Fresh off a positive earnings call that saw Cisco report $11.9 billion in revenue for the 2Q 2018 — a 3 percent increase from the same quarter in 2017 and the first time in 6 quarters the company reported year-over-year sales increases — CEO Chuck Robbins has a lot to crow about. First of all, the company's most strategic new direction: The Network. Intuitive, more commonly known as intent-based networking is rapidly finding acceptance amongst customers, Robbins said.+RELATED: Getting grounded in intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here
For the most part the dire warnings about running out of internet addresses have ceased because, slowly but surely, migration from the world of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6 has begun, and software is in place to prevent the address apocalypse that many were predicting.But before we see where are and where we’re going with IPv6, let’s go back to the early days of internet addressing.+Related: IPv6 deployment guide; How to plan your migration to IPv6+To read this article in full, please click here
Today is Valentine’s Day, and that means showing appreciation to the people you love. I love my kids; my cats; my new puppy, Bodhi; and most of all my wonderful and amazing wife, Christine. She’s a kind, warm and loving person who has been fighting a rare illness called CVID for the past few years and still keeps a smile on her face and stops to smell the roses — something I’m not very good at.I would also like to use this Valentine’s Day to show appreciation for cool infrastructure innovation because the new stuff is becoming super important.To read this article in full, please click here
Standing up a private cloud using technology from multiple vendors is a time-consuming, complex process that involves months of post-deployment tweaking and tuning.In 2009, VMware, Cisco and EMC formed a joint venture called VCE that aimed to solve that problem. (Note: Cisco and VMWare are clients of ZK Research.) They created a converged infrastructure (CI) product called “Vblock” that brought together VMware software, Cisco servers and networking with EMC storage in a preconfigured, turnkey, validated solution so customers could essentially turn the product on and start using it.Also on Network World: Azure Stack: Microsoft’s private-cloud platform and what IT pros need to know about it
Vblock had 90 percent of the heavy lifting done, with the other 10 percent being unique the organization. Customers loved it, with many saying Vblock was the only way to get a private cloud up and running inside a week. To read this article in full, please click here
The Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang are underway and all eyes are on the competitors. They are also on the digital infrastructure and technology allowing billions around the world to view world record-breaking moments in real-time. The 2018 Games represent the world’s first deployment of a broad-scale 5G network, thanks to a partnership between domestic telecom provider KT, Intel and Samsung. The new capabilities have been on the horizon for some time. We saw 5G steal the show a year ago at Mobile World Congress, and Verizon and AT&T have each announced plans to offer 5G networks before the end of 2018. So, what does the emergence of 5G networks mean for enterprises?To read this article in full, please click here
Demand for SD-WAN delivered as a managed service is exploding as customers see the benefits that SD-WAN can bring to their distributed organizations.For example, communications service providers (CSPs) such as Verizon, NTT, and BT all report strong demand for SD-WAN services. Plus, hundreds of other CSPs, cable providers (e.g. Comcast), managed service providers (MSPs), and system integrators have recently deployed new SD-WAN services.Also on Network World: SD-WAN: What is it and why you’ll use it one day | How to make the transition to SD-WAN
We also see that managed SD-WAN revenues are growing rapidly as they displace traditional managed WAN services (e.g. private lines and MPLS) — an addressable market of over $40 billion in business services.To read this article in full, please click here
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a significant and growing subset of the larger Internet of Things (IoT) movement, so you have to ask, “Is my network ready for machine-to-machine (M2M) devices?”To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Automation is currently the top priority for almost every technology-driven enterprise this year. Ever wondered why automation is taking center stage in the industry today? Why is it impacting and dominating the tech industry?New innovations and cutting-edge technologies are creating a massive demand among end users for high quality products and services. These customers are not willing to compromise when it comes to time, quality results. This demand for quick turn arounds and impeccable quality can only be achieved with the help of automation. In fact, enterprise automation is now essential when it comes to meeting increasing consumer demands, while digitally transforming the industry along.To read this article in full, please click here
IDC tells us that most companies are using more than one cloud and that cloud usage isn’t just about cost savings. Three out of every four companies are using cloud to chase additional revenue in the form of new customers, risk mitigation, IoT enablement or time to market gains. Most are using multiple external cloud services.However, especially as microservices become the dominant approach to new application development because of the iteration speed improvements that it provides, it has become important to distinguish the different ways that more than one cloud can be utilized. Specifically, the differences lie in where you sit in an organization and what you are trying to optimize from that seat. Although historically we’ve used the terms interchangeably, hybrid and multi cloud are not the same.To read this article in full, please click here
Remember just a few years ago, when everyone was talking about cloud computing? While cloud was consuming all the air in the room, few people were paying attention to another technology trend—one with the potential to transform industrial enterprises. I’m talking about edge computing.The idea of placing computing resources at the network’s edge—at or near where production processes are occurring—is not a completely new idea. Industrial control has relied on distributed computers to control manufacturing machines and processes for decades. But as manufacturers come under increasing competitive pressure, the need to optimize their efficiency, productivity and quality has become a matter of survival. This imperative requirement is driving companies across the industrial spectrum to look at how pushing intelligence out to the edge can help them gain a competitive advantage.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco Enterprise Agreements (“EAs”) are becoming an increasingly popular vehicle for purchasing and consuming software products and services from Cisco.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Network functions virtualization (NFV) enables IT pros to modernize their networks with modular software running on standard server platforms.Over time, NFV will deliver high-performance networks with greater scalability, elasticity, and adaptability at reduced costs compared to networks built from traditional networking equipment. NFV covers a wide range of network applications, but is driven primarily by new network requirements, including video, SD-WAN, Internet of Things and 5G.To read this article in full, please click here
As an IT professional, you were hired for a certain, specialized job. But why can’t you seem to get it done? Maybe you’ve been busy “fighting fires.” For anyone responsible for network infrastructure, that’s a leading culprit. But there are others.On the theory that to solve a problem first you need to identify it, we’ve listed a number of obstacles that may be keeping you and your team from the mission-critical parts of your jobs. Taking note of these distractions can be a first step toward fashioning solutions that lead to better outcomes for you and your organization.Infrastructure firefighting
When things don’t go according to plan and you have to trade your strategic IT roadmap for tactical reactionary decisions - that’s infrastructure firefighting. The network may not be working as intended; capacity planning may be off mark; production issues could be causing outages, requiring in-depth explanation and research to mitigate repeat outages in the future. Outages may require special actions, as we discuss in this article. You may not have signed on to extinguish unwanted fires, but like it or not, that has become part of your job.To read this article in full, please click here
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is a common term in IT that represents the average time required to repair a failed component or device. In networking, MTTR is often longer than desired because there are many interdependencies, whereby an issue in one part of the network may cause a problem much farther downstream. Furthermore, a configuration change might appear to create a new issue, when in fact it just exposed something that was there all along but hidden. It takes quite a bit of forensics to get to the root cause of a network problem. In the meantime (pun intended), there is plenty of blame to go around. The Wi-Fi network seems to be at the top of the list when the accusations fly – more so than any other section of the network. Why is that?To read this article in full, please click here
When enterprises started moving workloads and applications to the public cloud, it made sense to adapt existing networking technologies to the new domain. But while compute and storage have successfully become ‘cloud-like,’ networking hasn't.Cloud networking solutions being offered by companies including Aviatrix, Cisco, and Juniper Network are all vying to help organizations solve networking challenges when transforming their infrastructure to public cloud. But as cloud implementations become more complex, it’s becoming clear that cloud connectivity solutions based on virtualized datacenter networking technologies lack the agility and elasticity required to build and scale in the public cloud.To read this article in full, please click here
Internet throughput issues, prevalent in many homes, may become a thing of the past thanks to a new and inexpensive invention that copies how major internet networks perform data links between cities and countries.Scientists at University College London (UCL) say they’ve figured out how to bring down the cost of highly efficient optical transceivers so that they can be installed en masse around consumer environments.Also read: 5G wireless could change networking as we know it
The receiver technology, when fully developed, will be able to provide a consistent 10,000 Mbps connection to homes and small businesses by removing a choke point that exists now at the point where fiber subscribers are connected to the ISP, the researchers claim. Average all fixed-line, download speeds in the U.S. are currently only 64 Mbps in comparison, according to a Speedtest study. Optimization should be able to increase that, though.To read this article in full, please click here
Software tools for testing Wi-Fi can run on a laptop, but dedicated hardware tools offer the convenience of a sometimes less cumbersome form-factor that are compact enough to fit in the pouch of a laptop bag.This article looks at five of these devices: AirCheck G2 Wireless Tester (NETSCOUT), Cape Networks Sensor, EyeQ Wi-Fi Monitor (7SIGNAL), NetBeez Wi-Fi Monitor and WiFi Pineapple Tetra.+Also see: REVIEW: Mojo wireless intrusion prevention system; 8 Free Wi-Fi Stumbling tools+To read this article in full, please click here
If portions of enterprise data-center networks have no need to communicate directly with the internet, then why do we configure routers so every system on the network winds up with internet access by default?To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
When the company unveiled its intent-based network system (IBNS) solution at its “Network. Intuitive.” event in San Francisco last year, that version focused on bringing the concept of a “self-driving” network to the enterprise campus and was dependent on customers having the new Catalyst 9000 switches. Cisco’s solution works as a closed-loop system where the data from the network is collected and then analyzed to turn intent into commands that can be orchestrated.To accomplish that, Cisco’s IBNS requires two components: translation to capture intent, translate it into policy, and check integrity, and activation to orchestrate the policies and configure the systems.To read this article in full, please click here
I was in the local Best Buy the other day and overheard a conversation between a saleswoman and a father looking to buy a computer for his daughter. Apparently, the daughter is a designer, which of course requires lots of heavy graphics work. Anyway, the saleswoman was trying to explain how he should invest a little bit more in an expensive graphics card because of her work. The father wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted the least expensive machine possible.It was a mistake.Part of the art of life is knowing when and where to invest your resources for maximum return. Sometimes less is, well, less and investing a bit more really can make a difference. I know you didn’t come to this blog for self-help advice, but life’s truism has real-world implications for wide area networks and, in particular, when selecting the Internet infrastructure underlying your SD-WAN.To read this article in full, please click here