CNet is reporting that the latest Nielsen/NetRatings report on internet access claims over 40 million US internet users are now on broadband. This means about a third of the total users, with the remaining two thirds being dial-up. This is a substantial move from this time last year, when …

An article in the Washington Post details some of the requests from the FTC for new authorities requested in the fight against spam. The requests may go to far, though, when they ask for criminal penalties for forging email addresses. In the typical governmental hyperbole, Orson Swindle of the FTC …

According to an article on CNet, the FCC is considering leveling the playing field with dial-up and DSL by charging cable modem service providers an additional tax of 9.1% on their cable modem revenues (said tax getting pushed into the USF). I find it interesting that a conservative administration …

A number of articles this morning, including this one from BBC News talk about Fast TCP. Unfortunately, the examples that each of them give, about TCP breaking transmissions up into 1500-byte morsels, sending one packet and waiting for an acknowledgment before sending the second one are patently untrue, so what …

Intel has officially announced that the Centrino chips are only compatible with five particular pieces of VPN software and only then when you turn off the "Adapter Switching" feature of the chipset, Wired reports. If you don't turn that off or you use another piece of software, be prepared for …

A dubious article from Reuters and carried on ZDNET claims that P2P services consume "up to 60 percent of data traffic zipping around their networks is in the form of large music, movies and software files." I'm not sure that I agree, and I'm certainly not sure that it is …

There is a good interview on Broadband Reports with Jim Baller, an attorney specializing in muni broadband projects. Baller covers a lot of ground with the interviewer, Karl Bode. Everything from the history of the rural power in the United States and its relevance to the issues of broadband in …

According to an article from CNET, the first quarter of 2003 saw an increase of over two million users with broadband. Most (1.2 million) went to cable, but the healthy remainder are now using DSL. The article further states that of the 87 million people within the reach of …

After a 5 hour plane ride, 3 kids in the 3 rows in my section of business class (one about 6 weeks, one about 6 months, one about three -- only one crying at any given time), and a harrowing taxi ride at over 80MPH, I finally made it to the …

OK, before anyone complains, I know that this product has been announced for almost six months, but I didn't see it until somebody showed it to me this weekend. It was just so silly (and yet useful), that I had to write about it. 3Com has an in-wall switch that …

In an exciting development, a Verizon has stated that the company expects to announce soon a plan to add WiFi hotspots to some pay phones. The idea is pretty simple: since the pay phones already have hard lines back to the Central Office, they can run DSL over the phone …

After switching to an Apple PowerBook last year, InfoWorld reporter Tom Yager is planning on making his switch permanent and following it up with a change in servers. His plan is to move to an OS X-running XServe, followed by adding a second one in a cluster. According to Yager …

It isn't much surprise, but here is the first article I've seen (from Wired) that has evidence of the decline of DSL prices under the pressure of the cable companies.

A good article in Forbes this week summarizes the current state of Hollywood's war against your privacy in the state and local jurisdictions. For those who have not read previous articles on this subject, the industry associations are trying to tighten the DMCA provisions by removing the loophole procedure that …

An article1 on CommsDesign (part of EETimes) describes the work going on to implement and make available RDMA over Ethernet (Remote Direct Memory Access over Ethernet). This struck me as mildly amusing in the context of the recent IP over FireWire work because FireWire is basically a DMA protocol …

According to reports from SlashDot and an article from CNet, AOL has started to block personal mail servers running on its broadband lines.

An interesting article on SlashDot points to recent moves by a large ISP in New Zealand whose recent change to their TOS (terms of service) appear to claim ownership of the intellectual property of their customers. The TOS1 states that they aren't trying to gain control of customer's intellectual …

Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the internet, it appears that a number of states, including TX, MA, SC, FL, GA, AK, and CO are enacting bills that will make it illegal to have devices or software that "obscure the origin or destination of data …

In a non-announcement, the Apple Store is now listing a "Cluster Node" configuration for the Xserve product that includes no video card, no second gigabit Ethernet card and no additional drive space, but costs only 2/3 of the price of the entry level 1.33GHz dual-processor configuration. It appears …

According to an article from the BBC News service, UK Broadband installations have surged to the point where the UK now has higher penetration than France, once the Internet center of Europe (and the birthplace of interactive television).