Well, now there’s a crowdsourced, Consumer Reports–like way to find out, thanks to the folks who run the online speed testing service Speedtest.net.

The company, which runs more than a million tests a day on its main testing page, updated its broadband statistics site NetIndex.com on Tuesday to let users see comparative results sorted by city. For instance, Los Angeles sees an average speed of 7.2 Mbps, with the Road Runner service slightly edging Charter Communications for the top speed — 16.97 Mbps compared to Charter’s 16.4 Mbps.

Moreover, since Speedtest.net asks users to rate their satisfaction with their ISP, you can see user rankings as well, with Road Runner clocking a 3.2 out of 5 stars, compared to 2.9 for Charter and 2.5 for third-place AT&T Worldnet.

The point, according to Speedtest.net co-founder Doug Suttles, is to make it easier for people to find a new ISP when moving to town, or when they want to find a better provider.

The speed data is compiled from the previous 30 days worth of data, and is updated daily, while the satisfaction ratings reflect votes placed over years. The rankings aren’t particularly easy to find. The best way is to start on the Net Index homepage, scroll down to the state map and click on your state. Then under Cities, click on the tab to change the listing to “By IP Address” to find your city. The city-by-city data currently focuses on the United States, but will be expanding and there’s plenty of international data already.

New York City beats Los Angeles on average speed, with an average of 11 Mbps, raised in no small part because AT&T’s Worldnet service in the Big Apple registers an average 21.32 Mbp average, with Road Runner landing just behind at 17.29.

The data, Suttles argues, shows that broadband in the United States is better than many say think.

“For the most part our feeling is the ISPs get a bad rap,” Suttles said. “The government wants people to be convinced that broadband is terrible but we are a pretty sprawled-out country. We are hoping politicians look at this and realize it is not so bad in some places.”

Ookla, the parent company for Speedtest.net, is no newcomer to the world of broadband. It was founded four years ago as a spinoff from the ISP Speakeasy and sells versions of Speedtest.net’s testing service to nearly all the net’s top ISPs.

Speedtest.net was started largely as a tech demonstration, according to Suttles, but has since grown to be the place people turn to when they want to test their connections. And now, the site provides more than half the company’s revenue, thanks to lucrative ads like those for Google’s Chrome browser.

Now the company is asking testers to tell the company what speeds they were promised and how much they are paying, in order to come up with a ranking of ISPs by value and by which ones deliver the speeds they promise.

The company’s preliminary data-crunching results may come as a surprise to some.

“Nationally, 93 percent of people are getting the speed they signed up for,” Suttles said. “That’s definitively a different story than anyone else is telling.”

The company also has free mobile apps for Android and the iPhone as well, but data from those tests is not reflected in these results. Also not included is data from the testing suites the company provides directly to ISPs.

Some have questioned the methodology of the Speedtest.net tests and whether its tests are representative of the nation as a whole. In its defense, the company points to a recent MIT evaluation of different methodologies that found Speedtest.net was the best of the currently available data sources .

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Business Network Support for Easier Business Administration and Communication

Any organization’s day-to-day operations entail extensive internal and external communication. A business network support system aids in streamlining different communication channels and facilitating resource sharing, such as transfer of files and business documents. In fact, setting up a business network is one of the initial steps in developing an organizational IT system.

Business Network Support for Different-Sized Organizations

Business networks are essentially of two types, peer-to-peer and client/server. In a peer-to-peer network system, each computer within the network acts as a client as well as a server. This enables each computer to exchange files and e-mails directly with every other computer on the business network. This implies that the access to personal files is within the control of each individual user. Such a business network support system is feasible for small businesses.

However, for larger organizations that have bigger volumes of transfer, the client/server network system is indispensable. In such a setup, a high-powered central computer, or the server, acts as the focal point of the business network. This server is connected to other workstations, which do not have full access to personal files.

It is also worth noting that peer-to-peer and client/server business networks are either encompassed in a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN). The former usually has a smaller coverage, such as a school or a residence, and offers better data-transfer speed. The latter covers a bigger geography, such as a university or a commercial complex.

Business Network Support: Weighing the Pros and Cons

The principal benefit of setting up business network support is convenience and flexibility. It enables access to common network resource from any convenient location inside the primary networking environment. This, in turn, helps to increase productivity, as users can maintain a constant affiliation within their desired network. For a business, this means that employees can get more work done, faster.

However, there is a flipside to business networks. Since these networks are designed to transfer data using radio frequencies, poor signals may result in loss of information. Besides the data transmitters are not 100% secure, and there is a possibility of data theft.

Whatever the needs of your company might be, establishing a business network system is imperative for its growth. A well-planned local area or wide area network will not only increase organizational efficiency and control, but will also ensure security of confidential information.

Visit www.percentotech.com to access high-quality managed IT services, from server support and LAN/WAN administration to setting up WiFi points. Percento Technologies, besides the diverse range of services provided, takes pride in its high referral rate of over 89 percent.

The 5-inch Dell Streak tablet won’t go on sale by the end of July, a spokesman said late Tuesday. That announcement came after Dell earlier in the day mistakenly posted an online message on its Web site that customers could return to the site Wednesday to purchase the device.

“It was a mistake, and we took that information down this morning,” said spokesman Matt Parretta in a telephone interview. “I can say definitely that the Dell Streak won’t go on sale in July.”

Parretta noted that Dell said in May that the device would go on sale sometime this summer.

Androidpolice and other Web sites caught the message posted in error today, and then later said customers who signed up for a pre-sale offer could expect an e-mail today with a link to purchase a new phone for $299 with a new AT&T contract.

Dell and AT&T would not confirm that pricing, although Dell has said the device will run on a GSM network in the U.S. and has ruled out the only other GSM carrier, T-Mobile USA.

Parretta’s statement that the Streak won’t go on sale in July contradicts an FAQ still on the Dell site as of late Tuesday that accompanies the pre-sale registration form.

In the FAQ, the question is asked, “When will the Dell Streak be available for purchase?” And the answer given is: “The Dell Streak will be available for purchase in late July!”

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With the rise of personal mobile devices, a growing number of enterprises have scrapped the homogeneity mandate: instead of requiring employees to use a standard smartphone, more IT departments are now looking at some degree of control over employee-owned (or “employee-liable”) devices, to manage and secure them. 

“The corporate standards dam is breaking, as platforms like Android and iPhone push their way into the enterprise,” says Gartner Vice President Phillip Redman. “Most companies will accept these, and prepare guidelines and processes for managing and securing them.”

More wireless burning questions:

Should you even bother looking at Windows Phone 7?|How can enterprise WLANs manage the bandwidth crush from mobile devices and multimedia apps?|Is Sprint losing its WiMAX/4G gamble?|What’s the impact of carriers’ new “capped” wireless data plans on corporate networks?|How can wireless and wired security be brought together, rationalized and managed?|How are large-scale, dense Wi-Fi networks affecting radio management issues?|”Who should own your smartphone?”)

Best practices, Redmond says, include “segmenting users into work styles by mobility and application requirements, and matching up device choices.” Another key: adopting of a mobile device management platform or service to help manage the use, configuration and security of these devices.

The approach needs to be systematic and comprehensive, says Khoi Nguyen, group product manager for the mobile security group at Symantec. Crucial elements are: general device and application management; security features to ensure policies are in place, enforced and up-to-date; and alerting and reporting on unauthorized access.

Whatever the details, the overall process “boils down to a regimented and policy-driven approach that recognizes that smartphones and other mobile devices need equal treatment because they’ve become equally important with other IT assets,” says Tom Henderson, managing director of ExtremeLabs.

“Nothing technologically prevents this,” says Enterprise Mobility Foundation President Philippe Winthrop. Instead, he says, the real issues are cultural. “There has to be a recognition by the individual [employee] that e-mail is corporate intellectual property,” Winthrop says. “And if you’re looking at more than e-mail, then the company has every right to secure that information.”

A growing number of companies are formulating written mobile policies and requiring employees to read, understand and sign them before they have access to e-mail and other data from their device. One of Winthrop’s neighbors bought a new iPhone 4, and his company’s IT department installed, via the App Store, the corporate-mandated secure messaging platform. That will become increasingly common, Winthrop says.

“The big question surrounds legal issues — agreements between employees and employer — and placing an enterprise-owned agent on an employee’s handset,” says Craig Mathias, of the Farpoint Group mobile consultancy.

It’s the start of whole new relationship between mobile device users, in dual roles as individual consumer and employee, and the company for which they work.

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Perhaps it was only a matter of time. But wireless security researchers say they have uncovered a vulnerability in the WPA2 security protocol, which is the strongest form of Wi-Fi encryption and authentication currently standardized and available.

Malicious insiders can exploit the vulnerability, named “Hole 196″ by the researcher who discovered it at wireless security company AirTight Networks. The moniker refers to the page of the IEEE 802.11 Standard (Revision, 2007) on which the vulnerability is buried.

Hole 196 lends itself to man-in-the-middle-style exploits, whereby an internal, authorized Wi-Fi user can decrypt, over the air, the private data of others, inject malicious traffic into the network and compromise other authorized devices using open source software, according to AirTight.

The researcher who discovered Hole 196, Md Sohail Ahmad, AirTight technology manager, intends to demonstrate it at two conferences taking place in Las Vegas next week: Black Hat Arsenal and DEF CON 18.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) derivative on which WPA2 is based has not been cracked and no brute force is required to exploit the vulnerability, Ahmad says. Rather, a stipulation in the standard that allows all clients to receive broadcast traffic from an access point (AP) using a common shared key creates the vulnerability when an authorized user uses the common key in reverse and sends spoofed packets encrypted using the shared group key.

Ahmad explains it this way:

WPA2 uses two types of keys: 1) Pairwise Transient Key (PTK), which is unique to each client, for protecting unicast traffic; and 2) Group Temporal Key (GTK) to protect broadcast data sent to multiple clients in a network. PTKs can detect address spoofing and data forgery. “GTKs do not have this property,” according to page 196 of the IEEE 802.11 standard.

These six words comprise the loophole, Ahmad says.

Because a client has the GTK protocol for receiving broadcast traffic, the user of that client device could exploit GTK to create its own broadcast packet. From there, clients will respond to the sending MAC address with their own private key information.

Ahmad says it took about 10 lines of code in open source MadWiFi driver software, freely available on the Internet, and an off-the-shelf client card for him to spoof the MAC address of the AP, pretending to be the gateway for sending out traffic. Clients who receive the message see the client as the gateway and “respond with PTKs”, which are private and which the insider can decrypt, Ahmad explains.

From there, “the malicious insider could drop traffic, drop a [denial-of-service] attack, or snoop,” Ahmad says.

The ability to exploit the vulnerability is limited to authorized users, AirTight says. Still, year-after-year security studies show that insider security breaches continue to be the biggest source of loss to businesses, whether from disgruntled employees or spies who steal and sell confidential data.

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“There’s nothing in the standard to upgrade to in order to patch or fix the hole,” says Kaustubh Phanse, AirTight’s wireless architect who describes Hole 196 as a “zero-day vulnerability that creates a window of opportunity” for exploitation.

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Forrester forecasts nearly 10 percent U.S. increase in 2010

This recession has been going on for more than two years, but within some enterprises, there must be some people saying, “Heck, get out the checkbook. Let’s do this,” and are spending on new information technology.

Two events this past week indicate that for IT vendors, business is looking up. One is a report from Forrester Research forecasting IT spending growth in the U.S. of 9.9 percent this year, over last; global IT spending should grow by 7.8 percent. The other is Microsoft’s earnings report of a 48 percent increase in profit on a 22 percent increase in revenue in the quarter ended June 30, beating analysts’ forecasts.

Despite a string of news for Microsoft about will-they-won’t-they make a tablet computer, the Kin flop, losing the largest valuation title to Apple and uncertainty about whether Windows Phone 7 will be a hit, enterprises are spending money on IT and spending it at the Microsoft store.

Jeffries analyst Katherine Egbert called Microsoft’s results “sizzling” and expects its Windows business to see double-digit growth for the next two years, according to an AP story in which another analyst, Sasa Zorovic of Janney Capital Markets, attributed Microsoft’s record results to Windows 7,Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

Ten Windows 7 licenses are sold every second, Microsoft reported, for a total of 175 million since its introduction. Already, 15 percent of the PCs in the world are running the new operating system.

In spite of what some economists may be saying about a double-dip recession and stubbornly high unemployment, enterprises also must keep their eye on the calendar. Forrester attributes the stronger growth to companies “entering an innovation cycle marked by adoption of new technologies.” Many companies adhere to a refresh cycle where they replace servers, desktops and software on a regular basis and this must be the year. And just in time, Microsoft introduces Office 2010 and other enterprise software in the latest quarter.

“Computer equipment and software will be the strongest categories, with PCs, peripherals, and storage equipment leading the computer category, and operating system software and applications setting the pace for software,” Forrester reported.

The Wall Street Journal put it more succinctly: “At some point, businesses have to buy new computers,” it reported yesterday.

Besides Microsoft, Intel also reported strong results, including a 34 percent jump in revenue. If Intel is selling more chips, that means computer makers are planning to build more computers and load them with software from companies like Microsoft. It’s nice how that all works out.

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For a complimentary review of your network, visit: www.PercentoTech.com

If all the tutting, clucking, and yakking about the iPhone has made you reach for your lover’s purple pills, here’s a remedy for your malaise: Most people who have an iPhone are very happy with the service they get from AT&T.

No, this is not my conclusion. Though my sense is that the iPhone is largely a wonderful thing (even though I don’t use one) and that AT&T’s service (which I do use) is, well, not all that different from that of other providers.

The Yankee Group, people who ask people about people and things for a living, decided to find out just what iPhone users really feel about their phone service. And what they discovered was a remarkable level of comfort with AT&T.

CNN reported that The Yankee Group’s questioning elicited positive responses from 73 percent of iPhone users. As a whole, 69 percent of smartphone users say they’re happy with their service provider. So this might suggest that AT&T is performing above the average as far as iPhone users are concerned.

Oh, no one’s perfect. Not even AT&T.

However, Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe offered CNN a sobering explanation of why the often-criticized AT&T might be getting a relatively glowing review from those in the outside world: “Consumers transfer the high gloss of their Apple iPhone experience to AT&T. The iPhone creates a halo effect that rubs off.”

This seems entirely at one with the idea of human beings being prepared to put up with certain rational deficiencies when they are being emotionally satisfied. It is a phenomenon true of so many human relationships, in which an emotional uplift entirely circumvents say, a nose that is too big or a walk that is too ducklike.

AT&T, for its part, believes it really isn’t all that ugly. Company spokesman Mark Siegel told CNN: “There’s a gap between what people hear about us and what their experience is with us. We think that gap is beginning to close. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect; we still have work to do. But that’s no surprise to us, because we have a great network.”

Well, perhaps, but the sheer width of the iPhone halo is described by another statistic offered by The Yankee Group. 77 percent of iPhone users say they will buy another iPhone. Only 20 percent of Android users say they will buy another Android phone.

None of us is perfect. And we don’t expect perfection from anyone or anything in life. We merely hope for it. However, when something that is far above average grips us by our feelingful parts, we are more than a little grateful.

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Indian officials have demoed a touchscreen tablet computer with word processing, Web-browsing and video-conferencing functionality that will carry an initial price tag of about $35. University students are the target market, but it’s not a given that all of them will want such a device. “I can’t imagine a math or science or engineering major using a computer like this,” noted ITIC analyst Laura DiDio.

Human Resource Development Minister Shri Kapil Sibal unveils India’s prototype $35 computer.

“I think — assuming the device does come to market — that there will be some unexpected demographics interested in it,” he added.

In photos, the device looks much like the sleek tablet-style PCs coming on the market and typified by the iPad. It will offer such standard functionality as word processing, Web browsing and video-conferencing.

It is aimed at university students, with delivery planned for 2011.

At $35, the computer is cheaper than most digital cameras, raising the question of how India — or rather, the manufacturer it must engage — could possibly be able to pull off this feat.

How to Build a Very Cheap Computer

For starters, the device will run on a Linux operating system.

Originally, the Ministry had turned to the corporate sector for research and development, but it found support for the project “lukewarm.” It moved on to the sector where the device is intended to have its impact — the educational system — and received better responses from the universities.

Students devised a motherboard that is flexible enough for the components to change, if need be. Other innovations touch on the processor functionality. Reportedly, it won’t have a hard disk, using but will use a memory card instead.

Presumably it will be manufactured in India, which means inexpensive labor, Laura DiDio, principal of ITIC, told TechNewsWorld.

“They certainly won’t be using state-of-the-art parts either,” she said. “There also won’t be the huge markup that such retailers asApple (Nasdaq: AAPL) typically charge with their products. In theory, it is doable.”

The question is, how good will the quality be? At $35 or less, no one is expecting another iPad, but DiDio thinks these devices are intended to be disposable, although the government and manufacturer are unlikely to say so.

“At $35, I think most Indians who could afford that price in the first place would simply throw it away and get another. I doubt if there would be much service or support, or warranties accompanying their sale.”

Target Markets

With India’s immense population, there is certain to be a market there for the device. Still, it would be a mistake to assume all university students will want one — or that it will appeal only to students, DiDio said.

It can be assumed that university students in India who are financially struggling or otherwise on a tight budget would gravitate toward a cheap computer. So might the parents of younger students in middle or elementary school.

They might want to give their kids an inexpensive starter computer, DiDio noted. Another ripe possibility could be the emerging markets in Africa, where cellphones and smartphones are starting to take off.

Yet a wide swath of potential buyers won’t be interested in the device.

The North American and European export markets can be counted out, said Steven Baker, VP of industry analysis for NPD.

“It is not the kind of product that people want here,” he told TechNewsWorld. “The concept is just not exportable to these markets.”

It is also not a given that all university students will want the device, DiDio stressed.

“India churns out some of the world’s best engineers,” she pointed out. “I can’t imagine a math or science or engineering major using a computer like this.”

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Information Technology Vendor

The saying goes something like this: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The statement is, of course, embraced as dogma by those fearful of change and by automobile owners praying for a reasonable bill of charge while waiting at the mechanic’s garage.

But many of today’s CIOs must see something broken inside their IT departments. According to a new Forrester Research report, more than half of the 178 IT executives surveyed are hatching plans to upend the status quo and institute a new IT model within three years.

The ultimate goal, these CIOs say, is to improve services, reduce costs and increase consistency of business processes and IT systems. “The appetite for restructuring is obviously high,” writes Forrester principal analyst Marc Cecere. The area with greatest priority: the applications organization.

Several New Normal macroeconomic factors—not under the control of CIOs—are driving this desire for change. “The uncertainty caused by a stubborn unemployment rate, the stock market yo-yo-ing, new financial regulations and high government spending provides a push for changing the model of IT,” writes Cecere.

Advances in core IT systems and software manager are also inciting change. Cecere adds: “New services and innovative new technologies and techniques provide a pull toward models that can exploit their advantages.”

For some IT shops, an upheaval will come much sooner: Nearly one-third of IT chiefs surveyed stated that there was either a “high probability” or “certainty” that they would restructure within one year.

The most critical need for IT shops is to improve their services: More than three-quarters of respondents said this was a high or highest priority. To Cecere, however, that number should have been higher. “Improving services is such an obvious choice that you have to wonder about the smug bastards who didn’t choose this,” he writes. “The frustration among senior business leaders that there must be a different way to run IT to get the flexibility and innovation they want while not going back to the pre-recession spending levels is a dilemma that fuels the interest in new models for IT.”

According to the survey respondents, the applications group is “most likely to be restructured.” Why? Cecere writes:

The importance of cost reduction, increased consistency of processes and systems, and innovation are driving the need to restructure apps groups. They are the most fragmented and have the greatest potential for cost savings through rationalization or outsourcing. Most large shops, in particular, have federated apps organizations, where decisions about systems, tools, and methodologies are made independently from other apps groups. As a result, they’ve created multiple groups that have little ability to leverage people. In addition, many of the innovations in business analytics, mobile apps and other areas will come from apps groups. These innovations need to scale in terms of numbers of users, security, and reliability. Fragmented apps groups often don’t have the capacity, the need or the expertise to scale these innovations past their own business unit.

So just what kinds of new organizational models are CIOs considering? The report highlights (and offers explanations for) several, including: business-process-based, demand-supply (DS), and plan-build-run (PBR). But, Cecere adds, the “verdict is still out” on what models will be deemed most appropriate for individual IT shops.

“Currently, we are only seeing the train’s headlight in terms of the impact of these new organizational models,” Cecere writes. “Understanding them will require time in order to cut through the fog of hype and the hopefulness from early benefits.”

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