The 6th of June 2012 is World IPv6 Launch Day-- the day internet pioneer Vint Cerf describes as the launch of the "21st century internet," following on last year's one-day World IPv6 Day. 

Why do we need IPv6? The current internet protocol we rely on (IPv4) has space for 2^32 (4.3 billion) addresses, a seemingly large but actually limited number. IPv6 is much larger, since it expands the limit to 2^128  (over 340 trilion, trillion trillion) addresses.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) ran out of addresses to allocate to the Regional Read more...

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reports the Q4 2011 workstation market remains in the "doldrums"-- WW shipments reach 918.4 thousands units, down by -8.1% from 1.02m units in Q3 2011. 

This makes Q4 2011 the second consecutive quarter of negative growth, the first such occurrence since Q3 and Q4 2008. The analyst predicts Q1 2012 will show flat results. 

However JPR remains relatively optimistic, saying "The market just needs a kick start, and it should see that in Q2 2012 results, behind the momentum of a top-to-bottom refresh of workstation-class platforms Read more...

Rising energy requirements will shape the future of data centers in EMEA over the next 10 years, Canalys reports-- with rising power costs determining data center locations for vendors, service providers and customers. 

The analyst estimates the current combined base of server closets, server rooms and small, medium-sized and large data centers accounts for 1% of energy consumption and 5% of commercial electricity use across EMEA-- and predicts electricity use will jump by 15% by 2016. 

Driving power demand are large data centers, with a predicted Read more...

Airports and airport retailers looking to better serve and generate more revenue from today’s time-starved and mobile-enabled travelers are missing opportunities to do so, according to a survey of travelers in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for NCR.

While NCR itself sells airline and airport self-service, retail, wayfinding and mobile solutions, this has implications for any supplier, integrator talking to airports and retailers.

According to the survey, 23% of travelers in Germany, 30% in France, 34% in UK and 35% in the United States said they find it difficult to find the stores, restaurants and other retail offerings at airports in the limited amount of time they have.

Considering that over 1.5 billion people travel by air each year, these findings represent a huge amount of lost revenue potential from travelers who may have been interested in making purchases at an airport retailer, restaurant or service provider. Read more...