Trying to keep business professionals ahead of the rapidly changing technology environment, Cisco this week rolled out new business certificate and training packages.The package includes a certification-level offering for what’s known as a client advocate or a Customer Success Manager. The other certification has to do with helping business professionals learn how to build and transform corporations into the digital environment.+More on Network World: DHS warns on immigration spoofing scam+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News this morning that former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez reportedly had committed suicide sent the murderer’s name to the top of Twitter’s “trending” list. Clicking on it brought back a string of tweets that was positively littered with graphic pornography. Twitter
How much porn? I reported and blocked at least a half-dozen tweets and my rough estimate would be that about 1 in 50 were obscene (the flow has since receded to a trickle). I have been a daily, heavy user of Twitter since 2008 and this is by no means the first time I have encountered porn there. And, yes, it has previously been noticeable in instances where fast-breaking news makes the trending list. However, today’s deluge was by far the most concentrated and, well, offensive. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprises are adopting software-defined WAN to simplify branch office connectivity, improve application performance, and better manage WAN expenses, according to Gartner, which predicts that spending on SD-WAN products will rise from $129 million in 2016 to $1.24 billion in 2020.“While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking,” Gartner writes.Two early adopters of SD-WAN shared some of the gains they’re realizing from the technology. The Bay Club Company and Autodesk are deploying SD-WAN technology from VeloCloud and CloudGenix, respectively, to transform the way they provision and support remote sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
True legends in any field are few and far between but Robert Taylor, who died last week at 85, was definitely was one in the field of computer networking.A key figure on the development of the Internet and ubiquitous Ethernet, Taylor was also instrumental in developing the first personal computer known as the Alto and a host of other computer and networking advances throughout his career. And his career was dotted with major positions at Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Stanford Research Institute, NASA, the Pentagon, Xerox and Digital Equipment Corporation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A few special “light antennas” dotted around a room would provide significantly more bandwidth for internet-connected devices than traditional Wi-Fi, says a Dutch scientist. Wi-Fi’s days could be numbered if the technology works as suggested.+ Also on Network World: IoT device sales set to surge in next decade +
With this new Wi-Fi replacement system that’s been proposed, benign, infrared rays of light emitted from ceiling-mounted transmitters would beam bandwidth-intensive streams of data at smartphones and laptops within the room. And each ray of light could provide 40 gigabits per second, says Joanne Oh, a Ph.D. researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in a news article on the university’s website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For such a seemingly obvious idea, Gartner ignited quite a firestorm with its proposition that, to remain relevant, IT must be broken into two distinct realms: one focused on keeping the lights on, or, in Gartner parlance, Mode 1, and one devoted to the cool stuff that business people want, or Mode 2.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) technology promises enterprises true transport independence and flexibility. SD-WAN adopters can turn to any transport protocol -- 3G, 4G LTE, MPLS, Internet or Wi-Fi -- to provide the best cost and performance benefits for specific applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If you operate a small or medium-size U.S. business, you can expect to pay more for broadband services in the near future because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to deregulate providers of business data lines, critics of the proposal say.Users of ATMs, shoppers in stores that use credit card scanners, and mobile phone customers could also see prices go up after the FCC deregulates the so-called business data services (BDS) market. Schools and hospitals also depend on BDS for their broadband service, and prices could rise as much as 25 percent in areas where the FCC removes price caps, critics warn.The FCC is scheduled to vote Thursday on a proposal from Republican Chairman Ajit Pai that would deregulate large parts of the BDS market, which generates an estimated US$45 billion a year for AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom carriers. Incumbent telecom carriers welcome the plan, saying there's plenty of competition in the BDS market, sometimes called special access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. If you want to get a sense for how rapidly the SD-WAN market is evolving, go back and read some of the articles from, say, two years ago. Some of the talk was about startup companies entering the market, while other items describe how traditional WAN hardware vendors were pivoting to get into the lucrative new market of building network functions in software.Predictions of the eventual market size varied back then, but everyone knew it would be big. Doyle Research thought it might get to $3.2 billion by 2018. IDC projected a $6 billion market by 2020. I wouldn’t be surprised if those estimates from a few years ago turn out to be too conservative.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
5G technology, despite some fairly breathless hype, is still in the embryonic stages of development, but the pace is quickening. The major U.S. carriers are racing to buy up critical spectrum that will be necessary for the realization of 5G’s potential, which could include support for speeds up to 1Gbps and support for the ever-expanding Internet of Things.AT&T has made two major purchases with that end in mind – January saw the company announce the acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, of bankrupt wireless backhaul provider FiberTower, and just this week AT&T said that it would spend about $1.6 billion in an all-stock deal to acquire Straight Path Communications (Note: A Reuters report overnight cited sources as saying Verizon might try to top AT&T’s bid).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The NETGEAR CM700 High Speed Cable Modem is certified to work with most major cable providers, and may save you $100 or more annually by eliminating modem rental fees you may currently be paying. It provides a connection to high-speed cable Internet with speeds up to 1.4 Gbps. It is CableLabs certified DOCSIS 3.0 that is 32X faster than 2.0 devices. A Gigabit Ethernet port provides faster access and downloads. Its typical list price of $129.99 has been reduced to $99. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Good Friday 2017, the Easter Bunny dropped off Avaya’s Chapter 11 plan for reorganization at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of N.Y. The plan is aimed at significantly cutting Avaya’s pre-filing debt, which had become an anchor around an otherwise healthy and profitable company. The reduction of debt will strengthen the company’s balance sheet, putting the company in a position to be successful in the future. A healthy financial position leads to M&A opportunities, funding of R&D, hiring of new sales people or any other number of options. + Also on Network World: Avaya files Chapter 11 reorg plan, reduces debt by $4 billion | 4 possible outcomes for Avaya +
The proposed plan includes the following terms:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Avaya has filed a chapter 11 reorganization plan the company says will significantly reduce Avaya's pre-filing debt, strengthening its balance sheet and improve financial flexibility and position it for long-term success.+More on Network World: Avaya plan deploys network virtualization, segmentation to guard business jewels+Under the proposed plan, which must be approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York a number of actions are proposed, including:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're a Verizon customer who uses the carrier's email service, you very well might have an imminent decision to make about your Verizon.net address or risk losing access to your account and associated data.Verizon has been notifying customers on a rolling basis in recent months that it plans to shutter its email service so that the company can focus on higher priorities. The Verizon.net email domain can be traced back to 2000, when Verizon formed, and the company stopped issuing new Verizon.net email addresses in late 2015.While attempting to reconfigure my wireless plan today to avoid a possible data overage charge, I noticed on my main Verizon Wireless account page that I had received a series of increasingly urgent messages from the service provider in recent weeks —"Act now or lose email access" was the latest. I actually never use my Verizon email, so hadn't been checking messages and really don't care if mine dies off. Verizon is giving me a cut-off date of April 19.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.The flexibility of the cloud has driven IT to look closely at opportunities to replicate that agility in their own infrastructure and operations. Automation initiatives have optimized many layers of the computing stack, but application delivery services remain a last-mile problem as network teams find themselves hamstrung by inflexible legacy architectures.While virtual appliances for load balancing, long thought of as the answer for software-driven infrastructure, have existed since the advent of virtualization, they inherit most of the architectural challenges of legacy solutions, including limited scalability, lack of central management and orchestration, and performance limitations. Instead, what is needed is an application delivery architecture based on software-defined principles that logically separates the control plane from the data plane delivering the application services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Avaya has rolled out products it says will help enterprise customers more easily segment traffic between widely dispersed networked resources and effectively protect corporate data.The two central components of what the company calls its Data Center Everywhere plan include a new hardware-independent operating system for the company’s switches – the Virtual Service 8000 non-Avaya products such as x86, or ARM platforms – that lets customers deploy virtualized network functions anywhere in the network.+More on Network World: Cisco, Mitel, NEC and others are targeting Avaya’s customers as the networking company goes through Chapter 11 bankruptcy+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Machine learning is a modern wonder, but as with any new technology, opinions differ as to what the future holds. Some label it a fad, while others see limitless applications.We are firmly in the optimistic camp. Machine learning, even as it continues to develop, is already widely understood, and open-source libraries and cloud computing engines make the technology accessible to every software engineer. Most important, machine learning solutions are finding their way into enterprise networks. We already see machine learning applied to problems such as network management, enterprise security and IoT.As various enterprise networking vendors and startups incorporate machine learning, they are adopting very similar architectures, reinforcing a change in the way we view the network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This gadget from TP-Link plugs into a standard outlet and allows you to control it from anywhere using your smartphone, or with your voice through an Alexa device. Program on/off times or put it in "away mode" to simulate being home while you're away. The typical list price of $49.99 has been reduced 30% to $34.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The global seafood industry is over $190 billion. Millions of fishers take to the oceans each day to feed local communities and a growing global appetite for seafood.How can the demand for fish be met while maintaining healthy oceans? A new IoT-based solution holds promise.Background: The challenge of monitoring fishing boats
Over half of the world’s seafood is exported from developing countries. Much of the catch is from small fishing boats, which are difficult to monitor and protect. Commercial fishing in developing regions typically occurs within 30 miles from land. Establishing a communication channel that can support hundreds of fishing boats spread out over a large area is a challenge. Boats are small and lack dependable power. Devices have to be both affordable and rugged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fortinet has rolled out a new version of its FortiOS operating system that gives customers the ability to manage security capabilities across their cloud assets and software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) environments.With FortiOS 5.6, the company’s Fortinet Security Fabric gives a view of customers’ public and private clouds – including Amazon Web Services and Azure – as well as assets on and their software-defined WANs, says John Maddison, Fortinet’s senior vice president of products.+More on Network World: DARPA to eliminate “patch & pray” by baking chips with cybersecurity fortification+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here