When I began this blog in October of last year, my goal was to help readers understand both the magnitude of the digital transformation currently underway and its implications for companies and IT professionals in every industry. In particular, I focused on the role of the network in enabling digital business and best practices for transforming the network from a cost center to a growth driver.This is a subject near and dear to my heart because the networking industry has been my home for many years, and it has seen a lot of change. Come this fall, it’s likely so see a bit more. Last November, my company, Brocade, announced that it is being acquired by Broadcom Ltd., and in the next few months, that transaction is expected to be completed. I’m a perfect example of the fact that you can never fully predict how things will change; you can only know things will change. So I want to wrap up this blog series with a look back at some of the most important things you need to consider today to make sure you’re ready for whatever changes digital transformation may send in your direction.To read this Continue reading
With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wrapping up an SD-WAN workshop session with a client last week, I reflected on how rapidly the branch office WAN connectivity and management model is changing. Some great opportunities are emerging for enterprise IT teams that can materially impact how the network is designed, paid for and managed. Here are some thoughts:1. Public cloud is driving a lightweight edge security model
Most people agree that SD-WAN can facilitate service chaining, and a selective backhaul model is interesting to many enterprises that want to concentrate next-generation firewall services in larger locations. But with the rapid growth of distributed content in public cloud applications (even from Microsoft and Salesforce, who long resisted this trend that Google pioneered) it’s increasingly counterproductive to backhaul browsing traffic long distances from the end users. It reduces performance, and adds significant load at hubs on the network — not ideal when this can represent 80 percent or more of the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wrapping up an SD-WAN workshop session with a client last week, I reflected on how rapidly the branch office WAN connectivity and management model is changing. Some great opportunities are emerging for enterprise IT teams that can materially impact how the network is designed, paid for and managed. Here are some thoughts:1. Public cloud is driving a lightweight edge security model
Most people agree that SD-WAN can facilitate service chaining, and a selective backhaul model is interesting to many enterprises that want to concentrate next-generation firewall services in larger locations. But with the rapid growth of distributed content in public cloud applications (even from Microsoft and Salesforce, who long resisted this trend that Google pioneered) it’s increasingly counterproductive to backhaul browsing traffic long distances from the end users. It reduces performance, and adds significant load at hubs on the network — not ideal when this can represent 80 percent or more of the traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
My kids use the expression “easy, peasy” to describes something that is super simple. For example, I might ask my youngest child, “How was your math test?” And because high school math is beyond simple, he would respond, “Easy, peasy.” In life, there are things that should be easy, but we often overcomplicate them. One thing that should be easy every time is signing on to guest Wi-Fi. The fact that it isn’t, makes it one of my biggest pet peeves.+ Also on Network World: 9 free Wi-Fi stumbling and surveying tools +
Before I get into the why, I’ll take a step back and define guest Wi-Fi. Webopedia describes it as “a wireless router feature that is designed to allow users to easily grant visitor access to your wireless Internet connection.” Not to nitpick, but it’s more a Wi-Fi feature than a router feature, but most readers of this will get that. Also, note the word EASY in the definition, so all you Wi-Fi administrators out there, take note. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
My kids use the expression “easy, peasy” to describes something that is super simple. For example, I might ask my youngest child, “How was your math test?” And because high school math is beyond simple, he would respond, “Easy, peasy.” In life, there are things that should be easy, but we often overcomplicate them. One thing that should be easy every time is signing on to guest Wi-Fi. The fact that it isn’t, makes it one of my biggest pet peeves.+ Also on Network World: 9 free Wi-Fi stumbling and surveying tools +
Before I get into the why, I’ll take a step back and define guest Wi-Fi. Webopedia describes it as “a wireless router feature that is designed to allow users to easily grant visitor access to your wireless Internet connection.” Not to nitpick, but it’s more a Wi-Fi feature than a router feature, but most readers of this will get that. Also, note the word EASY in the definition, so all you Wi-Fi administrators out there, take note. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Picking the right network-monitoring platform can result in better network performance, more efficient use of IT staff and improved end-user productivity, so it’s important to pick the right one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Picking the right network-monitoring platform can result in better network performance, more efficient use of IT staff and improved end-user productivity, so it’s important to pick the right one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
There is no shortage of vendors competing for business at every part of the enterprise network - every vertical, every size business, from the edge to the core. None are created equal, but a few have separated themselves from the pack to become the 10 most powerful.This is Network World's understanding of the most powerful enterprise networking companies, which we based on our own research, consultations with trusted industry analysts and the work of our in-house journalists. For our purposes, we thought of power mostly as market share in key areas of the enterprise networking marketplace - specifically core networking, monitoring and management, WLAN and the edge, though we did consider their technology bases and important market factors as well. Enjoy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There is no shortage of vendors competing for business at every part of the enterprise network - every vertical, every size business, from the edge to the core. None are created equal, but a few have separated themselves from the pack to become the 10 most powerful.This is Network World's understanding of the most powerful enterprise networking companies, which we based on our own research, consultations with trusted industry analysts and the work of our in-house journalists. For our purposes, we thought of power mostly as market share in key areas of the enterprise networking marketplace - specifically core networking, monitoring and management, WLAN and the edge, though we did consider their technology bases and important market factors as well. Enjoy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As network pros rely more and more on SD-WAN to streamline connections among enterprise sites, the market for this technology will balloon from $225 million in 2015 to $1.19 billion by the end of this year, according to IDC.Over the next five years, SD-WAN sales will grow at a 69% compound annual growth rate, hitting $8.05 billion in 2021, according to IDC’s Worldwide SD-WAN Forecast, 2017–2021.As businesses adopt what IDC calls “third-platform” technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data and analytics, they put increased strain on the network. As organizations look to better connect their remote and branch office employees and provide them better quality network services, SD-WAN will continue to grow.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Much ink has been spilled on the topic of what constitutes true “line rate,” and in the past we’ve advocated offering traffic at, and only at, 100.00 percent of theoretical line rate to determine if frame loss exists. However, the distinction between 99.99 percent (which we used in these tests) and 100.00 percent load is not all that meaningful, especially at higher Ethernet speeds, for a couple of reasons. First, Ethernet is inherently an asynchronous technology, meaning each device (in this case, the device under test and the test instrument) uses one or more of its own free-running clocks, without synchronization. Thus, throughput measurements may just be artifacts of minor differences in the speeds of clock chips, not descriptions of a system’s fabric capacity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The device under test for this project was the Cisco Nexus 9516 data center core switch/router, a 16-slot chassis equipped with 1,024 50-gigabit Ethernet interfaces and two supervisor modules. Cisco equipped the switch with its N9K-X9732C-EX line cards, each of which offers 32, 64, or 128 ports of 100-, 50-, and 25-gigabit Ethernet capacity.The traffic generator/analyzer was Spirent TestCenter equipped with its 10/25/40/50/100G MX3 modules. The Spirent instrument has a measurement precision of +/- 2.5 nanoseconds.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How many ports are enough at the core of the data center? How does 1,024 sound?That’s the configuration we used to assess Cisco Systems’ Nexus 9516 data center core switch. In this exclusive Clear Choice test, we assessed the Cisco data center core switch with more than 1,000 50G Ethernet ports. That makes this by far the largest 50G test, and for that matter the highest-density switch test, Network World has ever published.As its name suggests, the Nexus 9516 accepts up to 16 N9K-X9732C-EX line cards, built around Cisco’s leaf-and-spine engine (LSE) ASICs. These multi-speed chips can run at 100G rates, for up to 512 ports per chassis; 50G rates for up to 1,024 ports; or 25G rates for up to 2,048 ports. We picked the 50G rate, and partnered with test and measurement vendor Spirent Communications to fully load the switch’s control and data planes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lately, I have been spending a lot of time on integrating security systems together, and specifically focusing a lot of my energy on Cisco’s Advanced Threat Security product family. (Disclosure: I am employed by Cisco.)Which is what brings me to Cisco’s Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), which is a solution to enable malware detection, blocking, continuous analysis and retrospective actions and alerting.In fact, when the Talos cyber-vigilantes parachute into an environment and performs their forensics analysis and active defense against attacks—AMP is one of the primary tools that they use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the late 1990s and early 2000s when it became too difficult for large companies to manage their own WAN footprints, they adopted managed multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services. These offered a simple connection at every location and offloaded the complexities of building large-scale routed networks from enterprises to the service provider.The advent of cloud computing, however, changed the dynamics of MPLS forever. Enterprises not only needed ubiquitous site-to-site connectivity, but also required better performance from the network to support Software as a Service-based business applications hosted in third-party data centers. In addition, video was becoming a standard mode of communication for corporate meeting and training applications, boosting the need for more bandwidth across the network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The concept of user performance management (UPM) is easy to understand but very difficult to implement. The Holy Grail of UPM would be a single, unified dashboard where IT operations would be able to “see” the status of every user. If a website were taking too long to load or an application were performing poorly, the operations staff could click on that user and immediately see where the problem is. One challenge for IT departments is that today’s user isn’t always a person. Thanks to the rise in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, “headless” clients that provide critical services to users now pump data through the network. For example, medical devices deliver time-critical information that can be the difference between life and death. Getting a grip on how these headless devices are performing on the network has become a daunting task for IT staff. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Networking performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) software, whether running as an independent appliance or embedded in networking equipment, can help stave off productivity issues for internal corporate users as well as those interacting with the network from the outside.But with ever-increasing traffic on corporate networks, users attempting to optimize connections to the cloud and new Internet of Things devices bombarding the network, enterprises and network performance monitoring vendors face growing challenges.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: 7 must-have network tools +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here