IP traffic will grow in a massive way as 10 billion new devices come online over the next five years.
Those are just a couple of the amazing facts found in Cisco’s 11th annual Visual Networking Index look at all things in the communications world.
+More on Network World: The most momentous tech events of the past 30 years+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT monitoring software probes various parts of the infrastructure -- servers, networks and applications -- and alerts IT about problems before they can cause an outage that affects the business. According to IT managers in the IT Central Station community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing infrastructure monitoring software include compatibility with existing infrastructure and customizable views.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Last month, Arista Networks put the core router market in the crosshairs with it’s Universal Spine (http://www.networkworld.com/article/3049140/router/arista-takes-aim-at-core-router-market-with-universal-spine.html) system. This week Arista complimented this by announcing a Universal Leaf network platform powered by its new 7280R switch series. The products leverage the Broadcom Jericho chipset which is optimized for 100 Gig-E, deep buffers and routing. Arista has been one of the more aggressive vendors with respect to using a leaf-spine architecture to be the backbone of a modern data center, so it makes sense that it would try and push the evolution of both the leaf and spines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) has received $30 million in U.S. funding for a new supercomputer that will roughly double the performance of its existing 9-petaflop supercomputer.The new system, named Stampede 2 after its predecessor, is being funded by the National Science Foundation. It will be available for scientific research by June 1, 2017.The Texas supercomputing center occupies a unique niche. The U.S. government owns the nation's largest and most powerful supercomputers. The national leader is Titan, a Cray XK7 Opteron-based system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, running at a peak performance of about 27 petaflops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The OpenSwitch Project took a significant development step this week when it became the first full feature network operating system project of the Linux Foundation.+More on Network World: Feeling jammed? Not like this I bet+The move gives OpenSwitch a neutral home where it can receive all the necessary support for long-term growth and sustainability – including back-office, technical infrastructure and ecosystem development services, said Michael Dolan, VP of Strategic Programs at The Linux Foundation.While the Linux Foundation hosts other projects in the networking space, the addition of OpenSwitch makes available a complete NOS solution, from the ASIC drivers to the APIs,’ that will run on reference hardware and in hypervisors, he stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not your average company that can trace its origins back to a nineteenth-century Russian tsar, but then, Sberbank is no average financial institution.Established through a decree by Emperor Nikolai I in 1841, Sberbank is Russia's oldest bank and has played a long and storied role in the nation's history. Today, with more than 16,000 branches in all 83 constituent entities of the Russian Federation -- traversing 11 time zones -- it serves roughly 70 percent of the Russian population.Therein lie the roots of the bank's very modern challenge.Whereas once virtually all transactions were conducted in person during office hours and on bank premises, the arrival of the Internet turned that pattern on its head. No longer constrained by branch operating schedules or the on-site availability of bank officers, customer-service demands skyrocketed as consumer expectations extended 24/7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nvidia has staked a big chunk of its future on supplying powerful graphics chips used for artificial intelligence, so it wasn't a great day for the company when Google announced two weeks ago that it had built its own AI chip for use in its data centers.Google's Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, was built specifically for deep learning, a branch of AI through which software trains itself to get better at deciphering the world around it, so it can recognize objects or understand spoken language, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What are the fundamental limitations inherent in machine learning systems?That’s the central question of a potential new DARPA program known as the Fundamental Limits of Learning (Fun LoL) which according to the researchers will address how the quest for the ultimate learning machine can be measured and tracked in a systematic and principled way.+More on Network World: Not dead yet: 7 of the oldest federal IT systems still wheezing away+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The original title for this story was "Transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6," but when we started researching, we quickly realized that most organizations are adopting an outside-in strategy, rather than moving over from all-IPv4 to all-IPv6 deployments. This means that they're often taking steps to accommodate incoming and outgoing IPv6 traffic at the organizational boundary and translating between the two stacks, or tunneling one protocol over another, for internal access and use. The majority of internal clients and other nodes are using IPv4, with increasing use of IPv6 in dual-stack environments (environments that run IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks side-by-side).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
There are some seriously old IT systems at work in the federal IT arsenal and some that are 56 years old have no real retirement date.That was one observation from a report issued this week from the federal watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.“Agencies reported using several systems that have components that are, in some cases, at least 50 years old. For example, the Department of Defense uses 8-inch floppy disks in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces. In addition, the Department of the Treasury uses assembly language code—a computer language initially used in the 1950s and typically tied to the hardware for which it was developed,” the GAO stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We all know the stereotype of a mainframe programmer or admin: gray hair, graduated from college in 1965, drives a Chrysler—and is about to retire, leaving a massive hole that his employer will find difficult to fill because no one under 60 knows how to use a mainframe.Now, let’s look at another stereotype: the millennial programmer. He/she is a few years out of college, with a degree in computer science, green or blue hair, and enough student debt to sink a yacht. The usual next step is to move to San Francisco, pay $2,200 a month to live under a staircase like Harry Potter and dream of joining a company that has a one-in-a-million chance of becoming the next Google.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Looking to continue tapping a market IDC says will be worth $6 billion by 2020, Software-Defined WAN company Viptela today said it raised $75M in a Series C round of financing.The new round of funding brings Viptela’s total funding to about $110M.The company said it would use the proceeds to grow sales, marketing, technical support and research and development.+More on Network World: What network technology is going to shake up your WAN?+This funding round was lead by investments from Redline Capital and new investor Northgate Capital as well as existing investor Sequoia Capital. Also as part of the financing, Tatiana Evtushenkova, Director of Redline Capital has joined the Viptela Board of Directors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a surprise move Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise said it would spin off its enterprise services business and merge it with CSC to create an IT services giant with $26 billion in annual revenue.It's the latest step by CEO Meg Whitman in her effort to turn around one of Silicon Valley's oldest companies. Just last year, Hewlett-Packard split itself into two vendors, with HPE selling data center products and services, and HP Inc. selling PCs.Now, HPE will slice itself up further, doubling down on its bet that a smaller company will be able to move faster and attract new business in a world increasingly dominated by the cloud.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers
HPE said it expects to complete the "spin-merger" by March 2017. The combined company will be led by Mike Lawrie, CSC's chairman, president and CEO. Whitman will have a seat on the board, and the remaining directors will be nominated half by HPE and half by CSC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Government agencies have done some work to mitigate the danger of electromagnetic threats to the electrical grid, but it’s not enough, says the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).Despite some action by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—such as developing a prototype transformer that would significantly speed recovery from a power outage caused by a failed transformer and studying the impacts of severe space weather, such as solar storms—more must be done to protect the grid, Homeland Security News Wire reports on the April-published GAO study (PDF).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“It’s time to take a stand,” says Redditor Grnslv, posting at r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt, “a subreddit dedicated specifically for Information Technology rage!”The stand in this case: opposition to compensation measured in calories. His screen capture explains: Redditor Grnslv
Not everyone participating in the ensuing discussion was a hardliner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Looking for a new job and a new city? See which metro areas made Glassdoor's ranking of the best locations in the U.S. for job seekers.Several of the top sites are major U.S. cities and tech hubs, but if that’s not your speed, don’t fret. Some of the best job opportunities are located in small and midsize metro areas, Glassdoor reports.To come up with its list, Glassdoor equally weighted four factors: hiring opportunity, cost of living, job satisfaction, and work-life balance.The report also includes median pay for employees and a few in-demand jobs for each metro location. While the ranking covers all kinds of jobs across all industries, a wide variety of tech positions appear among the in-demand jobs in most of the 25 cities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s definitely a service that’s taken for granted but HBO’s John Oliver this week pointed out that there’s a lot to be concerned about over the nation’s 911 emergency service.On Oliver’s Last Week Tonight HBO show, Oliver said 911 emergency call centers are antiquated, disjointed and in desperate need of funding and new technology. He said everyone should Google “understaffed 911 dispatch and [your town name]” to get an idea of problems near you and nationwide.Watch:
The watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office in 2013 wrote about 911 technologies: “The continuing evolution of communications technologies and wireless phones has implications for 911 services. Since 911 call centers predominantly use older, analog-based infrastructure and equipment, the current E911 system is not designed to accommodate emergency communications from the range of new technologies in common use today, including text and picture messaging and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony (e.g., Skype). In response to changing technologies, the Department of Transportation (DOT) launched the Next Generation 911 (NG911) Initiative, which has focused on the research required to develop an NG911 system. With NG911 services, the public could reach 911 call centers through various modes, including voice and data, and transmit multimedia Continue reading
The scam business of tricking employees into opening company coffers by spoof e-mails apparently from their CEO is on the rise.
The FBI says that the so-called business e-mail compromise scam has caused $2.3 billion in losses to 17,642 business and non-profit organizations in the U.S. and other countries since October 2013, with the number of victims nearly tripling since January 2015.
+More on network World: IRS: Top 10 2015 identity theft busts+
This week the Federal Trade Commission blog wrote that the CEO schemers first study their intended victims closely.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Appian Quick AppsKey features: Appian Quick Apps enables citizen developers without technical knowledge to create fully-functional business application in 15 minutes or less. Apps are automatically supported on leading devices, desktop web browsers and mobile devices. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here