FBI rack raid knocks 'tens' offline

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is staying mum on why it ripped out entire server racks from a US datacentre used by Swiss-based web host, DigitalOne.

The host emailed affected customers on Tuesday to advise that the disruption was due to the FBI confiscating three enclosures, according to the New York Times.

It claimed the FBI had seized servers relied on by “tens of clients” during its hunt for just one.

The FBI has not said who it was targeting in the raid, but a government official told the Times that the bureau had teamed up with the CIA and European cybercrime bureaus in pursuit of the Lulz Security group, responsible for a dozens of recent high profile attacks on corporations and government.

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Telstra seal $11b NBN Co deal

Telstra has finalised an $11 billion agreement with NBN Co and the Federal Government that would see the incumbent telco decommission its copper network and move fixed line broadband customers to the National Broadband Network as it is rolled out.

The agreement, finalised in an ASX announcement from Telstra this morning, comes a year after initially announced and following several delays in negotiations between the two broadband companies

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No support for ISP filter in Cyber-Safety report

Plans by the Australian Government to introduce a mandatory ISP-level internet filter have suffered another blow with the release of the interim report of the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety.

After reviewing arguments from both proponents of the cyber-safety measure and those opposed, the Committee declined to make any recommendations or endorse the policy in a chapter dedicated to discussion of the proposal.

Read more at www.itenews.com.au

Google Wins Race to 1 Billion Unique Visitors

According to Internet market research company comScore, Google websites welcomed more than a billion unique visitors around the globe in the month of May 2011, becoming the first Web property in the history of the Internet to reach such a milestone.

"In the past year, Google Sites has seen its audience grow 8 percent to eclipse the 1 billion threshold," comScore said in a blog post. "Microsoft Sites was the second largest Web property in May to reach more than 905 million visitors, followed by Facebook.com with 713.6 million visitors."

Read more at www.hothardware.com

NBN Could deliver 10 Gbps in five years

Australians connected to the National Broadband Network could receive peak speeds of up to 10 Gbps within five years through upgrades to the gigabit passive optical network (GPON) network, according to NBN Co.

Gary McLaren, chief technology officer at the government-owned network builder said that new wave division multiplexing (WDM) technology would increase the network's GPON capacity from 2.5Gbps available today to 40 Gbps.

Users could feasibly receive peak speeds of 10 Gbps – 100 times those promised today – depending on the load on their shared 32-premise GPON link, he said.

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Scientists break data transfer record

A newly developed data decoding technique has allowed German scientists to transmit a record 26 terabits of data on a single laser beam in one second.

Although it was only a quarter the record 109Tbps demonstrated on multi-core fibre connections in March, the new, single-source technique was expected to deliver efficiency and capacity gains.

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The Web is a job creator, not killer

Consulting group McKinsey has released a study that attempts to dispel the notion that internet services have an adverse impact on employment levels.

McKinsey's Global Institute report was produced for release at the “e-G8” summit in Paris, where internet big wigs met with political leaders to discuss the future of the web on Wednesday.

According to a McKinsey, the internet today accounts for 3.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) across G8 member countries, but will account for 21 percent in five years.

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