Looking to capitalize on the emerging software-defined WAN market opportunity, Verizon has entered into an agreement to offer startup Viptela’s SD-WAN technology as a hosted product.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: SD-WAN: What it is and why you’ll use it one day +SD-WAN is the idea of bringing software defined networking capabilities to branch office sites. Controlling the WAN through software allows for easier management of the network if changes are needed and SD-WANs typically support multiple types of connections, from broadband to MPLS to LTE.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Despite claims by the four biggest U.S. wireless carriers that each one has the best nationwide network, the latest performance data gathered by testing firm RootMetrics shows that are all good and getting better."This a great time for consumers. Network providers are really trying hard so that consumers ultimately benefit. You're not going to go wrong with any one of them," said Julie Dey, vice president of RootMetrics, in an interview.The competition between all four has been tight for years, but came into special focus in the last two months as Verizon, then T-Mobile and Sprint started running separate national ads that show tiny colorful balls running down a track with a narrator asserting each carrier's network superiority.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers from University College London claim to have reached a data rate of 1.125 terabits per second, the fastest data rate ever recorded between a single optical transmitter and a receiver, according to an article on the university's website.It's quick enough to download the entire high-definition Game of Thrones series in one second, the scientists claim.'Super-channels'
A way of combining carriers into what the scientists call a "super-channel" is key to obtaining the speeds. Super-channels are used for sending bulk data between cities and continents, they explain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The latest move in the topsy-turvy world of Yahoo is to ditch its Labs organization and squeeze its researchers into its product teams to help bring new ideas to market more quickly.Yahoo VP of Research Yoelle Maarek spun the development this way in a blog post this week:
Recently we announced our efforts to make Yahoo a more focused company. This focus will let us accelerate the pace of innovation to make our products even better. We saw these changes as an opportunity to better align our research efforts, while preserving Yahoo’s culture of exploration and inquiry. As a result, we are reorganizing Yahoo Labs and moving forward with a new approach to research at Yahoo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers.According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account.Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in recent years and many vendors, including large networking and security appliance makers, are frequently issuing firmware updates to fix such basic flaws when they are discovered by internal and external security audits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software-defined networks can be a boon to savvy organizations, offering opportunities to cut administrative costs while increasing network agility. But SDN technology can also create security risks, and how you manage those risks can mean the difference between a successful implementation and a disastrous one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
When your company is known for innovation, the role of Chief Strategy Officer is a pretty daunting job. Hilton Romanski was elevated to that position right before Chuck Robbins took over as CEO last July. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with Romanski to get an inside view of how the Cisco strategy engine runs.
Different companies seem to define strategy jobs differently, so let’s start with how it works at Cisco. CISCO
Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Hilton RomanskiTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nikola Alic, a photonics research scientist at the University of California’s Qualcomm Institute in San Diego, argues that optical research offers the best hope for helping the Internet accommodate the ever growing flow of multimedia services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
AT&T announced today it will begin field trials of faster 5G wireless technology this summer in Austin, Texas.The 3GPP industry standard for 5G, also known as Fifth Generation wireless, is not expected to be completed until 2020, with the earliest phase completed in 2018.Wireless speeds with 5G could be 10 to 100 times faster than with 4G LTE, which generally averages in the 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps range for users downloading data.Both AT&T and Verizon have ambitious 5G rollout plans, prompted by the recent explosion of wireless video and Internet of Things connectivity. AT&T estimates that its wireless network grew 150,000% from 2007 to 2015, largely because of video traffic; more than 60% of its wireless traffic in 2015 was video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The world's financial markets got off to such a rough start this year that some enterprises froze plans to upgrade their campus networks.After oil prices and stock markets around the globe plunged during the first trading days of the year, there was a slowdown in spending that hurt Cisco Systems results and colored its forecast for the current quarter, CEO Chuck Robbins said Wednesday."You see customers say, 'I want to just wait, see what's going on,'" Robbins said on a conference call about Cisco's fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 23.The report was a reminder that what happens in financial markets can echo in IT departments if business management fears shrinking sales or a falling stock price ahead. Cisco has a different financial calendar than most other IT companies and is one of the first to report on a quarter that spilled over into this calendar year. It's the world's dominant supplier of networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco Systems patched a critical vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to take over Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls configured as virtual private network servers by simply sending malformed network packets to them.For devices that are designed to protect private networks from Internet attacks, this is as bad as it gets. That's why Cisco rated the vulnerability with the maximum score of 10 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System.The flaw is located in the Cisco ASA code that handles the Internet Key Exchange version 1 (IKEv1) and IKE version 2 (IKEv2) protocols. More precisely, it stems from a buffer overflow condition in the function that processes fragmented IKE payloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Managing the Wide Area Network (WAN) for Redmond Inc., a supplier of industrial and commercial products – from salt that’s used to protect winter roadways to organic dairy products and health items – is an easier job today for the company’s technical project manager Aaron Gabrielson than it was a year ago.Redmond manages a phone system, point of sale and fax centrally out of headquarters in Heber City, Utah, which means each of Redmond’s 10 branch sites across the Midwest need a reliable connection back to headquarters in Utah. That’s easier for some sites, like those in Salt Lake City, than others, such as rural areas where there may only be a handful of workers on a farm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You might think that a niche conference on cabling design and installation held in Orlando in February would be a sleepy little affair, but I found just the opposite to be true.
The table setter when I arrived was a humorous/informative look by Ekahau's Jussi Kiviniemi at designing Wi-Fi networks for high capacity. The presenter compared such network installation and design to that of setting up a bar, but also made pointed observations about the conference center’s own imperfect Wi-Fi installation history.
The next presentation (“The Moose Project: What Went Wrong? An ICT Case Study from the National Park Service”) was as fiery a talk at a tech conference as I’ve ever heard. Recently retired National Park Service IT specialist Michael Thornton emphasized that he didn’t want to “bash anybody or point fingers” over what he described as a systemic problem with architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) projects, but at the same time he is urging fellow members of the information and communications technology field (ICT) to rise up and convince organizations that ICT pros need to be included in project plans from the start – or else risk botching those projects and wasting millions of dollars.To read this Continue reading
The winners in a broadband industry heavily shaped by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 celebrated publicly this week, as February 8 marked the 20-year anniversary of the law taking effect.The Act – a sweeping rewrite of America’s 60+ year old laws governing phone service, media ownership, and more – substantially deregulated the telecom and media industries, causing large-scale mergers and a much more centralized landscape.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco boosts, broadens Catalyst switches | US government wants to sharply increase spending on cybersecurity +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco is recalling Ethernet switches that pose a potential fire hazard because of damage to the source wiring that can cause a short. The company issued a field notice last week on the situation, which affects its IE5000 industrial Ethernet switches.From the field notice:
Potential damage to the source wiring can cause a short to the metal enclosure/barrier. This could lead to a potential electrical and/or fire safety hazard for the end user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco this week unveiled key enhancements to its enterprise switches, including a 6Tbps supervisor engine expected for some time.The extensions to Cisco’s Catalyst 6800, 4500-E and 3650 lines are intended to address a range of requirements spanning campus backbones, wiring closets, and small office and retail locations. They are designed to boost performance for business applications, support Cisco’s most recent features and accommodate space constrained environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FCC last week granted Verizon and Qualcomm permission to conduct limited tests of LTE-U technology in Raleigh, North Carolina and Oklahoma City, ahead of a planned summit meeting next week.The commission’s grant of a “special temporary authority,” or STA, will allow Qualcomm to perform performance testing in those two areas through the end of June 2016, according to the official document.+ MORE: LTE-U: A quick explainer | U.S. carriers stay tight-lipped on LTE-U deployments +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Criminals leave forensic evidence behind at crime scenes that's not being collected by police investigators, says a law enforcement expert.MAC addresses and router log-in attempts are recorded by routers. That information can tie a smartphone owner to a time and location, which can be valuable when trying to charge or prosecute suspects in criminal cases, reckons a police technical advisor.Routers
"These devices could hold a lot of information, but we're not capturing it," Dan Blackman, a Western Australia police advisor and Edith Cowan University PhD student, said in a Science Network Western Australia article.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I'm not quite sure if champion cabling installers have groupies, but if they did, 2016 Installer of the Year winner Alberta Luna's would have to be called the Luna-tics.
Luna defended his title this week at the annual BICSI Winter conference in Orlando, topping a field of 15 competitors and taking home the $5,000 prize and extra big trophy. During an interview with me last week, Luna said the secret to his success has been relaxing, something he's learned to do through competing in the event four times now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here