Russ

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Worth Reading: Thoughts on the 5G Network

5G is the current title for much of the network system work in the telco industry these days. All companies, SDOs and industry fora are now working on 5G technologies. There seems to be a rough consensus on requirements and use cases, and first proposals seem to suggest that the design and the implementation will have something to do with SDN/NFV. In general, the assumptions are that 5G will be faster (thanks to better radio), larger (intended to cover more connected devices due to IoT, smart city, new markets), more flexible (network programmability), and converged (unification of mobile and fixed network access/core). -via dirk kutscher

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Security ‘net: Student privacy in focus

Student Privacy in Focus

Driving your market back to the earliest age possible is a tried and true marketing technique — and technology companies are no different in this regard. Getting people hooked on a product at an early age is a sure fire way to build a lifelong habit of preference for that one brand, and for usage in general. Perhaps, though, we should be concerned when it comes to social media. As “edtech” makes its way into our schools, should we be concerned about the privacy of our children? Via CDT:

Schools have largely embraced education applications, websites, and devices (collectively referred to as “edtech”) as a means for improving classroom instruction and administration. 71 percent of parents report their child uses technology provided by schools for educational purposes. In most cases this means more data is being collected on students. However, US privacy law has not kept pace with the rapid adoption of technology and data collection in schools. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), our existing student privacy law, is outdated and there are no sector-specific privacy laws that focus on edtech.

How effective is anonymization, anyway? A good bit of research is showing Continue reading

Think visually: How graphics skills help engineers

Among all the skills I hear network engineers talk about, two that are often underrated are writing skills and graphics skills. There is some small slice of the networking world that is serious about writing (though I often think we make too big of a production out of writing, getting wrapped around tools and process instead of focusing on actual writing), but graphics is one area the we really don’t talk about a lot. After all, I’m an engineer, not a graphic designer, right? Or maybe — I’ve always heard I should be a master of one skill, rather than a jack of all trades…

Diane, over at Data Center Mix, has a great post up on four ways being an artist has helped her sell data center products. There are some great ideas in there, but as someone with formal training in graphic design (in a distant past I can barely remember any longer), I wanted to add a few thoughts about graphics skills as a network engineer.

She begins with this thought: a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m never quite certain this is actually true in every case (Charles Dickens in cartoon format doesn’t sound very Continue reading

Worth Reading: What we should fear in the world of patents

…only rarely are those accused of some patent violation really a bad actor. Rather, the patent system results in bad actors because the system is confusing with little transparency. When patents are unclear, in other words when the boundaries of a patent are vague, then people cannot adequately check whether their innovations infringe. If they have no reliable means of checking then innovators will find it hard, likely impossible, to design around a patent, or even to seek an appropriate patent license. via heartland

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Worth Reading: Troubleshooting video applications

Maybe it’s another sign of experience, aging, cynicism, and/or ego. Lately, I seem to be doing a lot of troubleshooting of application performance problems. “What on earth was the developer thinking?” is becoming a recurrent refrain, at least in my head. This is (I hope) not ego, just a real question about what appears to be a sub-optimal approach. via network computing

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Security ‘net

The ‘web has been abuzz with security stuff the last couple of weeks; forthwith a small collection for your edification.

The man in the middle attack is about as overused as the trite slippery slope fallacy in logic and modern political “discourse” (loosely termed — political discourse is the latest term to enter the encyclopedia of oxymorons as it’s mostly been reduced to calling people names and cyberbullying, — but of course, putting the social media mob in charge of stopping bullying will fix all of that). But there are, really, such things as man in the middle attacks, and they are used to gather information that would otherwise be unavailable because of normal security provided by on the wire encryption. An example? There is no way to tell if your cell phone is connecting to a real cell phone tower or a man-in-the-middle device that sucks all your information out and ships it to an unintended recipient before forwarding your information along to its correct destination.

The list of aliases used by the devices that masquerade as a cell phone tower, trick your phone into connecting with them, and suck up your data, seems to grow every day. But Continue reading

Worth Reading: Is your network This Old House?

Many information technology infrastructures are very similar to some of these old houses. Many of our customers have been adding on capability to their infrastructures, as their businesses require more IT capability, including advanced security, network bandwidth, storage, raw computing power, voice, data, and cloud. And many have done this without taking a look at the entire infrastructure to determine if the foundation is stable and can support all of the new capabilities – or whether there might be any cracks. via netcraftsmen

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Fear itself: Thinking through change and turmoil

Fair warning: this is going to be a controversial post, and it might be considered a bit “off topic.”

Maybe it’s just that time of year. Or maybe it’s several conversations I’ve been involved in recently. Or maybe it’s the result of following over 150 blogs on a daily basis covering everything from religion to politics to technology to philosophy. Whatever it is, there’s one thing I’ve noticed recently.

We’re really afraid.

I don’t mean “concerned about what the future might hold,” but rather — it seems, at least sometimes — sinking into a state of fear bordering on the irrational. Sometimes it feels like the entire world is one long troubleshooting session in the worst designed network I’ve ever encountered. Let me turn to a few completely different areas to illustrate my point. Some of these are going to make people mad, so hold on to your hats — and hear me out before you jump all over me or shut down.

We’re afraid of what the future might hold for us as engineers and as people. Maybe this entire software defined thing is going to destroy my entire career. Maybe I’ll end up like a buggy whip maker Continue reading

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