Tag Archives: Networking

EE switch on 5G

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EE switch on 5G mobile network in UK towns

Mobile operator EE (BT) has started to extend their new 5G ultrafast mobile broadband network. This now covers an additional nine towns and cities across the UK. Including locations such as Southend-on-Sea, Stirling and Weybridge. Since the EE switch on 5G project launch, Internet coverage and speed are even better for customers.

The development means that EE’s 5G network are now live across busy parts of 80 UK locations. It will take a long time to reach the same level of coverage in each areas as has already been achieved by existing 4G networks. The operator’s website lists “Stirling” under towns, although these days it is usually described as a city.

At present the operator is only able to harness a 40MHz slice of the 3.4GHz radio spectrum band for their 5G service, although more bands are due to be released by Ofcom later this year (e.g. 700MHz and 3.6-3.8GHz). Nevertheless, they have so far been able to deliver better speeds than rivals at Vodafone, O2 and Three UK, although it remains to be seen whether this will last.

EE Switch on 5G

According to independent 5G testing by RootMetrics, EE’s 5G network achieved the highest average download speed and highest 5G availability in London, Birmingham and Cardiff.

An increase of speeds as EE switch on 5G

The operator has previously told customers to expect an increase in speeds of around 100-150Mbps from the EE switch on 5G scheme. Even in the busiest areas and at the same time they also predicted that “some customers” may break the 1Gbps (1000Mbps+) milestone on their 5G smartphones. The fastest speed possible when EE launched 4G in 2012 was just 50Mbps. But getting 1Gbps in busy urban areas, with only 40MHz of spectrum, is likely to be quite rare.

The most recent data from Opensignal did however confirm that their customers were achieving an average 5G download speed of 149.8Mbps (Megabits per second), which is well above the typical 4G average on their network of 33.1Mbps.

Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Division, said: “A year ago, we started
the UK’s 5G journey by launching the first 5G network. In just one year,
we have already seen several incredible experiences and real-life use cases
that 5G enables, both for consumers and businesses, and there is still so
much more to come. 5G technology will continue to make our customers’
lives easier, make our networks more efficient, and help launch entirely
new ideas and businesses that we haven’t yet imagined.”

3 key benefits of 5G

A better connection in busy places: Ever struggled to get online while at a music festival or in a stadium, even though you appear to have a full signal? You will know how frustrating it is when your content eventually uploads much later or sometimes not at all. This happens when too many people try to connect in one place at the same time. Networks reach their limit, and everything slows down.

The 5G network will give you a more reliable connection in the busiest places and at the busiest times. That is because 5G has a greater bandwidth than 4G and can support more devices. So, you can stream sports in a stadium, download videos at a busy train station and share photos while partying at a music festival.

Faster speeds, better quality: 5G gives you faster mobile speeds than ever before. Making everyday tasks on your 5G-ready smartphone feel super-quick.

You will be able to download films onto your phone in seconds instead of minutes. So, if you are stuck for something to watch on the way home from work you can watch the latest blockbusters and box sets. Stream in the highest resolutions and watch big sporting events in all their glory. Enjoy smoother and better overall video calls.

Instant connection: 5G gives you an almost instant internet connection. So, whether you want to play a video, load an app, or control smart devices in your home, everything feels super-quick with 5G.

The faster speeds at which the 5G network responds to your commands is important for gamers, because it responds even more quickly to your button commands. What is more, 5G opens up exciting possibilities for new augmented and virtual reality experiences. This will transform the way you play games on the move.

Faster speeds for business

LIS clients benefit from our business telecoms services. Contact the LIS Help Desk to see how we can speed up telecoms and save you money. We have it all, and they are all delivered to you with our impeccable IT support.

LIS – SECURING YOUR DIGITAL WORLD

#5G #Telecoms #MobilePhone ~#ITSupport

Security Challenge

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Take our 60 minute security challenge

We are the local data security experts. Our team prides itself on quickly finding ways that hackers could damage your business and blocking them. Are you ready to take the security challenge?

When you’re running a business, you want to think you’ve done as much as possible to keep your data safe from theft and loss. But if you don’t have the right professionals implementing data security, how well protected are you really?

In fact, if you give us just 60 minutes, we’re confident we would find something wrong with your IT setup that places your data security at risk.

Watch our new video to find out more – then contact us to start your 60 minute security challenge.

Secure your business for peace of mind

Technology is advancing every day and so is the risk of hacking. Users are increasingly facing the risk of hacking as cyber security threats become progressively more sophisticated. Implementing a firewall on your network perimeter and anti-virus on your desktop is no longer a sufficient solution – the attack surface is now much bigger.

Take our 60 minute security challenge. If you give one of our experts just 60 minutes to examine your IT systems, we’re confident they’ll find a data security breach that will horrify you. Of course, we’re not doing this to be cruel.

We want to show you what extra measures your business should be taking to keep your data safe. And your people and clients protected. Let’s face it, it’s better that WE find the breach, than a cyber-criminal does.

Contact the LIS Help Desk to help you stay vigilant when it comes to hackers. We will suggest which upgrades for your system are best suited to your business. This will improve your IT security.

#WeChallengeYou #60minuteSecurityChallenge #Security #Business

 

Councils get connected

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Local authorities invest in networking and contact centre technology through IT outsourcing contracts. Helping local councils get connected.

Councils get connected and help the wider community

Cheshire East Council is working with technology service provider Capita to build a wide area network (WAN) to connect more than 500 public services sites. An article published yesterday by Computer Weekly explains all.

The £8m, five-year contract will see council, school, fire service and police operations in the county connected by the network. This is part of the government’s £5bn Network Services 2 framework.

Councils get connected

Councils to connect hundreds of its sites through wide area network.

Why set up a WAN?

A wide area network (WAN) is a data network, usually used for connecting computers, that spans a wide geographical area. WANs are used to connect offices, towns, counties and help councils get connected. WANs are often used by larger organizations to facilitate the exchange of data. A wide variety of industries have embraced WANs with facilities at multiple locations. Increasingly, however, even small businesses are utilizing WANs as a way of increasing their communications.

The benefit of WANs

Although WANs serve a purpose similar to that of local area networks (LANs), WANs are structured and operated quite differently. The user of a WAN usually does not own the communications lines that connect the remote computer systems. Instead, the user subscribes to a service through a telecommunications provider. Unlike LANs, WANs typically do not link individual computers, but rather are used to link LANs. WANs also transmit data at slower speeds than LANs. WANs are also structurally similar to metropolitan area networks (MANs), however provide communications links for distances greater than 50km.

Advantages of WANs

Do you have a wide area network (WANs) at your company? If you have multi sites or operate globally, you probably do. That is because WANs are powerful business tools. They make it possible for large organizations to communicate internally faster and more efficiently. They also make it possible for consumers to enjoy company benefits they could not enjoy in the past.

  • Boosts your privacy: Setting up a WAN allows you to share sensitive data with all your sites without having to send the information over the Internet.
  • Increases bandwidth: Corporate WANS often use leased lines instead of broadband connections to form the backbone of their networks.
  • Eliminates Need for ISDN: WANs can cut costs by eliminating the need to rent expensive ISDN circuits for phone calls. Instead, you can have your WAN carry them.
  • Guaranteed uptime: Many WAN providers offer business-class support. That means you get a specific amount of uptime monthly, quarterly, or yearly as part of your service level agreement.
  • Cuts costs and increase profits: In addition to eliminating the need for ISDN, WANs can help you cut costs and increase profits in a wide variety of other ways.

Disadvantages of WANs

While WANS provide numerous advantages, they have their share of disadvantages. As with any technology, you need to be aware of these downsides to make an informed decision about WANS. The three most critical downsides are high setup costs, security concerns, and maintenance issues.

  • High setup costs: WANs are complicated, complex and expensive to set up.
  • Security Concerns: WANs open the way for certain types of internal security breaches. such as unauthorized use, information theft, and malicious damage to files.
  • Maintenance Issues: Maintaining a WAN is a challenge, no doubt about it. Guaranteeing that your data centre will be up and operating 24/7 is the biggest maintenance challenge of all.

The best solutions for your business

We are unable to predict when businesses will return to normal due to the pandemic. We all must try and operate in the new normal way of business. With staff working from home and some of the team working at the office, which solution is best for you? Make sure your business stays connected, secure and efficient.

Contact the LIS Help Desk to make sure your security is appropriate. Do you have good Firewalls in place, or do they resemble swiss cheese? Use encrypted connections when using online banking. Are your Virtual Private Network (VPN) secure? Our friendly and experienced team will asses your options for connectivity and be able to help you with your telecommunications.

LIS – SECURING YOUR DIGITAL WORLD

#Networking #Telecoms #Business #ITSupport

Team Meetings Are Simple

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Working from home (WFH) with Microsoft Teams. If you are already a user of what has become Microsoft’s fastest-growing app in history, you’ll realise that team meetings are simple and quick. Although not always convenient if you’re in a home setting that’s verging on disorganised.

So, before you start a Teams meeting, use the blur background function to put you in focus, rather than what’s behind you. Be that a child home-schooling at the kitchen table, a stack of laundry ready for ironing or an interesting choice of reading material on your bookcase.

Team meetings are simple when working from home

It’s clear that WFH isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Standard Life Aberdeen has informed 4,900 of its UK employees working from home not to expect a return to the office this year. While Health Secretary Matt Hancock has indicated his hope that employers offer home working as a choice going forward.

A record of 2.7 billion minutes of Microsoft Teams meetings took place in a single day in April. It has become a feature of daily working life for many, team meetings are simple and are here to stay. Microsoft Teams will replace Skype for Business Online which is being retired on 31 July 2021.

Team Meeting Are Simple

The hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. Invite everyone you work with to chat, meet, call and collaborate all in one place. Discover a new way to work together.

All capabilities of Skype for Business are available in Microsoft Teams – like blurring out your background during a video call – but Teams expands on capabilities for communication and collaboration. Microsoft Teams brings together files, chats, and apps in an integrated app, with functionality that enables organizations to move faster and collaborate more efficiently.

All Office 365 customers are encouraged to use Teams, whether independently or alongside with Skype for Business. However, customers will need to move to Teams before the Skype for Business Online retirement date. Here’s some advice on how to make Microsoft Teams technology at your fingertips your new best friend.

Don’t leave them hanging

Teams allows you to test your functionality before a video call. This lets you adjust the camera angle, test the audio, sort out any lighting issues or blur the background before you get going.

Cut the inbox clutter

Drowning in emails could become a thing of the past. If a colleague wants you to send a file, or answer a quick query, chats is the answer.

It’s good to share

Using the chat window is an easy way to have a quick conversation with a colleague. Need to share a file? Attach it in the chat, then call or video call your colleague to discuss the file straight from the window. Meetings can be scheduled without leaving the chat. There’s no need to switch between apps during a conversion as chat is integration with other Microsoft products like Office.

Collaboration and communication

Syncing with Office 365, you can create a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document in Teams, immediately share it with colleagues and then co-write. It cuts out confusion around the very latest version of documents, spreadsheets or power points.

Any time, any place

Teams is a fully cloud-based solution, meaning you can access information from anywhere on any device. Using the Teams phone app gives immediate access to all your apps and documents. You can easily respond to chat and conversations, join meetings with one click and continue to collaborate. So even on the move, you stay in the loop.

Overcoming isolation

Working from home can be a lonely experience but using the Teams internal communications keeps the workforce engaged and motivated and conscious they are working towards the same goal, even when physically apart. It provides scope to check in, not check-up.

Privacy and security

Microsoft Teams comes with security and privacy controls designed to prevent vulnerabilities to hacking, protection which includes:

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA) – Users supply added forms of verification to prove their identity, helping protect their accounts from attacks through weak or stolen passwords.
  • Microsoft Endpoint Manager – To manage devices and apps and enforce conditional access on any device.
  • Secure Guest Access – Allows users to collaborate with individuals outside their organisation while controlling access to their own data.

How can we be part of your team?

We are working in unusual times that no one has experienced. Take the pressure of worrying about you IT system. Wouldn’t it be nice to focus working on your business rather than for the business? No more organised meetings in the board room. Team meetings are simple with Microsoft Teams. Allow yourself to spend extra time playing golf, going down the gym or your favourite activity.

Find out more about how LIS can support your team working from home. Contact the LIS Help Desk for the latest IT Support Advice,  Security, Cloud Back Up Solutions and Telecoms. Like the famous TV advert said, “It’s good to talk.”

LIS – SECURING YOUR DIGITAL WORLD

#MicrosoftTeams #WFH #Business #ITSupport

 

Internet under the sea

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Aqua-Fi is a Wi-Fi system for watery environments where radios typically struggle. Communicating underwater has always been a hassle. Radio transmissions, the ubiquitous wireless standard above the waves, can’t transmit very far before being entirely absorbed by the water. Acoustic transmissions (think sonar) are the preferred choice underwater, but they suffer from very low data rates. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just have Internet under the sea?

Researchers use lasers to bring the Internet under the sea

Underwater Wi-Fi is exactly what researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, have developed. The system, which they call Aqua-Fi, uses a combination of lasers and off-the-shelf components. This creates a bi-directional wireless connection for underwater devices. The system is fully compliant with  IEEE 802.11 wireless standards, meaning it can easily connect to and function as part of the broader Internet.

Internet under the sea

The Aqua-Fi system uses a Wi-Fi connection to wirelessly connect a device to a Raspberry Pi,which converts the signal into a laser to be beamed to a relay on the water’s surface.

How will Internet under the sea work?

Waterproofed smartphones can transmit data underwater. The researchers used a regular old Wi-Fi signal to connect that device to an underwater “modem.” Specifically, they used a Raspberry Pi to function as that modem. The Raspberry Pi converted the wireless signal to an optical signal. In this case, a laser that was beamed to receiver attached to a surface buoy. Established communications techniques were used to send the signal to an orbiting satellite. For the underwater device to receive data, the process is simply reversed.

Aqua-Fi stems from work that the KAUST researchers did back in 2017. The researchers used a blue laser to transmit a 1.2-gigabit file underwater. But that wasn’t interesting enough, according to Basem Shihada, an associate professor of computer science at KAUST and one of the researchers on the Aqua-Fi project. “Who cares about submitting just a file?” he says. “Let’s do something with a bit more life.”

The light bulb moment

It was that thinking that spurred the team to start looking at bi-directional communications. With the ultimate goal of building a system that can transfer high-resolution video. Internet under the sea could be a possibility.

Shihada says it was important to him that all of the components be off the shelf. “My first rule when we started this project: I do not want to have something that is [custom made for this],” he says. The only exception is the circuit in the Raspberry Pi that converts the wireless signal to an optical signal and vice versa.

The team used LEDs instead of lasers in their first design, but found the LEDs were not powerful enough for high data rates. With LEDs, the beams were limited to distances of about 7 meters and data rates of about 100 kilobits per second. When they upgraded to blue and green lasers, they achieved 2.11 megabits per second over 20 meters.

Shihada says that currently, the system is limited by the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi. The team burned out the custom circuit responsible for converting optical and wireless signals when, on two occasions, they used a laser that was too powerful. He says that in order for this setup to incorporate more powerful lasers that can both communicate farther and transmit more data, the Raspberry Pi will need to be swapped out for a dedicated optical modem.

Testing the system

Two students at KAUST talk over Skype using Aqua-Fi. Each phone is connected to an underwater Raspberry Pi on each end of the black box. A green laser is reflected down the length of the box several times to create a distance of 20m.

What are the limitations?

Even with the limitations of the Raspberry Pi, the KAUST researchers were able to use Aqua-Fi to place Skype calls and transfer files. However, there’s still a big problem that needs to be addressed in order to make a system like Aqua-Fi commercially viable; and it can’t be solved as easily as swapping out the Raspberry Pi. “If you want to imagine how to build the Internet underwater,” says Shihada, “laser alignment remains the most challenging part.” Because lasers are so precise, even mildly turbulent waters can knock a beam off course and cause it to miss a receptor.

What options are available?

The KAUST researchers are exploring two options to solve the alignment problem. The first is to use a technique similar to the “photonic fence” developed to kill mosquitoes. A low-power guide laser would scan for the receptor. When a connection is made, it would inform another, higher-powered laser to begin sending data. If the waves misaligned the system again, the high-power laser would shut off and the guide laser would kick in, initiating another search.

The other option is a MIMO-like solution using a small array of receptors, so that even if the laser emitter is jostled a bit by the water, it will still maintain a connection.

Do we need the Internet under the sea?

You might still be asking yourself at this point why anyone even needs the Internet underwater? First, there’s plenty of need in underwater conservation for remote monitoring of sea life and coral reefs, for example. High definition video collected and transmitted by wireless undersea cameras can be immensely helpful to conservationists.

However, it’s also helpful to the high-tech world. Companies like Microsoft are exploring the possibility of placing data centres offshore and underwater. Placing data centres on the ocean floor can perhaps save money both on cooling the equipment as well as energy costs. If the kinetic energy of the waves can be harvested and converted to electricity. Finally, if there are data centres underwater, the Internet will need to be there too.

How can we connect you?

We are sorry to report that we are unable to help with the progress of launching Internet under the sea. However, our land-based clients are happy with our service and a support team that is not wet behind the ears! Contact the LIS Help Desk to find out more about super-fast broadband. Unlimited broadband packages are available with speeds up to 1,000mb download and upload. If that’s not fast enough we can join several lines together and the sky is the limit… yes, we ran out of sea puns!

Our experienced team can also help you with any other IT enquiries, security issues and telecoms.

LIS – SECURING YOUR DIGITAL WORLD

#UnderTheSea #UnderwaterWiFi #WithCoolLasers