Despite the goal of keeping Web communications private, flaws in the design and implementation of Transport Layer Security have led to breaches, but the latest version – TLS 1.3 – is an overhaul that strengthens and streamlines the crypto protocol.What is TLS?
TLS is a cryptographic protocol that provides end-to-end communications security over networks and is widely used for internet communications and online transactions. It is an IETF standard intended to prevent eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery. Common applications that employ TLS include Web browsers, instant messaging, e-mail and voice over IP.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco and Amazon Web Services will soon offer enterprise customers an integrated platform that promises to help them more simply build, secure and connect Kubernetes clusters across private data centers and the AWS cloud.The new package, Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS combines Cisco, AWS and open source technologies to simplify complexity and helps eliminate challenges for customers who use Kubernetes to enable deploying applications across on-premises and the AWS cloud in a secure, consistent manner said David Cope, senior director of Cisco Cloud Platform & Solutions Group (CPSG).[ Also see How to plan a software-defined data-center network and Efficient container use requires data-center software networking.]
“The significance of Amazon teaming with Cisco means more integration between product lines from AWS and Cisco, thus reducing the integration costs notably on the security and management fronts for joint customers," said Stephen Elliot, program vice president with IDC. “It also provides customers with some ideas on how to migrate workloads from private to public clouds.”To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will soon offer enterprise customers an integrated platform that promises to help them more simply build, secure, and connect Kubernetes clusters across private data centers and the AWS cloud.The new package, Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS, combines Cisco, AWS and open-source technologies to simplify complexity and helps eliminate challenges for customers who use Kubernetes to enable deploying applications on premises and across the AWS cloud in a secure, consistent manner said David Cope, senior director of Cisco Cloud Platform & Solutions Group (CPSG).[ Also see How to plan a software-defined data-center network and Efficient container use requires data-center software networking.]
“The significance of Amazon teaming with Cisco means more integration between product lines from AWS and Cisco, thus reducing the integration costs notably on the security and management fronts for joint customers," said Stephen Elliot, program vice president with IDC. “It also provides customers with some ideas on how to migrate workloads from private to public clouds.”To read this article in full, please click here
Most IT professionals select cloud providers based on price or proximity to users, but network performance should also be considered. Because as we see in a new report from ThousandEyes, the underlying network architecture of the big cloud providers can have a significant impact on performance. And performance varies widely among cloud service providers.In its first annual public cloud benchmark report, ThousandEyes compared the global network performance of the “big three” public cloud providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. The network management company looked at network performance (latency, packet loss, jitter) and connectivity architecture. It also measured user-to-cloud connectivity from 27 cities around the globe to 55 AWS, Azure, and GCP regions and measured the inter-AZ and inter-region connectivity within all three cloud provider networks. In addition, they measured inter-region connectivity between all 55 regions on a multi-cloud basis.To read this article in full, please click here
Cloud-assisted driving, remote surgery, touch-sensitive VR, and most important for the global economy, a massive jump in industrial productivity, are all on the way and have one thing in common: the continuing evolution of network infrastructure toward 5G.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) will drive adoption of private 5G networks, some are saying.In fact, automakers BMW; Daimler, which makes Mercedes vehicles; and Volkswagen have told the German spectrum manager BNA (Federal Network Agency) that they are “interested in operating local 5G networks,” Markus Fasse and Stephan Scheuer wrote in a recent Handelsblatt Global article.[ Read also: How enterprises can prep for 5G | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ]
Separately, network equipment vendor Qualcomm says it’s working on 5G NR technologies for private, industrial IoT networks.To read this article in full, please click here
In the realm of enterprise computing, we have already automated the management and orchestration of software-defined compute and storage resources. Need another server or more storage capacity? Those virtual resources can be created in mere minutes — and without intervention from a human to initiate or manage the process.Need changes to the network, such as a router reconfiguration? Well, that’s going to take a lot of time and effort from a range of humans. Even something as simple as an update to a DNS or IPAM server can take three to five days to complete. A port turn-up can take just as long — not because any physical action takes that much time, but because the workflow of all the human reviews and approvals takes time.To read this article in full, please click here
Entegra Bank, a fast-growing financial institution based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, switched from MPLS links for its 22 branches to SD-WAN-based broadband and slashed its WAN connectivity bill by 50%, while increasing bandwidth an average of fivefold.Loren Long, senior vice-president and CTO at the bank, says he had been eyeing both SD-WAN and broadband for some time, waiting for SD-WAN technology to mature and for rural broadband to improve in availability, dependability and security. After a positive experience with Silver Peak’s WAN optimization gear, “we felt confident to make that change,” he says.In a typical SD-WAN scenario, branch office broadband would connect directly to the public Internet. But since this a bank with heightened security and compliance responsibilities, traffic from the branches is backhauled over an encrypted VPN to internal gateways, where a third-party security services provider monitors all traffic and enforces security policies.To read this article in full, please click here
Network certifications typically serve as a litmus test of a network professional’s knowledge of technologies that most company already use. Increasingly, however, network professionals are looking beyond what is, and they’re getting a leg up on certifications that will set them apart from their peers in the near future.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
There are three types of applications; applications that manage the business, applications that run the business and miscellaneous apps.A security breach or performance related issue for an application that runs the business would undoubtedly impact the top-line revenue. For example, an issue in a hotel booking system would directly affect the top-line revenue as opposed to an outage in Office 365.It is a general assumption that cloud deployments would suffer from business-impacting performance issues due to the network. The objective is to have applications within 25ms (one-way) of the users who use them. However, too many network architectures backhaul the traffic to traverse from a private to the public internetwork.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco is bringing high-speed Ethernet to the data center with four new switches it says will ultimately become the foundation of highdensity, intent-based networks.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
A kind of twisting of light beams, within a fiber optic cable, rather than the sending of them linearly will let computer systems, and the internet overall, run faster, according to researchers who have just announced new findings. The group reckon they could speed up the internet a hundred-fold using the twisted technique.“What we’ve managed to do is accurately transmit data via light at its highest capacity in a way that will allow us to massively increase our bandwidth,” Dr. Haoran Ren, of Australia’s RMIT University, said in a press release.To read this article in full, please click here
Researchers reckon they could speed up the internet a hundredfold with a new technique that twists light beams within fiber optic cable rather than sending them in a straight path.“What we’ve managed to do is accurately transmit data via light at its highest capacity in a way that will allow us to massively increase our bandwidth,” Dr. Haoran Ren, of Australia’s RMIT University, said in a press release.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ]
The corkscrewing configuration, in development over the last few years and now recently physically miniaturized, uses a technique called orbital angular momentum (OAM).To read this article in full, please click here
Harrison Lewis wasn’t looking for SD-WAN, but he’s glad he found it.Northgate Gonzalez, which operates 40 specialty grocery stores throughout Southern California, had distributed its compute power for years. Each store individually supported applications with servers and other key infrastructure and relied on batch processing to deal with nightly backups and storage, according to Lewis, the privately held company’s CIO.
More about enterprise SD-WAN:
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SD-WAN deployment options: DIY vs. cloud managed
SD-WAN: What is it and why you’ll use it one day
How to choose the right SD-WAN transport and why it matters
Over time, the company’s needs changed, and it began centralizing more services, including HR and buying systems, as well as Microsoft Office, in the cloud or at the company’s two data centers. With this shift came a heavier burden on the single T-1 lines running MPLS into each store and the 3G wireless backup. Complicating matters, Lewis says, rainy weather in the region would flood the wiring, taking down terrestrial-network connectivity.To read this article in full, please click here
A firewall is a network device that monitors packets going in and out of networks and blocks or allows them according to rules that have been set up to define what traffic is permissible and what traffic isn’t.There are several types of firewalls that have developed over the years, becoming progressively more complex over time and taking more parameters into consideration when determining whether traffic should or should not be allowed to pass. The most modern are commonly known as next-generation firewalls (NGF) and incorporate many other technologies beyond packet filtering.[ Also see What to consider when deploying a next generation firewall. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
Initially placed at the boundaries between trusted and untrusted networks, firewalls are now also deployed to protect internal segments of networks, such as data centers, from other segments of organizations’ networks.To read this article in full, please click here
In a move that IBM says will make it the world’s leader in hybrid cloud, the company says it’s going to buy open-source giant Red Hat for $34 billion, banking on what it sees as Red Hat’s potential to become the operating system of choice for cloud providers.IBM says it expects growth in the use of cloud services to blossom in the coming years, with enterprises poised to expand from using cloud for inexpensive compute power to placing more applications in the cloud.[ Now see After virtualization and cloud, what's left on premises?]
“To accomplish this, businesses need an open, hybrid cloud approach to developing, running and deploying applications in a multi-cloud environment,” IBM says in a written statement.To read this article in full, please click here
Arista joined the parade toward high-speed Ethernet with new switches capable of supporting 400G speeds and aimed at hyperscale cloud and data-center networks.The Arista 7060X4 Series platforms are based on the Broadcom 12.8Tbps Tomahawk 3 silicon and feature 32 400G ports. Each 400G port can be split into four 100G ports for a total of 128 100G ports in a 1U chassis. Arista also enhanced its EOS operating system to better support traffic management, load balancing, buffering and routing for the high-speed boxes. [ Related: MPLS explained -- What you need to know about multi-protocol label switching
Over time, Ethernet speed transitions have been the primary driver for improving both the throughput and price-performance of data-center networks. 400G Ethernet is the next major transition on this journey, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Arista’s chief development officer, wrote in a blog about the announcement.To read this article in full, please click here
My humble beginnings
Back in the early 2000s, I was the sole network engineer at a startup. By morning, my role included managing four floors and 22 European locations packed with different vendors and servers between three companies. In the evenings, I administered the largest enterprise streaming networking in Europe with a group of highly skilled staff.Since we were an early startup, combined roles were the norm. I’m sure that most of you who joined as young engineers in such situations could understand how I felt back then. However, it was a good experience, so I battled through it. To keep my evening’s stress-free and without any IT calls, I had to design in as much high-availability (HA) as I possibly could. After all, all the interesting technological learning was in the second part of my day working with content delivery mechanisms and complex routing.To read this article in full, please click here
Space may not be the final frontier for the Internet of Things, but evidence is mounting that it could be the technology’s next golden opportunity. While we’re still a ways away from the IoT in space becoming a commercially viable mainstream technology, a variety of companies are pushing the envelope in two significant ways.First, companies are working to realize the promise of satellite-powered networks that would bring the Internet of Things everywhere on earth. Second, vendors — and NASA — are exploring actual IoT applications and use cases beyond Earth’s atmosphere, in satellites and rockets.To read this article in full, please click here