Archive

Category Archives for "Network World LAN & WAN"

IDG Contributor Network: Named data networking: Stateful forwarding plane for datagram delivery

The Internet was designed to connect things easily, but a lot has changed since its inception. Users now expect the internet to find the “what” (i.e., the content), but the current communication model is still focused on the “where.”The Internet has evolved to be dominated by content distribution and retrieval. As a matter of fact, networking protocols still focus on the connection between hosts that surfaces many challenges.The most obvious solution is to replace the “where” with the “what” and this is what Named Data Networking (NDN) proposes. NDN uses named content as opposed to host identifiers as its abstraction.How the traditional IP works To deliver packets from a source to a destination, IP needs to accomplish two phases of operation. The first phase is the routing plane also known as the control plane. This phase enables the routers to share routing updates and select the best path to construct the forwarding information table (FIB). The second phase is the forwarding plane also known as the data plane. This is the phase where forwarding to the next hop is executed upon FIB examination.To read this article in full, please click here

What is Linux? Everything you need to know about the open-source operating system

Linux is a tried-and-true, open-source operating system released in 1991 for computers, but its use has expanded to underpin systems for cars, phones, web servers and, more recently, networking gear.Its longevity, maturity and security make it one of the most trusted OSes available today, meaning it is ideal for commercial network devices as well as enterprises that want to use it and its peripherals to customize their own network and data center infrastructure.[ Also see Invaluable tips and tricks for troubleshooting Linux. ] That in turn makes Linux skills highly sought after by IT hiring managers. For example, many of the new technologies associated with DevOps, such as containers, infrastructure, and SDN controllers, are built on Linux.To read this article in full, please click here

Arm introduces Neoverse high-performance CPUs for servers, 5G

There have been some interesting developments in the Arm-as-a-server processor field, from Cavium’s success to Amazon offering much cheaper instances on its home-brew Arm processors. But now Arm Holdings itself is getting into the fray, and it's offering is a whopper.Last October, Arm announced the Neoverse platform designed specifically for cloud computing and edge network environments. This week it revealed the Neoverse N1 and E1 platforms, and they are impressive. Usually when Intel and AMD introduce new server chips, they are basically the same chips with faster clocks and more cores. But these two chips are very different in design and meant for different use cases.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco warns on HyperFlex security vulnerabilities

Cisco this week identified two “High” security vulnerabilities in its HyperFlex data-center package that could let attackers gain control of the system.  HyperFlex is Cisco’s hyperconverged infrastructure that offers computing, networking and storage resources in a single system. More about edge networking How edge networking and IoT will reshape data centers Edge computing best practices How edge computing can help secure the IoT The more critical of the two warnings – an 8.8 on Cisco’s severity scale of 1-10 – is a command-injection vulnerability in the cluster service manager of Cisco HyperFlex Software that could let an unauthenticated, attacker execute commands as the root user.To read this article in full, please click here

How managed network services are evolving to simplify the global WAN

Fundamentally, the way that carriers (i.e. telcos) deliver managed network services hasn’t changed in decades. The core architecture of this network, known as hub and spoke, consists of branches talking to the data center over a managed network with a separate firewall in the middle. However, this type of legacy WAN can’t support today’s business needs, which include a seminal shift to the cloud, as well as mobile users that need network access from anywhere, not just from the branch.Yishay Yovel, vice president of market strategy at Cato Networks, has followed the carriers’ dilemma for years. According to Yovel, there are numerous catalysts to this evolutionary change in the managed network services market.To read this article in full, please click here

Wi-Fi 6, 5G play big in Cisco’s mobile forecast

The popularity of mobile devices will continue its dramatic growth over the next four years as new technologies kick in with higher density and bandwidth, according to Cisco’s annual Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update (2017 – 2022) released this week. Perhaps the key forecast: Mobile traffic will be on the verge of reaching an annual run rate of a zettabyte by the end of 2022. In that timeframe, mobile traffic will represent nearly 20 percent of global IP traffic and will reach 930 exabytes annually – nearly 113 times more than all mobile traffic generated globally in 2012. (An exabyte is 1,000,000,000 gigabytes and a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes.)To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why blockchain may be blockchain’s best cybersecurity option

One of the hallmark features of blockchain is that it is supposedly much more secure, adding remarkable levels of transparency that could help better identify and mitigate cyber threats. But, at a time when we’re approaching 2,000 blockchain projects in development worldwide, watching thousands of crypto miners do their thing each day and seeing billions of investment dollars pouring in each year, are we taking warnings about potential threats seriously? Has the greater community taken some aspects of blockchain’s security for granted? The hard truths reveal affirmatives to both questions.To read this article in full, please click here

Like 4G before it, 5G is being hyped

Just as it did with 4G, AT&T has once again jumped the gun and announced that it was deploying 5G (actually, they’re calling it “5G E”) in twelve cities, only to be challenged by its three major competitors, who claim that AT&T was merely re-branding a faster version of 4G as 5G and misleading the public about the technology.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Vapor IO heads new edge computing alliance

Edge computing container specialist Vapor IO has organized the Kinetic Edge Alliance, a group of hardware, software and networking companies that plan to collaborate on accelerating the integration edge solutions.The list of partners includes Federated Wireless, Linode, MobiledgeX, Packet, StackPath, Alef Mobitech, Detecon International, Hitachi Vantara, New Continuum Data Centers, Pluribus Networks, and Seagate Technology.The Alliance plans to target the top 30 U.S. metro markets with its products, which cover nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population. So far, Vapor IO has begun rollouts in Chicago but plans for five more cities this year: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle.To read this article in full, please click here

That VPN may not be as secure as you think

If you’re a VPN subscriber and have ever wondered just how secure the supposedly encrypted pipe that you’re using through the internet is — and whether the anonymity promise made by the VPN provider is indeed protecting your privacy— well, your hunches may be correct. It turns out several of these connections are not secure.Academics say they’ve discovered a whopping 13 programming errors in 61 separate VPN systems tested recently. The configuration bungles “allowed Internet traffic to travel outside the encrypted connection,” the researchers say.The independent research group, made up of computer scientists from UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Spain’s Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies (IMDEA) with International Computer Science Institute, write in the Conversation this month, some of which is redistributed by Homeland Security Newswire, that six of 200 VPN services also scandalously monitored user traffic. That’s more serious than unintended leaks, the team explains — users trust providers not to snoop. The point of a VPN is to be private and not get monitored. VPN use ranges from companies protecting commercial secrets on public Wi-Fi to dissidents.To read this article in full, please click here

Lentiq combines data lakes with edge computing

It’s a common tactic to combine two technologies for synergy sake, but Lentiq really has a unique idea. It is combining the concept of the data lake with edge computing into what it calls “interconnected micro data lakes,” or data pools.“Data pools” are micro-data lakes that function like a data lake while supporting popular apps such as Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and Streamsets software, or “everything a data scientist or data engineer needs,” according to the company.The data pools exist independently across different clouds, and governance rules are enforced only when the data moves, so each department will have the tools needed for their use cases and access to the data they need.To read this article in full, please click here

SD-WAN can help solve challenges of multi-cloud

With SD-WAN becoming remote users’ primary access to cloud-based applications, and with organizations deploying multi-cloud environments to optimize performance, it’s important for IT pros to choose SD-WAN technology that supports secure, low-latency and easy-to-manage connectivity to their cloud providers.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Cisco pushes silicon photonics for enterprise, webscale networking

Cisco says it's closed its deal to buy optical-semiconductor firm Luxtera for $660 million bringing it the advanced optical technology customers will need for speed and throughput for future data-center and webscale networks.When Cisco announced the deal in December, Rob Salvagno, Cisco vice president of Corporate Business Development, said, “As system port capacity increases from 100GbE to 400GbE and beyond, optics plays an increasingly important role in addressing network infrastructure constraints, particularly density and power requirements.”To read this article in full, please click here

Coming soon: On-premises 5G gear for enterprises

With all major mobile carriers expected to offer 5G this year, enterprises that want to take advantage of this next-gen mobile data service need to start thinking about how to support it on site.Anticipation is keen for 5G, given that it promises to deliver faster speeds and lower latency than the current premium wireless technology, 4G LTE. Ideally, 5G networks could deliver fast internet to areas of the country where wired broadband is unavailable, and more reliable connections to a variety of devices including not only computers and smartphones but also appliances, automobiles and security systems. But to use these services as a WAN option, businesses need hardware that can connect it to their existing wired and wireless LANs.To read this article in full, please click here

SD-WAN creates new security challenges

SD-WAN products have been available for the better part of five years. Early adopters of the technology focused primarily on transport-related issues such as replacing or augmenting MPLS with broadband. As any technology matures and moves out of the early adopter phase, the buying criteria changes — and SD-WAN is no different.In 2018, a ZK Research survey asked respondents to rank SD-WAN buying criteria, and security came out as the top response, well ahead of technology innovation and price. (Note: I am employee of ZK Research.) To better understand this trend and what it means to network professionals, I sat down with Fortinet’s executive vice president of products and solutions, John Maddison, who sets the company’s product strategy, making him well versed in both SD-WAN and security.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Named data networking: names the data instead of data locations

Today, connectivity to the Internet is easy; you simply get an Ethernet driver and hook up the TCP/IP protocol stack. Then dissimilar network types in remote locations can communicate with each other. However, before the introduction of the TCP/IP model, networks were manually connected but with the TCP/IP stack, the networks can connect themselves up, nice and easy. This eventually caused the Internet to explode, followed by the World Wide Web.So far, TCP/IP has been a great success. It’s good at moving data and is both robust and scalable. It enables any node to talk to any other node by using a point-to-point communication channel with IP addresses as identifiers for the source and destination. Ideally, a network ships the data bits. You can either name the locations to ship the bits to or name the bits themselves. Today’s TCP/IP protocol architecture picked the first option. Let’s discuss the section option later in the article.To read this article in full, please click here

1 2 3 … 105