Yesterday’s Internet Outage In Parts of U.S. and Canada You Didn’t Hear About

How a Tiny Error Shut Off the Internet for Parts of the US and Canada

Reposted from Wired

Lily Hay Newman13 hrs ago

© Joe Raedle

A year ago, a DDoS attack caused internet outages around the US by targeting the internet-infrastructure company Dyn, which provides Domain Name System services to look up web servers. Monday saw a nationwide series of outages as well, but with a more pedestrian cause: a misconfiguration at Level 3, an internet backbone company—and enterprise ISP—that underpins other big networks. Network analysts say that the misconfiguration was a routing issue that created a ripple effect, causing problems for companies like Comcast, Spectrum, Verizon, Cox, and RCN across the country.

Level 3, whose acquisition by CenturyLink closed recently, said in a statement to WIRED that it resolved the issue in about 90 minutes. “Our network experienced a service disruption affecting some customers with IP-based services,” the company said. “The disruption was caused by a configuration error.” Comcast users started reporting internet outages around the time of the Level 3 outages on Monday, but the company said that it was monitoring “an external network issue” and not a problem with its own infrastructure. RCN confirmed that it had some network problems on Monday because of Level 3. The company said it had restored RCN service by rerouting traffic to a different backbone.

 

© Downdetector.com 

The misconfiguration was a “route leak,” according to Roland Dobbins, a principal engineer at the DDoS and network-security firm Arbor Networks, which monitors global internet operations. ISPs use “Autonomous Systems,” also known as ASes, to keep track of what IP addresses are on which networks, and route packets of data between them. They use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to establish and communicate routes. For example, packets can route between networks A and B, but network A can also route packets to network C through network B, and so on. This is how internet service providers interoperate to let you browse the whole internet, not just the IP addresses on their own networks.

In a “route leak,” an AS, or multiple ASes, issue incorrect information about the IP addresses on their network, which causes inefficient routing and failures for both the originating ISP and other ISPs trying to route traffic through. Think of it like a series of street signs that help keep traffic flowing in the right directions. If some of them are mislabeled or point the wrong way, assorted chaos can ensue.

Route leaks can be malicious, sometimes called “route hijacks” or “BGP hijacks,” but Monday’s incident seems to have been caused by a simple mistake that ballooned to have national impact. Large outages caused by accidental route leaks have cropped up before.

“Folks are looking to tweak routing policies, and make mistakes,” Arbor Networks’ Dobbins says. The problem could have come as CenturyLink works to integrate the Level 3 network or could have stemmed from typical traffic engineering and efficiency work.

Internet outages of all sizes caused by route leaks have occurred occasionally, but consistently, for decades. ISPs attempt to minimize them using “route filters” that check the IP routes their peers and customers intend to use to send and receive packets and attempt to catch any problematic plans. But these filters are difficult to maintain on the scale of the modern internet and can have their own mistakes.

Monday’s outages reinforce how precarious connectivity really is, and how certain aspects of the internet’s architecture—offering flexibility and ease-of-use—can introduce instability into what has become a vital service.

Everything You Need to Know About Google’s Fi Wireless Service

As some may already know, Google is launching its Fi mobile phone service in the United States, and with aggressive expansion plans, hopefully, into Canada and Europe. Google has partnered with Sprint and T-Mobile in the United States. But the intriguing aspect of this new business is Google’s intent to offload phone service to WiFi wherever possible.  This prospect has been looming in the wings for awhile, with the talk of true Metro-scale WiFi using VHF white space, and Google’s innovative experiments with “Loon Balloon,” (see my earlier post), and with low orbiting satellite WiFi coverage. Whether these risky and expensive experiments will materialize is another question. However, the prospect of wider area, stronger signal metro WiFi continues to move forward.  Google’s hybrid approach using both mobile service frequencies and WiFi to provide full mobile voice and data service is beginning to sound very interesting.

The Key to Google Fi Service Is WiFi Offloading

Everything You Need to Know About Google’s Fi Wireless Service (GOOG, GOOGL).

The search giant has an enormous reach and the potential to disrupt existing players while changing how a given field operates. It’s fair to say the company has done that with its Google Fiber Internet service, which has forced Comcast, AT&T, and others to increase the speeds of their broadband Internet offerings.

It’s also reasonable to point out that not every initiative launched by the search giant proves transformative. For every Chromecast or Android operating system that scores big, the company has a few semi-duds like its Nexus phones.

Its latest offering, the Google Fi wireless phone service, has the potential to go either way. At first glance it’s perhaps a tad underwhelming, but in the long run Google has shown an ability to use its products to force changes by the existing industry leaders.

What is Google FI?
Fi represents Google’s attempt to enter the wireless market in the United States with a low-cost service that operates over Wi-Fi whenever possible. When no connection is available over Wi-Fi, the service will use the Sprint  (NYSE: S  ) or T-Mobile  (NYSE: TMUS  ) network — whichever happens to be stronger in that location.

It’s not a revolutionary service. In fact, it’s very similar to what FreedomPop and Republic Wireless already do, except those two low-cost carriers strictly rent space on the Sprint network.

Source: YouTube

Google described Fi in the blog post announcing its launch as a partnership with wireless carriers (in this case Sprint and T-Mobile), similar to the way the company has developed its Nexus tablets and phones:

Project Fi enables us to work in close partnership with leading carriers, hardware makers, and all of you to push the boundaries of what’s possible. By designing across hardware, software and connectivity, we can more fully explore new ways for people to connect and communicate.

Linking Fi to Nexus is an important admission, as in the past, Google executives have acknowledged that the goal of the Nexus hardware was to force innovation, not to become a dominant smartphone maker.

In a speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai laid out this philosophy when talking about the company’s efforts in consumer electronics.

“It’s a bit misunderstood outside [the company] as to why we do Nexus devices,” he said. “All innovations in computing happen at the intersection of hardware and software. For you to drive the next generation, you need to do both closely together.”

Fi is going to be offered by invitation-only at launch and solely on Google’s Nexus 6, which costs around $649 when not subsidized by a carrier. Thus, it seems very likely that Fi will not be a big hit out of the gate. It’s possible that Google will add more devices going forward, but the launch plan is a clear attempt to keep Fi small.

How Fi is priced
Google has come up with a somewhat unique price structure for Fi that refunds customers for data that they do not use. Aside from that wrinkle — which is essentially a variation on T-Mobile allowing its customers to carry over unused data — Google’s plan is in line with other low-cost carriers.

Google charges $20 a month for talk, text, Wi-Fi tethering, and international coverage in 120-plus countries. On top of that it charges a flat $10 per GB for cellular data while in the U.S. and abroad.

“Since it’s hard to predict your data usage, you’ll get credit for the full value of your unused data,” the company wrote. “Let’s say you go with 3GB for $30 and only use 1.4GB one month. You’ll get $16 back, so you only pay for what you use.”

Google is pushing the market
While Google may not be trying to conquer the wireless market, it is clearly trying to push it forward. Fi is not a revolutionary service, but it could put pricing pressure on industry leaders AT&T and Verizon. Fi is not cheaper than FreedomPop or Republic Wireless and it’s not really much less expensive than certain plans from T-Mobile and Sprint.

It is, however, a big public rollout for phone plans that rely on Wi-Fi. Pushing that agenda forward is likely exactly what Google is hoping to do.

FCC To Propose Strong Net Neutrality Rules

Rule Would Ban Practice Known as Paid Prioritization, Say Sources

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Tom Wheeler

In an extraordinary turn of events, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears set to implement strong new rules, later this month to enforce Net Neutrality on the Internet.  If the new rules are implemented, it will have major favorable implications for future global Internet policy with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland.  This means simply that all traffic on the Internet will be treated equally and fairly, which is one of the founding principles of the Internet, since its invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vin Cerf and others back in the 1980’s.  It is the same for voice telecommunications the World over.  The current problem has been the preference of large corporate Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to charge preferentially for priority access, or “paid prioritization.” The potential for abuse by corporations is obvious. Comcast, one of the largest “carriers with content,” has been cited for the potential to prioritize its NBC content over other competitor content, if Net Neutrality were not enforced.  Netflix had already capitulated to Comcast and entered into what is known as a paid “peering agreement,” to insure priority of Netflix streaming content. If the FCC Title II rules are implemented, the Comcast/Netflix agreement would likely become null and void.

 

REBLOGGED from The Wall Street Journal

By GAUTHAM NAGESH
Updated Feb. 2, 2015 4:18 p.m. ET

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler intends to seek a significant expansion of his agency’s authority to regulate mobile and fixed broadband providers, a move that would fully embrace the principle known as “net neutrality.”

According to multiple people familiar with the agency’s plan, Mr. Wheeler intends to change the way both mobile and fixed broadband firms are regulated. Rather than being lightly regulated information services, they would become like telecommunications companies, which would subject them to greater regulation on everything from pricing to how they deploy their networks.

A key element of the rule would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment, a practice known as paid prioritization, these people say.

Mr. Wheeler’s expected proposal tracks closely with President’s Barack Obama’s Nov. 10 statement, in which he called for the “strongest possible rules” to protect net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. That represents a major shift from the chairman’s initial plan, which would have allowed some paid prioritization.

In his statement, the president called for Mr. Wheeler to classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, a move that came after months of campaigning by activists, Web startups and others.

The proposal would also give the FCC the authority to regulate deals on the back-end portion of the Internet, where broadband providers such as Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. pick up traffic from big content companies such as Netflix Inc. and network middlemen like Level 3 Communications Inc. The FCC would decide whether to allow these so-called paid peering deals based on whether it finds them just and reasonable, the standard under Title II.

A federal court struck down the FCC’s most-recent set of net neutrality rules in January 2014, sending the issue back to the agency for the third time. Wireless and broadband industry officials have indicated they plan to sue again if the FCC moves ahead with Title II, which they believe would saddle them with outdated regulations and depress investment in upgrading networks.

It remains unclear how the proposed rules will treat other practices besides paid prioritization, such as zero-rated mobile plans that let users access only a small number of apps without hurting their monthly data allowance. The FCC is also expected to exempt broadband providers from the bulk of Title II regulations, in areas including what they charge their customers, through a process known as forbearance.

Mr. Wheeler is expected to circulate his proposal on Thursday, with a vote scheduled for the FCC’s open meeting on Feb. 26. A majority of the FCC’s five commissioners must approve the rules for them to take effect.

The Digital Utopian Vision of Marshall McLuhan and Stewart Brand Is Cracking

It appears to me that the original vision and promise of the Internet, referred to by many as Digital Utopianism, is at severe risk of deteriorating into a “balkanized”  and severely impaired World Wide Web.

Internet barriers, censorship, protectionist Internet policy, and ubiquitous surveillance seem to be the emerging new reality.  Notable digital luminaries the likes of Vin Cerf and Bill Gates have been questioned on this point, and both have expressed no major concern about deterioration of the freedom of the Internet or with the original Utopian vision.  The argument is that the World Wide Web cannot be effectively blocked or censored.  Google would probably respond that their “loon balloons” could simply be launched to counter censorship. As a long time Silicon Valley high tech executive, I understand this optimistic view, but the facts on the ground are now providing serious evidence that the Internet is under attack, and may not survive unless there is a significant shift in these new trends.

This week alone, Turkey’s Erdogan has tried to block both Twitter and YouTube to prevent Turks from viewing evidence of his corrupt government. This morning’s New York Times reports Edward Snowden’s latest revelation.  While the U.S. government and media were investigating and publicly reporting on Chinese government Internet espionage and Chinese network equipment manufacturer Huawei, the NSA, the British GCHQ and Canada’s  Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) ,  were all collaborating, doing exactly the same thing. The hypocrisy and irony of this is not lost on either the Chinese or the Internet community. CBS 60 Minutes reported on the Chinese espionage, but has been essentially silent on NSA’s own transgressions. 60 Minutes even broadcast a report that NSA metadata was essentially harmless, which has now been shown to be false. The 60 Minutes objective reporting problem is the canary in the coal mine of the corporate takeover of media and the Web.  Protectionist policies in various countries targeted against Google, Microsoft and others are emerging. One of the many negative effects of the NSA revelations was the announcement this week that the United States was giving up control of the International Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which essentially sets Internet traffic policy. Finally, this week, Netflix spoke out forcefully against the “peering agreement” it was blackmailed into signing with Comcast to insure “quality of service” (QOS) for Netflix programming to the edges of the Web.

Read more: NSA breached Chinese servers

Read more: Netflix Thinks Peering Should Be A Net Neutrality Issue

I recently came across Professor Fred Turner, Professor of Communication at Stanford. It has been a revelation for me.  His book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture’ is an acclaimed milestone work. Turner has articulated the World I lived in the counterculture of the 1960’s and in the early Silicon Valley. His work explaining the evolution from the “counterculture” of the 1960’s to the emerging new “cyberculture” of the late 1980’s and 1990’s is an excellent record of that time in northern California.  This was the World of Steve Jobs at that time and his personal evolvement to a digital Utopian.  It is detailed in Jobs biography, and in Jobs wonderful Stanford University 2005 commencement speech, in which he also acknowledged the importance of Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog.  This was also my countercultural World as a Communications student at San Jose State at that time, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and subsequent high tech career, beginning at Intel Corporation.  But even Professor Turner has expressed his own ambivalence about the future direction of the Web, though only from the standpoint of less worrying lack of diversity of Web communities. My concern is much more deeply based on current evidence and much more ominous.

Fred Turner, Stanford Professor of Communication – Counterculture to Cyberculture

Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog and the original digital utopia visionary, has been rethinking its basic concepts. Brand has come around 180 degrees from environmental Utopianism based on “back to the land,” and is now embracing the future importance of urban enclaves. While this new urban view is now a widely held idea by many futurists, it can also be viewed as another facet of the end of digital utopia.  This TEDTalk by Brand lays out his new vision.  Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.

Netflix thinks its peering deal with Comcast should be a net neutrality issue before the FCC. So do I!

It appears that Netflix move to enter into a peering agreement with Comcast, essentially paying Comcast for “preferred traffic capacity,” was strictly a tactical move, necessary to protect Netflix’ quality of service to their customers.  As I predicted earlier, the recent Court decisions and Netflix’ fait accompli move, may well accelerate action by the FCC to insure Net Neutrality, and block a corporate takeover of the Net.

Gigaom

Netflix has come out in favor of some sort of government intervention when it comes to ISPs that charge content providers for capacity at the edge of their networks, claiming Thursday that it should be a network neutrality issue. The internet video provider recently paid Comcast for direct access to the Comcast network after a prolonged negotiation that led to customers getting a crappy Netflix experience during prime time hours.

However, despite coming to an agreement, Netflix isn’t ready to throw in the towel on the issue of ISPs seeking to charge content companies such as Netflix and Google — as well as transit providers like Level 3 and XO Communications — to connect their networks. While it seems like one unified whole, the internet as we know it is a series of interconnecting networks, and for content such as streaming videos to traverse these networks, capacity must be available.

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Setback for Net Neutrality May Actually Speed Its Adoption

Yesterday, the United Stated Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling that was essentially a “technical” setback for the notion that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, better known as Net Neutrality. The ruling now permits giant corporations like Verizon, NBC/Comcast, and Time Warner to charge higher fees to content providers like Netflix, Amazon and even potentially, Google.  If that sounds bad for consumers, you are right.

This Court decision has even deeper implications as NBC/Comcast is in the unique position of being both a “carrier” of the Internet bits, and a “content provider.” The enables Comcast to charge higher fees to content providers for content that competes with NBC. Is that anti-competitive? Sure sounds like it to me.

This decision was essentially caused by an earlier decision of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to maintain a free and open “hands off” policy, and not regulate Internet traffic, considered evil by Internet purists.

But the effect of this Court ruling may be greater evil, leading to the conclusion that “common carrier” regulation of the Internet may be the lesser of the two evils, and an inevitable outgrowth of the NSA Internet espionage revelations, Chinese military Internet espionage revelations, and “balkanization” of the Internet by foreign governments, building protectionist national firewalls, and just plain old Internet traffic snooping of your privacy.   It is like what happened to the Summer of Love. The Internet was originally about free love, but before long the whole thing deteriorated into a jungle. That is what we have now, and by the simple decision of the FCC to declare the Internet a “common carrier,” a regulated telecommunications infrastructure, corporations would need to implement Net Neutrality and report their Internet traffic policies to the government.  For those who hate government regulation, I agree in principle. Sadly, it is the corporations, and the NSA that have made this imperative, to insure transparency, equality, and some level of Internet privacy.

In February of 2013 I wrote on this blog about the problem, and the book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, by Yale Law School Professor Susan P. Crawford.

Read more: Why Internet Neutrality is so important

How Gigabit Fiber to the Home Will Transform Education Way Beyond MOOC’s

The post below caught my attention because of the current industry debate and competitive battle over deployment of much higher Gigabit Internet bandwidth via optical fiber to consumers, known as Fiber to the Home or FTTH, at prices much lower than they currently pay for even 50 Megabit Internet connectivity.  Gigabit connectivity is already a reality in Hong Kong and South Korea, with Europe not far behind. The big cable carriers, Comcast and Time Warner, have actually argued publicly that consumers don’t want or need higher bandwidth. How they came to that conclusion is a mystery.  Now Google has entered into direct competition with the cable carriers, deploying Gigabit FTTH in Kansas City and Austin, Texas to be followed by other locations, at prices a fraction of Comcast’s pricing for lower bandwidth.  This battle has been admirably described in the book Captive Audience, The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, by Yale Law Professor, Susan P. Crawford.

So people have asked the question, “what will people do with all of this massive bandwidth?” Having lived with Moore’s Law for most of my career, I smile in bemusement. I can remember a fear that the 256K flash memory chip was “too big.” The truth is that if you were asked 20 years ago to predict how we would be using the Internet today, I doubt many would have accurately predicted our current global village.  The few exceptions would be visionaries like Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco Systems, who authored this Huffington Post article, providing an excellent prediction of how FTTH may impact just one aspect of the future: education.

Reblogged from Huffington Post ImpactX

Beyond Online Classes: How The Internet of Everything Is Transforming Education

Posted: 08/22/2013 10:36 am

By Dave Evans, Chief Futurist, Cisco Systems

éducation, 21st Century, Dave Evans, Internet Of Everything, Bblog-Cisco, Broadband,Connections, Dave The Futurist, Digital Classroom, ImpactX, Learning, Online Classes,BACK TO SCHOOL, Telepresence, Impact News

Over the next few weeks, students will be heading back to school for the fall semester. In fact, my oldest child will be starting college for the first time, and I have another one not far behind. So naturally, I’ve been thinking about the future of education, and the opportunities and challenges 21st century technology might bring.

Technology has had an amazing impact on education in the last few years. But what we’ve seen so far is nothing compared to the sea change that will be created by the Internet of Everything (IoE) in the coming decade. The networked connections among people, processes, data and things will change not just how and where education is delivered, but will also redefine what students need to learn, and why.

When we talk about technology-enabled learning, most people probably think of online classes, which have had mixed results so far. On one hand, online courses can make higher education much more affordable and accessible. On the other hand, not all students can stay engaged and successful without regular feedback and interaction with their instructor and other students. Even the best online classes cannot hope to duplicate the rich spontaneous interactions that can take place among students and instructors in the classroom.

But with connection speeds going up, and equipment costs going down, we can go beyond online classes to create widely accessible immersive, interactive, real-time learning experiences. Soon, time and distance will no longer limit access to an engaging, high quality education. Anywhere there is sufficient bandwidth, a student can participate in a rich virtual classroom experience — attending lectures, asking questions, and participating in real-time discussions with other students.

And the “sufficient bandwidth” requirement is not that far away. Connection speeds to the high-end home user are doubling every 21 months. Said another way, this is a doubling of almost 64 times over the next decade. Consider a home with a 10 Mbps connection today; this same home could have a 640 Mbps in a decade, and a home with a 50 MB broadband connection today might have a 3 GB connection in 10 years — this is sufficient bandwidth to display streaming video on every square inch of the walls of a 1,800-square-foot home! What type of immersive experiences could educators create with these types of connections?

Within the next decade, high connection speeds and low hardware costs could bring immersive, interactive classes right into the home.
Of course this is about more than simply raw network speeds; the Internet of Everything will also impact some of our basic assumptions about the purpose and nature of education. People today generally agree that the purpose of education is to convey knowledge. But if all the world’s knowledge is instantaneously available online via smartphone or Google Glass, how does that affect what we need to teach in school? Perhaps education will become less about acquiring knowledge, and more about how to analyze, evaluate, and use the unlimited information that is available to us. Perhaps we will teach more critical thinking, collaboration, and social skills. Perhaps we will not teach answers, but how to ask the right questions.

I know that technology will never replace the full, face-to-face experience that my son will have when he starts university next month. But technology can supplement and enrich the traditional in-person school experience. And I hope the school my son attends will teach the new set of 21st century skills needed to help him make the most of technology.

Harlem Shake, Gangman Style May Spell End of Telecom Monopoly

Could Apple, Google and Intel  Save Net Neutrality? 

Something potentially very important may be happening for the future of the Internet and Net Neutrality: online video broadcasting: participation and interactive television. It could portend an end of the current Comcast and Time Warner monopoly behavior, attempting to consolidate control, and essentially to censor content, by controlling both the carrier pipe and by prioritizing their own content, to the detriment of others seeking access to “the pipe” to broadcast their own content.

A number of online journalists and bloggers have been writing recently about the potential for the Silicon Valley Big Three to change the Internet monopoly game. Let’s hope that they are right.  Posts going back to 2012 have rhetorically asked, “Could Google Save Net Neutrality?“ This week Mark Suster has posted on TechCrunch: “Participation: The Trend That is Bigger Than Harlem Shake.”   Both of these writers are potentially on to something big, IMHO. Suster even cites Harvard Professor Clayton M. Christensen‘s book,  The Innovator’s Dilemma, to make the point that the Net Neutrality battle may be at an Andy Grove strategic inflection point that could be shifting in favor of net neutrality.

The key development may be Psy, Gangman Style, The Harlem Shake, and the entry of Apple, Google and Intel into the streaming multimedia space, as providers of interactive, participatory content.  Comcast view these players as threats to their monopoly dominance. The telecom mindset lives in a parallel universe that cannot even imagine what Apple, Google and Intel are planning.  Fortunately, in my mind, we have the right three Twenty-First Century players, with very deep pockets, prepared to do battle with the Nineteenth Century telecoms, to insure that the future of the Internet evolves as we all know that it should.

I have been thinking and stressing about Net Neutrality and the power of the giant telecom monopolies for some time. Yale University Law Professor Susan Crawford has also written a book, subtitled “The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power In the New Gilded Age.”  Having heard Professor Crawford speak, and having posted her remarks here on this blog, her arguments are compelling. My own experience with the domestic telecom industry over the years only adds to my concern.  The new telecom monopoly of the Internet, following after its free and open roots, reflects the current dominance of Wall Street and its apparent disregard for democracy: a New Gilded Age of Monopoly, harking back to the age of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller. Ironically PBS American Masters this week broadcast a retrospective biography of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, just in case we have forgotten after 100 years.

Read more: http://mayo615.com/2013/02/12/why-net-neutrality-is-so-important-the-telecom-industry-and-monopoly-power/

 

Intel @ CES: Atom 7 Watt: All Day Battery Life, “Perceptivity” Computing, And More Consumer Products

Paul Ottelini, Intel CEO, CES Keynote Speaker 2013

http://gizmodo.com/5973896/intels-new-chips-everything-you-need-to-know-updating

 Intel’s drive to dramatically reduce power consumption generally, and particularly traditional “leakage” or heat dissipation has enabled them to announce all-day battery life for many of Intel’s reference design phones, smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks, using the existing Ivy Bridge multi-core architecture.  Next generation processors are also now available, but have emphasized processing cycles over power economy in the first generation.

Intel’s drive into the consumer product spaces dominated by ARM continues to look promising, after previous failed efforts.

Perceptivity or “touch” computing was also one of the key themes this year.

 That means human-like senses getting into the devices, hopefully. And not just janky features that don’t really work. Dell is already launching demo software, and searches with voice, command and control with voice in games, interact with Wikipedia, and other features are already available.

One of the ways that this could help would be security, and fixing all the idiotic passwords that people use. It can use face-unlock, and uses advanced imaging tech to recognize about 700 points on the face and muscular movements, so that it can’t be fooled by someone printing out your Facebook profile pic.

But most amazing is Intel’s push into Premium Pay TV with Comcast, allowing premium TV broadcasting directly to a PC or HDTV, without a set top box.  At first glance this looks a lot like “integrated” Google TV without a set top box…

So we now have NVIDIA jumping into gaming consoles, competing with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, and we have an Intel and Comcast partnership jumping into the intelligent integrated TV space, competing with Google, Apple and the big Asian HDTV manufacturers…

There is going to be a market implosion like nothing since the nanosecond before the Big Bang.