybe "decibel" is not part of your normal vocabulary but it is a term we all occasionally read or hear used. Typically it has to do with noise levels - we use decibels to describe loud or soft sounds. US government research even suggests a safe exposure sound limit of 85 decibels for eight hours a day. We frequently hear the term but - have you ever wondered what a "decibel" really is? We take a look in this podcast.

What The Heck Is A Decibel? [21:21]

Mike and Gordon discuss the Barnes and Noble Nook and compare it to the Amazon Kindle.

First Impressions: Barnes and Noble's Nook

German graduate students Erik Tews and Martin Beck have discovered an exploitable hole in WPA, a popular wireless encryption protocol. This week, Tews will present a paper on the topic at the PacSec conference in Tokyo. In this podcast Mike Qaissaunee  and I  discuss wireless network security and this newly discovered WPA hole. Here's a list of questions asked during the podcast: Where is the information for this podcast coming from? Why is this important? So,we've now got a security issue with WPA encryption! Before we get toWPA - can you give us a little background on wireless encryption? So, the first attempt was WEP. Most devices still support it - why should we not use it? So, that's not good. What did the IEEE do? What else did the 802.11i group do - what was the second solution? So, let me make sure I understand.Older wireless devices can be updated to support WPA which includesTKIP. Now, I've heard of WPA2 - what is that? So, the new products support both but old products only support WPA. I think I've got it! What did Tews and Beck actually crack? So the problem is with old devices that only support WPA and TKIP and not WPA and AES? What is the problem with TKIP?Now, didn't WEP use checksums this way?The ars technica piece mentioned short packets are ideal - especially ARP broadcasts. Why? Let me see if I understand, an attacker sniffs a packet, makes minormodifications to affect the checksum, and checks the results by sendingthe packet back to the access point.  So it is not something we should be worried about? What can we do to protect our networks? Can you describe rekeying? Now, I've heard of this - you need to be careful. You don't want to enable rapid rekeying unless ALL of your clients support IEEE 802.1x and an authentication method (e.g. EAP-TLS) that supports key distribution.  So, let's get to the point here - WPA really is not broken? Listen to get the answers!

German graduate students Erik Tews and Martin Beck have discovered an exploitable hole in WPA, a popular wireless encryption protocol. This week, Tews will present a paper on the topic at the PacSec conference in Tokyo. In this podcast <a href="http://q-ontech.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mike Qaissaunee</a> and I discuss wireless network security and this newly discovered WPA hole. Here's a list of questions asked during the podcast: Where is the information for this podcast coming from? Why is this important? So, we've now got a security issue with WPA encryption! Before we get to WPA - can you give us a little background on wireless encryption? So, the first attempt was WEP. Most devices still support it - why should we not use it? So, that's not good. What did the IEEE do? What else did the 802.11i group do - what was the second solution? So, let me make sure I understand. Older wireless devices can be updated to support WPA which includes TKIP. Now, I've heard of WPA2 - what is that? So, the new products support both but old products only support WPA. I think I've got it! What did Tews and Beck actually crack? So the problem is with old devices that only support WPA and TKIP and not WPA and AES? What is the problem with TKIP?Now, didn't WEP use checksums this way? The ars technica piece mentioned short packets are ideal - especially ARP broadcasts. Why? Let me see if I understand, an attacker sniffs a packet, makes minor modifications to affect the checksum, and checks the results by sending the packet back to the access point. So it is not something we should be worried about? What can we do to protect our networks? Can you describe rekeying? Now, I've heard of this - you need to be careful. You don't want to enable rapid rekeying unless ALL of your clients support IEEE 802.1x and an authentication method (e.g. EAP-TLS) that supports key distribution. So, let's get to the point here - WPA really is not broken? Listen to get the answers!

WPA - Give It A Crack [32:50]

Elaine Johnson

Bio-Link is an Advanced Technological Education(ATE) Center for Biotechnology that originated in late 1998 with a grantfrom the National Science Foundation. The Center is located on the campus of City College of San Francisco with office space at the University of California, San Francisco. Regional Bio-Link Centers across the country are located inSeattle, WA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; Madison, WI;Graham, NC; and Portsmouth, NH. At the SAME-TEC conference this past July, I had the opportunity to interview Bio-Link Director DrElaine Johnson. In the interview Elaine discusses the work the Bio-LinkCenter and Regional Centers are doing to bring students the knowledge and skills essential to the fieldas well as the ability to continue with more advanced education inmath, science and engineering.  Myundergraduate background is in Microbiology so I've always had aninterest in biotechnology and related fields. If you are faculty andconsidering starting a biotechnology program or maybe a studentthinking about a biotechnology career, you will find her interview veryinteresting.Elaine and her Center's work are outstanding! You can get more information on Elaine and Bio-Link here.

<a href="http://bio-link.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bio-Link</a> is an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Center for Biotechnology that originated in late 1998 with a grant from the <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">National Science Foundation</a>. The Center is located on the campus of <a href="http://www.ccsf.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">City College of San Francisco</a> with office space at the <a href="http://www.ucsf.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of California, San Francisco</a>. <a href="http://bio-link.org/centers.htm#regional" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Regional Bio-Link Centers</a> across the country are located in Seattle, WA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; Madison, WI; Graham, NC; and Portsmouth, NH. At the <a href="http://www.same-tec.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SAME-TEC conference</a> this past July, I had the opportunity to interview Bio-Link Director Dr Elaine Johnson. In the interview Elaine discusses the work the Bio-Link Center and Regional Centers are doing to bring students the knowledge and skills essential to the field as well as the ability to continue with more advanced education in math, science and engineering. My undergraduate background is in Microbiology so I've always had an interest in biotechnology and related fields. If you are faculty and considering starting a biotechnology program or maybe a student thinking about a biotechnology career, you will find her interview very interesting.Elaine and her Center's work are outstanding! You can get more information on Elaine and Bio-Link <a href="http://bio-link.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.

A conversation with Biotechnology NSF Center Director Elaine Johnson [8:24]

Intro:In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems.  Podcast Questions: Mike:Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a littlebut about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H) Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network? Mike:OK, so what’s a PON? Mike:What are the PON Architectural Choices? Mike:What is Centralized Splitting? Mike:What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting? Mike:What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs? Mike:What are the Outside Plant Components? Mike:What’s an ONT? Mike:Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field?  Reference List:  FiOS:Our FutureJamesArmstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James ToddSTCCVerizon NextStep Class of 2008 Passive Optical Network SplitterLawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen BooherSTCCVerizon NextStep Class of 2006 FTTHExplained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhancedserviceshttp://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/MichaelKunigonis, Product Line Manager: Access Corning Cable Systems

Intro: In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems. Podcast Questions: Mike: Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a little but about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H) Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network? Mike: OK, so what’s a PON? Mike: What are the PON Architectural Choices? Mike: What is Centralized Splitting? Mike: What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting? Mike: What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs? Mike: What are the Outside Plant Components? Mike: What’s an ONT? Mike: Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field? Reference List: FiOS: Our FutureJames Armstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James ToddSTCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2008 Passive Optical Network SplitterLawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen BooherSTCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2006 FTTH Explained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhanced services<a href="http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/</a>Michael Kunigonis, Product Line Manager: Access Corning Cable Systems

Passive Optical Networks (PONs)  [24:24]

Intro: Two weeks ago we gave an overview of IPv6. This week we take a look at some of the technical details for this protocol.Mike: Gordon, a couple of weeks ago we discussed Ipv6 - can you give usa quick review - what's the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?The most obvious distinguishing feature of IPv6 is its use of muchlarger addresses. The size of an address in IPv6 is 128 bits, which isfour times the larger than an IPv4 address. A 32-bit address spaceallows for 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. A 128-bit address space allows for 2 28 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (or 3.4x1038) possible addresses.In the late 1970s when the IPv4 address space was designed, it wasunimaginable that it could be exhausted. However, due to changes intechnology and an allocation practice that did not anticipate therecent explosion of hosts on the Internet, the IPv4 address space wasconsumed to the point that by 1992 it was clear a replacement would benecessary.With IPv6, it is even harder to conceive that the IPv6 address space will be consumed.Mike: It's not just to have more addresses though, is it?It is important to remember that the decision to make the IPv6 address128 bits in length was not so that every square inch of the Earth couldhave 4.3x1020addresses. Rather, the relatively large size of the IPv6 address isdesigned to be subdivided into hierarchical routing domains thatreflect the topology of the modern-day Internet. The use of 128 bitsallows for multiple levels of hierarchy and flexibility in designinghierarchical addressing and routing that is currently lacking on theIPv4-based Internet.Mike: Is there a specific RFC for IPv6?The IPv6 addressing architecture is described in RFC 2373.Mike: I know there is some basic terminology associated with IPv6. Can you describe Nodes and Interfaces as they apply to IPv6?A nodeis any device that implements IPv6. It can be a router, which is adevice that forwards packets that aren't directed specifically to it,or a host, which is a node that doesn't forward packets.An interface is the connection to a transmission medium through which IPv6 packets are sent.Mike: How about some more IPv6 terminology - can you discuss Links, Neighbors, Link MTUs, and Link Layer Addresses?A link is the medium over which IPv6 is carried. Neighbors are nodes that are connected to the same link.A link maximum transmission unit (MTU) is the maximum packet size that can be carried over a given link medium, and is expressed in octets.A Link Layer address is the "physical" address of an interface, such as media access control (MAC) addresses for Ethernet links.Mike: Can you give a brief ouline in address syntax?IPv4 addresses are represented in dotted-decimal format. This 32-bitaddress is divided along 8-bit boundaries. Each set of 8 bits isconverted to its decimal equivalent and separated by periods.For IPv6, the 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries, andeach 16-bit block is converted to a 4-digit hexadecimal number andseparated by colons. The resulting representation is calledcolon-hexadecimal.The following is an IPv6 address in binary form:00100001110110100000000011010011000000000000000000101111001110110000001010101010000000001111111111111110001010001001110001011010The 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries:0010000111011010 0000000011010011   0000000000000000   0010111100111011 0000001010101010   0000000011111111   1111111000101000 1001110001011010  Each 16-bit block is converted to hexadecimal and delimited with colons. The result is:21DA:00D3:0000:2F3B:02AA:00FF:FE28:9C5AIPv6 representation can be further simplified by removing the leadingzeros within each 16-bit block. However, each block must have at leasta single digit. With leading zero suppression, the addressrepresentation becomes:21DA:D3:0:2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5AMike: I know there are lost of zeros in IPv6 addresses - can you discribe zero compression notation?Some types of addresses contain long sequences of zeros. To furthersimplify the representation of IPv6 addresses, a contiguous sequence of16-bit blocks set to 0 in the colon hexadecimal format can becompressed to “::?, known as double-colon.For example, the link-local address of FE80:0:0:0:2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2 canbe compressed to FE80::2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2. The multicast addressFF02:0:0:0:0:0:0:2 can be compressed to FF02::2.Zero compression can only be used to compress a single contiguousseries of 16-bit blocks expressed in colon hexadecimal notation. Youcannot use zero compression to include part of a 16-bit block. Forexample, you cannot express FF02:30:0:0:0:0:0:5 as FF02:3::5. Thecorrect representation is FF02:30::5.To determine how many 0 bits are represented by the “::?, you can countthe number of blocks in the compressed address, subtract this numberfrom 8, and then multiply the result by 16. For example, in the addressFF02::2, there are two blocks (the “FF02? block and the “2? block.) Thenumber of bits expressed by the “::? is 96 (96 = (8 – 2)(16).Zero compression can only be used once in a given address. Otherwise,you could not determine the number of 0 bits represented by eachinstance of “::?.Mike: IPv4 addresses use subnet masks - do IPv6 addresses?    No - a subnet mask is not used for IPv6. Something called prefix length notation is supported.  The prefix is the part of the address that indicates the bits that havefixed values or are the bits of the network identifier. Prefixes forIPv6 subnet identifiers, routes, and address ranges are expressed inthe same way as Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation forIPv4. An IPv6 prefix is written in address/prefix-length notation. Forexample, 21DA:D3::/48 is a route prefix and 21DA:D3:0:2F3B::/64 is asubnet prefix.Mike: I know there are three basic types of IPv6 addresses - can you give a brief description of each?    1. Unicast – packet sent to a particular interface  A unicast address identifies a single interface within the scope of thetype of unicast address. With the appropriate unicast routing topology,packets addressed to a unicast address are delivered to a singleinterface. To accommodate load-balancing systems, RFC 2373 allows formultiple interfaces to use the same address as long as they appear as asingle interface to the IPv6 implementation on the host.2. Multicast - packet sent to a set of interfaces, typically encompassing multiple nodes  A multicast address identifies multiple interfaces. With theappropriate multicast routing topology, packets addressed to amulticast address are delivered to all interfaces that are identifiedby the address.3. Anycast– while identifying multiple interfaces (and typically multiple nodes)is sent only to the interface that is determined to be “nearest? to thesender.  An anycast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriaterouting topology, packets addressed to an anycast address are deliveredto a single interface, the nearest interface that is identified by theaddress. The “nearest? interface is defined as being closest in termsof routing distance. A multicast address is used for one-to-manycommunication, with delivery to multiple interfaces. An anycast addressis used for one-to-one-of-many communication, with delivery to a singleinterface.In all cases, IPv6 addresses identify interfaces, not nodes. A node isidentified by any unicast address assigned to one of its interfaces.Mike: What about broadcasting?  RFC 2373 does not define a broadcast address. All types of IPv4broadcast addressing are performed in IPv6 using multicast addresses.For example, the subnet and limited broadcast addresses from IPv4 arereplaced with the link-local scope all-nodes multicast address ofFF02::1.Mike: What about special addresses?    The following are special IPv6 addresses:Unspecified Address    The unspecified address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 or ::) is only used toindicate the absence of an address. It is equivalent to the IPv4unspecified address of 0.0.0.0. The unspecified address is typicallyused as a source address for packets attempting to verify theuniqueness of a tentative address. The unspecified address is neverassigned to an interface or used as a destination address.Loopback Address    The loopback address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 or ::1) is used to identify aloopback interface, enabling a node to send packets to itself. It isequivalent to the IPv4 loopback address of 127.0.0.1. Packets addressedto the loopback address must never be sent on a link or forwarded by anIPv6 router.Mike: How is DNS handled?Enhancements to the Domain Name System (DNS) for IPv6 are described in RFC 1886 and consist of the following new elements:Host address (AAAA) resource record  IP6.ARPA domain for reverse queriesNote:  According to RFC 3152, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)consensus has been reached that the IP6.ARPA domain be used, instead ofIP6.INT as defined in RFC 1886. The IP6.ARPA domain is the domain usedby IPv6 for Windows Server 2003.The Host Address (AAAA) Resource Record: A newDNS resource record type, AAAA (called “quad A?), is used for resolvinga fully qualified domain name to an IPv6 address. It is comparable tothe host address (A) resource record used with IPv4. The resourcerecord type is named AAAA (Type value of 28) because 128-bit IPv6addresses are four times as large as 32-bit IPv4 addresses. Thefollowing is an example of a AAAA resource record:host1.microsoft.com    IN    AAAA   FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C A hostmust specify either a AAAA query or a general query for a specific hostname in order to receive IPv6 address resolution data in the DNS queryanswer sections.The IP6.ARPA Domain TheIP6.ARPA domain has been created for IPv6 reverse queries. Also calledpointer queries, reverse queries determine a host name based on the IPaddress. To create the namespace for reverse queries, each hexadecimaldigit in the fully expressed 32-digit IPv6 address becomes a separatelevel in inverse order in the reverse domain hierarchy.For example, the reverselookup domain name for the address FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C (fullyexpressed as FEC0:0000:0000:0000:02AA: 00FF:FE3F:2A1C) is:C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.ARPA.TheDNS support described in RFC 1886 represents a simple way to both maphost names to IPv6 addresses and provide reverse name resolution.Mike: Can you discuss transition from IPv4 to IPv6?Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in RFC 1933.The primary goal in the transition process is a successful coexistenceof the two protocol versions until such time as IPv4 can be retired if,indeed, it's ever completely decommissioned. Transition plans fall intotwo primary categories: dual-stack implementation, and IPv6 over IPv4tunneling.More Info Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in RFC 1933. There are two primary methods.Dual Stack Implementation Thesimplest method for providing IPv6 functionality allows the two IPversions to be implemented as a dual stack on each node. Nodes usingthe dual stack can communicate via either stack. While dual-stack nodescan use IPv6 and IPv4 addresses that are related to each other, thisisn't a requirement of the implementation, so the two addresses can betotally disparate. These nodes also can perform tunneling of IPv6 overIPv4. Because each stack is fully functional, the nodes can configuretheir IPv6 addresses via stateless autoconfiguration or DHCP for IPv6,while configuring their IPv4 addresses via any of the currentconfiguration methods.IPv6 Over IPv4 Tunneling  Thesecond method for implementing IPv6 in an IPv4 environment is bytunneling IPv6 packets within IPv4 packets. These nodes can map an IPv4address into an IPv4-compatible IPv6 address, preceding the IPv4address with a 96-bit "0:0:0:0:0:0" prefix. Routers on a network don'tneed to immediately be IPv6-enabled if this approach is used, butDomain Name System (DNS) servers on a mixed-version network must becapable of supporting both versions of the protocol. To help achievethis goal, a new record type, "AAAA," has been defined for IPv6addresses. Because Windows 2000 DNS servers implement this record typeas well as the IPv4 "A" record, IPv6 can be easily implemented in aWindows 2000 environment.Mike: we've only touched on some of the IPv6 details - where can people get more information?I'm hoping to run a session at our summer conference  July 28 - 31 in Austin, TX - we've currently got faculty fellowships available to cover the cost of the conference. See www.nctt.org for details.References - Content for this academic podcast from Microsoft sources:All Linked Documents at Microsoft Internet Protocol Version 6 (note: excellent and free online resources): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961.aspx Understanding IPv6, Joseph Davies, Microsoft Press, 2002ISBN: 0-7356-1245-5Sample Chapter at: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4883.asp#SampleChapter

Intro: Two weeks ago we gave an overview of IPv6. This week we take a look at some of the technical details for this protocol. Mike: Gordon, a couple of weeks ago we discussed Ipv6 - can you give us a quick review - what's the difference between IPv4 and IPv6? The most obvious distinguishing feature of IPv6 is its use of much larger addresses. The size of an address in IPv6 is 128 bits, which is four times the larger than an IPv4 address. A 32-bit address space allows for 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. A 128-bit address space allows for 2 28 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (or 3.4x1038) possible addresses. In the late 1970s when the IPv4 address space was designed, it was unimaginable that it could be exhausted. However, due to changes in technology and an allocation practice that did not anticipate the recent explosion of hosts on the Internet, the IPv4 address space was consumed to the point that by 1992 it was clear a replacement would be necessary. With IPv6, it is even harder to conceive that the IPv6 address space will be consumed. Mike: It's not just to have more addresses though, is it? It is important to remember that the decision to make the IPv6 address 128 bits in length was not so that every square inch of the Earth could have 4.3x1020 addresses. Rather, the relatively large size of the IPv6 address is designed to be subdivided into hierarchical routing domains that reflect the topology of the modern-day Internet. The use of 128 bits allows for multiple levels of hierarchy and flexibility in designing hierarchical addressing and routing that is currently lacking on the IPv4-based Internet. Mike: Is there a specific RFC for IPv6? The IPv6 addressing architecture is described in <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2373.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RFC 2373</a>. Mike: I know there is some basic terminology associated with IPv6. Can you describe Nodes and Interfaces as they apply to IPv6? A node is any device that implements IPv6. It can be a router, which is a device that forwards packets that aren't directed specifically to it, or a host, which is a node that doesn't forward packets. An interface is the connection to a transmission medium through which IPv6 packets are sent. Mike: How about some more IPv6 terminology - can you discuss Links, Neighbors, Link MTUs, and Link Layer Addresses? A link is the medium over which IPv6 is carried. Neighbors are nodes that are connected to the same link. A link maximum transmission unit (MTU) is the maximum packet size that can be carried over a given link medium, and is expressed in octets. A Link Layer address is the "physical" address of an interface, such as media access control (MAC) addresses for Ethernet links. Mike: Can you give a brief ouline in address syntax? IPv4 addresses are represented in dotted-decimal format. This 32-bit address is divided along 8-bit boundaries. Each set of 8 bits is converted to its decimal equivalent and separated by periods. For IPv6, the 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries, and each 16-bit block is converted to a 4-digit hexadecimal number and separated by colons. The resulting representation is called colon-hexadecimal. The following is an IPv6 address in binary form: 00100001110110100000000011010011000000000000000000101111001110110000001010101010000000001111111111111110001010001001110001011010 The 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries: 0010000111011010  0000000011010011   0000000000000000   0010111100111011  0000001010101010   0000000011111111   1111111000101000  1001110001011010  Each 16-bit block is converted to hexadecimal and delimited with colons. The result is: 21DA:00D3:0000:2F3B:02AA:00FF:FE28:9C5A IPv6 representation can be further simplified by removing the leading zeros within each 16-bit block. However, each block must have at least a single digit. With leading zero suppression, the address representation becomes: 21DA:D3:0:2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5A Mike: I know there are lost of zeros in IPv6 addresses - can you discribe zero compression notation? Some types of addresses contain long sequences of zeros. To further simplify the representation of IPv6 addresses, a contiguous sequence of 16-bit blocks set to 0 in the colon hexadecimal format can be compressed to “::?, known as double-colon. For example, the link-local address of FE80:0:0:0:2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2 can be compressed to FE80::2AA:FF:FE9A:4CA2. The multicast address FF02:0:0:0:0:0:0:2 can be compressed to FF02::2. Zero compression can only be used to compress a single contiguous series of 16-bit blocks expressed in colon hexadecimal notation. You cannot use zero compression to include part of a 16-bit block. For example, you cannot express FF02:30:0:0:0:0:0:5 as FF02:3::5. The correct representation is FF02:30::5. To determine how many 0 bits are represented by the “::?, you can count the number of blocks in the compressed address, subtract this number from 8, and then multiply the result by 16. For example, in the address FF02::2, there are two blocks (the “FF02? block and the “2? block.) The number of bits expressed by the “::? is 96 (96 = (8 – 2)(16). Zero compression can only be used once in a given address. Otherwise, you could not determine the number of 0 bits represented by each instance of “::?. Mike: IPv4 addresses use subnet masks - do IPv6 addresses? No - a subnet mask is not used for IPv6. Something called prefix length notation is supported. The prefix is the part of the address that indicates the bits that have fixed values or are the bits of the network identifier. Prefixes for IPv6 subnet identifiers, routes, and address ranges are expressed in the same way as Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation for IPv4. An IPv6 prefix is written in address/prefix-length notation. For example, 21DA:D3::/48 is a route prefix and 21DA:D3:0:2F3B::/64 is a subnet prefix. Mike: I know there are three basic types of IPv6 addresses - can you give a brief description of each? 1. Unicast – packet sent to a particular interface A unicast address identifies a single interface within the scope of the type of unicast address. With the appropriate unicast routing topology, packets addressed to a unicast address are delivered to a single interface. To accommodate load-balancing systems, RFC 2373 allows for multiple interfaces to use the same address as long as they appear as a single interface to the IPv6 implementation on the host. 2. Multicast - packet sent to a set of interfaces, typically encompassing multiple nodes A multicast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate multicast routing topology, packets addressed to a multicast address are delivered to all interfaces that are identified by the address. 3. Anycast – while identifying multiple interfaces (and typically multiple nodes) is sent only to the interface that is determined to be “nearest? to the sender. An anycast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate routing topology, packets addressed to an anycast address are delivered to a single interface, the nearest interface that is identified by the address. The “nearest? interface is defined as being closest in terms of routing distance. A multicast address is used for one-to-many communication, with delivery to multiple interfaces. An anycast address is used for one-to-one-of-many communication, with delivery to a single interface. In all cases, IPv6 addresses identify interfaces, not nodes. A node is identified by any unicast address assigned to one of its interfaces. Mike: What about broadcasting? RFC 2373 does not define a broadcast address. All types of IPv4 broadcast addressing are performed in IPv6 using multicast addresses. For example, the subnet and limited broadcast addresses from IPv4 are replaced with the link-local scope all-nodes multicast address of FF02::1. Mike: What about special addresses? The following are special IPv6 addresses: Unspecified Address The unspecified address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 or ::) is only used to indicate the absence of an address. It is equivalent to the IPv4 unspecified address of 0.0.0.0. The unspecified address is typically used as a source address for packets attempting to verify the uniqueness of a tentative address. The unspecified address is never assigned to an interface or used as a destination address. Loopback Address The loopback address (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 or ::1) is used to identify a loopback interface, enabling a node to send packets to itself. It is equivalent to the IPv4 loopback address of 127.0.0.1. Packets addressed to the loopback address must never be sent on a link or forwarded by an IPv6 router. Mike: How is DNS handled? Enhancements to the Domain Name System (DNS) for IPv6 are described in RFC 1886 and consist of the following new elements: Host address (AAAA) resource record <a href="http://IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.ARPA</a> domain for reverse queries Note:  According to RFC 3152, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) consensus has been reached that the <a href="http://IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.ARPA</a> domain be used, instead of <a href="http://IP6.INT" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.INT</a> as defined in RFC 1886. The <a href="http://IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.ARPA</a> domain is the domain used by IPv6 for Windows Server 2003. The Host Address (AAAA) Resource Record: A new DNS resource record type, AAAA (called “quad A?), is used for resolving a fully qualified domain name to an IPv6 address. It is comparable to the host address (A) resource record used with IPv4. The resource record type is named AAAA (Type value of 28) because 128-bit IPv6 addresses are four times as large as 32-bit IPv4 addresses. The following is an example of a AAAA resource record: <a href="http://host1.microsoft.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">host1.microsoft.com</a>    IN    AAAA   FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C A host must specify either a AAAA query or a general query for a specific host name in order to receive IPv6 address resolution data in the DNS query answer sections. The <a href="http://IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.ARPA</a> Domain The <a href="http://IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IP6.ARPA</a> domain has been created for IPv6 reverse queries. Also called pointer queries, reverse queries determine a host name based on the IP address. To create the namespace for reverse queries, each hexadecimal digit in the fully expressed 32-digit IPv6 address becomes a separate level in inverse order in the reverse domain hierarchy. For example, the reverse lookup domain name for the address FEC0::2AA:FF:FE3F:2A1C (fully expressed as FEC0:0000:0000:0000:02AA: 00FF:FE3F:2A1C) is: <a href="http://C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.ARPA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">C.1.A.2.F.3.E.F.F.F.0.0.A.A.2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.C.E.F.IP6.ARPA</a>. The DNS support described in RFC 1886 represents a simple way to both map host names to IPv6 addresses and provide reverse name resolution. Mike: Can you discuss transition from IPv4 to IPv6? Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in <a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1933.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RFC 1933</a>. The primary goal in the transition process is a successful coexistence of the two protocol versions until such time as IPv4 can be retired if, indeed, it's ever completely decommissioned. Transition plans fall into two primary categories: dual-stack implementation, and IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling. More Info Mechanisms for transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 are defined in RFC 1933. There are two primary methods. Dual Stack Implementation The simplest method for providing IPv6 functionality allows the two IP versions to be implemented as a dual stack on each node. Nodes using the dual stack can communicate via either stack. While dual-stack nodes can use IPv6 and IPv4 addresses that are related to each other, this isn't a requirement of the implementation, so the two addresses can be totally disparate. These nodes also can perform tunneling of IPv6 over IPv4. Because each stack is fully functional, the nodes can configure their IPv6 addresses via stateless autoconfiguration or DHCP for IPv6, while configuring their IPv4 addresses via any of the current configuration methods. IPv6 Over IPv4 Tunneling The second method for implementing IPv6 in an IPv4 environment is by tunneling IPv6 packets within IPv4 packets. These nodes can map an IPv4 address into an IPv4-compatible IPv6 address, preceding the IPv4 address with a 96-bit "0:0:0:0:0:0" prefix. Routers on a network don't need to immediately be IPv6-enabled if this approach is used, but Domain Name System (DNS) servers on a mixed-version network must be capable of supporting both versions of the protocol. To help achieve this goal, a new record type, "AAAA," has been defined for IPv6 addresses. Because Windows 2000 DNS servers implement this record type as well as the IPv4 "A" record, IPv6 can be easily implemented in a Windows 2000 environment. Mike: we've only touched on some of the IPv6 details - where can people get more information? I'm hoping to run a session at our summer conference July 28 - 31 in Austin, TX - we've currently got faculty fellowships available to cover the cost of the conference. See <a href="http://www.nctt.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.nctt.org</a> for details. References - Content for this academic podcast from Microsoft sources: All Linked Documents at Microsoft Internet Protocol Version 6 (note: excellent and free online resources): <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961.aspx</a> Understanding IPv6, Joseph Davies, Microsoft Press, 2002 ISBN: 0-7356-1245-5 Sample Chapter at: <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4883.asp#SampleChapter" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/4883.asp#SampleChapter</a>

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Details Podcast [32:30]

The FCC 700 MHz Spectrum AuctionIntro: In this podcast we discuss the in-progress FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction.Gordon:Mike, you are the reigning Global Wireless Education ConsortiumEducator of the year so you know about this stuff - what exactly isthis spectrum the FCC is auctioning and where did it come from?Back in 2005 Congress passed a law that requires all U.S. TVstations to convert to all digital broadcasts and give up analogspectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band. This law will free up 62 MHz ofspectrum in the 700 MHz band and effectively eliminate channels between52 and 69. This conversion, which has a deadline of February 18, 2009, has freed up spectrum that is being split up by the FCC into five blocks.Gordon: What so interesting about this block of spectrum?Cell coverage, required cell-site density and cost (total network cost and cost per customer).I understand eachspectrum block in the 700 MHz auction, except for the national publicsafely D-Block, has been assigned an area designation by the FCC. Could youdescribe those areas included in the 700 MHz auction using FCC definitions.Economic AreasBoththe A-Block (12 MHz) and the E-Block (6 MHz) are being auctioned usingthe Economic Area (BEA) service areas established by the RegionalEconomic Analysis Division, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S.Department of Commerce. Included are Guam and the Northern MarianaIslands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa andthe Gulf of Mexico. There are a total of 176 Economic Area serviceareas designated by the FCC.BEA services include GeneralWireless Communications Service (GWCS), Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR)and Location and Monitoring Service (LMS). Cellular Market AreasTheB-Block (12 MHz) is being auctioned using the Cellular Market Area(CMA) service areas. The 734 CMAs are broken down as follows:Areas 1-305: Created from the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs)defined by the Office of Management and Budget (1-305)        Area 306:     The Gulf of MexicoAreas307-734: Rural Service Areas (RSAs) established by the FCC which do notcross state borders including parts of Puerto Rico not already in anMSA (723-729), U.S. Virgin Islands                    (730-731), Guam (732), American Samoa (733), and Northern Mariana Islands          (734).CMA Services include Cellular Radiotelephone Service and Interactive Video and Data Service (IVDS) Regional Economic Areas TheC-Block (22 MHz) is being auctioned using the 12 Regional EconomicAreas (REAs) created by the FCC. The REAs are an aggregation of the 52Major Economic Areas (MEAs) defined by the FCC.          REA Services include Wireless Communications Service (WCS)All FCC areas, along with names, county lists, maps and map info data can be found on the Commission's website linked here. Mike: How is the auction being conducted?On their website, the Federal Communications Commission has  a public notice titled Auction of 700 MHZ Band Licenses. This document describes the bidding procedure for the 214 companies that have qualified for the auction, which will be handled by the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau(WTB). The WTB is one of seven FCC Bureaus and is responsible for allFCC domestic wireless telecommunications programs and policies.Here's a summary outline of the procedure pulled from the 12 page FCC document: Bidding in Auction 73 started on Thursday, January 24, 2008.Each qualified bidder received prior to January 24: At least two RSA SecurID tokens  An Integrated Spectrum Auction System (ISAS) Bidder’s Guide  A FCC Auction Bidder Line phone number TheFCC will conduct the auction over the Internet and telephonic biddingwill also be available. In either case, each authorized bidder musthave his or her own SecurID token. There will be aminimum opening bid amount for each license and package and the minimumopening bid amount is subject to reduction at the discretion of the WTB. The WTB will not entertain requests to lower minimum opening bid amounts. The WTB has established the following block-specific aggregate reserve prices for Auction 73: Block A, $1.807380 billion;Block B, $1.374426 billion;Block C, $4.637854 billion;Block D, $1.330000 billion;Block E, $0.903690 billion.Mike:It's interesting the range of reserve prices - is it safe to say thatthese correlate to the "value" the FCC sees with each?If, at the close of bidding in Auction 73, the aggregate reserve price for the A, B, C  and/or E Blocks has not been met, the WTB will issue an announcement that bidding in Auction 73 is closed and set a date for commencement of Auction 76. Roundresults will be available approximately 10 minutes after the close ofeach round. and two types of reports will be available to bidders: (a)publicly available information, and (b) bidder-specific informationavailable only to that bidder when logged in to the FCC Auction System. Eachqualified bidder will have a default watchlist that contains everylicense and packages of licenses selected on the bidder’s short-formapplication. Qualified bidders may also create custom watchlists. On Tuesday, January 22, the WTB conducted a mock auction, which will allow qualified bidders tofamiliarize themselves with the FCC Auction System. Only qualifiedbidders will be permitted to participate in the mock auction. Oncewinning bids are announced (either after Auction 73 or Auction 76) andwinning bidders are announced, winning bidders will have 10 businessdays to file a long-form application (FCC Form 601) and make downpayments for all of the licenses it won.Mike: Who are some of the major bidders? USA Today has published an interesting article titled Google could cause a stir in FCC's airwaves auction and, in the article, some of the leading bidders and their likely strategies are listed.Let's take a quick look at some of the major bidders (in alphabetical order) and their expected bidding strategies. For additional detail be sure to read the  USA Today Article.AT&amp;T AT&amp;Talready has more spectrum than any other carrier so bidding on the 700MHz band will be used for further build-out. Many experts arespeculating AT&amp;T will focus primarily on the D-Block public-safetyspectrum.Mike: Why is AT&amp;T going after public-safety spectrum? Am I missing something?Cablevision, Cox, Advance/Newhouse, BresnanThesecable companies are interested in spectrum to provide wireless servicesand compete with the large providers. Most experts believe they will bebidding on A-Block regional licenses in their service areas.EchoStarEchoStaris a satellite TV provider that is interested in using spectrum toprovide wireless broadband access to its customers. Most experts do notfeel EchoStar has the money to compete with companies like Google,At&amp;T and Verizon in the auction.GoogleGoogleis the heavyweight here. The company wants to further expand into thecellular smartphone market and has the money to compete with the bigproviders. The company is expected to bid the $4.6 Billion minimum forthe C-Block spectrum.Mike: Is this National Spectrum? As opposed to regional?Leap, MetroPCS,, AlltelLikethe cable companies (Cablevision, Cox, etc), these regional wirelesscompanies will likely be bidding on A-Block regional licenses in theirservice areas. Experts also are speculating Alltel will bid on thepublic safety D-Block spectrum.Paul Allen and VulcanPaulAllen's (co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates) investment company,Vulcan, already owns spectrum in Washington and Oregon.Vulcan may bebidding on some of the C-Block regional licenses or smaller A orB-Block regional licenses.QualcommTheCalifornia based wireless manufacturer is looking for spectrum for itsMediaFlo smartphone video service. Qualcomm will likely be bidding onE-Block regional licenses.VerizonVerizon will likely be bidding big on C-Block spectrum with plans to open their network to any (hardware and software) devices.Mike: Can you give us some background on the auction to date?The 26th round finished yesterday (Friday - Feb. 1, 2008) afternoon - here's a quick update from the FCC auction site: Bidding Rounds to Date: 26Bid totals to Date: $18,554,080,600The A and B-Blocks have been getting most of the attention lately:The Los Angeles A-Block leads the A's  with a current bid of $580,268,000.The Chicago B-Block leads the B's with a current bid of $892,400,000. There has not been a C-Block bid since it passed the FCC reserve price on Thursday. The current C-Block bid is $4,713,823,000.The public safety D-Block has not had a bid in 25 consecutive rounds and is stuck at $472,042,000, well below the $1.3 Billion reserve price set by the FCC.E-Block bidding has been slow with the New York City E-Block leading at       $178,897,000.23 licenses had not registered a bid at the end of round 26, 19 of these 23 are in the E-Block.Mike: Any personal observations and opinions on the auction?It looks (to me anyways) like the C-Block bidding may be done. Since the FCC reserve price of $4.6 Billion has been passed, the open-access that Google wanted is assured. We won't know who thewinning bidders are until after the auctions have closed but I'd sayGoogle is the current leading C-Block bidder.Rightnow it does not look like the D-Block will meet the $1.3 Billionreserve price and will end up being re-auctioned by the FCC.A number of E-Block licenses will not meet minimum bids and will also be re-auctioned.TheFCC had set an original goal of $10 Billion for the auction. Withcurrent bids totaling over $18 Billion, it appears the auction (fromthe FCC's perspective) will be a success.Bidding is closed for the weekend with round 27 starting Monday (Feb. 4, 2008) morning.Mike: What's the best way to stay updated?If you want to stay updated - the FCC  Auction 73: 700 MHz Auction Summary page lists, among other things, results of the auction after each round. You can also watch my blog!Mike: When will we know the winners?Theauction will likely last a couple of months so we won't know thewinners until then. We should start to see products from the winningbidders that use the spectrum sometime next year.

The FCC 700 MHz Spectrum AuctionIntro: In this podcast we discuss the in-progress FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction.Gordon: Mike, you are the reigning Global Wireless Education Consortium Educator of the year so you know about this stuff - what exactly is this spectrum the FCC is auctioning and where did it come from?Back in 2005 Congress passed a law that requires all U.S. TV stations to convert to all digital broadcasts and give up analog spectrum in the 700 MHz frequency band. This law will free up 62 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band and effectively eliminate channels between 52 and 69. This <a href="http://ictcenter.blogspot.com/2007/09/analog-to-digital-mandated-conversion.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conversion</a>, which has a deadline of February 18, 2009, has freed up spectrum that is being split up by the FCC into five blocks.Gordon: What so interesting about this block of spectrum?Cell coverage, required cell-site density and cost (total network cost and cost per customer).I understand each spectrum block in the 700 MHz auction, except for the national public safely D-Block, has been assigned an area designation by the FCC. Could you describe those areas included in the 700 MHz auction using <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/maps/areas/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FCC definitions</a>.Economic AreasBoth the A-Block (12 MHz) and the E-Block (6 MHz) are being auctioned using the Economic Area (BEA) service areas established by the Regional Economic Analysis Division, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce. Included are Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Gulf of Mexico. There are a total of 176 Economic Area service areas designated by the FCC.BEA services include General Wireless Communications Service (GWCS), Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) and Location and Monitoring Service (LMS). Cellular Market AreasThe B-Block (12 MHz) is being auctioned using the Cellular Market Area (CMA) service areas. The 734 CMAs are broken down as follows: Areas 1-305: Created from the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) defined by the Office of Management and Budget (1-305) Area 306: The Gulf of MexicoAreas 307-734: Rural Service Areas (RSAs) established by the FCC which do not cross state borders including parts of Puerto Rico not already in an MSA (723-729), U.S. Virgin Islands (730-731), Guam (732), American Samoa (733), and Northern Mariana Islands (734).CMA Services include Cellular Radiotelephone Service and Interactive Video and Data Service (IVDS) Regional Economic Areas The C-Block (22 MHz) is being auctioned using the 12 Regional Economic Areas (REAs) created by the FCC. The REAs are an aggregation of the 52 Major Economic Areas (MEAs) defined by the FCC. REA Services include Wireless Communications Service (WCS)All FCC areas, along with names, county lists, maps and map info data can be found on the Commission's website linked <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/maps/areas/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here.</a> Mike: How is the auction being conducted? On their website, the <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Federal Communications Commission</a> has  a public notice titled <a href="http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-83A1.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Auction of 700 MHZ Band Licenses</a>. This document describes the bidding procedure for the <a href="http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-83A2.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">214 companies</a> that have qualified for the auction, which will be handled by the <a href="http://wireless.fcc.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wireless Telecommunications Bureau</a> (WTB). The WTB is one of seven FCC Bureaus and is responsible for all FCC domestic wireless telecommunications programs and policies.Here's a summary outline of the procedure pulled from the 12 page FCC document: <ul><li>Bidding in Auction 73 started on Thursday, January 24, 2008.</li><li>Each qualified bidder received prior to January 24:<ul><li> At least two RSA SecurID tokens </li><li> An Integrated Spectrum Auction System (ISAS) Bidder’s Guide </li><li> A FCC Auction Bidder Line phone number</li></ul> </li><li>The FCC will conduct the auction over the Internet and telephonic bidding will also be available. In either case, each authorized bidder must have his or her own SecurID token. </li><li>There will be a minimum opening bid amount for each license and package and the minimum opening bid amount is subject to reduction at the discretion of the WTB. The WTB will not entertain requests to lower minimum opening bid amounts.</li><li> The WTB has established the following block-specific aggregate reserve prices for Auction 73: <ul><li>Block A, $1.807380 billion;</li><li>Block B, $1.374426 billion;</li><li>Block C, $4.637854 billion;</li><li>Block D, $1.330000 billion;</li><li>Block E, $0.903690 billion.</li></ul></li></ul>Mike: It's interesting the range of reserve prices - is it safe to say that these correlate to the "value" the FCC sees with each?<ul><li>If, at the close of bidding in Auction 73, the aggregate reserve price for the A, B, C and/or E Blocks has not been met, the WTB will issue an announcement that bidding in Auction 73 is closed and set a date for commencement of Auction 76. </li><li>Round results will be available approximately 10 minutes after the close of each round. and two types of reports will be available to bidders: (a) publicly available information, and (b) bidder-specific information available only to that bidder when logged in to the FCC Auction System. </li><li>Each qualified bidder will have a default watchlist that contains every license and packages of licenses selected on the bidder’s short-form application. Qualified bidders may also create custom watchlists. </li><li>On Tuesday, January 22, the WTB conducted a mock auction, which will allow qualified bidders to familiarize themselves with the FCC Auction System. Only qualified bidders will be permitted to participate in the mock auction. </li><li>Once winning bids are announced (either after Auction 73 or Auction 76) and winning bidders are announced, winning bidders will have 10 business days to file a long-form application (FCC Form 601) and make down payments for all of the licenses it won.</li></ul>Mike: Who are some of the major bidders? <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">USA Today</a> has published an interesting article titled <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2008-01-23-fcc-auction_N.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google could cause a stir in FCC's airwaves auction</a> and, in the article, some of the leading bidders and their likely strategies are listed.Let's take a quick look at some of the major bidders (in alphabetical order) and their expected bidding strategies. For additional detail be sure to read the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2008-01-23-fcc-auction_N.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">USA Today Article</a>.<a href="http://www.att.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AT&amp;T</a> AT&amp;T already has more spectrum than any other carrier so bidding on the 700 MHz band will be used for further build-out. Many experts are speculating AT&amp;T will focus primarily on the D-Block public-safety spectrum.Mike: Why is AT&amp;T going after public-safety spectrum? Am I missing something?<a href="http://www.cablevision.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cablevision</a>, <a href="http://www.cox.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cox</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications#Cable_television" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Advance/Newhouse</a>, <a href="http://www.bresnan.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bresnan</a>These cable companies are interested in spectrum to provide wireless services and compete with the large providers. Most experts believe they will be bidding on A-Block regional licenses in their service areas.<a href="http://www.echostar.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EchoStar</a>EchoStar is a satellite TV provider that is interested in using spectrum to provide wireless broadband access to its customers. Most experts do not feel EchoStar has the money to compete with companies like Google, At&amp;T and Verizon in the auction.<a href="http://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google</a>Google is the heavyweight here. The company wants to further expand into the cellular smartphone market and has the money to compete with the big providers. The company is expected to bid the $4.6 Billion minimum for the C-Block spectrum.Mike: Is this National Spectrum? As opposed to regional?<a href="http://www.leapwireless.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leap</a>, <a href="http://www.metropcs.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MetroPCS</a>,, <a href="http://www.alltel.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alltel</a>Like the cable companies (Cablevision, Cox, etc), these regional wireless companies will likely be bidding on A-Block regional licenses in their service areas. Experts also are speculating Alltel will bid on the public safety D-Block spectrum.<a href="http://www.vulcan.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Paul Allen and Vulcan</a>Paul Allen's (co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates) investment company, Vulcan, already owns spectrum in Washington and Oregon.Vulcan may be bidding on some of the C-Block regional licenses or smaller A or B-Block regional licenses.<a href="http://www.qualcomm.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Qualcomm</a>The California based wireless manufacturer is looking for spectrum for its MediaFlo smartphone video service. Qualcomm will likely be bidding on E-Block regional licenses.<a href="http://www.verizon.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Verizon</a>Verizon will likely be bidding big on C-Block spectrum with plans to open their network to any (hardware and software) devices.Mike: Can you give us some background on the auction to date?The 26th round finished yesterday (Friday - Feb. 1, 2008) afternoon - here's a quick update from the <a href="http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_summary&amp;id=73" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FCC auction site</a>: <ul><li>Bidding Rounds to Date: 26</li><li>Bid totals to Date: $18,554,080,600</li><li>The A and B-Blocks have been getting most of the attention lately:</li><ul><li>The Los Angeles A-Block leads the A's with a current bid of $580,268,000.</li><li>The Chicago B-Block leads the B's with a current bid of $892,400,000.</li></ul> <li>There has not been a C-Block bid since it <a href="http://ictcenter.blogspot.com/2008/01/google-becomes-telephone-company.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">passed the FCC reserve price on Thursday</a>. The current C-Block bid is $4,713,823,000.</li><li>The public safety D-Block has not had a bid in 25 consecutive rounds and is stuck at $472,042,000, well below the $1.3 Billion reserve price set by the FCC.</li><li>E-Block bidding has been slow with the New York City E-Block leading at $178,897,000.</li><li>23 licenses had not registered a bid at the end of round 26, 19 of these 23 are in the E-Block.</li></ul>Mike: Any personal observations and opinions on the auction?<ul><li>It looks (to me anyways) like the C-Block bidding may be done. Since the FCC reserve price of $4.6 Billion has been passed, the open-access that Google wanted is assured. We won't know who the winning bidders are until after the auctions have closed but I'd say Google is the current leading C-Block bidder.</li><li>Right now it does not look like the D-Block will meet the $1.3 Billion reserve price and will end up being re-auctioned by the FCC.</li><li>A number of E-Block licenses will not meet minimum bids and will also be re-auctioned.</li><li>The FCC had set an original goal of $10 Billion for the auction. With current bids totaling over $18 Billion, it appears the auction (from the FCC's perspective) will be a success.</li></ul>Bidding is closed for the weekend with round 27 starting Monday (Feb. 4, 2008) morning.Mike: What's the best way to stay updated?If you want to stay updated - the <a href="http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auction_summary&amp;id=73" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FCC Auction 73: 700 MHz Auction Summary page</a> lists, among other things, results of the auction after each round. You can also watch my blog!Mike: When will we know the winners?The auction will likely last a couple of months so we won't know the winners until then. We should start to see products from the winning bidders that use the spectrum sometime next year.

The FCC 700 MHz Spectrum Auction [28:48]

Special Notes: In this podcast Mike and I interview Martin Trieu, a former communitycollege student and current Google Engineer from California. The interview wasdone on January 5, 2008 during our National Science Foundation fundedNational Center for Telecommunications Technologies (located atSpringfield Technical Community College) winter conference hosted byOrange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California. We’d like to thank Dr Ann Beheler; Dean, Business, Computing, &amp;Career Services at Orange Coast College and Principle Investigator ofthe NSF funded Convergence Technology Center (located at Collin CountyCommunity College), for hosting our conference and arranging thisinterview with Martin. We’d also like to thank the National ScienceFoundation for funding and support. In the interview Martin uses a couple of acronyms that may needclarification. He refers to UCI - short for University of California,Irvine and EE – short for Electrical Engineering. He also refers toOrange Coast College as “OCC?.Martin’s son, 14 year old Martin Jr, was in the audience and is taking a programming course at OCC this semester.I’d also like to thank Mike Q – this was the first interview we’ve donein front of a live audience and I ended up asking all the questions due to some microphone issues.We know you’ll find the interview with Martin fascinating – if you area potential student, Martin’s story could inspire you to take a look atyour local community college. If you are a current student – we hopehis story motivates you to continue to do your best work. If you are afaculty or staff member – we know you can relate to Martin’s storybecause you and your students have similar stories to tell. If you arean employer – Martin is a good example of the type of talent,dedication and motivation you will find coming out of your localcommunity college.We especially enjoyed recording and now enjoy listening to this interview with Martin – we hope you do too!- GordonPodcast Intro: We’re here today at the NCTTWinter Conference hosted by Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA.with Martin Trieu, a Software Engineer at Google Audio. Interview Questions:1.    Can you tell us about your background – where were you born and what brought you to the United States?2.    I know you attended Orange Coast College, what made you decide togo to college and why did you choose a community college?3.    What happened after you graduated?4.    How did you start working for Internet based companies?5.    How has working for Internet based companies changed?6.    Can you describe your current job?7.    What advice would you give young people with regards to careers and success?

Special Notes: In this podcast Mike and I interview Martin Trieu, a former community college student and current Google Engineer from California. The interview was done on January 5, 2008 during our National Science Foundation funded National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (located at Springfield Technical Community College) winter conference hosted by Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California. We’d like to thank Dr Ann Beheler; Dean, Business, Computing, &amp; Career Services at Orange Coast College and Principle Investigator of the NSF funded Convergence Technology Center (located at Collin County Community College), for hosting our conference and arranging this interview with Martin. We’d also like to thank the National Science Foundation for funding and support. In the interview Martin uses a couple of acronyms that may need clarification. He refers to UCI - short for University of California, Irvine and EE – short for Electrical Engineering. He also refers to Orange Coast College as “OCC?. Martin’s son, 14 year old Martin Jr, was in the audience and is taking a programming course at OCC this semester. I’d also like to thank Mike Q – this was the first interview we’ve done in front of a live audience and I ended up asking all the questions due to some microphone issues. We know you’ll find the interview with Martin fascinating – if you are a potential student, Martin’s story could inspire you to take a look at your local community college. If you are a current student – we hope his story motivates you to continue to do your best work. If you are a faculty or staff member – we know you can relate to Martin’s story because you and your students have similar stories to tell. If you are an employer – Martin is a good example of the type of talent, dedication and motivation you will find coming out of your local community college. We especially enjoyed recording and now enjoy listening to this interview with Martin – we hope you do too!- Gordon Podcast Intro: We’re here today at the NCTT Winter Conference hosted by Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. with Martin Trieu, a Software Engineer at Google Audio. Interview Questions: 1.    Can you tell us about your background – where were you born and what brought you to the United States? 2.    I know you attended Orange Coast College, what made you decide to go to college and why did you choose a community college? 3.    What happened after you graduated? 4.    How did you start working for Internet based companies? 5.    How has working for Internet based companies changed? 6.    Can you describe your current job? 7.    What advice would you give young people with regards to careers and success?

An Interview with Google Engineer Martin Trieu [31:32]

Mike Intro: Earlier this fall wediscussed DOCSIS 3.0 and how the cable companies will use thistechnology to deliver high bandwidth services to consumers. In thispodcast we discuss the implementation and technologies the traditionaltelephone companies are using to deliver-high bandwidth voice, videoand data services. Mike: Gordon,I know you are very familiar with Verizon and the companies FiOS fiberto the home ((FTTH) product. How is the project coming along? FiOS is Verizon's Fiber to the Home (FTTH), alsoknow as Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) product offering. The serviceprovides high-bandwidth data, voice and video services. The company hasposted some interesting data on their policy blog for the third quarter of 2007. Here's a summary: Fiber Implementation: Source: http://www.verizon.com/fiberoptics FiOSis currently available in parts of 16 states: California, Connecticut,Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, NewJersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginiaand Washington. At the end of September 2007, Verizon had passed about 8.5 million homes and businesses – installing more than 457 million feet of fiber in parts of 16 states.     Verizon expects to continue passing some 3 million premises annually through 2010, when the company expects to have passed about 18 million homes, or over half the homes it serves.   Verizon will begin boosting speeds and capabilities on its all-fiber network when it begins deploying advanced G-PON electronics in 2007.  This technology can increase downstream broadband speeds by up to four times, and upstream speeds by eight times.    Verizon is investing nearly $23 billion in the FiOS project, between 2004 and 2010.   Mike: How about broadband products?  Broadband Products: Source: http://www22.verizon.com/Content/ConsumerFiOS/     Mike: What about video?  Video: Source: http://www.verizonfios.com/tv   Mike: What's happening with bandwidth over fiber?On November 19, Verizon announced they have completed a 100 Gbps opticalcommunications test between Tampa and Miami, FL. The two cities are 312miles apart. Here's a couple of quotes from the press release:   Verizonhas successfully concluded the industry's first field test of 100gigabits per second (Gbps) optical transmission, on a live, in-service312-mile (504 kilometer) network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami.      Thetest, which utilized a live video feed from Verizon's national FiOS TVnetwork as the "payload," was successfully completed Friday (Nov. 16).The 100 Gbps transmission was conducted on a Verizon Business ultralong-haul optical system carrying other live traffic at 10 Gbps. Thetest demonstrated that by deploying advanced electronics, an existingnetwork system can easily and quickly be upgraded to 100Gbps. The test was done using existing fiber that had been installed for 10Gbps service. Here's a couple more quotes from the press release:   Unlikeother trials that used 10 separate 10 Gbps wavelengths to carry 100Gbps, the Verizon test utilized a 100 Gbps signal on a singlewavelength, demonstrating Verizon's drive to promote "true" 100 Gbps ina serial fashion on just one transmission wavelength.Like theequipment in the company's 40 Gbps trial in June 2004, the 100 Gbpsequipment used in the field trial was implemented with a "plug andplay" approach. This is a key objective for future commercialimplementation, and means the technology was used without any changesto the fiber, amplifiers and other embedded equipment. Amazing bandwidth obtained using existing fiber - the trial only swapped electronics using, according to the press release, Alcatel-Lucent's 1625 LambdaXtreme Transport system.Mike: Will companies continue to deliver assymetrical services?On October 22, Verizon announced20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey andConnecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that Ifind exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see thebandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'llsee bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selectedareas as the telcos, like Verizon, go head-to-head with the cable companies like Comcast. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.Thesecond exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services.Mike: Could you explain what a symmetrical service is and how it differ from what we're used to?Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, havealways been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short forasymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidththan upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" abit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way youtraditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information inthe address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to aDNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sendsback the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directedto that site location. The site server then sends your browser the sitecontents you want to see.Think about it - in the traditionalmodel - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of informationcomes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers havedesigned their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lotsof downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this newFIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a Verizon press release:"Verizon'snew symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usagepatterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore,senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generatedcontent continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity,upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for allusers."Mike: Thanks Gordon. We'll take a look at Fiber To The Node (FTTN) technologies next week.

Mike Intro: Earlier this fall we discussed DOCSIS 3.0 and how the cable companies will use this technology to deliver high bandwidth services to consumers. In this podcast we discuss the implementation and technologies the traditional telephone companies are using to deliver-high bandwidth voice, video and data services. Mike: Gordon, I know you are very familiar with Verizon and the companies FiOS fiber to the home ((FTTH) product. How is the project coming along? FiOS is Verizon's Fiber to the Home (FTTH), also know as Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) product offering. The service provides high-bandwidth data, voice and video services. The company has posted some interesting data on their <a href="http://policyblog.verizon.com/PolicyBlog/Blogs/policyblog/CZBlogger1/391/FiOS-Fact-Sheet-Q307-Edition.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">policy blog</a> for the third quarter of 2007. Here's a summary: Fiber Implementation: Source: <a href="http://www.verizon.com/fiberoptics" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.verizon.com/fiberoptics</a> FiOS is currently available in parts of 16 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. At the end of September 2007, Verizon had passed about 8.5 million homes and businesses – installing more than 457 million feet of fiber in parts of 16 states. Verizon expects to continue passing some 3 million premises annually through 2010, when the company expects to have passed about 18 million homes, or over half the homes it serves. Verizon will begin boosting speeds and capabilities on its all-fiber network when it begins deploying advanced G-PON electronics in 2007. This technology can increase downstream broadband speeds by up to four times, and upstream speeds by eight times. Verizon is investing nearly $23 billion in the FiOS project, between 2004 and 2010. Mike: How about broadband products? Broadband Products: Source: <a href="http://www22.verizon.com/Content/ConsumerFiOS/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www22.verizon.com/Content/ConsumerFiOS/</a> Mike: What about video? Video: Source: <a href="http://www.verizonfios.com/tv" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.verizonfios.com/tv</a> Mike: What's happening with bandwidth over fiber?On November 19, Verizon announced they have completed a 100 Gbps optical communications test between Tampa and Miami, FL. The two cities are 312 miles apart. Here's a couple of quotes from the <a href="http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2007/verizon-successfully.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">press release</a>: Verizon has successfully concluded the industry's first field test of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) optical transmission, on a live, in-service 312-mile (504 kilometer) network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami. The test, which utilized a live video feed from Verizon's national FiOS TV network as the "payload," was successfully completed Friday (Nov. 16). The 100 Gbps transmission was conducted on a Verizon Business ultra long-haul optical system carrying other live traffic at 10 Gbps. The test demonstrated that by deploying advanced electronics, an existing network system can easily and quickly be upgraded to 100Gbps. The test was done using existing fiber that had been installed for 10 Gbps service. Here's a couple more quotes from the press release: Unlike other trials that used 10 separate 10 Gbps wavelengths to carry 100 Gbps, the Verizon test utilized a 100 Gbps signal on a single wavelength, demonstrating Verizon's drive to promote "true" 100 Gbps in a serial fashion on just one transmission wavelength.Like the equipment in the company's 40 Gbps trial in June 2004, the 100 Gbps equipment used in the field trial was implemented with a "plug and play" approach. This is a key objective for future commercial implementation, and means the technology was used without any changes to the fiber, amplifiers and other embedded equipment. Amazing bandwidth obtained using existing fiber - the trial only swapped electronics using, according to the press release, <a href="http://www.lucent.com/wps/portal/Products/detail?LMSG_CABINET=Solution_Product_Catalog&amp;LMSG_CONTENT_FILE=Products/Product_Detail_000044.xml" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alcatel-Lucent's 1625 LambdaXtreme Transport system</a>.Mike: Will companies continue to deliver assymetrical services?On October 22, Verizon <a href="http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2007/verizon-redefines-fast-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">announced</a> 20 Mbps symmetrical FIOs service in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for as low as $64.99 a month. There are two things that I find exciting about this offering. First - it's great to see the bandwidths continue to go up. I feel this is just the start and we'll see bandwidths of over 100 Mbps within the next two years in selected areas as the telcos, like <a href="http://www.verizon.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Verizon</a>, go head-to-head with the cable companies like <a href="http://www.comcast.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Comcast</a>. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where FIOS is available you re in for a real treat regarding bandwidth.The second exciting thing I see here is a shift to symmetrical services. Mike: Could you explain what a symmetrical service is and how it differ from what we're used to?Broadband products to date, including FIOS, ADSL and cable modem, have always been asymmetrical - the "A" in ADSL is even short for asymmetrical! Asymmetrical services provide more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. It's been a way for the providers to "cheat" a bit based on traditional Internet usage. Consider the way you traditionally surf the web - you enter a small amount of information in the address bar and hit enter. The address you type ends up going to a DNS (Domain Name Service) server and is looked up. The DNS server sends back the IP address of the site you want and your browser is directed to that site location. The site server then sends your browser the site contents you want to see.Think about it - in the traditional model - a little information gets sent upstream and lots of information comes back downstream. Recognizing these patterns the providers have designed their networks to provide a little upstream bandwidth and lots of downstream bandwidth. Well...... all this has changed with this new FIOS offering from Verizon. Here's a quote from a <a href="http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2007/verizon-redefines-fast-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Verizon press release</a>: "Verizon's new symmetric service is a smart response to the changing usage patterns of high-speed Internet subscribers," said Vince Vittore, senior analyst with Yankee Group. "We believe that as user-generated content continues to expand and telecommuting increases in popularity, upstream speed will become just as important as downstream for all users."Mike: Thanks Gordon. We'll take a look at Fiber To The Node (FTTN) technologies next week.

Fiber To The Home (FTTH) Technology Update [23:20]

Title: The Next Generation Cable Network: DOCSIS 3.0 Intro: Thefirst DOCSIS standard, short for Data Over Cable Service InterfaceSpecifications, standard was released by the company Cable Labs in1997. In this podcast we take a look at the history of thesestandards and discuss DOCSIS 3.0 – the emerging standard in thecable industry.  Mike:Gordon, can you give us a brief history of the first DOCSISstandards? Gordon– just covers up to 2.0  Mike:What are “tiered services?? Tieredservices is business jargon for providing a service (such as telecomconnectivity or cable channel service) according to separate,incrementally distinct quality and pay levels, or "tiers."We’re seeing this term used a lot recently in political debateregarding “net neutrality?.  Mike:Can you tell us a little more about DOCSIS 3.0? Sure– in a nutshell it’s bigger, better, faster… It’sa needed response to products from competitors like Verizon with FIOsFTTH product and AT&amp;T with the FTTN Lightspeed product. It’striple play broadband – voice video and data.   DOCSIS3.0: -Much higher bandwidth through channel bonding  -Starts at 160 Mbps Downstream, 60 Mbps Upstream and goes up fromthere    -TI just rolled out their Puma 5 chip set a couple of weeks ago forcable modems. The chipset supports new DOCSIS 3.0 features, such aschannel bonding, enable ultra highdownstream bandwidth rates of at least 160 Mbps in the residential dataand voice services configuration and 320 Mbps in video and businessservices configuration. In addition Puma 5 also supports greaterquality of service with IPv6 and securitywith Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). -Multiple 6 MHz (or 8 MHz) channels are bound, treating them logicallyas one Channel	bonding in both upstream and downstream  -IPv6 for advanced networking capabilities -Expanded address space (2128 or 3.4 dodecillion) Improved	operational capabilities  Mike:How will IPv6 be rolled out? There’sa lot of speculation now but it looks like it will be in to phases.John T. Chapman and Shalabh Goel from Cisco Systems have aninteresting piece we’ve got linked in the shownotes(http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html) “Theinitial deployment phase allows the cable operator to set up an IPv6control and management plane for managing the cable modems, set-topboxes, and multimedia terminal adapters (MTAs) with a cost-effectiveupgrade. In a subsequent deployment phase, cable operators can offerIPv6 directly to the home network. Many new devices are already IPv6capable, and cable operators could soon be running the largest IPV6networks in the world.? Mike:What are some other key features of DOCSIS 3.0? Otherkey related DOCSIS 3.0 features, which may be migrated over time,include: • Enhancedsecurity, including advanced encryption standard (AES), securityprovisioning and theft of service features; • Anupstream frequency range extension to 85 MHz and a downstreamfrequency extension to 1 GHz that allows an operator to add existingcapacity with plant upgrades at a later date; • Enhancedplant diagnostic features, including a cable modem diagnostic log,enhanced signal quality monitoring, extension of IP data record(IPDR) usage and capacity management. Mike:How about the commercial services? (from:http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html) DOCSIS3.0 specifications define two technologies for business services overDOCSIS: layer 2 virtual private networks (VPNs) and T-1 circuitemulation. Businessusers will be able to videoconference from their PCs and PDAs and tapinto corporate networks through VPNs; residential customers willsubscribe to video-on-demand (VOD) and IP telephony services with lowlatency and minimum packet loss; and users everywhere will be able toupload and download files at much greater broadband speeds. Mike:When will it be available? Comcast	demo’ed 150 Mbps at the May 14, 2007 Cable Show in Las Vegas. “The	Associated Press described a demo in which a 30-second, 300MB	television commercial was downloaded in a few seconds, while a	standard cable modem took 16 minutes?. 	 “Also	downloaded, in less than four minutes, was the full 32-volume	Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster’s visual	dictionary. With a standard cable modem, that download would have	taken three hours and 12 minutes (dialup would have taken 2 weeks)?. “Comcast	is currently trialing this in the Boston area. In one trial, the	cable operator will set up an IP video headend to experiment with	carrying voice, video and data over a single IP connection?. 	  Accordingto FierceIPTV(http://www.fierceiptv.com/story/comcast-to-trial-docsis-3.0-iptv/2007-05-08): “Comcast'splanned converged-services trial will take place in a system thatserves 50,000 homes, and will include an IP-video headend and DOCSIS3.0 STBs, as well as the Slingbox from Sling Media, dual modeWiFi-cellular handsets and mobile phones capable of playing video.? Accordingto Chapman and Goel: The industry consensus is that fully compliantDOCSIS 3.0 CMTS*  implementations will be available in 2008 to 2009.Many cable operators will require the most critical DOCSIS 3.0features, such as downstream channel bonding and IPv6, far earlier.To meet this demand, many vendors’ CMTS products now includeearly implementations of such a subset of DOCSIS 3.0 features. *CMTS: A cable modem termination system or CMTS is equipment typicallyfound in a cable company's headend, or at cable company hubsite andis used to provide high speed data services, such as cable internetor Voice over IP, to cable subscribers. Inorder to provide these high speed data services, a cable company willconnect its headend to the Internet via very high capacity datalinks, also known as a circuit (canonical form of telecommunicationcircuit), to a network service provider. On the subscriber side ofthe headend, the CMTS enables the communication with subscribers'cable modems. Different CMTSs are capable of serving different cablemodem population sizes - ranging from 4,000 cable modems to 150,000or more. A given headend may have between half a dozen to a dozen ormore CMTSs to service the cable modem population served by thatheadend. Oneway to think of a CMTS is to imagine a router with Ethernetinterfaces (connections) on one side and coax RF interfaces on theother side. The RF/coax interfaces carry RF signals to and from thesubscriber's cable modem. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMTS)

Title: The Next Generation Cable Network: DOCSIS 3.0 Intro: The first DOCSIS standard, short for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications, standard was released by the company Cable Labs in 1997. In this podcast we take a look at the history of these standards and discuss DOCSIS 3.0 – the emerging standard in the cable industry. Mike: Gordon, can you give us a brief history of the first DOCSIS standards? Gordon – just covers up to 2.0 Mike: What are “tiered services?? Tiered services is business jargon for providing a service (such as telecom connectivity or cable channel service) according to separate, incrementally distinct quality and pay levels, or "tiers." We’re seeing this term used a lot recently in political debate regarding “net neutrality?. Mike: Can you tell us a little more about DOCSIS 3.0? Sure – in a nutshell it’s bigger, better, faster… It’s a needed response to products from competitors like Verizon with FIOs FTTH product and AT&amp;T with the FTTN Lightspeed product. It’s triple play broadband – voice video and data. DOCSIS 3.0: - Much higher bandwidth through channel bonding - Starts at 160 Mbps Downstream, 60 Mbps Upstream and goes up from there    - TI just rolled out their Puma 5 chip set a couple of weeks ago for cable modems. The chipset supports new DOCSIS 3.0 features, such as channel bonding, enable ultra high downstream bandwidth rates of at least 160 Mbps in the residential data and voice services configuration and 320 Mbps in video and business services configuration. In addition Puma 5 also supports greater quality of service with IPv6 and security with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). - Multiple 6 MHz (or 8 MHz) channels are bound, treating them logically as one <ul><li>Channel 	bonding in both upstream and downstream </li></ul> - IPv6 for advanced networking capabilities - Expanded address space (2128 or 3.4 dodecillion) <ul><li>Improved 	operational capabilities </li></ul> Mike: How will IPv6 be rolled out? There’s a lot of speculation now but it looks like it will be in to phases. John T. Chapman and Shalabh Goel from Cisco Systems have an interesting piece we’ve got linked in the shownotes (<a href="http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html</a> ) “The initial deployment phase allows the cable operator to set up an IPv6 control and management plane for managing the cable modems, set-top boxes, and multimedia terminal adapters (MTAs) with a cost-effective upgrade. In a subsequent deployment phase, cable operators can offer IPv6 directly to the home network. Many new devices are already IPv6 capable, and cable operators could soon be running the largest IPV6 networks in the world.? Mike: What are some other key features of DOCSIS 3.0? Other key related DOCSIS 3.0 features, which may be migrated over time, include: • Enhanced security, including advanced encryption standard (AES), security provisioning and theft of service features; • An upstream frequency range extension to 85 MHz and a downstream frequency extension to 1 GHz that allows an operator to add existing capacity with plant upgrades at a later date; • Enhanced plant diagnostic features, including a cable modem diagnostic log, enhanced signal quality monitoring, extension of IP data record (IPDR) usage and capacity management. Mike: How about the commercial services? (from: <a href="http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.cable360.net/ct/sections/features/20942.html</a>) DOCSIS 3.0 specifications define two technologies for business services over DOCSIS: layer 2 virtual private networks (VPNs) and T-1 circuit emulation. Business users will be able to videoconference from their PCs and PDAs and tap into corporate networks through VPNs; residential customers will subscribe to video-on-demand (VOD) and IP telephony services with low latency and minimum packet loss; and users everywhere will be able to upload and download files at much greater broadband speeds. Mike: When will it be available? <ul><li>Comcast 	demo’ed 150 Mbps at the May 14, 2007 Cable Show in Las Vegas. </li><li>“The 	Associated Press described a demo in which a 30-second, 300MB 	television commercial was downloaded in a few seconds, while a 	standard cable modem took 16 minutes?. 	 </li><li>“Also 	downloaded, in less than four minutes, was the full 32-volume 	Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster’s visual 	dictionary. With a standard cable modem, that download would have 	taken three hours and 12 minutes (dialup would have taken 2 weeks)?. </li><li>“Comcast 	is currently trialing this in the Boston area. In one trial, the 	cable operator will set up an IP video headend to experiment with 	carrying voice, video and data over a single IP connection?. 	 </li></ul> According to FierceIPTV (<a href="http://www.fierceiptv.com/story/comcast-to-trial-docsis-3.0-iptv/2007-05-08" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.fierceiptv.com/story/comcast-to-trial-docsis-3.0-iptv/2007-05-08</a> ): “Comcast's planned converged-services trial will take place in a system that serves 50,000 homes, and will include an IP-video headend and DOCSIS 3.0 STBs, as well as the Slingbox from Sling Media, dual mode WiFi-cellular handsets and mobile phones capable of playing video.? According to Chapman and Goel: The industry consensus is that fully compliant DOCSIS 3.0 CMTS* implementations will be available in 2008 to 2009. Many cable operators will require the most critical DOCSIS 3.0 features, such as downstream channel bonding and IPv6, far earlier. To meet this demand, many vendors’ CMTS products now include early implementations of such a subset of DOCSIS 3.0 features. * CMTS: A cable modem termination system or CMTS is equipment typically found in a cable company's headend, or at cable company hubsite and is used to provide high speed data services, such as cable internet or Voice over IP, to cable subscribers. In order to provide these high speed data services, a cable company will connect its headend to the Internet via very high capacity data links, also known as a circuit (canonical form of telecommunication circuit), to a network service provider. On the subscriber side of the headend, the CMTS enables the communication with subscribers' cable modems. Different CMTSs are capable of serving different cable modem population sizes - ranging from 4,000 cable modems to 150,000 or more. A given headend may have between half a dozen to a dozen or more CMTSs to service the cable modem population served by that headend. One way to think of a CMTS is to imagine a router with Ethernet interfaces (connections) on one side and coax RF interfaces on the other side. The RF/coax interfaces carry RF signals to and from the subscriber's cable modem. (source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMTS" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMTS</a> )

The Next Generation Cable Network: DOCSIS 3.0 [34:20]

The best podcast episodes on physical health. Episodes talk about your diet, sleep, exercise and all the things that people do to improve their physical health and live a healthier life. This topic is for everyone, with applications in all of our everyday lives. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Episodes on Physical Health & Your Body

The best podcasts about ourselves as well as the world through the lense of Science. Specific topics include things about our brain, emotions to biology, physics and more!