cisco

Texas-size tech behind Super Bowl stadium

ARLINGTON, Texas--In my role as a reporter, I've had the good fortune to visit a number of control and/or command centers, such as those running a massive radio telescope, a nuclear submarine, a national laser fusion facility, and several others.

For anyone who remembers the Matthew Broderick vehicle "War Games," the bar for what a control room looks like is high: massive screens, dozens of workstations, long tables, and people moving around everywhere. But in the commodity PC era, that kind of room is mostly long gone. While I've seen NASA control centers that approach … Read more

Cisco sees 26-fold wireless data increase in 5 years

Wireless carriers will see mobile data traffic increase 26 times between 2010 and 2015 according to Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index Forecast. Will wireless operators be ready for it?

That's the big question. The prediction of steep increases in traffic load are not entirely unexpected. Wireless carriers have been preparing for traffic increases by adding more capacity not only to their radio networks, but also in the back-haul networks that carry the traffic from the radio towers to the Internet.

By 2015, Cisco says that mobile data traffic will grow to 6.3 exabytes of data or about … Read more

Ecotality, Cisco connect Internet-savvy EV charger

Cisco Systems and Ecotality, an electric-vehicle charging station company, are collaborating to make EVs part of a home energy-management system.

Ecotality's Blink home EV charging station will connect to Cisco's Home Energy Controller, a touch-screen device for managing home energy, as part of early electric vehicle trials with consumers.

The integration will let electric car owners schedule charging to take advantage of preferential rates offered by utilities for electric vehicles, typically after 9 p.m. From the Cisco home energy dashboard, there is an application to monitor and program how an electric car is charged, according to the … Read more

Crave giveaway: Pair of Cisco wireless routers

OK, this week we've got another two-for-one special here on Crave, but instead of software, this time it's hardware. Thanks to a donation from Cisco, we've got both an "enthusiast" wireless router, the new Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Dual-Band Wireless-N Router (Cisco owns Linksys), as well the user-friendly Cisco Valet Plus, which is geared toward non-tech savvy folks.

In his review, Editor Dong Ngo said the Valet Plus will change the way you think about setting up your home network. "The Cisco Valet Plus is by far the easiest wireless router to use to … Read more

Chip start-up Tilera lands $45 million in funding

Tilera, a relatively young chip company, said today it has raised an additional $45 million in financing from tech heavyweights such as Samsung and Cisco Systems.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company, which designs many-core processors, received a new round of financing led by Artis Capital Management that includes new investment from WestSummit Capital Management, Comerica Bank, Cisco Systems, and Samsung Venture Investment. Existing investors include Walden International, Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital Broadcom, NTT Finance, VentureTech Alliance, and Quanta Computer.

The previous round of financing, announced back in March 2010, raised $25 million.

Founded in 2004, Tilera has made … Read more

Cisco ships dual-band 450Mbps router

True dual-band 450Mbps Wireless-N routers were one of the main trends in networking during CES 2011, with Trendnet, Netgear, and D-Link announcing their own. Cisco, on the other hand, didn't make any announcements during the show, but it's now one of the first to have a 450Mbps true dual-band router on the market.

Cisco announced today that it now ships the new Linksys E4200 concurrent dual-band router, its first to offer the ceiling speed of 450Mbps on the 5GHz band. This is similar to the Netgear WNDR4000 and the D-Link DIR-857, which are not yet available for purchase.… Read more

CES: Cisco, GE, Xerox talk innovation (live blog)

Editor's note: This live event has concluded. For a brief rundown of what was announced, check out our summary post here. You can also replay our live blog in the Cover It Live module below.

Three companies that have been around the block a few times--Cisco Systems, General Electric, and Xerox--are sharing the stage this morning at CES, and we're there for live coverage of their talks.

The CEOs of the three companies--Cisco's John Chambers, GE's Jeffrey Immelt, and Xerox's Ursula Burns--are participating in a panel discussion on innovation, in what the Consumer Electronics Association … Read more

SkyCross antennas outfit devices for Verizon 4G

LAS VEGAS--Wireless antenna maker SkyCross announced today at CES a partnership with Verizon Wireless that brings wireless connectivity to certain devices running on the carrier's 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network.

SkyCross antennas are being used in tablets from Acer and Cisco, a home automation control system from Ionics, and other devices being demonstrated this week at Verizon Wireless's Innovation Center CES booth. Acer's tablet is using an LTE MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) antenna, the Cisco Cius tablet uses an iMAT (isolated mode antenna technology) LTE antenna, and the Ionics product is incorporating an iMAT antenna.

MIMO … Read more

Netgear Genie to help manage home networks

LAS VEGAS--If you have one of the new wireless routers from Cisco, such as the Valet Plus, the Linksys E3000, or the Linksys E2000, you'll need the desktop software called Cisco Connect that makes setting up and managing the network a no-brainer, even for novice users.

Today, Netgear announced a similar application called Netgear Genie that the company says can do the same thing and a lot more.

The application itself is still in the final beta stage. However, according to Netgear, Genie is a "home network dashboard that enables consumers to monitor, connect, and control their home … Read more

Capellas-led coalition making strides by the Vblock

What's in a Vblock? It's a cloudy mix onto which a very experienced CEO is shedding more light.

Michael Capellas, the former chief executive of Compaq, MCI, and First Data, and current CEO of Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Coalition, updated industry analysts with VCE progress as of early December 2010, slightly more than a year after Cisco Systems and EMC announced the VCE joint venture, which integrates servers and networking gear from Cisco, storage and management software from EMC, and the VSphere virtual operating system of VMware into Vblocks.

While the VCE Coalition is a privately held entity … Read more