Items tagged with Internet
The Chrome Dev Summit 2018 event is underway now, and one of the big focuses of the event is making the web faster and smoother. One of the ways Google's Chromium team is going to make this happen is with a new tool called Squoosh, a powerful image compression tool that launches almost instantly and offers a simple, fast UI, even when it’s working hard. The app offers compression and conversion between image formats like PNG, JPG and WebP with multiple compression algorithms to choose from. The Squoosh web app works in any browser but of course Google recommends Chrome for the best...
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Some of Google's major services unexpectedly went offline for a period of time on Monday, apparently resulting from a tiny ISP in Nigeria inadvertently hijacking certain internet traffic. Referred to as a BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) hijack, traffic that should have found its way to Google's servers instead pinged Nigerian ISP MainOne Cable Company. At issue is that MainOne Cable was hosting over 200 Google network prefixes, resulting in traffic not going to where it was supposed to. This is what we know: Starting at 2018-11-12 21:12 UTC Nigerian ISP AS37282 'MainOne Cable Company' leaked 212...
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Comcast has laid claim to the title of "nation's largest provider of gigabit broadband" with the announcement that nearly 58 million homes and business have access to its gigabit internet service. Comcast claims its rollout to be the fastest deployment of gigabit speeds to the most locations in the country; Xfinity Gigabit Internet and Comcast Business Gigabit service are available to "nearly all" customers in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Comcast offers faster speeds with multi-gigabit available to business users in Comcast service areas. Comcast notes it has increased speeds 17 times...
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If you've noticed that your streaming media feeds seem a bit slower lately, you are not alone. Others have noticed that online videos suddenly seem to be buffering more often and arriving on devices looking a little blurry. Maybe websites appear to be taking longer to load. If so, it could be because your Internet service provider (ISP) is throttling traffic. It's not necessarily in your head, in other words. This was one of the fears that net neutrality advocates warned about when the Federal Communications Commission, led by chairman Ajit Pai, was determined to strip away regulations implemented...
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Charter is not making many friends in high places in New York. Just the opposite, the New York State Public Service Commission announced it has revoked its approval of a 2016 merger between Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable (TWC) due to Charter, doing business as Spectrum, wavering on promises it made, along with "various instances of misconduct." One of the times the Commission noted in its revocation announcement is a 2017 lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. In the lawsuit, the AG accused Spectrum of throttling Internet speeds for streaming services like...
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The European Union's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favor of draft legislation that would overhaul Europe's copyright rules. However, the concern from several Internet pioneers, civil liberties groups, and others who oppose the legislation fear that it will ultimately be a tool for surveillance and essentially wreck the web as we know it today, even though those favoring the legislation may have good intentions. Lawmakers are trying to protect the interest of copyright holders. However, one of the provisions (Article 13) would require companies like Google to create an automatic filter...
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Over the past week, we've reported quite a bit about the rise of cord-cutting and how big cable and satellite TV companies are adapting to the changing landscape. Comcast in particular lost 96,000 customers last quarter, and is looking for new ways to stop defectors from moving to cheaper alternatives. Last week, Comcast responded by raising internet speeds out of the blue for customers in specific regions of the United States: Houston, Oregon, and Southwest Washington. We don't know if these areas in particular have seen heavy defections from Comcast's TV packages, but customers in these...
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Each year on April 1 we are a bit skeptical about some of the stuff we read because some of it isn’t real. Cloudflare, the same company that uses a wall of lava lamps to generate encryption keys, swears that its new 1.1.1.1 consumer DNS service is the real deal. The promise is that the new DNS service is the fastest on the web and is designed with privacy-first in mind. If you aren’t sure what DNS is, Cloudflare describes it this way, "DNS is the directory of the Internet. Whenever you click on a link, send an email, open a mobile app, often one of the first things that has to happen...
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What happened yesterday was outrageous. Officials at the FCC voted 3-2 to repeal net neutrality rules enacted during the previous administration, stripping away consumer protections against ISP abuse. The vote ignored a public outcry that had grown loud and clear leading up to the vote, one that included voices from many of the Internet's pioneers, along with 18 state attorney's general and tens of millions of people from all walks of life, both Republicans and Democrats. The process was a farce, though the fight for net neutrality is not over. Yes, net neutrality advocates lost a battle yesterday....
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AT&T is testing out a new way of delivering ultra-fast Internet connectivity to customers that is on par with fiber-optic networks, only AT&T's solution is over the air. Called "Project AirGig," this first-of-its-kind system consists of a contraption that clamps onto existing power poles, negating the need to build new towers or run lines under the ground. According to AT&T, it only takes a few minutes to train an electrical worker how to install these devices. Project AirGig is the result of over a decade of research by AT&T Labs. More than 300 patents and patent applications are...
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The net neutrality debate is hard upon us, but not everyone understands what's at stake. Most tech-savvy folks understand the issues and have a thoughtful position based on their understanding of the technology and how it's used. But some have no position, mainly because they simply don't follow the tech press on a daily basis. This may be especially true when we're speaking of folks who are somewhat older or younger, or who simply don't have a tech background. The following is provided mostly as a resource for those folks. We have always had an "open Internet." In the old days (i.e., the early...
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Verizon has announced that it will begin its rollout of 5G services to customers in certain U.S. markets next year. However, this isn't lightning fast 5G wireless for your smartphone to connect to while you are out and about. Verizon plans to use this 5G wireless service to provide faster internet access to homes and business using technology it purchased earlier this year. Verizon wants to light up wireless residential broadband service in three to five markets during 2018. The first, and only confirmed market for its 5G launch will be Sacramento, California during the second half of 2018....
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by Chairman Ajit Pai, is set to vote on whether it should dismantle net neutrality rules that were put in place under the Obama administration. As this has become a political issue, the FCC is assuredly going to proceed with Pai's plan to withdraw the rules, after having voted 2-1 back in May of this year to advance the process. A final vote is scheduled for December 14.In case you are not aware, net neutrality rules were put in place to ensure that all Internet traffic is treated equally and fairly. Through government regulation, wireless carriers...
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Google is all about adding tools to Chrome to prevent annoying things from happening while you surf the web. Chrome already has a bunch of tools to help protect you when you are surfing the web, like telling you when traffic is HTTPS secure, blocking pop-ups, and stopping annoying autoplay videos. In coming versions of Chrome, Google will build in more protections to take the annoyance out of web surfing.Google says that one of the most common bits of feedback it receives are reports of websites redirecting unexpectedly to other places. Google says that it has found that these redirects often come...
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