The evolution of Wi-Fi

Did you know other names considered for "Wi-Fi" included FlankSpeed and DragonFly? Another curious fact: there are an estimated 10 billion wireless devices in use -- outnumbering the world’s population of 7 billion. D-Link has created an infographic filled with interesting facts about wireless technology. Coming from a company widely known for creating networking gear, it just seems fitting.

Among other highlights in the graph below: a wireless tech timeline, the future of Wi-Fi, and a visual breakdown of the latest WiFi standard, 802.11ac.

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Belkin unveils 802.11ac router lineup, $139 and $159

A 56-page PowerPoint file supposedly containing plans for Microsoft’s next generation gaming console was posted on Scribd last weekend. The file has since found a home on multiple hosting services and websites but that run could be short-lived as Microsoft’s legal team has reportedly been sending takedown noticesto sites hosting the writings.

The original file has been removed from Scribd at the request of Covington & Burling LLP, a group that represents Microsoft according to their client list.Furthermore, a technology site based in the Czech Republic called Ihned.cz received a letter from Alan Radford, an Internet investigator working on behalf of Microsoft.

The letter notes that a domain under the site owner’s control is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaging in other unauthorized activities with relation to copyrighted material owned by Microsoft. The document is referred to as the IEB Roadmap in the letter. The author asks that the content be removed or have access to it disabled.

If Microsoft is indeed asking websites to stop hosting the file, one would have to think that the leaked document is indeed genuine. Of course, a two-year-old PowerPoint file is likely outdated at this point but there’s little doubt that a majority of the material found within will be coming down the pipeline at some point.

The document was allegedly written in 2010 and chronicles multiple events that have come to fruition since its inception but as CNET points out, the interesting bits include mention of a $299 Xbox 720 bundled with a Kinect 2 camera accessory. The bundle is expected to launch in time for the 2013 holiday buying season with plans for a 10-year lifecycle and a goal to sell 100 million units.

Physicists set world record with 186Gbps network transfer

Scientists at Caltech managed to squeeze 186Gbps of data through a fiber optic network link between Victoria, B.C and Seattle, WA. This achievement marks the highest speed transfer ever over a long-range network, breaking the previous record of 119Gbps which was also set by the same Caltech team.

The impressive figure was not just data sent one way, but rather the sum of simultaneously sending 86Gbps of data to the University of Victoria and receiving 100Gbps at the Washington State Convention Center. While the 186Gbps link was not fully bi-directional, the highest possible transfer in any given direction was still a whopping 100Gbps, a limit imposed by the networking switches used. The total amount of data transferred during the demonstration was 4.42 petabytes.

The team utilized a cluster of ten cutting edge, pre-production Dell servers with PCIe-3 based network cards. The computers were stuffed with SSDs and joined together between cities via a "state of the art" fiber optic network connected to multiple 100Gbps network switches. Some more details about the setup can be found here.

Caltech hopes their new achievement can be applied to CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is a particle accelerator where scientists can take small amounts of matter, accelerate them to 99.9% the speed of light and collides the matter together in hopes that the resulting "explosion" reveals clues about our universe. During these tests, a massive amount of particle data is generated and that data needs to be collected. The team hopes that their progress in the field of high-speed communications will help high-energy physicists collect, send and receive this tremendous amount of data with greater ease.