Networking

Over the past few years, we’ve all come to realize just how important it is to have the best possible home Wi-Fi system. There’s nothing like signal drops of dead spots to bring the best Zoom of Teams meeting to a grinding halt.But what if your internet connection sucks? Well, if you’re living where there’s 5G coverage, this might be the solution that you need.Today sees Netgear unveil an industry-first — a 5G tri-band Wi-Fi 6 mesh system.The Netgear Orbi NBK752 mesh system combines 5G and mesh Wi-Fi into a single product that can blankets an entire home (up to 5,000 sq. ft.) in WiFi, no matter whether you live in a brick townhouse or a sprawling rural ranch.The tri-band WiFi is set up in a way to deliver a dedicated WiFi connection between the router and satellites, so that no matter how many devices are connected at the same time, you still get the best possible performance. The Netgear Orbi NBK752 works with most major mobile service providers, including T-Mobile and AT&T.Netgear Orbi NBK752, the first 5G Tri-band WiFi 6 mesh systemNetgear Orbi NBK752 highlights5G speeds in your home: 5G offers up to 10x the speed and capacity of 4G, with latency rates as low as 1ms.Next-generation WiFi: WiFi 6 allows multiple devices to connect simultaneously without impacting speed or reliability.Tri-band technology: Tri-band WiFi with a dedicated WiFi connection between the router and satellite delivers maximum speed and performance to all devices.Wireless network coverage: 5G is completely wireless, making it the perfect high-speed solution in areas that have access to strong mobile network coverage but lack a decent cable or DSL.Cellular network flexibility: The router accesses the LTE network in areas without 5G, so you can use it as a backup if your service fails. And when 5G does expand to your area, you’ll be ready to take advantage of it.Whole-home coverage: This mesh system includes a router plus a satellite unit, ensuring your home (up to 5,000 sq. ft) gets reliable WiFi coverage throughout. Need more coverage? You can purchase additional satellites to expand coverage.Easy setup and management: The Orbi App makes it easy to set up the router, manage your network remotely, pause the Internet on any device, track your Internet data usage, and more.”As the leader in the networking space, we continue to bring exciting new solutions to market that leverage state-of-the-art technology to meet the changing needs of our customers. And the Orbi 5G WiFi 6 Mesh System is no exception,” said David Henry, President & GM of Connected Home Products and Services at NETGEAR. “In a time when having reliable home WiFi is critical to not only work and learning, but to just about everything else we do, consumers can access the best Internet connection with this latest addition to our Orbi portfolio.”

The system comes with a free 30-day trial of the NETGEAR Armor, a service designed to protect the connected home from online threats.The Netgear Orbi NBK752 5G WiFi 6 Mesh System is not cheap — the two-pack comes in at $1,099.99 — and is available for pre-order starting today. More

LikeSimple setupGood Wi-Fi 6 performance

Don’t LikeBulky nodesSome controls lack depth

Mesh wi-fi has become the go-to option for extending wi-fi range in many small office and home office environments, and also has a strong following among consumers. Linksys has been in the game for a while, and has a new Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) version of its Velop Whole Home Intelligent Mesh WiFi 6 (AX4200) System. The two-node kit I was sent costs £375, while a single node costs £226 and a three-node kit costs £579. Linksys says each node will cover 2,700 square feet (2,508 sq m). In the US, a single AX4200 node costs $249.99.Setup is simplicity itself. Download the mobile app, configure a login, connect whatever you designate as the ‘primary node’ to your internet router via the Gigabit WAN port and to mains power, and then return to the app to walk through the few stages that complete setup. The whole process was easy, and my two-node system was up and running in under 15 minutes.  The Velop Mesh Wi-Fi 6 (AX4200) nodes measure 114.3mm (4.5in.) square by 243.8mm (9.6in.) tall and weigh 943.5g (2.08lbs).
Image: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet
The nodes themselves are large, measuring 24.4cm high and 11.4cm square. They shouldn’t be hemmed in — behind cupboards, for example — as this will interfere with their ability to work optimally. Instead, these white plastic monoliths will likely create a bit of visual clutter.  The tri-band system delivers a top speed of 4.2Gbps, which was plenty to meet my household needs, including powering working from home, family video calling and delivering streaming entertainment services. If wired connections are preferred, then every node has three Gigabit Ethernet ports at its disposal.  Ports and connectors on the Velop Mesh Wi-Fi 6 (AX4200) nodes: USB 3.0; 3x Gigabit Ethernet; Gigabit WAN; power.
Image: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  
There is also a USB-A port on each node, and this can be used to attach external storage so that content can be shared and streamed by anyone on the network. I tested this with an external hard drive and sharing worked perfectly. There are even some instructions on how to access shared devices via different operating systems in the Linksys app.  The app is neat and accessible. It is easy to set up guest access on the hoof, with a private password that provides internet access but no visibility of computers or connected devices, so that guest accounts can be switched on and off as needed. However, some controls are less expansive than they could be. Parental controls include blocking internet access from specific devices on a schedule or on demand, but website blocking is managed by manually adding URLs, which is a hassle.  Video calling can be given priority over all other types of activity, and it’s also possible to prioritise up to three devices for bandwidth use, with the remainder sharing whatever is left. So, those work calls happening while others are using the smart TV may no longer stutter.  

Performance during testing was very impressive. Everything seemed to work a little bit faster, and the reach was excellent. My existing system doesn’t stretch into the kitchen or to the far end of the garden, but the Velop WiFi 6 (AX4200) managed both, and speeds in these locations seemed as good as those in my home office right by the router.  With home office working much more prevalent for many people nowadays, a solid mesh wi-fi system might be a wise investment. The Linksys Velop WiFi 6 (AX4200) is easy to set up, even for newcomers to the concept, and while the detailed controls could do with a bit more depth, these may well come as Linksys develops the system further. RECENT AND RELATED CONTENT Netgear Orbi Quad-Band Mesh WiFi 6E System (RBKE963): Fast but expensive wireless mesh networking Fortinet, Linksys joint venture aims to bring enterprise security to home offices Best Wi-Fi router 2021: Expert reviews of top brands Mesh networking vs. traditional Wi-Fi routers: What is best for your home office? Best mesh Wi-Fi system 2021: Top routers compared Read more reviews More

Image: Getty Images
Huawei released a snippet reporting its three-quarter revenue total on Friday, and it showed the Chinese giant is continuing to get hammered in the consumer segment. In its first quarter, sales were down 16.5%; by the half-year, the revenue drop was 29%; and for the nine months of its fiscal year, Huawei reported taking in 456 billion yuan in revenue. This represents an almost 33% drop on the 671 billion yuan reported last year. “Overall performance was in line with forecast,” Huawei rotating chair Guo Ping said. “While our B2C business has been significantly impacted, our B2B businesses remain stable.” Huawei did not break out its quarterly revenue explicitly nor provide a breakdown of its business units, but it had 152 billion yuan for Q1, Q2 was around 168 billion yuan, and Q3 was in the realm of 136 billion yuan. For the half-year, Huawei said in August its carrier business was down 14% to 137 billion yuan and consumer declined 13.7% from 221 billion yuan to 136 billion yuan, while enterprise increased 18% to 36 billion yuan. Last November, Huawei sold off its Honor brand due to US restrictions.

In May, Huawei reported revenue almost halved in its Australian arm during 2020, and it had shed 113 employees. During September, the US Justice Department and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou cut a deal to end an extradition lawsuit that ran for nearly three years. Meng admitted only to misleading global financial institutions and did not plead guilty to the various fraud charges imposed against her. Without even trying to hide its hostage diplomacy tactics, Beijing subsequently released two Canadians who were detained shortly after Meng’s arrest and kept in Chinese prisons. By contrast, Meng was able to live under house arrest in one of her two Vancouver homes. The US Federal Communications Commission laid out in September the rules for small carriers that are applying to access a pot of $1.9 billion to rip out and replace Huawei and ZTE network equipment and services. Related Coverage More

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and members of the Sudanese armed forces shut down the country’s internet this week after announcing a coup on Monday. Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and several government ministers were arrested as the Sudanese army took full control of the country. The internet shut down came amid reports of troops opening fire on peaceful protesters, killing at least 11 people and injuring hundreds.Both Cloudflare and Netblocks reported this week that internet in the country was shut down. Internet blackouts have become the go-to tactic for repressive governments hoping to shield their actions from the outside world. But mobile service was restored briefly on Tuesday, allowing horrifying videos of government attacks on protesters to emerge before it was shut down again. As of Friday, Netblocks and Cloudflare confirmed that internet in Sudan is still being disrupted, leaving more than 43 million people without access to vital services or ways to communicate with the outside world. 
Netblocks
Netblocks explained that this “class of internet disruption affects connectivity at the network layer and cannot always be worked around with the use of circumvention software or VPNs.”Celso Martinho, engineering director at Cloudflare, told ZDNet that shutting down the internet is not as hard as people might imagine. Martinho explained that the internet is a network of networks, and in the case of a country like Sudan, the networks are their ISPs, identified by their Autonomous System Numbers (ASN). ASNs exchange traffic between each other, internally and from outside sources like ISPs from neighboring countries, transit providers, or other partners — also known as peering. 

“The government can order the local ISPs to stop peering traffic to other entities outside the country. If the ISPs comply, all they need to do is to stop announcing their routes to the outside internet; turning the internet off is a simple configuration change,” Martinho said. “Citizens in countries going through government-induced partial shutdowns tend to be creative and find ways to access the outside Internet using VPNs or other platforms. However, in this case, we don’t see HTTP or any other type of traffic coming from Sudan.” Martinho added that Cloudflare has been working with civil society and human rights groups to help call attention to internet shutdowns through Project Galileo and Cloudflare Radar. “We believe it is important for democratic countries to call out those who shut down the Internet and put diplomatic pressure on them to restore what we believe to be basic human rights,” Martinho said. Scott Carpenter, the director of policy and international engagement with Google’s open society threat tracker Jigsaw, explained to ZDNet that from conversations with people in other regions, a feeling of complete paralysis takes over when the internet is shut down.”People have no way of knowing if relatives are safe, for instance,” Carpenter said.The situation reminded him of when Ethiopia suffered a similar shutdown. “One person we spoke to feared for his family in Tigray, especially his father who was ill. In his own words, ‘For days I had bad dreams. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t work. I thought maybe he was gone.’ In other cases, people have been unable to receive proper medical care because they were cut off from doctors in other communities,” Carpenter added. Internet shutdowns like the one occurring in Sudan take a number of different forms. Some are full-on blackouts while others take the form of chronic censorship, Carpenter said.The shut down of even one or two services can impact millions, and in many countries “the internet” is nearly synonymous with one or two apps that people use to communicate online every day.”Internet shutdowns almost always include mobile networks, and sometimes extend to wired lines as well, though those are more important for business users and are often somewhat insulated. In this instance, there appears to be a blackout of mobile networks and most landlines,” Carpenter said. “Countries have various avenues for implementing shutdowns. If they have only a handful of ISPs and mobile telcos, they can simply ask them to turn off service. In these situations, the telcos have the option to restore access for some individuals, which can allow well-connected individuals to escape the shutdown. Other options are to install specialized equipment in every telco, as has been happening in Russia, or, the bluntest option, to implement shutdowns at the internet exchanges that connect a country’s networks with those abroad.”
Google
When asked what people in Sudan can do to circumvent the blockage or what others outside of the country could do to help, Carpenter and Martinho explained that in the case of total shutdowns like this one, it’s technically challenging to circumvent the block if your provider is a local ISP.Carpenter said the options for circumventing internet shutdowns vary dramatically by the circumstances. If there’s a total shutdown and you don’t have specialized equipment, then the only off-the-shelf options known are getting a signal from across a border or using SMS-based tools like SMS Without Borders, he said. “In either case, you’ll be relying on potentially expensive international or long-distance services, and with SMS-based tools, you need to prepare in advance. People with more resources may have a foreign SIM card that continues to work or dial-up modems they can use long-distance with a landline. Options like satellite internet are not widely available yet, nor should we expect them to solve the problem,” Carpenter said.  He urged people outside of Sudan to speak out about the internet shut down and said governments should try to help by providing reliable information about functioning tools and supporting more tools to provide free access. “In places where shutdowns are regular occurrences, providing journalists and community advocates with foreign SIM cards in advance can sometimes help them stay connected and get information out of the country,” Carpenter explained. Netblocks noted that Sudan officials have previously blocked social media for 68 consecutive days to shut down protests. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp were restricted from December 21, 2018 to February 26, 2019, the country’s longest recorded network disruption. There was another mobile internet blackout from June 3 to July 9 in 2019. The 15-member U.N. Security Council released a statement on Friday calling for the end of the coup and the restoration of the country’s civilian government.  More

Dear Apple, The two of us are in a much better working relationship now. I appreciate that we’ve found common ground, so I’d like to discuss something that has been weighing on my mind: iCloud iOS restores from backups.I just spent my entire evening helping my 76-year old father, over the phone, to restore his last iCloud backup to his new iPhone 13 Pro. It was immensely frustrating.I wish it didn’t have to be. Most of your software and services just plain work — most of the time. But lately, iCloud restore has not been a great experience.

ZDNet Recommends

The best cloud storage services

Free and cheap personal and small business cloud storage services are everywhere. But, which one is best for you? Let’s look at the top cloud storage options.

Read More

Let me back up for a minute. This past weekend, my parents came over to my house, toting my dad’s working iPhone XR and his new iPhone 13 Pro in the box. My mom, with her iPhone 8, was going to inherit the XR. We made sure all of the phones had recent iCloud backups, and that our bandwidth and our WiFi network were sufficient to run a restore (I have a 1 gigabit fiber connection to AT&T, and I can usually achieve over 300Mbps over 802.11ac).The transfer process from both phones seemed to work. All of my dad’s local data and account configuration from his XR were copied over to the 13 Pro. When we were sure everything was on the 13 Pro, we wiped the XR. My mother copied her data from the 8 to the XR; we moved her SIM card over and popped the phone into a brand new pink Otterbox case. She had nowhere near as many apps and photos as my dad did, so it happened pretty quickly. 

I sent them both home, feeling that I was a good son who did a good job.This morning, I got a text from my dad: “I can’t open any of my apps, and it says there is still 128MB left of data to sync with iCloud.” I told him to reboot the phone and wait a few hours to see if it would resolve itself.It did not.It turns out this is a known issue with iOS and iCloud restores. We tried the various reported solutions to resolve it, such as turning off the Wi-Fi Assist and attempting the most recent iOS update (it wouldn’t let us).The only way to resolve it was to do a full erase of the phone and a full iCloud restore from the last good backup. Well, we erased the phone. While doing the restore procedure, we had connectivity issues with iCloud; the phone froze up a few times, requiring reboots and re-attempts. To say my New York City-born retired Jewish dentist of a father living in East Boca Raton was not happy with this process is an understatement. Things he said in anger over the phone about Apple and my recommendation to upgrade to the iPhone 13 Pro were not particularly flattering.Did we finally get it working? After multiple attempts — and spending well over an hour on the phone — yeah. Was this the painless, seamless phone migration experience we expected of Apple? It was not.I wish I could say this was an isolated problem, but it isn’t. When I received my own iPhone 13 Pro Max during the initial launch shipments, I also had numerous connectivity problems with iCloud. In fact, many customers did, as they all tried to connect and transfer data from their old phones at once. The servers were overloaded; clearly, there was no plan for additional capacity or hot provisioning of resources with a hyperscale cloud provider like AWS or Azure.I could not complete an iCloud restore for two days, and I also could not complete a phone-to-phone direct transfer.How did I eventually resolve these issues? I gave up on my iCloud backups and started fresh. This was easy for me to do, as I could inventory the two dozen apps I regularly use on my iPad and install and sign into them fresh on the iPhone. Their data was already cloud-enabled. Fortunately, I’m primarily a Google Apps user because it is my work-issued productivity platform, and I’ve been using it personally for two decades. I keep my photos backed up on both iCloud Photostream and Google Photos. Apple, there are many things I don’t like about Google. But their cloud and their data restore process to their devices and apps works — flawlessly.

Did I have to sign in to all of my accounts again? Yes, manually. Did I lose all my phone app organization and personalization, also? Yes. But I dealt with it because I am a technologist, and I realize that this is a crazy time when everyone is very dependent on the cloud. Stuff happens, and cloud infrastructure strains during high-demand times.But the bottom line is you, Apple, need a better solution for cloud availability issues for end-users like my dad. This is especially necessary if iCloud capacity is always going to be at a premium during these product launches and iOS and MacOS update windows.Perhaps we need something akin to Time Machine for iOS. Yes, I know we have iTunes on Windows, but nobody likes it. I am not going to make my poor septuagenarian father deal with that; he only likes using his iPad these days. And I know we have a Mac backup facility, but he doesn’t use one. It’s not well-suited for multi-user scenarios like this anyway.How hard would it be to have some flash device plug in with a USB-C to Lightning or a USB-C cable (for iPad Pro) — allowing us to dump the core of the device storage and personalization settings in an encrypted fashion — and do an offline restore? Or use another iOS device with sufficient storage capacity to act as a temporary host, like my iPad Pro? I could dump the user data and config, restore the data, and then grab the apps from iCloud when the network is available. It’s like the second Star Trek movie where Spock dumps his Katra consciousness into Dr. McCoy, saving the entire crew by sacrificing his life in the dilithium chamber. And then he was reborn in the next movie from a McCoy backup. Maybe that wasn’t the greatest restore procedure, but you get the idea.It’s something to think about. More

Netgear is seeing stronger demand from small businesses, but consumer demand has slowed, and supply chain woes will hit fourth quarter sales.The networking company reported third quarter revenue of $290.2 million, down 23.3% from a year ago when workers upgraded remote office and Wi-Fi infrastructure en masse. The company reported third quarter earnings of 31 cents a share and non-GAAP earnings of 50 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting Netgear to report third quarter revenue of $294.96 million with non-GAAP earnings of 42 cents a share. Netgear CEO Patrick Lo highlighted numerous moving parts. Netgear added that it has authorized plans to buy an incremental 3 million shares of its company stock, or 10% of its outstanding shares.As for the outlook, Netgear said it has numerous disruptions on the logistics front with costs rising for ocean freight as long as longer shipping times. The fourth quarter will see lower consumer Wi-Fi demand with supply constraints hampering SMB demand. The company said fourth quarter revenue will be between $250 million to $265 million. That guidance was well below Wall Street estimates of $328.6 million in revenue. Netgear added that “considerable uncertainty remains in the market due to the COVID-19 pandemic and deteriorating supply chain condition.” Netgear also flagged supply chain constraints last quarter.  More

Anyone can set up a Wi-Fi network. Setting up a 4G LTE or 5G network, that’s a different story. It took expensive, proprietary hardware from incumbent network equipment manufacturers. Now, thanks to a partnership of Dish Network, Helium Network, and FreedomFi it’s become affordable to set up your own small-scale cellular network. Here’s how it works.Dish Wireless provides the cellular data backbone. If you’re thinking, “but isn’t Dish a satellite TV company?” You’re right, it is. But, it also owns Boost Mobile, Ting, and Republic Wireless. While Dish is working on its own cellular network, in the meantime it’s moving to AT&T for its 4G and 5G networks for its cellular customers.

Helium provides the next link in the bridge. It’s a consumer-deployed, decentralized wireless infrastructure that produces and delivers data-forwarding hotspots. By installing a hotspot in the home or office, you can provide and/or strengthen your 5G wireless coverage using the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) 3Ghz spectrum. Despite its name, CBRS has nothing to do with the Citizen Band (CB) radio you might recall from the 60s and 70s and movies such as Smokie and the Bandit.  In addition, Helium users also earn rewards as $HNT, a Helium network-based token. This is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency. Helium appears to be doing well with this novel way of expanding 5G networks. It currently has over 240,000 low-power wide-area networks, and LoRA-based hotspots across 21,000 cities in North America, Europe, and Asia. Over 500,000 additional hotspots are currently back-ordered and over 50 new manufacturers are waiting to be approved to build and sell Helium-compatible hardware.Helium connects the Dish network to the FreedomFi devices by using WHIP. This is an open-source and standards-compliant wireless network protocol built for low-power devices over large areas. Helium Decentralized Wire Network (DWN) provides wireless access to the internet for devices using multiple independent access points, which are also miners. Dish pays miners for transmitting data to and from the internet with HNTs.Dish has been working with blockchain-based coinage for some time. In 2014, it was the first large company to accept Bitcoin, and the first subscription-based TV provider to accept the currency. The company added Bitcoin Cash as a payment option in 2018, and the following year, GoChain added Dish as a signing node on its public network. Additionally, Dish and Input Output Global, the company behind the Cardano blockchain, announced a partnership agreement to build blockchain-based services together. In short, Dish is comfortable with cryptocurrency.

“Using Helium Network’s technology and blockchain-based incentive model, Dish is a pioneer in supporting an entirely new way to connect people and things,” said Amir Haleem, Helium’s CEO and co-founder. “The CBRS-based 5G hotspots will be deployed by customers, creating opportunities for users, partners, and the entire ecosystem.”Those hotspots are FreedomFi Gateways. These are commodity, x86 network appliances that offers a straightforward, highly affordable path for anyone to build their own Private LTE or 5G network using open-source software and small cell radios. Put it all together and you get an inexpensive way to bring 5G to your business and customers and possibly make some virtual money along the way.Related Stories: More

Networking equipment company Juniper Networks delivered better-than-expected third quarter financial results, reporting non-GAAP net income of $152 million, an increase of 5% year-over-year. The non-GAAP diluted earnings per share are $0.46 and net revenue is $1.188 billion, nearly matching Wall Street’s expectations of $1.2 billion and $0.46 per share earnings. See also: Juniper Networks beats Wall Street expectations for Q2, predicts higher supply costs for Q3Juniper Networks shares are up 1.71% at $27.02 in after-hours trading.”We reported a fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth and a second consecutive quarter of exceptional order growth during the Q3 time period,” said Juniper’s CEO Rami Rahim on Tuesday. Juniper Networks expects to deliver a revenue around $1.26 billion, plus or minus $50 million, in Q4. The non-GAAP net income per share will be approximately $0.53, plus or minus $0.05. In April, CFO Ken Miller said the company was “experiencing ongoing supply constraints which have resulted in extended lead times,” blaming the slowdown on the “worldwide shortage of semiconductors impacting many industries.”

The company included a similar message in July, reminding investors that there is still a worldwide shortage of semiconductors, caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. They reiterated that there will be extended lead times and elevated costs that will “persist for at least the next few quarters.”Today, Miller said that the company “executed extremely well despite the challenging supply chain environment and demonstrated strong financial management during the September quarter.” “Our strong order momentum, record backlog, and actions to strengthen our supply chain provide confidence in our future growth prospects and our ability to deliver improved profitability in 2022 and beyond,” Miller added.Juniper Networks bought Apstra for an undisclosed sum in January and spent $450 million acquiring 128 Technology Inc. in October 2020.

Tech Earnings More