Discussion - Fiber to the Home Architectures

Brian and Andy discussed about fiber optics in the home. The article talked about two kinds of fiber optics architectures that are available today, Ethernet based and PON architectures. The article seemed to be biased towards Ethernet based architectures because the reading only mentions the flaws of the PON architecture but not of the Ethernet based. But after hearing the discussion, they both made it known that Cisco is trying to promote the Ethernet based architecture so the article will be on the biased side.

Discussion - Mobile Network Security

Yves Jean-Bart and Eugene led a discussion on the need for security in mobile networks. The article talks about how cellular providers are turning into internet service providers with the new capability of phones. The discussion focused around IP traffic being able to be used with new cellphones. This leaves phones open to getting viruses and also they must be protected from other threats such as a denial of service (DoS) attack. There are a few preventative measures that, unfortunately, not ever wireless carrier is using. Firewalls can be implemented to filter out malicious internet traffic from cellular network traffic. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can be used to secure transmissions that usually aren't secured. Anti-virus software for mobile devices, but it is underutilized by the cellular carriers. It was also brought up that this article may just be blowing the threat out of proportion. If the threat was great, there would be more being done to combat it.

Second Presentation

Our second presentation on "Hot Storage Mediums" focused on the current state of the two technologies we covered. The first half of the presentation was on holographic storage. Included in this section was a simplified view of how holographic storage works. There was also a picture of what the holographic drive and medium look up. This half of the presentation concluded with some specifications for this new storage medium. The second half was on hybrid storage. One of the slides highlighted which companies are contributing to this up and coming storage medium. Also included were some of the current hard drives on the market and the specifications claimed by the companies that produced them.