C/NET named its top products of 2020 some time back; but, not included in that list were some items that were thought to not be ready for the market yet or the market not ready for them. I will try to highlight a few of these because of their importance in what we face today and tomorrow.
The use of mRNA to produce a flexible vaccine in record time that promises unprecedented success for a vaccine of any type. In 10 short months, several vaccines have been developed, tested, verified and deployment begun. This process is likely to give rise to several other treatments for maladies previously endemic to humanity.
The introduction of WiFi 6 routers (an early name perhaps) bodes well for the many of us who face new challenges in WiFi demand both at home and in the office. Previous generation routers were good enough for what they were designed to accomplish; but, the new demands posed by the responses we have made to the Covid inspired environment lead to far more instantaneous demand of already taxed WiFi resources within the home network or the office network. For instance, managing 2, 3, or more simultaneous ZOOM sessions will overtax current generation routers. The new routers are being designed specifically with this kind and level of demand in mind.
The Apple M1 chip, an ARM chip and close cousin to the System On a Chip (SOC) found in the Raspberry Pi computers brings with it the promise demonstrated in the Pi 4 and Pi 400 computers, excellent performance, low power draw, simple integration, straightforward software adaptation, and easy software development, not to mention excellent flexibility and easy system implementation. Whether Apple can succeed in bringing this family of chips to the market remains to be seen; but, the new benchmarks illustrated give the competition something to shoot for.
VPN’s (Orchid VPN is an example) continue to evolve to provide better protection and protection for more users. Once limited to providing a secure point-to-point network over shared bandwidth or secure bandwidth alike, VPN’s can fill more roles as they themselves mature and as available bandwidth improves. Not long ago a business network was blessed to have 100Mb in-house bandwidth; now, that speed is pedestrian with gigabit and terabit networks coming into their own. With internet speeds exceeding 200Mb common and gigabit internet available (at a price), VPN’s can now provide the kind of speed once only available within the scope of a local network, out into the WAN (wide area network).