Hasta La Gadget!

And this, friends, is how you make the leap into the mainstream. Bigfoot Networks has been toiling away in an effort to get its gaming-optimized networking guts into just about everything — there’s also a VisionTek GPU with Killer innards, and a trifecta of mainboard makers announced that they too would be joining the bustling integration party earlier in the year. Now, however, the outfit’s really got something to hang its hat on: a handshake with Dell’s Alienware unit. The Killer Wireless-N 1103 networking adapter will now be listed as an option for the Alienware M18x, M17x, M14x and M11x, promising data rates as high as 450Mbps as well as its Advanced Stream Detect to intelligently classify and prioritize network traffic. Mum’s the word on how much the upgrade will be, but based on prior reviews, we’d say the premium will be well worth it for the hardcore among us.

Continue reading Alienware adds jitter-killing Killer Wireless-N technology to M18x, M17x, M14x and M11x

Alienware adds jitter-killing Killer Wireless-N technology to M18x, M17x, M14x and M11x originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Alienware, Bigfoot Networks  | Email this | Comments

Looks like the world wide web is seeing a few upgrades this week. Shortly after NC State announced a new methodology for routing fiber optic connections more quickly, in flies Alcatel-Lucent with a shiny new network processor to make things even faster. The FP3 that was announced this week promises a “fourfold increase in performance over the fastest IP network available,” supporting 400Gbps transmission speeds while cutting power consumption by up to 50 percent. The chip’s been demonstrated to the powers that be this week, and it’s reportedly designed to “address tomorrow’s demand for ultra-high performance public and private IP networks.” How so, you ask? A sole FP3 could handle 70,000 simultaneous HD video streams or 8.4 million simultaneous retail cloud sessions, and quite frankly, could make the 100 Gigabit Ethernet standards that were used to look like old hat. But hey — who’s kvetching about that?

Continue reading Alcatel-Lucent’s FP3 network processor routes at 400Gbps, handles 70,000 simultaneous HD streams

Alcatel-Lucent’s FP3 network processor routes at 400Gbps, handles 70,000 simultaneous HD streams originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PC World  |  Alcatel-Lucent (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

Well, fancy that — a teardown of last week’s refreshed Time Capsule has revealed a regular, non-enterprise drive lurking within. Curious, as Cupertino’s website lists a “Serial ATA server-grade hard disk” as standard equipment on the device’s official spec sheet. It’s generally assumed that for a drive model to be qualified as “enterprise,” it must sustain a mean time between failure — MTBF for short — in excess of one million hours. So what’s the MTBF for the Western Digital’s WD20EARS (Caviar Green) in HardMac‘s Time Capsule? Conveniently, the hard drive maker wouldn’t say. Of course, we guess the definition here is up for interpretation, but given past experiences with the wireless backup gizmo, we’d certainly hope this improved revision fares better.

Continue reading Updated Time Capsule opened, server-grade hard drive nowhere to be found?

Updated Time Capsule opened, server-grade hard drive nowhere to be found? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Jun 2011 06:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |  Hardmac (1), (2), Apple  | Email this | Comments

HomePlug hasn’t exactly struck it big on the home networking scene but, with so many disparate options (none of which play very nice together) it’s not hard to see why. The Powerline Alliance is throwing its support behind a new IEEE standard, P1905, that may ease our consumer pain and make the outlet connectivity tech a better fit for our dungeons living rooms. The goal is to create a layer that sits atop the various wired and wireless hookups that blanket our homes and let them easily share data. Bridging the gap between HomePlug, HomePlug AV, Ethernet, WiFi, and MoCA is an ambitious task to tackle, but we’ve got faith our gadgets can get along.

Continue reading HomePlug and IEEE want our home networks to play nice, talk to each other

HomePlug and IEEE want our home networks to play nice, talk to each other originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At one time Cisco was the Hoover Dam of the technology sector. It was strong, majestic in size, and reliable. There were few cracks in the concrete and not a drop of water was coming through to indicate any kind of instability. Today the story for the company is much different. If the company is […]