Hasta La Gadget!

Here’s an interesting one. Just days after Cisco admitted that it was killing its own internal development of WiMAX kit, the networking mainstay has sunk an undisclosed amount of cheddar into a company that holds WiMAX in the highest regard: Grid Net. Said outfit has close ties to GE, Intel, Motorola and Clearwire, all of which have also voiced support (and invested real dollars) for the next-generation wireless protocol in years past. Last we heard, Cisco was doing its best to remain “radio-agnostic,” and while some may view this as flip-flopping, we view it as brilliant; it’s costly to develop internally, but buying stake in a company that’s already well versed in a given technology allows Cisco to keep WiMAX at arm’s reach without incurring the risk associated with building within. Beyond all that, we think that Cisco’s just trying to get in early on the energy management biz, particularly after the US government announced that it would be funding the distribution of loads of in-home energy monitors in the coming years. According to Grid Net, it intends to “use the proceeds from this investment to promote its real-time, all-IP, secure, reliable, extensible, end-to-end Smart Grid network infrastructure solutions,” though specifics beyond that were few and far between. Verizon mentioned that it would soon be using its LTE network for all sorts of unorthodox things — we suppose WiMAX backers are planning to allow the same.

Cisco sinks funding into WiMAX-supporting Grid Net, looks to ride the ‘smart energy’ wave originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cisco Tuesday announced a new router, the CRS-3, that it says is capable of delivering 322 terabits per second.

Now, we don’t usually cover routers and similar enterprise hardware here in Gadget Lab, but this one’s worth a brief mention. Let’s leave aside Cisco’s breathless hype (it will “forever change the internet” — yeah, we’ll believe that when we see it). And nevermind the fact that, actually, there are only a handful of people with the technical skills and the equipment necessary to put Cisco’s speed claims to the test, so they might as well claim it delivers 322 kajillion bits per second, because who would know the difference?

Those caveats aside, 322 Tbps is insanely fast. Just how fast? About a million times faster than your typical cable modem (literally). Or, as Silicon Valley Insider puts it, “fast enough to allow every man, woman, and child in China to make a video call at the same time.”

That’s fast.

You could also use speed like that to download the entire Library of Congress in about a second, fill up your iTunes library with over 4 billion MP3 files in about a minute, or download every movie ever made in 4 minutes, SVI says.

There’s more: see SVI’s article for a clever, quick presentation.

Cisco’s New Router Could Let Everyone in China Make a Video Call at Once (Silicon Valley Insider)

Photo: Conan the Librarian/Flickr

It’s still far, far too early to call WiMAX a dead technology, but with the second major infrastructure supplier moving away from it in as many months, that’s a pretty damning sign, isn’t it? After Alcatel Lucent’s announcement that it would be scaling back WiMAX investment last month, Cisco has now pulled the plug on its own efforts, citing a desire to stay as “radio-agnostic” as possible in the 4G race. That makes sense for a company that hasn’t traditionally played in the wireless game the same way stalwarts like Ericsson and Nokia Siemens have, but the move still lies in stark contrast to Cisco’s 2007 acquisition of Navini Networks that brought a host of WiMAX-focused equipment into the fold. Of course, CDMA has managed just fine in the shadow of GSM’s global domination over the past decade, so these early warning signs could amount a fat load of nothing by the time we’ve reached a 4G steady state.

Another one bites the dust: Cisco steps out of the WiMAX game originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The FCC has this week signaled its intent to snoop around set top boxes and how they may be improved. Prompted by “a lack of competition and innovation in this market,” the regulator will look into ways it can encourage the proliferation of broadband internet access provision as well as stimulating further advances. One potential solution may involve compelling cable and broadband providers to supply “bridge” network interface devices that’ll allow users to hook up their set top box to a modem and get groovy online. Whatever the final proposals are, and they’ll take more definite shape in February, we’re pleased to see the FCC take a proactive approach toward an industry it perceives to be stagnating. Our idea? Boxee Boxes for everyone!

FCC ponders opening set top boxes to broadband connections, greater competition originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We first saw the Cisco FlipShare TV hit the FCC just over a month ago, and now that’s it’s official (well, official in the sense that Walt Mossberg broke the embargo by two hours) we’re still sort of underwhelmed and a little befuddled — although it’s made by Cisco, the Flip-focused media player doesn’t actually connect to your home WiFi network. Instead, the FlipShare software transmits data from your computer using a proprietary USB dongle, which means the player itself is useless unless your computer is on with Flip’s funky FlipShare software running and the dongle connected. Flip tells us the decision to go proprietary was made to make things easier for non-technical users to set up (like Flip’s cameras, the FlipShare software is preloaded on the dongle) but we can’t help but think it’s actually a bit more complicated, since Gran won’t be able to just turn the thing on and subscribe to your new Flip user channels enabled by FlipShare 5.0. Instead, she’ll have to get out her laptop, plug in the dongle, launch the software (which pulls the content from the internet), and then start using the FlipShare TV’s RF remote to get at your videos, which seems pretty complicated to us. Yeah, we’re just not sure, especially at $149 — we’ve actually got one here for review, we’ll let you know how we feel in the next couple days.

Continue reading Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen

Flip Video FlipShare TV beams video to the big screen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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