Blog
New reports from Cybera give the low-down on Alberta’s networking capabilities
Where are all the fibre networks in Alberta? How many free WiFi spots do we have access to in the province? And how soon until we see internet delivered by drones? After a year of researching, Cybera has unveiled a comprehensive update to the networking chapter of its 2014 State of Alberta Digital Infrastructure Report. The in-depth review looks at the […]
Canada’s Internet Performance: What the Numbers Show
By the Cybera Data Science Team Introduction To an ever increasing degree, participation in the economy and society at large is mediated by the internet. If people don’t have good internet access, they feel disenfranchised. Currently in Canada, there are many, many people who feel disenfranchised. For several years now, it has seemed that internet […]
Cybera recognized for its support of gender diversity in IT
This week, Cybera’s Vice President of Policy and Strategic Initiatives, Barb Carra, was pleased to represent Cybera as it accepted the inaugural KNOVO Award of Distinction for corporate gender diversity. Cybera was one of 11 organizations honoured at the awards ceremony, which was held on Tuesday in Calgary’s Jubilee Auditorium. KNOVO was launched in 2015 […]
Alberta Educator’s First Major Shared Service Passes the Test
When over 53,000 students at three of Alberta’s post-secondary institutions went online this month to register for courses and communicate with their teachers, it was under the watchful eye of the University of Alberta’s IT staff. The institution has successfully transferred the operations of one of Alberta’s first educational shared services from Cybera (Alberta’s not-for-profit […]
That Escalated Quickly
One of Cybera’s newest projects involves creating a pilot Identity Federation for Alberta K-12 School Authorities. This Identity Federation, known as MyUnifiED, will give participating school staff and students the ability to log into different web services using their school’s login account — they no longer need to have a separate set of credentials stored […]
Area51 Declassified
Welcome to the Rapid Access Cloud Experimental Region NOTE: The Area51 cloud region was decommissioned in 2018 Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud provides a stable and reliable platform for non-production, demonstrative, or development purposes, using tried and well-tested OpenStack services like OpenStack Compute (nova) and OpenStack Object Storage (swift). Introducing new services to the Rapid Access […]
Municipalities “to the right of the dot”. Imagine the new opportunities!
By Richard Schreier, Project Manager, Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) Until recently, there was not a lot of choice in what domain name came after the dot in your web address. Traditionally, .CA or .COM were two of about 250 top-level domains (or TLDs in domain industry jargon) available, most of which were very specific to the […]
Online privacy and security — whose responsibility?
Early in the Pokemon Go craze, several articles warned that the game’s Terms & Conditions offered poor protection for the private details of those who downloaded the app, as it provided full access to users’ Google accounts. Clearly the majority of players did not read this policy (or care, if they did). At last check, […]
Classroom Case Study: Working with NoSQL Databases on the Rapid Access Cloud
By Michael Strobl, PhD Student, University of Alberta A common use of Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud has been for classroom learning. Instructors from a number of Alberta institutions have used the cloud to run student assignments, teach the basics of cloud computing, or run modern-day analytics. This post highlights one such use case from the […]
“CY-Fi” brings super-fast Wi-Fi speeds to Calgary’s tech innovators
Visitors accessing the public Wi-Fi at Calgary’s Alastair Ross Technology Centre (ARTC) will now experience some of the fastest internet in Calgary. The ARTC — which offers affordable office space and business advisory services to over 100 local start-ups — has recently connected to Alberta’s Research and Education Network to provide innovators with an invaluable […]
Alberta’s Public Sector Celebrates Four Years of (More) Affordable Internet
Members of the Alberta Internet Buying Group may have noticed their internet bill was a little lower this month. July 2016 marked the seventh major decrease in the cost of bandwidth for the group, which was reduced from $5.75/Mbps to $5.00/Mbps. This month also marks the fourth anniversary of the Internet Buying Group. To celebrate its achievements over the past four […]
How Organizations can use Pokémon Go
Pokémon Go was officially released in Canada this weekend. The game has proven to be great for socializing, giving folks a reason to get out more, and people are even finding their love interests through the game (looks like Tinder has some competition). But the game is also giving headaches to police, raising safety issues, […]
Revere to the rescue: Cybera’s new network alerts system
Network outages are never a pleasant experience, but they are even worse when you’re left in the dark and don’t know a) If the problem is on the local network, b) Whether anyone is looking into the problem, or c) What might be causing it. This used to be the case for some of Cybera’s […]
Doing Science with Data
As part of Cybera’s mandate to explore new technologies and share our experiences with stakeholders, we are actively looking for new ways to improve our processes and bring value to our research and education community. One of the first projects I worked on when I joined Cybera was our metrics dashboard… More specifically, I was […]
Going digital to help patients and families interact in a more personal way
A new robot at the Ronald McDonald House in Edmonton is demonstrating the powerful effect that digital connections can have on humans’ lives.