Verizon Communications on Tuesday became the first service provider to say it will use Alcatel-Lucent's upcoming 7950 XRS core routing system, which will bring the French-American equipment vendor into the carrier core routing business for the first time in about a decade.

Using caching technology from Akamai Technologies, Ericsson's Smart Cloud Accelerator, announced Wednesday, is designed to allow operators to improve performance in both fixed and mobile networks.

The scoop: MIMO MagicTouch 10-inch touch-screen USB monitor, by MIMO Monitors, about $300.

Juniper Networks this week has unveiled access routers designed to provide an on-ramp to the service provider network from residential, business and mobile networks.

In an effort to accommodate enterprise users looking to implement private and hybrid Clouds, Cisco - in the coming months - will unveil an "integrated" WAN routing system of existing, but enhanced, products.

We're at an awkward stage as the age of network-streamed multimedia matures. Broadband and cell providers have only recently realized the public's enormous appetite for streaming video, VoIP, and the combination of both.

A reader has noticed that the Wi-Fi at her local library has slowed considerably in recent months, and she's wondering what's causing it: "Is it our computers, bogged down with too much junk, or is it something to do with the library's system?"

The world is almost out of IP addresses--or at least it's almost out of the IPv4 addresses that IT admins and users are most familiar with. Fortunately, IPv6 has been developed to exponentially expand the pool of available IP addresses while also providing a few other benefits.