After scrutinizing the two operating systems that run its networking and security products, Juniper Networks gives them both a clean bill of health, but it plans to replace a part of one that was exploited by unknown parties to undermine its Netscreen security gear.Juniper revealed last month that it had found two flaws in its ScreenOS operating system and patched them, but now it plans to patch one of them again to make the security of the operating system stronger, according to a Juniper blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two pieces in the complicated puzzle of smart-home options will snap together later this year when the ZigBee Alliance starts certifying devices that use the Thread protocol for networking.
The industry groups behind these two systems have agreed to work out how they can both be integrated into the same product: Thread for exchanging data packets with other devices and ZigBee for defining how applications work on the device. This should lead to ZigBee products that can talk to many more devices in the Internet of Things.
As the latest edition of the International CES trade show begins on Tuesday, consumers are faced with a slew of new standards, protocols and frameworks to tie home IoT products together as an easily managed system. On Monday, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it's finished a new specification it calls Wi-Fi HaLow, which uses less power so it can work in small battery-powered devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to broadband Internet connection speeds in the United States, there’s both good news and bad news to report. The good news is that average download speeds for American broadband subscribers has tripled between 2011 and 2014. The bad news? The US still has a lot of catching up to do.According to the FCC’s fifth Measuring Broadband America report, the average download speed in the US hit 31 megabits per second (Mbps) in September 2014. That compares favorably to an average download speed of 10Mbps in March 2011 and 15Mbps in September 2012. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smart switchesSmart switches offer functionality found in managed switches, such as VLANs, port mirroring, and link aggregation. However, smart switches are typically targeted towards small and midsized networks that don’t need the complete management capabilities and fine-tuning offered in fully managed switches. We looked at switches from six vendors, the same vendors from our recent small business router review. So if you’re building an SMB network, reference both reviews to find a matching router and switch that meets your needs. Vendors include the big-name Cisco, popular home and business brands D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear, and also lesser-known names DrayTek and UTT Technologies. We setup and evaluated each switch and in this review we compare product in regards to price, features, and user-friendliness. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco this week issued a security advisory on a vulnerability in its IOS XE software. IOS XE Release 16.1.1 could allow an attacker to cause an affected device to reload.The vulnerability is due to incorrect processing of packets that have a source MAC address of 0000:0000:0000, the advisory states. An attacker could exploit it by sending a frame that has a source MAC address of all zeros to an affected device.A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause the device to reload. All products that run IOS XE Release 16.1.1 are vulnerable, the advisory states. Two of those products are Cisco’s Catalyst 3850 and 3650 series switches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The networking and computing world, as well as the worlds of science and inventions, lost well-known pioneers as well as younger movers and shakers during 2015. Here’s a brief look back at these people and their contributions (see Slideshow version here).
LOOK BACK: 2014’s notable deathsRalph Ungermann: Co-founder of Zilog, Ungermann-Bass (Died June 2, age 73)
Ungermann was a pioneer in both the PC industry via his 1974 co-founding of microprocessor maker Zilog and of the data communications industry via his 1978 launch of Ungermann-Bass, which Tandem Computers, and later Newbridge Networks, acquired. A serial entrepreneur, the Berkeley College-educated Ungermann also formed an ATM switching and multimedia networking company called First Virtual in 1994, before moving into the world of venture capital by co-founding a firm in Shanghai. In his obituary, Ungermann is quoted as having once said: " I like to pioneer things, create a space that does not exist. If you can imagine it, you can create it. It is much more fun and challenging to create an industry, than to follow someone else.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Acacia Communications, an optical networking company that boosts bandwidth for cloud and other service providers, Monday filed for an IPO -- a rarity during a year in which the number of tech companies going public is at its lowest since 2009, the year Acacia launched.The $125M filing to go public comes during a year when the rise of the Unicorn, private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more, has blown away the tech IPO market. Tech IPOs this year have included those by First Data, Rapid7 and Pure Storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fight over LTE networks using the same frequencies as Wi-Fi may be headed toward a peaceful resolution at last.Powerhouses of the wireless world that have clashed over LTE in unlicensed spectrum are now committed to creating tests for whether these new types of networks can coexist with Wi-Fi. Those tests may be ready to go in February.Powerful mobile vendors including Qualcomm and Ericsson are pushing gear that would let carriers put LTE signals on unlicensed channels now used by Wi-Fi. Carriers including Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and SK Telecom want to use those technologies, which would give already licensed operators a way to boost network speed without buying more frequencies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Juniper revised the list of ScreenOS versions that contain a backdoor allowing attackers to bypass authentication and gain administrative access to NetScreen enterprise firewall devices.The networking equipment manufacturer announced last week that it found, during an internal audit, two instances where rogue code was added to its ScreenOS operating system without authorization. The code could be used by attackers to gain privileged access to NetScreen firewall devices and to decrypt VPN connections.The company said at the time that ScreenOS versions 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20 were vulnerable, but an analysis by researchers from security firm Rapid7 revealed that not all listed versions are vulnerable to both issues.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Raspberry Pi was created as an educational platform but has become one of the most popular embedded systems platforms on earth with a full copy of Linux and a rabid community of DIY-minded developers. That combination alone makes the Raspberry Pi a natural fit for hacking together enterprise IT applications and devices. Add in its low cost and the ready availability of open source solutions, and you can quickly see how previously expensive systems and devices are suddenly within reach of IT departments willing to experiment with Raspberry Pi, as my first foray into DIY IT Raspberry Pi projects showed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than half (56%) of IT pros will be on-call or working during the holidays to troubleshoot tech problems, according to network management vendor Ipswitch. Past experience shows it’s necessary: among 378 IT pros surveyed, 38% say they’ve experienced a major network outage during a holiday break.Here are some additional findings from Ipswitch’s third annual "Happy Holidays?" survey: Days expected to be on-call or working
• Christmas Eve: cited by 29%• Christmas Day: 11%• New Year’s Eve: 11%• New Year’s Day: 5%To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A California court has found in favor of Arista Networks in a software ownership lawsuit filed by its co-founder.In a preliminary ruling, the California Superior Court, Santa Clara County found that OptumSoft, a company started by Arista co-founder David Cheriton, does not own Arista code developed to work with royalty-free licensed software. That software is OptumSoft’s TACC -- Types, Attributes and Constraints Compiler -- a platform for developing modular or distributed applications or systems, a key functionality Arista markets as a differentiator for it EOS operating system software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AT&T is pouring billions into its network to make it more dynamic, which is resulting in new capabilities for enterprise customers. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently stopped by AT&T headquarters in Dallas to talk to Josh Goodell, VP of Network on Demand, about what the company is learning from early adopters of its Switched Ethernet on Demand service and what comes next. Among other things, Goodell explains how provisioning now takes days vs. weeks, service profiles can be changed in seconds, and how he expects large shops to use APIs to connect their network management systems directly to AT&T controls. Oh, and a slew of virtual functions are on the horizon that will enable you to ditch all those appliances you’ve been accumulating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Former AT&T executive Gail McGovern gets credit for longevity at the American Red Cross -- she walked into a messy situation in 2008 and has served as CEO since -- but she and her pack of AT&T cronies mainly get taken to task throughout a thorough new ProPublica article on the charity's struggles. Not only has McGovern failed to turn around the financial fortunes of Red Cross, but her management organization's style has hurt morale and limited the charity's effectiveness in aiding Americans, according to the report.(ProPublica, if you don't know, is a nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom, and has been examining the travails of Red Cross over the past couple of years in conjunction with NPR.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Leverett, Mass., will improve its existing fiber-optic network by the start of the new year, boosting peak speeds from one gigabit to two gigabits, and dropping the price from $45 per month to $40, according to a report in the local Recorder newspaper.A small town in central Massachusetts, just north of Amherst, Leverett has fewer than 2,000 residents, making it among the smallest in the country with its own municipal gigabit fiber network.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Dell maneuvers toward EMC takeover with no rivals in sight + F5 Networks brings back retired CEO after successor resigns over "personal conduct"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
F5 Networks, the Seattle-based application delivery networking company with an increasingly cloud-oriented focus, has announced that CEO and President Manuel Rivelo has resigned "for matters regarding personal conduct unrelated to the operations or financials of the Company."Or as F5 spins it in its press release headline on Monday: "F5 Networks Announces Appointment of Long-Time F5 Executive John McAdam as President and CEO."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
F5 Networks, the Seattle-based application delivery networking company with an increasingly cloud-oriented focus, has announced that CEO and President Manuel Rivelo has resigned "for matters regarding personal conduct unrelated to the operations or financials of the Company."Or as F5 spins it in its press release headline on Monday: "F5 Networks Announces Appointment of Long-Time F5 Executive John McAdam as President and CEO."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As it sets its sights on becoming the No. 1 IT company in the industry, Cisco will continue to face challenges and opportunities in virtually every IT market. Here’s an arbitrary list of 10 areas that will impact Cisco in 2016 as the company evolves to address emerging trends that are shaping the industry in the coming year and beyond.The antithesis of Cisco is disaggregation, taking off the shelf switching hardware and mixing and matching multivendor and open source operating systems to run it. It decouples the dependencies and integration of the hardware and software, which Cisco argues is an integration and total cost of ownership nightmare. But the big cloud companies are using it and eventually the enterprise, so Cisco will need to continue to address it by offering compelling consumption options in addition to competitive product. Perhaps uncoupling its own? (Read all Network World's predictions for next year.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New networks being built with far less fanfare than cell towers will connect objects that in some cases have never been linked before, like street lights and traffic signals. The latest, called Starfish, is now debuting in Silicon Valley.The many new dedicated networks for the Internet of Things aren't as fast as LTE or Wi-Fi, but they're designed to reach devices across an entire region with lower cost and power consumption. That's part of the equation that's supposed to make IoT work.But as a new kind of network, these LPWA (low-power wide area) technologies are still a Wild West of competing vendors and approaches. Take your pick: Ingenu, SigFox, LoRaWAN, NB-LTE and more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here