Cisco’s DNA Center is a new network automation software that the company has positioned as the interface for its ambitious intent-based networking (IBN) strategy.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What is intent-based networking? | Why intent-based networking could be a big deal +Launched in the summer of 2017, the IBN plan to build an intuitive network has a variety of components that include DNA Center, which is the provisioning dashboard for managing the campus and branch networks.To read this article in full, please click here
The holiday season is as good a time as any to take stock of what we witnessed in 2017, and from a technology perspective it was a year unlike any other. We saw the value of crypto currencies skyrocket and the opening of a crypto-futures market. The first shipments of 400G technologies into the wide-area-network with AT&T and Vodafone New Zealand, the continued deployment of Software-Defined Networking, a technology we’ve long championed, an early example of augmented reality go viral with Pokémon Go and Virtual Reality start to reshape the way we interact with the world around us – such as changing how we watch live sports.To read this article in full, please click here
The reality for security teams today is that they are facing challenges on multiple fronts. The number of security breaches is increasing, which means the number of security alerts to be examined each day is increasing. The attacks are becoming more sophisticated and multi-dimensional. The number of cybersecurity solutions available continues to grow, which requires time and effort to understand. The amount of data in the network is snowballing, which means the cybersecurity infrastructure needs to be constantly updated to keep up. What’s worse is that all this is happening in the midst of new networking paradigms related to cloud, virtualization and software-defined data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
Research firm IHS Markit recently released its Data Center Network Equipment market tracker report for Q4 2017 by analyst Cliff Grossner, which includes Software-Defined WANs (SD-WAN). I don’t normally comment on other industry research, but I have tremendous respect for Grossner, and his quantitative numbers are among the best. So, I felt a deep dive into his findings on the SD-WAN market was worth the effort.Also read: Why 2018 will be the year of the WAN
It’s important to note that Grossner’s numbers include SD-WAN appliance and control management software revenue and not services, so his numbers will be smaller than other firms, such as IDC, which has the market pegged somewhere in the billion-dollar range. Neither is better than the other, per se; they’re just different.To read this article in full, please click here
The way we manage and monitor networks is morphing. Passive, reactive tools are being replaced by more proactive network analytics systems that give the entire network team a single source of truth about network behavior and a much deeper understanding of where infrastructure issues are hiding and what to do about them.Before IT was forever changed by the arrival of mobile devices, virtualization and cloud apps, fixing network problems was relatively simple because users plugged into the network from one location to access local applications and resources.But with the proliferation of diverse wireless clients – a range of hardware using different versions of different operating systems (the permutations can quickly scale into the thousands) – and the use of applications and services that are often not under IT’s control, getting to the heart of individual user and systemic client network problems has become the new nightmare.To read this article in full, please click here
The fundamental shift of the enterprise toward the cloud has posed a conundrum for many. The largest issue is the state of most enterprise networks. These networks were designed for an era gone by. Their original designs could not foresee the coming of technologies such as SDN, SDWAN, Segment Routing, the Cloud and an exponential increase in bandwidth that have all happened over the past 10 years.The IPv4 Internet BGP routing table alone has experienced a 10% year over year growth between 2009 and 2017 along. In 2009 the table eclipsed 286,000 routes. Here in 2017 we are at approximately 650,000. These figures only account for IPv4 routes, and not the full IPv4 and IPv6 tables. During that same period we have gone from token ring and 10Base-T to 100GbE.To read this article in full, please click here
Most people think of Aerohive Networks as a Wi-Fi vendor, which makes sense given most of the company’s revenue comes from selling wireless access points into businesses. In actuality, Aerohive is a cloud management vendor that has applied its expertise in that area to wireless LANs. About year ago, the company introduced its software-defined LAN (SD-LAN) solution that includes wireless APs and wired switches, enabling its customers to manage the entire campus network from the cloud.This week, Aerohive extended its reach into the WAN with the release of its SD-WAN solution that can be managed through HiveManager, the same cloud management tool used for its SD-LAN products, giving customers a single console for managing the WAN, wired network and wireless APs.To read this article in full, please click here
Undersea, internet-carrying cables are not protected well enough and there isn’t an alternative in place should they fail.That's according to a new report from U.K.-based Policy Exchange, which outlines potential catastrophic effects that a simple cut in the hosepipe-sized underwater infrastructure could create.Also on Network World: The hidden cause of slow Internet and how to fix it
Tsunamis, a vessel dragging an anchor, or even saw-wielding Russians could bring down the global financial system or cripple a solo nation’s internet access, Policy Exchange says in its new study (pdf).To read this article in full, please click here
About a decade ago almost all data centers were built on a traditional three- (or sometimes more) tier architectures that used the spanning tree protocol (STP). That prevented routing loops but also deactivated all the backup links, which accounted for almost half the ports in large environments. This caused organizations to significantly overspend on their networks.Leaf-spine networks, on the other hand, have only two tiers, are much flatter and use something called ECMP (equal cost multi-pathing). So all routes are active, creating a much more efficient network that more agile and costs less.Also on Network World: 10 Most important open source networking projects
The traditional three-tier data center was designed to scale up, which was the key requirement in the client/server era. Leaf-spine is optimized for rapid scale out, which has become critical in data centers today, as more and more traffic is moving in an East-West direction. To read this article in full, please click here
The booming popularity of Linux happened around the same time as the rise of the web. The server world, once proprietary, eventually fell in love with Linux just the same way networking did. But for years after it began growing in popularity, it remained in the background. It powered some of the largest servers, but couldn’t find success on personal devices. That all changed with Google’s release of Android in 2008, and just like that, Linux found its way not only onto phones but onto other consumer devices.The same shift from proprietary to open is happening in networking. Specialized hardware that came from one of the “big 3” networking vendors isn’t so necessary anymore. What used to require this specialized hardware can now be done (with horsepower to spare) using off-the-shelf hardware, with Intel CPUs, and with the Linux operating system. Linux unifies the stack, and knowing it is useful for both the network and the rest of the rack. With Linux, networking is far more affordable, more scalable, easier to learn, and more adaptable to the needs of the business.To read this article in full, please click here
VMware today released a new version of its NSX virtual networking software that aims to make it easier to manage network requirements of cloud-native and application-container-based applications.The move represents the latest example of a network vendor evolving its automation tooling to operate in not just traditional data center and campus networks, but increasingly in cloud environments that cater to a faster-pace of application development.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What SDN is and where its going +VMware has two separate versions of its software-defined networking (SDN) software. The more popular and widely-used version named NSX integrates with VMware’s vSphere virtualization management software and the company’s popular ESXi compute hypervisor.To read this article in full, please click here
When most non-technical people hear the term “seven layers”, they either think of the popular Super Bowl bean dip or they mistakenly think about the seven layers of Hell, courtesy of Dante’s Inferno (there are nine). For IT professionals, the seven layers refer to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, a conceptual framework that describes the functions of a networking or telecommunication system.The model uses layers to help give a visual description of what is going on with a particular networking system. This can help network managers narrow down problems (Is it a physical issue or something with the application?), as well as computer programmers (when developing an application, which other layers does it need to work with?). Tech vendors selling new products will often refer to the OSI model to help customers understand which layer their products work with or whether it works “across the stack”.To read this article in full, please click here
During the past three decades, we have seen a monumental growth in networking technology. From RFC-1163, which describes the beginnings of BGP in 1989 to the cloud and software defined networks of today, our voracious appetite for bandwidth and services have begun to outpace the networking industry’s ability to deliver.I remember when I had my first “broadband” – and I use that term loosely – circuit installed at my house. It was a 128kbps ISDN line from my local telco. Since it was 1996, I was riding high compared to everyone else using 28.8 kpbs modems to access the internet. Today I have a 1Gbps connection that allows me to stream 4k video from multiple providers. In roughly 20 years, my consumption of bandwidth has increased 8000%!To read this article in full, please click here
IDG
Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) technology is sweeping across the industry, growing from an emerging technology in 2017 to become mainstream in 2018.Research firm IDC predicts SD-WAN revenues will hit $2.3 billion in 2018, growing 69% on a compound annual growth rate to reach more than $8 billion by 2021. “2017 saw a lot of early adopters of SD-WAN that were limited to maybe two or three sites,” says IDC networking analyst Brad Casemore. “Now, rollouts are getting a lot bigger; we’re starting to see hockey-stick inflection point.”To read this article in full, please click here
IDG
The world of enterprise Wi-Fi moves fast, but 2018 is going to see gear based on 802.11ac Wave 2 remain the state of the art – its successor, 802.11ax, is still one for the future.Wave 2 is the latest Wi-Fi standard to be certified by the IEEE. Its main technological innovation is MU-MIMO, or multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output. In practice, this means that manufacturers can create access points that talk to multiple devices at the same instant. Earlier APs had to handle multiple streams sequentially.To read this article in full, please click here
IDG
The world of enterprise Wi-Fi moves fast, but 2018 is going to see gear based on 802.11ac Wave 2 remain the state of the art – its successor, 802.11ax, is still one for the future.Wave 2 is the latest Wi-Fi standard to be certified by the IEEE. Its main technological innovation is MU-MIMO, or multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output. In practice, this means that manufacturers can create access points that talk to multiple devices at the same instant. Earlier APs had to handle multiple streams sequentially.To read this article in full, please click here
IDG
The world of enterprise Wi-Fi moves fast, but 2018 is going to see gear based on 802.11ac Wave 2 remain the state of the art – its successor, 802.11ax, is still one for the future.Wave 2 is the latest Wi-Fi standard to be certified by the IEEE. Its main technological innovation is MU-MIMO, or multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output. In practice, this means that manufacturers can create access points that talk to multiple devices at the same instant. Earlier APs had to handle multiple streams sequentially.To read this article in full, please click here
IDG
As the preeminent networking company shapes its plans for 2018, analysts and users say Cisco is at somewhat of an inflection point, transitioning from a hardware-based company to an integrated hardware and software-focused one.In doing so, Cisco has plotted the next generation of its network management products in the form of intent-based networking. Meanwhile, as hardware sales growth slows due to workloads shifting to the public cloud, the company eyes the Internet of Things and edge computing as new frontiers for revenue growth.To read this article in full, please click here
Tesla’s “Maximum Plaid” speed mode rockets its new Roadster from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds. If you think that’s fast, go ahead and Google “5G.”5G is Plaid for cellular networking – a next-generation mobile network that promises not only ten-times the available spectrum, for ten-times the download speeds, but across ten-times the devices and with a fraction of the latency.The move from 1Gbps to 10Gbps speeds will support bandwidth-intensive applications like high-definition video and virtual reality, and near real-time connections will enable ultra-low latency applications like autonomous cars, remote surgery and specialized applications within the Internet of Things (IoT).To read this article in full, please click here
Tesla’s “Maximum Plaid” speed mode rockets its new Roadster from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds. If you think that’s fast, go ahead and Google “5G.”5G is Plaid for cellular networking – a next-generation mobile network that promises not only ten-times the available spectrum, for ten-times the download speeds, but across ten-times the devices and with a fraction of the latency.The move from 1Gbps to 10Gbps speeds will support bandwidth-intensive applications like high-definition video and virtual reality, and near real-time connections will enable ultra-low latency applications like autonomous cars, remote surgery and specialized applications within the Internet of Things (IoT).To read this article in full, please click here