1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

The post Regin: Stuxnet's Best Spying Malware Cousin appeared first on VR World.

1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

The post Regin: Stuxnet's Best Spying Malware Cousin appeared first on VR World.

Are you a frustrated Samsung customer? Annoyed by the lack of 4K content outside of Netflix? Well, DirecTV has your back, sorta. DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) is partnering up with Samsung (KRX: 005930) to release a bunch of UHD content for any and all Samsung 4K TVs released in 2014. These TVs already have DirecTV built into them and do not require a receiver be directly connected to them in order for them to receive TV service.

The real big deal here is not the built-in DirecTV service, which has been available for quite some time, but rather the fact that now DirecTV will be serving 4K video through their DirecTV Genie HD DVR devices to Samsung TVs in glorious 4K. This service currently only offers 19 films to consumers in UHD. Many of the films are remastered in 4K, but that doesn’t change the fact that Samsung’s 4K portfolio was close to nil when they launched these 4K TVs. Sony was the only place you could really get access to a sizable library of 4K content as Samsung only included 5 movies in their Samsung UHD Video Pack on a 1TB hard drive with their curved UHD TVs earlier this year.

Thankfully for Samsung owners, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) already offers a pretty sizable library of 4K content including both House of Cards and Breaking Bad as well as a few remastered movies and nature films. The expectation is that Netflix’s library will continue to increase in order to stay competitive with all other streaming services and Amazon who will inevitably do the same. If you consider how fast 4K is gaining adoption, there’s a very good chance that if cable providers don’t get on the 4K bandwagon quickly they will be left behind by the streaming providers that are finding a way to deliver 4K to consumers quickly and effectively. There is already talk of Comcast’s 4K video service, which will also supposedly launch on Samsung first, but it remains to be seen if that will use Comcast internet service or Comcast cable service.

The 4K content wars are heating up, but most of the studios and Blu-Ray are still missing. The studios are missing a huge opportunity to capitalize on the high price of 4K TVs and use that to their advantage to charge higher prices for 4K mastered content. The biggest problem is that Hollywood seems uninterested in launching 4K content even though the market is starving for it globally. So, as a result, a lot of older content is getting remastered. And the interesting thing is, if you look at the newer content that is doing well and already 4K ready like Breaking Bad or House of Cards that is because both productions took production into their own hands and did things their own way. As a result, both of them shot their entire productions in 4K and are the premiere content for Netflix 4K.

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In a very politically inflammatory statement today, Senator Ted Cruz likened Net Neutrality to Obamacare, which does more harm than good to the internet’s future as the hotly contested issue of Net Neutrality ping pongs around the IT industry and Capitol Hill.

Obviously, Cruz made his statement as a response to Obama’s instruction to the FCC (including Chairman Tom Wheeler) that they need to preserve Net Neutrality by giving the FCC the regulatory powers to oversee the internet by classifying it as a Title II communications service, which would liken it to land line phone service.

The problem with such an analogy is that it likens a multi-faceted piece of legislation that Republicans oppose to a reclassification of a type of telecommunications so that it can be properly regulated (which it technically isn’t right now). The idea was not to regulate the internet in order to allow it to self-regulate, but that does not appear to have worked and now people are calling for a reclassification as a Title II common carrier service. This would require companies to treat all traffic equally and not to be able to pick and choose, which they’re technically already doing. Some may liken Obamacare to this reclassification because Obama now supports it or because it involves government regulation, but the truth is that the FCC has already been regulating internet service for quite some time, but hasn’t had the authority to enforce a truly equal internet.

“Net Neutrality” is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

Following his statement, some well known internet personalities including the creator of The Oatmeal online comic, Matthew Inman, who broke down Net Neutrality to the junior Senator in a comical, yet informed, way.

The real issue with Cruz’s tweet is that it very likely comes from a place where lobbyists are encouraging him to shoot down Net Neutrality, after all, he does take money from large telecom companies for his campaign donations. Additionally, Cruz has been emboldened by the recent election to stand up to Obama even more than he already has and to make Obamacare a central issue around next year’s Congress and to repeal it. Cruz may have gotten the attention of many by likening a conversion of internet service into a Title II telecommunications form, but by likening it to Obamacare, he has immediately turned a bi-partisan issue of Net Neutrality into a partisan issue and will encourage people to be against Net Neutrality even though it is in their best interest.

Even the EFF is behind the reclassification plan that Obama now states that he also backs, because in the past Obama has remained silent on the topic and there’s actually a good chance that with a Republican House and Senate Obama may actually find some common ground with them on Net Neutrality. The problem is that the state of the internet is so horrible with all of the oligopolies that it is virtually impossible to allow the internet to exist in an unregulated manner, there is not enough competition among internet service providers, so there is no way that consumers can simply be the driving force behind innovation and Net Neutrality. We’ve covered this topic many times over the course of the past year, and some of the most recent talks by Tom Wheeler about the lack of competition are possibly the most enlightening. Because of government intervention, these companies have been allowed to become too big and effectively have local monopolies or duopolies with very few to no places having three options for wired broadband.

Optimally, the best thing would be to have multiple internet service providers in each area, including a possible municipal broadband option, which would then compete with each other for consumers’ business and improve in order to compete with those customers. After all, that’s sort of how it used to be until AT&T bought up all of the land line companies and Comcast started gobbling up cable providers (and now wants to absorb TWC).

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As a response to the thousands of comments on the FCC’s website pertaining to the Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) merger, Comcast has released a public statement as a part of a blog post on the company’s own site detailing its side of the merger (really an acquisition, but acquisition is a dirty word). In the company’s own post is links to its official response to the FCC Comments with a 300+ page document that supposedly addresses the concerns and refutes others.

The document features sections titled:

THE TRANSACTION WILL PROVIDE SUBSTANTIAL PUBLIC INTEREST BENEFITS, AND CHALLENGES TO THESE BENEFITS ARE WITHOUT MERIT
Featuring Answers – The Transaction Will Enhance Competition and Choice for Businesses of All Sizes, The Transaction Will Accelerate the Deployment of Advanced Broadband Services, Increase Broadband Competition and Innovation, and Expand Broadband Adoption and many more.

This is just a short summation of Comcast’s comment responses and really illustrate the company’s complete and utter disconnect from reality.

Comcast is essentially claiming that Comcast and Time Warner Cable becoming one company will improve competition for businesses (who are already being ripped off) even though the combined company would very likely become the only game in town for many businesses. It also claims that it will accelerate the deployment of advanced broadband services, which may be why Time Warner Cable has started to roll out their MAXX service to select areas, but still keeps the majority of their customers at much lower speeds. In fact, Comcast’s customers at the very peak are only one-third the speed of Time Warner Cable’s fastest 300 Mbps service.

Additionally, Comcast claims that it will be able to increase broadband competition and innovation with this acquisition even though they are effectively gobbling up the number two cable ISP in the US after Comcast making them at least three times bigger than the next biggest competitor. And sure, the company can claim that this acquisition will somehow expand broadband adoption, but there’s no denying that broadband adoption would very likely continue at the same pace, if not faster without such a merger.

THE TRANSACTION WILL NOT HARM COMPETITION OR THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Featuring Answers – No Vertical Harms: The Transaction Will Not Facilitate Anticompetitive Foreclosure or Other Exclusionary Conduct, No Harm to Advertising, Petitioners Erroneously Define Certain “Relevant Markets.” – The Broadband Market Is Local, Not National.

They also want to make it clear that this merger will not affect competition or the public interest. The two companies do this by saying that there’s no way that they will partake in any anticompetitive behavior as a result of being owners of NBC Universal as well as tens of millions of cable customers as well as Comcast Sports and Time Warner Cable sports networks.

Both also claim that this will not harm advertising, which is very unlikely to be true because if there are fewer companies to advertise with, you’re very likely going to end up paying a higher price. Fewer cable operators and television networks simply means that advertisers are going to be dealing with Comcast more than they already do. They also claim that commenters are incorrectly defining the relevant markets at hand, saying that the broadband market is not a national one, but rather a local one. But if you look at most local broadband markets, there is very little to no competition and Comcast will become a bigger competitor in most local markets. Sure, Comcast and Time Warner Cable don’t actually compete with each other very often, but that’s because most cable operators have local monopolies on cable TV and cable internet services.

OTHER ISSUES RAISED BY COMMENTERS ARE NOT TRANSACTION-SPECIFIC, ARE ADDRESSED IN OTHER PROCEEDINGS, OR ARE OTHERWISE EXTRANEOUS, AND THUS ARE IRRELEVANT TO THE COMMISSION’S ANALYSIS
Featuring Answers – Customer Service, Customer Prices, Municipal Broadband

Then the two go on to address all of the comments that they believe have nothing to do with the Comcast and Time Warner Cable acquisition and that they are addressed elsewhere or completely irrelevant. They don’t believe that topics like customer service, consumer prices or the stifling of municipal broadband are relevant to such an enormous deal such as this one. In fact, the whole episode of Ryan Block trying to leave Comcast being like pulling teeth is a perfect example of how a company has policies in place in order to prevent customers from leaving even though they clearly wish to leave.

Comcast’s behavior in terms of customer service in that situation is why their customer service should be considered a part of this transaction and therefore relevant. They also talk about how consumer prices are not relevant to the topic at hand, when in reality it should be one of the most relevant topics because Americans grossly overpay for the speeds that they get compared to other developed countries and if Comcast doesn’t want to talk about that, then they don’t deserve this merger. And last but not least, they talk about the issue of municipal broadband, also known as competition, which they clearly hate and have actively lobbied against in multiple states and even gotten some states to ban via lobbying of certain state legislatures.

Hughesnet Plans

Comcast’s own delusions continue in its claims that “Including wireless, 99% of households have the choice of at least three fixed or mobile broadband providers offering speeds of at least 3 Mbps, and approximately 98% have two or more choices offering speeds of at least 10 Mbps.”

Somehow, Comcast believes that people’s wireless broadband service is competitive with its own landline fixed service. They create the illusion that there are at least three competitive service providers in 99% of the country, when the reality is that mobile broadband providers generally cap users at 2, 5 and 10 GB of data a month, which is not ample enough to actually use for a home connection, especially for an entire family. Additionally, Comcast neglects to mention that in most areas consumers have one or two choices with a specific cable provider and a phone provider being the two primary choices. Yes, there is Satellite service from Hughesnet which does deliver up to 15 Mbps to most of the country (part of Comcast’s equation) but their plans are almost as restrictive as mobile broadband providers and cost as much as or more than mobile broadband providers. In fact, under Comcast, we could see broadband prices and structures reaching Hughesnet status with data caps (which Comcast has experimented with) and very short term promotional pricing (which they already do), not to mention high prices.

Overall, Comcast is once again trying to bend the truth and ignore the reality of the situation and let’s hope that the FCC sees through their ridiculous perversions of the truth in order to nuke this merger once and for all.

The post Comcast Posts Surreal Response to FCC Comments appeared first on VR World.

We’re not really sure what would possess someone to defend one of the most hated companies in America, but Forbes contributor Gene Marks went ahead and did just that. He claims not to be a shill of Comcast in any way shape or form (even though they’ve been shown to pay for positive pieces). They also recently cancelled a promotional event at a legislator’s house, the same legislator that proposed a bill in Kansas to block municipal broadband after the Kansas City Star contacted them about the event. Comcast has also made sure that their lobbying efforts are strong and effective as they’ve effectively got every important Senator and Representative of the Congress on their payroll. For example, 84 of the 97 congressmen that approved the Comcast and NBC merger received money from Comcast. The amounts range from token contributions of about $1,000 up to $25,100. Additionally, Comcast has spent over $3.2 million in 2012 (last data available) among federal candidates alone (does not count state or local) for lobbying. During the 2012 election, Comcast gave Obama’s campaign over $328,000 and Romney’s campaign nearly $100,000. Yet again proving how much our politicians are really in their pockets.

Now, getting back to Gene Marks’ so-called 5 reasons to admire Comcast, of which there are only really four (Sorry, Jimmy Fallon doesn’t count). So what are exactly his reasons?

• Comcast is a tech company that has improved the lives of its customers.

Really? Comcast has improved the lives of their customers? That explains why they’re the second most hated cable company in America, right? Because they improve people’s lives. I’m sure people hate their doctors, teachers and librarians as much, too. Yet, Comcast is considered one of the most hated companies in America (not even among cable companies, ALL companies). Not the banks, not the carriers, not the oil companies, the cable companies are the most hated and Comcast is easily in contention for the #1 place.

Cable Satisfaction

• Comcast technology is reliable.

He may actually have somewhat of a point here, while Comcast like many ISPs may have a lot of haters, places like DSLReports appear to support the fact that Comcast is fairly reliable. But it doesn’t change the fact that many customers absolutely loathe the company. Including people like Ryan Block who tried to cancel his service and was met with an agent that almost wouldn’t let him cancel.

• Comcast stands behind its employees.

He actually uses the example of Ryan Block’s call as well to talk about how Comcast supported their employee, saying that he was only doing his job. So, Comcast trains their employees to not be helpful and constantly be selling people services they don’t want. If you listen to the call, you can hear how this guy is literally trained to shove Comcast services down the customers’ throats. I don’t really know if this is a valid point, especially when Gene himself mentions all of the Comcast employees that complain about their jobs (and then questions their validity).

• Comcast is a ruthless, competitive, take no prisoners tech company…and good for them.

Gene is partly right here, but he forgets why they are the way they are. Comcast is fairly ruthless, yes, ruthless to their competitors, ruthless to the politicians that don’t support them, and ruthless to their own customers. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the kind of ruthless I want to support. Oh, and the competitive part? Who the hell is Comcast competing with? They’ve effectively got local monopolies in most of the areas they serve. If they’re not the only choice in the area, they’re probably the 2nd choice and the other choice is very likely AT&T which is no better than Comcast in any way (and is usually more expensive). Comcast can only be competitive if you look at the networks they own, which include all of NBCUniversal’s holdings which are numerous and even that acquisition is questionable considering how many people were opposed to it and how many people still believe it was not a justified acquisition.

Hey, maybe it was all just clickbait, but in the end supporting a company like Comcast is simply unjustified, especially when you consider what they’re doing to companies like Netflix. Comcast really really wants to acquire Time Warner Cable and it seems as though they will do whatever possible to make that happen. Meanwhile they will essentially become the de facto internet provider for over 30 million Americans and further stifle competition where there already was very little. So, please do tell us why we should admire Comcast, because it only really seems like there’s one reason to and that’s because their reliable and last time I checked that’s not really good enough.

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Ryan Block tried to cancel his Comcast service recently and the Comcast representative simply would not let him do so without explaining why he’s leaving. The Comcast rep was completely unresponsive and employed sales tactics that have been used many times before to keep people from leaving their companies. With Comcast already behaving a lot like AOL did back in the internet’s early years, this kind of experience could become even more common as Comcast and Time Warner Cable are set to merge. This episode is yet another example of why a company like Comcast should not ever be allowed to acquire any of their competitors, especially their next biggest competitor in Time Warner Cable.

As you can tell, the Comcast representative simply was not heeding the customers’ requests whatsoever and was clearly on a mission (either as a result of his training or from his manual) to figure out why Ryan was leaving Comcast. Such behavior can only be described as anti-competitive and anti-consumer as it does nothing other than bully the consumer into coming back to the company (or never leaving). Comcast also uses some pretty ridiculous claims in the call to try to convince Ryan to stay with them including some of their internet speed claims. They offer 105 Mbps internet speeds, however Google and Time Warner Cable already offer speeds of 300 Mbps and 1 Gbps which are far faster than anything Comcast has offered any consumer, ever.

Such tactics are shameful and Comcast should be forced to answer for such behavior. No matter what happens in the Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger, this needs to be investigated thoroughly by the FTC and FCC.

The post Listen: Cancelling Comcast is Like Pulling Teeth appeared first on VR World.

Nearly 650,000 people have left comments on the FCC’s website regarding their proposed Net Neutrality rules, which were proposed roughly 2 months ago. The comments have been open since May 15th, and will be closed on July 15th, likely with over 650,000 comments on the topic, many of which are criticizing the FCC for not taking a strong enough stance to protect consumers. The FCC’s very own Chairman Tom Wheeler even tweeted about the milestone on Friday, reminding people to continue to leave their comments.

We’ve received about 647k #netneutrality comments so far. Keep your input coming — 1st round of comments wraps up July 15.

— Tom Wheeler (@TomWheelerFCC) July 11, 2014

If you still wish to give the FCC your two cents on Net Neutrality, then you just need to add your comment to the heap here and tell them what you think. They are supposedly going to read every single one of these comments, which I don’t necessarily believe or think to be possible considering the flood that the FCC got. They rarely get anyone commenting with most topics only getting comments in the hundreds and very rarely in the thousands. However, people are becoming more aware of the FCC’s comment system and as a result, thousands have also commented on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well.

Such issues regarding Net Neutrality must be addressed as soon as possible because there are certain carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile that threaten to destroy Net Neutrality with their own programs that seek to enrich them and their partners. Sure, some of them are designed to make consumers happier, like T-Mobile’s free music streaming, but they still ultimately pick winners and losers without letting the apps have a level playing field on their network.

After this comment period, the FCC will supposedly reconvene and attempt to readdress these concerns at which point they may come out with new proposed rule making guidelines and then open themselves for another round of comments. This is a very long and protracted process, but people that care about the freedom of the internet should not be discouraged. Hopefully the FCC will realize how much people care and they won’t simply bend to the will of the large ISPs and carriers like their predecessors.

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The German government has announced that they will be switching away from Verizon for internet services as an ISP for the German government. They noted that the reasons for this decision had to do with increased demands on the network and the prevalence of the NSA in Verizon’s business. Based on the translation that was available, it appears as though the German government is merely using this as an opportunity to switch internet services to a company that is German. Sure, the likelihood that their networks will get snooped on by the NSA will probably go down, or at least become more difficult.

However, usually, such moves are usually just being used by the companies not involved to gain an upper hand on their competition, which is in this case Verizon. While the German government hasn’t quite made it clear who they intend to replace Verizon with, it is quite clear that the NSA’s snooping and relationship with Verizon has made doing business in Germany difficult for Verizon. This will likely not be the end of such moves by European governments and I suspect there will be more companies that will lobby their governments to switch to local ISPs or technology companies in order to ‘better protect’ themselves. While simultaneously taking an opportunity of bad PR on the part of American companies to snatch away their business.

According to an AP report, Verizon was unable to keep the contract (which they’ve held since 2010) due to the fact that they weren’t able to meet some core requirements of the German government put on the company, likely as a result of the NSA’s snooping revealed by Edward Snowden and publications like Der Spiegel. As a result of not meeting the German government’s demands on these requirements, Verizon is losing the contract in 2015 to another company, likely one based in Europe or even Germany.

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Time Warner Cable is rolling out one of the fastest internet speeds available in the country today next month. Our sources have been indicating to us that Time Warner Cable has been in the process of rolling out a 200/300 Mbps service in the San Diego area. They already offer 100 Mbps to new customers, but many of those people will get upgraded to Time Warner Cable’s 300 Mbps service which is one of the fastest in the country. Keep in mind that this 300 Mbps service is still only over cable, so it can’t compete with Google’s 1 Gbps fiber service or the uploads that it or any fiber service can offer. But even so, moving from a 50/5 Mbps plan to a 300/20 Mbps plan for exactly the same price, nobody is going to complain about that. Additionally, this could be yet another one of Time Warner Cable’s justifications that a Comcast merger is okay because they are upgrading customers and not remaining stagnant. All of this will also help Time Warner Cable pump up their image in the eyes of the FCC who sees very little progress in terms of ISPs improving their speeds even though customers keep paying for faster and faster speeds by moving up through more expensive tiers.

As it stands right now, Time Warner Cable offers Ultimate 100 Mbps service for $64.99, Extreme 30 Mbps service for $54.99 a month, Turbo 20 Mbps service for $44.99 a month and Standard service for $34.99 a month. There’s also Basic at 3 Mbps for $29.99 a month and Everyday Low Price 2 Mbps for $14.99 a month. If you look at the current price structure, Time Warner Cable’s pricing only really makes sense at the high end with a 3x increase in speed costing you only $10 a month more.

However, with the new speed structures Ultimate customers will be getting 300/20 Mbps for $64.99 a month while Extreme customers will pay $54.99 a month for 200/20 Mbps speeds. We don’t know what will happen to the lower tiers, but I would expect that the Turbo customers may actually see 100 Mbps depending on what kind of a modem they have. Below that, I would expect to see Standard probably get upgraded to 30 Mbps, effectively doubling the speeds and we’d probably see basic come up to 10 Mbps to satisfy what will likely be a modified definition of Broadband by the FCC.

Time Warner Cable 300 Mbps modem compatibility

However, in order to get these 200 Mbps and 300 Mbps speeds from Time Warner Cable users will have to upgrade from their current models to the currently unavailable. The only modem that Time Warner Cable currently has on their approved list is the Arris (formerly Motorola) Surfboard SB6183. This modem is capable of 16×4 bonded channels which means it can do a maximum of 600 Mbps download and about 150 Mbps upload (theoretically). However, realistically users on Time Warner Cable will expect to see speeds of 300/20 Mbps download/upload with this modem. It has also been incredibly difficult to find any of these modems anywhere and the only place I saw any of them for sale was on eBay and surprisingly it was sold from someone in San Diego, likely testing out this new service in the area.

Needless to say, we’re very excited for this service to roll out over the course of the next month and will hopefully swap out our current SB6580 for one of these since we only use it in bridge mode as it is already as many users that have TWC’s Ultimate tier of service already do. However, if you don’t want to go out and get this modem, you should be able to still get 100 Mbps from Time Warner Cable’s service with nearly all of their approved modems.

The post Time Warner Cable Rolling Out 300 and 200 Mbps Service July 7th appeared first on VR World.

Level 3 Communications has announced that they will be buying the former Time Warner Cable internet service for enterprise division (TW Telecom) for $5.6 billion ($7.3 billion with debt), further increasing their size and scope. Some news sites have made the mistake saying that Level 3 Communications is buying Time Warner Cable, which is simply not correct. TW Telecom was started as a joint venture between Time Warner Cable and US West which is now a part of Centurylink. However, TW Telecom has operated as an independent entity for quite some time and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ as TWTC.

The deal is currently structured as 24% cash and 76% stock (in Level 3 Communications) and will come to a total sum of $7.3 billion after the purchase price and debt are accounted for. We already know that Level 3 Communications is quite a big tier 1 ISP because they stated how many different companies they serve when they talked about the problems they’ve been encountering with US ISPs. If you read our article about it, you will find out that Level 3 Communications currently has something like 180,000 miles of fiber laid around the world and has a total interconnect capacity of nearly 14 Tbps.

Adding TW Telecom to Level 3 Communications’ network would simply strengthen the company’s offerings and broaden their customer base, allowing them to achieve better efficiency and possibly even more importantly, be a protector of things like net neutrality. After all, if Level 3 Communications is all about making sure the internet is a fair place, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing if they’re in control of more of the internet. However, companies like Level 3 Communications may also become easier targets for hackers and governments to attack or approach in terms of getting easier access to the internet. So, as thing always are, there are both good and bad things that will come with Level 3 Communications getting better. With this deal, though, Level 3 Communications gains 27,000 route miles of fiber and over 16,000 “on-net” commercial buildings connected. As well as two National Operations Centers (NOCs) in Littleton, CO and O’Fallon, MO, where its solutions are monitored for quality 24/7/365 to assure the best and most reliable service.

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Lately, there has been a lot of talk about ISPs (internet service providers) with the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well as all of the Net Neutrality legislation and news going around. In this era of essentially no competition among internet service providers, many customers are generally stuck with 2, maybe 3 choices for internet service in their area, which is actually worse than the current state of wireless which is also essentially an oligopoly.

In most places, you have the choice between some sort of cable TV provider that also provides internet service and a telephone provider, usually being Comcast, Time Warner or Cox on the cable side and AT&T on the telephone side either with a DSL service or U-Verse. Now, in some areas you have none of these choices and you’re stuck with either dial-up from some local phone operator or you have to shell out tons of money a month for satellite internet from Hughesnet (owned by Echostar, parent company of DISH). The problem with this service is that it offers speeds of 15 Mbps/2 Mbps down/up for $130 a month, which is about triple what land line operators charge, AND they cap users at 40 GB a month of data. And the company is touting these speeds as “15x faster than before” which makes this all the more ridiculous.

Also, if you want internet service from say Time Warner Cable, you would be forced to pay $35 a month (promotional for 12 months), which will eventually come to $40 or $45 a month. This service will get you 15/1 Mbps down/up and unlimited bandwidth, unlike some of their competitors, AT&T. They also have a fairly new 100 Mbps download service which they sell for $70 a month that only has 5 Mbps upload.

AT&T on the other hand, offers an 18 Mbps service for $45 a month which is about the same as Time Warner Cable, but also requires a 1 year contract and will go up after the promotional price ends. Their fastest service that they offer is 45 Mbps for $65 a month, but this is slower than what Time Warner Cable used to offer at 50 Mbps, but now offers for 100 Mbps.

Now that we’ve shown a small bit of how ridiculous the current ISP climate is in the US, we wanted to talk about an ISP that we recently heard about. This ISP is called Webpass and they’re a very small internet service provider, but they serve urban customers in San Francisco, San Diego and Miami. Their model is to deploy to a single building or complex and to get a large deployment of customers at once in order to make their capex (capital expenditures) worthwhile.

What makes Webpass so great is not just their unbelievably fast speeds, but also their reasonable prices and their commitment to Net Neutrality. Webpass offers their internet to consumers for $55 a month or $500 a year, whichever they wish to pay. Granted, if you pay for a full year of service upfront, you also save $160 over the course of that year. What does $55 get you? It gets you a jack anywhere in your apartment or condo that delivers a minimum of a 100/100 Mbps symmetrical line and in some areas a 200/200 line depending on the neighborhood and building.

Here’s a video of how it works:
So, not only is Webpass incredibly fast and cheap, it is also incredibly easy because you no longer have to deal with a modem anymore. You only need to have a router and any network connectivity beyond your router are immediately Webpass’ problem. This also removes one of the potential factors for messing up an internet connection and makes the overall process smoother and easier.

But if their price, speed and simplicity weren’t enough they are also very principled in how they treat their customers’ data. They specifically state in their net net neutrality policy that they will or will not do the following 6 things:

1. Our customers pay us to deliver the entire Internet.

2. All packets are treated equally. Exceptions are made for violating the acceptable use policy or activity we deem malicious.

3. We do not accept payment from content providers to increase the prioritization of their packets or to decrease the prioritization of a competitor’s packets.

4. We do not pay content providers to deliver service to our network.

5. We adjust our peering relationships often to provide the best routes possible to our customers.

6. It is normal for a customer’s experience with each website to be different. The customer’s experience is a combination of Webpass’ network performance, the destination’s network performance, and the distance to the destination.

So, Webpass is actually an ISP that you can like. Sure, they’re small but more and more ISPs like them are popping up around the country and we need to be able to support them to create competition where we likely will only get less if we stick with the big cable companies. Unfortunately, the process for getting Webpass in your building or complex is much more difficult than it should be, but they also need to preserve their profitability and need to be able to pay off their investment and be sure they will get a substantial commitment from residents. I have personally requested to get Webpass at my residence but have yet to hear back from them, after all, it isn’t entirely my decision.

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In a recent blog posted on Level 3 Communications’ own website, Mark Taylor VP of Content and Media at Level 3, spoke about how Level 3 Communications’ own networks work and even made a small plug about how the company has spent over $40 billion on building up their 180,000 miles of high speed fiber to help interconnect the internet. However, where their connections terminate with their peers is ultimately where they are the most vulnerable. However, Level 3 obviously does not cover the entire globe and their customers need to be able to connect to the whole globe, so there are peering agreements that allow for the sharing of data across these networks to enable fewer, better and faster connections from point A to point B. To understand how huge Level 3 communications really is, they actually provided a map of all the places where their fiber lies and where they may be leasing fiber to complete connections that they themselves haven’t laid or own.

Level 3 Communications Network Map

Now, looking at the map above, the orange lines are built and owned by Level 3 Communications while the yellow lines are either owned by multiple carriers or are leased. But this map represents the entire global network that Level 3 has access to and can connect with other carriers or ISPs. Now, these guys, Level 3 Communications are sort of a ‘middle man’ in the internet’s grand scheme. They aren’t a middle man in the sense that they exist for no purpose other than to skim money off the existence of the internet, they are a middle man because they quite literally sit between your ISP and the destination of where you are trying to go. Or, they sit between the servers of the company that is serving you data and your ISP. Your ISP connects you to the internet and Level 3 Communications and other carriers are responsible for helping you get there. Now, Level 3 Communications themselves has tens of thousands of customers that they help connect to the internet with 51 peers in 45 different physical locations, listed below are a total of 66 actual connections (since some locations are repeated).

In all of Level 3 Communications connections globally, only 12 of those are actually experiencing any sort of bottlenecking or packet loss. And of those 12, 6 of them are already in the process of being upgraded to remove these bandwidth issues. Since after all, Level 3 communications has a total interconnection capacity of over 13,600 Gbps (1,360 10 Gigabit ethernet ports, plus a few smaller ones) they have distributed capacity with individual peers ranging from a single 10 GigE port to 148 ports, depending on the peer. The average number of interconnection cities per peer is five, but ranges from 1 to 20, so there is quite a bit of variance between peers and between cities. But what’s most important is that the average utilization of those interconnected ports is 36 percent, while congested ones near 90 percent and start to experience packet loss and connectivity issues.

However, these 6 peers that are problematic have been problematic for the past year on a consistent base and have chosen to do nothing about it. They maintain their interconnect utilization at nearly 90% all the time and as a result are dropping packets like crazy. 5 of those peers (companies/ISPs) are US based and 1 is in Europe. Level 3 communications did a pretty good job of explaining exactly how this problem manifests itself by showing one of their 100 Gbps connections to Dallas on April 3rd with a problematic peer and then one located in Washington D.C. that isn’t problematic. While Level 3 Communications has chosen not to name and shame these peers, I can tell you with 99% certainty that the Dallas peer is none other than SBC aka AT&T. So, while Level 3 didn’t directly name and shame their problematic peers, we already know that one of them is AT&T and it isn’t going to be much of an assumption to think Comcast is going to be among that list as well. However, we have pretty concrete evidence from Level 3 that AT&T is doing a piss poor job of maintaining their interconnections with Level 3.

First, you can see the congested peer… (AT&T)

Followed by the uncongested peer….

Notice, they are both getting close to 100% utilization, but the uncongested one is not dropping any packets or having any sort of errors because it isn’t plateauing and getting overutilized. But even in this scenario, Level 3 communications is working with their peer to augment the connection to improve the performance so that there isn’t a chance of packet loss in the future.

Overall, Level 3 Communications is further making clear as to why providers like Netflix are crying out against companies like Comcast and speaking out against the Comcast – Time Warner Cable merger (both probably on Level 3’s list), as well as how such behavior is affecting Net Neutrality and how certain companies are using neglect to force companies like Netflix to pay for dedicated lines into Comcast’s network even though companies like Level 3 are already doing so and their interconnects are merely being neglected.

If you’re interested, here’s a list of the best and worst ‘middlemen’ like Level3, which according to these claims, is the best.

The post Level 3 Communications Calls Out US ISPs for Intentionally Slowing Down Networks appeared first on VR World.

Qualcomm has been fairly quiet about their high-end ambitions after what is expected to follow the soon-to-launch Snapdragon 805 chipset. The Snapdragon 805 is Qualcomm’s chip that will likely ship in devices next quarter and is marketed by Qualcomm as their 4K chip with the Adreno 420 GPU.

Now, even though the Snapdragon 805 (APQ8084) is a very powerful chip, it lacks 64-bit capability and doesn’t have an integrated modem, requiring a separate modem like Qualcomm’s 20nm MDM9x35 to enable cellular capability. It also sports an improved Krait CPU with a Krait 450 CPU compared to the Snapdragon 801 and 800’s Krait 400. However, it still doesn’t quite satisfy Qualcomm’s need for a very powerful chip that looks into the future. The Snapdragon 805 is the chip for now.

That leads us to today’s announcement of the Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808 chips. The Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808 mark the first time that Qualcomm has ever announced a high-end 64-bit chip and the first time they have implemented ARM’s own cores into their SOC. Both the Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808 will feature ARM’s A57 and A53 64-bit cores with the Snapdragon 810 being a 4 big + 4 LITTLE and the 808 being 2 big + 4 LITTLE in a big.LITTLE configuration. This marks a pretty big shift in the company’s attitude towards big.LITTLE when you consider that they were saying that their cores were good enough that they didn’t need to do a big.LITTLE configuration. And the fact that Qualcomm now has a high-end SoC that supports the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set architecture. Keeping in mind that they are already shipping the Snapdragon 410 to the middle of the market with an A53-based 64-bit CPU.

To me, and many others, it seemed like Qualcomm was poo pooing what Samsung and others were doing, and now they’re effectively doing the same with these two chips’ CPU cores. However, Qualcomm explained that they were reacting to market demand for 64-bit capable chips and that they wanted to deliver them to their customers as requested. They said that because their own custom 64-bit ARM CPU cores weren’t necessarily timed for what the market has demanded, they have adjusted and are delivering a 64-bit solution as quickly and effectively as they can with ARM’s cores. This can all be traced back to Apple’s release of the A7 64-bit chip in the iPhone 5S and how much they fundamentally shook the foundations of the mobile SoC world and what people were demanding.

In addition to the 64-bit ARM A57 and A53 cores, Qualcomm is integrating their modem directly into the SoC’s die, bringing the SoC and modem into one chip once again. Because they are integrating their 20nm MDM9x35 chip, they already know what they can expect to see from the modem side of things in terms of performance and power savings. Additionally, because Qualcomm has been working on 20nm with their modem, they could proof and tweak the process in anticipation for these Snapdragon chips. Because they both share the same modem, they will both be capable of Cat 6 LTE enabling LTE Advanced features globally with a single design. When paired with Qualcomm’s RF360 front-end solution, both chips will be capable of 3×20 MHz Carrier Aggregation, resulting in up to 300 Mbps download speeds in various spectrum scenarios.

The Snapdragon 810 will also be one of Qualcomm’s 4K-focused chips with the introduction of a 4K HEVC hardware video encoder as well as a 14-bit dual ISP (image signal processor) capable of 1.2 GP/s and supporting image sensors up to 55 MP. And because Qualcomm wants to focus on 4K so heavily with the Snapdragon 810, they once again bumped the GPU to an Adreno 430 which should bring 30% faster graphics performance when compared to the Adreno 420 in the Snapdragon 805. They also took a very serious look at the GPGPU compute capability of the Adreno chip and improved it by 100% all while reducing power consumption by 20% when compared to its predecessor. The Adreno 430 will also support OpenGL ES 3.1 which was recently announced as a standard, even though I suspect many of their currently available OpenGL ES 3.0 capable hardware could be updated to 3.1 via driver update as well. In addition to OpenGL ES 3.1 support, the Adreno 430 will also support hardware tessellation, geometry shaders and programmable blending. The Snapdragon 810 also will be Qualcomm’s first SoC to support LPDDR4 memory which means better performance and lower power consumption for high-end devices utilizing this SoC.

One of my biggest complaints about many SoC vendors as they’ve started to try to attach themselves to 4K is the fact that none of these GPUs, no matter how powerful, are capable of 3D graphics in 4K. The amount of horsepower it takes to do 3d graphics in 4K is absolutely insane and is far outside of the realm of these mobile SoCs, for now. As such, we were given clarification that most gaming in 4K on these devices will be done at 1080P and upscaled to 4K on whatever display it’s being played on. So, whenever you hear 4K gaming being mentioned, that’s likely what you are going to be seeing, even though its really 1080P gaming being upscaled to 4K. After all, almost all of the mobile games are built for 720P or 1080P and not anything much higher.

In contrast to the Snapdragon 810, the Snapdragon 808 is a very similar chip to the Snapdragon 810 but it takes more of a smartphone focus rather than a 4K tablet one. Even though, either chip can be used for a smartphone or tablet, it would just be more cost prohibitive to put a Snapdragon 810 in a smartphone. The Snapdragon 808, as we stated earlier is a slightly differently configured chip with a dual ARM Cortex-A57 plus quad Cortex-A53 CPU configuration, so technically it’s a sexacore or hexacore chip rather than an octocore like the 810.

The Snapdragon 808 takes more of a focus on future smartphone resolutions with a targeted design for WQXGA resolution of 2560×1600 (close to the Oppo Find 7) even though that phone has a 2560×1440 resolution, it’s essentially the same resolution. It does, however, have an Adreno 418 GPU, which actually puts it below the Adreno 420 and Adreno 430 which are both targeted towards 4K resolutions. The Adreno 418 claims to deliver 20% faster 3d graphics than the Adreno 330 in the Snapdragon 800, giving a slight performance boost to smartphones even though they’ll be handling much higher resolutions. In fact, the 2560×1600 resolution is double the pixels of the current 1920×1080 on most smartphones, which in my eyes, should justify more than a 20% improvement over the current generation. The doubling of pixels is especially important when you consider exactly when this SoC is expected to be shipping in devices.

The Snapdragon 808 will also support 12-bit dual ISPs as opposed to the Snapdragon 810’s 14-bit dual ISPs, resulting in less performance available to the image sensors to utilize. It will also support LPDDR3 rather than LPDDR4 support in the Snapdragon 810.

Now, if you take into account the Snapdragon 810 platform as a whole, you would be looking at an 8-chip solution, assuming that you were to go with Qualcomm’s RF360 RF front-end (WTR 3925 and WTR 3905) as well as their PMICs (power management integrated circuits) and their 2×2 WLAN chip (QCA6174A) that enables 802.11ac and MU-MIMO. They also have an NFC chip (QCA1990) and an audio codec that round out their full Snapdragon 810 platform, which is if you want to go Qualcomm the whole way.

Based on what I see here, I would say that the Snapdragon 810 will likely be a pretty attractive part for many looking to win the spec wars against their competitors and that we’ll probably see it used in both phones and tablets. I say this primarily because of the fact that even though the Snapdragon 808 is a slightly dialed down version of the 810, I’m simply not convinced that it will be powerful enough to deliver a smooth experience at 2560×1600 and to enable what I’d expect to be upscaled gaming (in the short term). The Snapdragon 810 really looks to be a great part, but it will be interesting to see where it will fit in their stack once Qualcomm eventually shows off their own custom 64-bit CPU cores, the successor to Krait. Judging by Qualcomm’s own marketing they really seem to be focusing on the Snapdragon 810, and I can totally see why. I think we will see more devices launching with the 810 than we will with the 808, even though the 808 will be in a more affordable price range. A flagship chip is a for flagship devices and manufacturers want to make sure they are putting in the best possible at that time.

Both the Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808 are expected to be sampling in the second half of 2014 and shipping in devices in the first half of 2015.

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