Sean Michael Kerner

There was a time not so long ago when a T1 at 1.54 Mbps was enough bandwidth for almost anyone. Not anymore. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has just ratified the VDSL2 (Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line 2) standard, which is intended to reach downstream and upstream rates of up to 100Mbps. The current top ADSL […]

Access infrastructure vendor Citrix Systems today announced its acquisition of San Jose-based NetScaler for $300 million in cash and stock. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter this year. NetScaler is a privately held firm that develops application networking acceleration products that are widely used among Fortune 500 customers, including Google, […]

If you’re a student with time on your hands and want to contribute to an open source project, Google wants to hear from you. The search engine giant is offering coders up to $4,500 to work on projects for different open source groups. Programmers can apply to the “Google Summer of Code” initiative through a […]

Criminals aren’t the only ones benefiting from the onslaught of threats that bombard corporate networks. Security vendors are also reaping the benefits. According to Infonetics Research, worldwide security appliance and software revenue is forecast to hit $6.5 billion by 2008. The latest quarterly report on Network Security Appliances and Software from Infonetics pegged first-quarter 2005 […]

The need for mobility in the home has prompted Gartner to increase its 2005 forecast for worldwide PC shipments. The research firm originally forecast a 9.9 percent increase over last year, but now it says 2005 growth will be 10.2 percent, which translates into 202.1 million units. Among the drivers for increased growth for PC […]

Microsoft officially launched its MSN China portal at msn.com.cn. The new portal follows a recent joint venture agreement and acquisition by Microsoft in China. MSN China is officially operated by Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology Company Ltd and is further supported by local partners. As part of its launch ceremony, MSN China rolled out nine […]

As part of its spam fighting efforts, Microsoft today announced a pair of new services to help users and ISPs fight the deluge. MSN Postmaster is a new online resource that Microsoft is making available globally in 10 different languages to help users and ISPs understand when and why MSN’s popular Hotmail service considers an […]

E-mail has become a pervasive, mission-critical aspect of business and personal life for many. It turns out, though, that Americans actually have an obsessive-compulsive need to check it morning, noon and night. America Online and Opinion Research Corporation surveyed 4,012 respondents in 20 U.S. cities to gauge the degree to which Americans obsess over e-mail. […]

The Force was with the Elite Torrents network yesterday. Unfortunately for the high-speed download network that leaked the latest Star Wars flick, it was the police force. In the first criminal action against peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharers deploying BitTorrent technology, federal agents executed 10 search warrants across the country and seized control of the network’s main […]

Though Linux is gaining momentum in North America, those that work for Linux organizations are not immune to layoffs. The OSDL, the self-proclaimed center of gravity for Linux and the employer of Linus Torvalds, recently laid off an undisclosed number of employees in its sales, marketing, business development and programming departments, an OSDL spokesperson said […]

Sales of mobile phones broke records in the first quarter of 2005, with the likes of Motorola and Nokia enjoying the ride. But the period also put a strain on some of the smaller manufacturers. According to the latest statistics from Gartner, sales grew by 17 percent to a record total of 180.6 million units […]

Wind River this week announced a slew of product improvements across its lineup and introduced a Linux platform to support developers. VxWorks 6.1 is the newest version of Wind River’s real-time operating system for device software optimization. The company expanded the processor support in VxWorks 6.1 to include ARM, xScale and SuperH processor architectures in […]