The Big Picture: a heat map of the 'entire' internet

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, though, let's say it's worth millions and millions of internet connections. Thanks to John Matherly, founder of Shodan, a search engine which focuses on helping companies locate internet-connected devices, we are getting a pretty detailed look at how the web looks on a map. While Matherly's tweet says the picture shows where "all devices on the internet" were located after he pinged them, that might be a bit of a stretch. Still, the image manages to give us a really good idea of the internet traffic across different parts of the world. And we reckon it's beautiful.

802.11ac: what you need to know 5G Wi-Fi brings gigabit speeds to your gadgets

If you thought Wi-Fi couldn't get much faster than 802.11n, think again.

802.11ac, dubbed 5G Wi-Fi, promises ridiculously fast wireless connections, better range, improved reliability, improved power consumption and a free horse. (OK, we're lying about the horse.)

802.11ac is the latest evolution of Wi-Fi, and it should be particularly good for gaming and HD video streaming.

So how does it work, does it live up to the hype, and how long will you have to wait before you can get your hands on it? Let's find out.

Your 802.11ac speed could break the gigabit barrier

The fastest current 802.11n Wi-Fi connections max out at around 150Mbps with one antenna, 300Mbps with two and 450Mbps with three antennas. 802.11ac connections will be roughly three times faster - so that's 450Mbps, 900Mbps and 1.3Gbps respectively. Netgear, brilliantly, illustrates this with two pictures of motorways: the first picture, showing "Today's Wi-Fi", is normal, but the one labelled "3x speed with 802.11ac" is really blurry.

Your 802.11ac speed won't break the gigabit barrier

As with previous Wi-Fi standards, the speeds quoted on the box and in the promotional materials are theoretical maximums, not the speeds you'll actually get: so far devices with potential top speeds of 1.3Gbps have topped out at around 800Mbps. That's still blisteringly fast, of course, but there's still a gap between advertised speeds and real world ones. 802.11ac connection speeds will be reduced by numerous factors: network overhead, which is the chatter your hardware needs to keep the connection going; interference, congestion and physical obstacles; distance; the number of simultaneous connections; and whether the router is running in compatibility mode so that older wireless kit can still connect.

802.11ac video and gaming

Because 802.11ac has bandwidth to spare, it should be great for HD video streaming and for gaming. According to Netgear [PDF], you can say bye-bye to buffering: "802.11ac will significantly enhance the user experience by improving the playback quality to any point throughout the house. With 802.11ac, for the first time wireless will provide similar performance as wired Gigabit connections."

802.11ac routers use more antennas

To improve range and reliability, 802.11ac routers can use more antennas than existing 802.11n kit: your next router may have as many as eight antennas inside it.

802.11ac routers will use "beamforming" technology

Wi-Fi is omnidirectional, but 802.11ac routers will be able to use directional transmission and reception technology dubbed "beamforming". The router will be able to identify the rough location of the device it's talking to and strengthen the appropriate antenna(s) accordingly. The idea is to reduce interference.

802.11ac Wi-Fi uses the 5GHz frequency band

Older wireless kit uses the 2.4GHz frequency band, which is fairly crowded: your kit is potentially sharing radio frequency with next door's baby monitor, your cordless phone and even your microwave. Like high performance 802.11n kit, 802.11ac routers will use the less cluttered 5GHz band where there's considerably more room for data transmission. 802.11ac hardware will use two kinds of channels in that range: 80GHz ones and 160GHz ones.

802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible

You won't need to throw out all your old wireless-capable kit as 802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible with your existing Wi-Fi kit. For example, at last year's CES Buffalo demonstrated an 802.11ac router that operated on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands and that promised to play nice with 802.11a, b, g and n hardware.

The 802.11ac release date is now, sort of

As with 802.11n, hardware is coming out before the 802.11ac standard is actually finalised. That's going to happen later this year, but manufacturers are readying their products now and they'll be everywhere by the summer, with minor software updates addressing any changes that might happen to the standard before it's finalised. We'd expect 802.11ac prices to be steep initially, as they were with the first 802.11n kit, but those prices should start to fall almost immediately.

802.11ac hasn't skipped lots of letters

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the body in charge of the 802.11 standard, isn't skipping lots of letters: while major WiFi standards have jumped from 802.11n to 802.11ac, the IEEE didn't just skip 802.11o, p, q and so on. Successive versions of the 802.11 standard can also denote amendments to existing standards, so for example 802.11i introduced improved security and 802.11j introduced extensions for Japanese networks.

World Without a Web: What Will Happen if the Internet Dies?

The recent attack on Chinese dissidents’ Gmail accounts that was purportedly carried out by the Chinese government isn’t the first time the security of the Internet has been called into question. But it did get people talking again about a possible “digital Pearl Harbor.” This phrase is meant to describe a crippling and amorphous offensive on a country’s digital infrastructure. The maxim has become a meme at best, and a scare tactic at worst.

By most accounts, such an attack is thankfully improbable. The very question of such a strike appears to annoy noted security expert Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography—among other books on the subject—and a source for Congressional hearings on security several times over. He claims that it’s not in our enemies’ best interest to cut off the Internet. For one, eavesdropping would be harder for them. And how would an adversary know it had won? “If we attacked Russia and disabled their communications system, there’s no way they could surrender,” he said

YouTube's Redesign Smells a Lot Like Mobile

YouTube took the wraps off a site redesign on Friday, one that borrows heavily from the service's mobile apps. Its new site is better designed to display on any size screen and has more of an emphasis on playlists.

Now when you Like a playlist, it will appear in the left sidebar. Playlists you create will be listed in the sidebar, too, just one click away from anywhere on the site. A simplified editing page makes creating playlists easier as well.

YouTube's website is also now center-aligned with a more card-like appearance, just like its mobile apps. The front page is simple, with just two views: What to Watch and Your Subscriptions. If you want things even more austere, you can also hide the left sidebar with a toggle button right beside the YouTube logo. The sidebar automatically disappears when the browser window gets too thin (though you can get it back by clicking the toggle).

In a blog post describing the change, YouTube reveals its users experience "almost half" of their time on the service through mobile apps — clearly the primary factor guiding the changes.

Overall, the site looks indisputably cleaner and, not coincidentally, is more in line with the most recent redesign of Google services.

Via: Mashable

The last places on Earth without the internet

It could be simple to forget just what life has been including prior to a internet. For several, not just a time moves without having examining email, surfing around on-line or even talking to Search engines. Some 1. 3 billion dollars individuals alive currently usually are young ample not to ever have noticed anything else. Yet contains the community of networks supporting more or less everything exercise actually attained every section of the earth?

Several good reasons nonetheless quit individuals getting at the world wide web where they live, naturally. There’s censorship, firstly. “We don’t find very much targeted visitors via Northern Korea, ” affirms Steve Graham-Cumming of CloudFlare, a new content delivery community – the equivalent of a new local parcel syndication center, but also for website traffic. “Likewise, early within the Syrian municipal conflict that they block internet access and also we noticed a new lower with targeted visitors via individuals Syrian associations. ”

It’s likewise a new well-established trouble of which the majority of the world’s poorest individuals would not have the actual signifies or even technological innovation to help login, using simply 31% of men and women within the acquiring globe online, when compared with 77% within the formulated international locations.

The people of North Korea have less access
 to modern technology than their neighbours,
 as this night-time satellite image hints. (Nasa)

Nevertheless, these kind of political and also societal hindrances gain access to will not automatically show regarding the physical magnitude of the internet itself. Assuming this is the right gadget as well as the political overall flexibility, perhaps there is anyplace remaining in the world the place that the labyrinth of cable television and also wireless impulses will not get to?

Giving answers to this particular problem will begin with the description of the a variety of tiers of internet access. The primary components for getting on-line usually are sent associations, cell phone networks and also satellites. Fibre-optic cables makeup the actual center of the internet, criss-crossing oceans and also territory. The first of those communications cables were being drop within the 1850s for carrying telegraph impulses. Today that they connect just about all continents with the exception of Antarctica, and can include several – although not just about all – little island nations around the world.

Cellular associations, in the mean time, rely on cell phone podiums. As well as these kind of can offer an impressive get to. “Two in the past I was in the actual Sahara, and also for quite a large number of time I had access, ” Graham-Cumming affirms. “It has been patchy and also slow-moving, nevertheless it has been presently there. ” Really, several acquiring international locations, particularly with The african continent, be dependent predominantly in cell phone associations for getting at the world wide web.

The Cook Islands may not have internet via cables
, but people can use satellites. (Getty)

Eventually, satellites include the slowest means of having on-line, but the only alternative for those dwelling not even close to a new cell phone tower or even insert. This Iridium satellite television constellation protection stretches around anyone on the planet, and also his or her satellite television cell phones can easily insert a person upward with or else unconnected sites, for example national areas in america, Antarctica or even remote places of territory much like the Prepare Countries. “If you reside available within the twigs someplace, the item can make absolutely no perception on your local phone system supplier to operate a new food fibre to your dwelling or even farmville farm, ” affirms Jesse Belson, editor of the quarterly Talk about of the Web survey at Akamai, on the list of world’s major content delivery networks. “So most of the time satellite television is the optimum alternative, even though it will not be the actual speediest one particular. ” Pure mileage points out of which delay: from the equator, for example, files has to vacation with regards to twenty-two, 000 mile after mile (35, 000km) concerning satellite television and also end user.

Internet access by using satellite television is usually progressively increasing, though. A new satellite television broadband supplier referred to as O3b Sites recently launched their primary some satellites, which usually the item affirms orbit all around some instances closer to Globe in comparison with normal geosynchronous satellites and also handle a new four hundred distance (643km) circumference for each satellite television. This could speed up files exchange by simply with regards to some instances when compared with traditional satellite television associations. This Prepare Countries within the Off-shore enrolled as the primary demo customers, while sites including Somalia and also away from the coast Peru need to join with a few months or so. This company likewise ideas to offer internet to help cruise liners and also ocean going oilrigs, which usually presently utilize traditional satellites. “There will be sites exactly where it’s difficult to obtain either terrestrial or even satellite television associations, although individuals purses will end up scaled-down and also scaled-down, ” affirms Steve Scruff of the neck, O3b’s CEO.

Also, Search engines recently announced ideas to help take on staying internet deserts through their Loon project, several giant balloons which will take flight at with regards to 70, 000 toes (21, 000 metres) and also supply internet to help outlying or even disaster-stricken places. Including satellites, individuals connecting throughout the balloons would need its own antenna to offer and also obtain a indicate. This preliminary kick off was held final July, whenever thirty balloons were being deployed previously mentioned Completely new Zealand’s South Island.

Google's Loon project aims to get cut-off people online by using balloons. (Getty)

Different engineering likewise promise to produce access simpler within the little or even short-term dark places nonetheless staying with far more formulated nations around the world. Inside subterranean tunnels, internet can be sent by simply creating local 'hang-outs' applying cell phone radios, since is the situation in Amtrak and also Eurostar train locomotives, and also in some city subways.  


Is protection virtually all-pervasive and then? Less than. There are several sites remaining exactly where cable television, wireless or even satellite television impulses will not get to. Serious caves including Georgia’s Krubera Cave, which usually reaches 5, 610 toes (1, 710m) subterranean, for starters, would most likely end up being without program – it’s the actual greatest cavern in the world. (However, perhaps subterranean the item wouldn’t end up being certain in the event that there’s a new cell phone tower regional, by way of example, or even a good beginning right overhead that your satellite television indicate could possibly enter. )

An additional feasible final spot without having internet is usually deeply upside down. While many submarines have got internet permitted throughout the exact same means that that they utilize to maintain radio speak to, the actual impulses can be weak or even non-existent considering that the indicate may become altered by simply h2o. “I bet a new nuclear boat provides really rubbish access, ” Graham-Cumming speculates.

In truth, the best way to find not online may very well be a new self-imposed ban. It’s feasible of which internet-free areas and specific zones may possibly arise in the foreseeable future. Some areas might choose to by choice reduce them selves away on the internet, similar to the uncontacted tribes with South usa, Completely new Guinea and also The indian subcontinent, who purposefully want to continue to be remote. “I wouldn’t end up being shocked in the event that many group eventually affirms, ‘No, we don’t want to have internet, ’” affirms Graham-Cumming.

To seriously avoid the internet, and then, you should create lots of work. Actually the actual remotest forests right now makes a signal of some sort or other. When you ever end up yearning for any life before emails, LOLcat memes and also Myspace, think about this: the actual tendrils of the final community usually are so popular right now, it’s surprisingly hard to escape.