The convergence of voice and video traffic are quickly transforming the growing complexity of networks at a torrid pace. IDC estimates that the skills gap in VOIP should grow to 19% by 2011.

This changing profile in the role of the network plays a key role in the skills shortage. Network enabled collaboration tools such as social networking apps and the Webex conferencing/collaboration solutions we use in our business each and every day are demanding a new set of IT skills to deliver business value.

My perspective is two-fold on this issue; the first is what I have seen in the resources we have attempted to hire! We give a very straightforward quick written/oral test to all new technical hires. This requires basic networking knowledge and some Unix commands. On average, (after filters from reputable recruiting firms, some with 5-10 years experience) less than 10% pass muster for the first filter we use in our hiring process. This is a troubling fact, which has cost us considerable time and effort to secure the right resources with competent skills. So I can say from our market assessment in a very strong technological job skills market, core Unix and networking foundation skills are slipping.

The second is that we as an IT Operations Management (ITOM) industry need to keep pushing hard to build better proactive and intuitive solutions to aggregate instrumentation from all Data Center tools, including more work around VOIP, video streaming, and collaboration so that we can ease this transition. If ITOM solutions become more proactive across the typical Cisco infrastructure that is commonly installed in the Data Center, we can free up some additional time for advanced “emerging technologies” training where existing IT workers can enhance their core skills and re-invigorate their careers. We have to do a much better job of getting our existing IT professionals trained on emerging technologies!

While there’s less that ScienceLogic can do around training, we certainly strive to do our part to enhance a day in the life of the networking engineers who use our solutions to simplify monitoring of increasingly complex networking, Wireless, VOIP, and collaboration needs.

I’d like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here; perhaps Dell was using it in a much narrower sense. Perhaps the term has really only been used more commonly since the time Dell first applied for the trademark back in March 2007 and now. BUT…

- Dell’s definition is quite broad and certainly not Dell-specific. “The design of computer hardware for use in datacenters and mega-scale computing environments for others; customization of computer hardware for use in data centers and mega-scale computing environments for others; design and development of networks for use in data centers and mega-scale computing environments for others.” Strike One.

- And according to the Wall Street Journal’s research, “cloud computing” has been in regular use since 2001. Strike Two.

So now the “case” has been returned to examination and hopefully the PTO will follow up on everyone else’s research on this and decide that yes, cloud computing is one of those broad, ubiquitous terms that should NOT be trademarked by a single company.

Here's the actual policy:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption, or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement... DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including US citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism... The policies cover 'any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,' including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover 'all papers and other written documentation,' including books, pamphlets and 'written materials commonly referred to as "pocket trash..."

It's not the policy that's amazing; it's the fact that the government has actually made it public.

Slashdot thread. My previous essay on crossing borders with laptops, and how to protect yourself.

Although honestly, the best thing is probably to keep your encrypted archives on some network drive somewhere, and download what you need after you cross the border.

Some of the largest and medium-sized U.S. airports report close to 637,000 laptops lost each year, according to the Ponemon Institute survey released Monday. Laptops are most commonly lost at security checkpoints, according to the survey. Close to 10,278 laptops are reported lost every week at 36 of the largest U.S. airports, and 65 percent of those laptops are not reclaimed, the survey said. Around 2,000 laptops are recorded lost at the medium-sized airports, and 69 percent are not reclaimed. Travelers seem to lack confidence that they will recover lost laptops. About 77 percent of people surveyed said they had no hope of recovering a lost laptop at the airport, with 16 percent saying they wouldn't do anything if they lost their laptop during business travel. About 53 percent said that laptops contain confidential company information, with 65 percent taking no steps to protect the information.

From Google Code:

Ratproxy is a semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool. It is meant to complement active crawlers and manual proxies more commonly used for this task, and is optimized specifically for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing, user-initiated traffic in complex web 2.0 environments.

This tool falls into the same family as Burp and Paros, as examples. It will apparently run on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Windows if you have Cygwin loaded. Check it out.

Article Link

But there's this lovely new segment of lightly licensed spectrum in the U.S., the 3.65 GHz band. It's a non-exclusive licensed band available only in parts of the country that don't have pre-existing ground-to-satellite or radar uses that overlap. This omits most of the eastern seaboard and most major cities; Seattle is one exception.

The licensing mechanism allows any number of operators to obtain inexpensive licenses, and register the base stations they use by location. If interference arises among base stations, operators are required to work out the problems themselves. I wrote extensively about this band and its rules on 9-May-2008 in profiling Azulstar, formerly a metro-scale Wi-Fi firm, but now a big proponent of WiMax in 3.65 GHz. I also went over the rules for the band on 11-June-2007 when the FCC announced the arrangement.

Several firms offer base station and customer premises equipment for this band now, so close to the 3.5 GHz band more commonly exclusively licensed in Europe and elsewhere. WiMax equipment is available because the 3.65 GHz band can be used with WiMax without any modifications to that protocol, although limited to just 25 MHz of the 50 MHz that the FCC set aside.

Equipment that conforms to a more stringent set of rules about contention and other factors can use the whole 50 MHz, and that's where 802.11y comes in. It's an extension of Wi-Fi to cope with the specific needs--and to open Wi-Fi technology up to 20 W EIRP, a vastly higher power output. This could allow connections over 5 km, the group says.

The Wikipedia entry on 802.11y, clearly written by someone involved with the specification, notes that three specific additions are needed: a tweak to support the way in which the FCC wants contention among competing devices to work; a method for an access point to tell a station (a connecting radio) that it's about to switch its channel or its channel's bandwidth, and the station should do likewise; and a mechanism to handle a base station allowing or revoking permission to use the spectrum without uniquely identifying the user's system or broadcasting its precise GPS-based location.

The standard is near completion and initial approval. I don't have any knowledge about whether any mainstream Wi-Fi equipment makers or metro-scale equipment makers are looking into building 802.11y into their gear.

The fact is that this could be a great technology for the mostly sub-metropolitan markets that 3.65 GHz is available in, although it has the same pain as WiMax: all new gear on the towers and all new adapters for customers.