Arista Networks this week expanded its data center interconnect offerings with products designed to enable the interconnection of cloud networks.Arista is adding capabilities that extend its spine networking platforms, EOS operating system software and CloudVision management system to include cloud interconnect features. These capabilities include Spine Transit, Spine Interconnect and Spine Peering.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Arista adds security to cloud software+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco’s emphasizing the establishment of small internal “start-ups” for innovation rather than forming, funding and acquiring spin-in companies to develop new products for key markets.
CEO Chuck Robbins says Cisco is setting up small teams internally to “give them big hairy problems to solve” in areas the company prioritizes for product development and revenue growth. Such areas include data center, security, service provider routing, software programmability – including automation and orchestration -- collaboration, and analytics for the Internet of Things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Recent tests to see whether LTE-U technology interferes with Wi-Fi signals prove conclusively that LTE-U poses no problems whatsoever for Wi-Fi networks, and also that LTE-U (Long-term evolution in Unlicensed spectrum) will drown out Wi-Fi, depending on which party is to be believed.Both the pro-LTE-U side of the debate, backed largely by Qualcomm, and the anti-LTE-U side, made up of a host of different tech companies under the aegis of the Wi-Fi Alliance, say that testing has vindicated their respective positions.+ MORE: LTE-U -- A quick explainer | Worries mount over upcoming LTE-U deployments hurting Wi-Fi +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Let’s face it: when it comes to Internet connectivity, there’s no such thing as “too fast.” And optical fiber is the only choice for connectivity that exceed 1,000 Mbps, aka Gigabit Internet. Optical fiber provides higher bandwidths – download speeds 40 times faster and upload speeds more than 300 times faster than garden variety broadband – and spans much longer distances than electrical cabling. And some companies, such as Bell Labs, Cisco and Comcast are claiming that their new "fiber optic" services (when eventually installed) will be 10 times faster than Google. In the meantime, Google Fiber is the hottest ticket in town, and it's popping up in municipalities all over America. It started in Kansas City during the summer of 2012 -- followed by Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah in 2014. And on the official Google Fiber team blog, director of Fiber Expansion Jill Szuchmacher noted that Google is in the process of designing the San Antonio network, and construction has started in Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Salt Lake City. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Japan Prize Foundation
The Japan Prize medal
The Japan Prize Foundation announced this week that it has begun the process of finding nominees for its 2017 awards, which will honor outstanding achievements in the fields of “Electronics, Information and Communication” and “Life Science.” Winners receive a certificate of merit and medal, plus a none-too-shabby monetary award of 50 million yen ($407K US dollars).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The concept of object health is present throughout ACI. When problems are detected, an object’s health score drops from 100, with lower scores indicating greater severity. This is hierarchical, so while a port that is disconnected on a single endpoint will show a health score of 0, the fabric node containing that port may show a health score of 50, and the application containing the down endpoint may show a score of 80. This can be traced visually through the Web UI by selecting the Health view on the affected application. This makes it extremely easy to pinpoint problems on a vast fabric.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
1. It's the spectrum that's unlicensed, not the LTE.The acronyms are flying: LTE-U, LAA, MuLTEfire. They're all forms of LTE tweaked to send signals over unlicensed frequencies, which are open to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and any other technology that plays fair. Carriers could use it as soon as 2016 to add frequencies without spending billions to license them. At first, unlicensed LTE will only be used to supplement a carrier's own bands to make downloads faster. Later, it might send traffic both directions and even be used by enterprises that have no licensed spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here are five things you should know about unlicensed LTE, the concept of sending 4G cell traffic over channels also used by Wi-Fi and other networks.1. It's the spectrum that's unlicensed, not the LTE.The acronyms are flying: LTE-U, LAA, MuLTEfire. They're all forms of LTE tweaked to send signals over unlicensed frequencies, which are open to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and any other technology that plays fair. Carriers could use it as soon as 2016 to add frequencies without spending billions to license them. At first, unlicensed LTE will only be used to supplement a carrier's own bands to make downloads faster. Later, it might send traffic both directions and even be used by enterprises that have no licensed spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hardly trivialImage by Mahender G/FlickrAs computers grow ever more powerful, we humans have to figure out where we still remain superior. Here's one suggestion: although the Internet is full of endless reams of data, it takes a human mind to suss through it all and determine what qualifies as interesting to other humans. Thus, we at ITworld present you with the following anecdotes about technology and the Internet, guaranteed to have been selected by the human hand and eye to pique your interest. Hopefully robots won't take this job for another few years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sprint Chairman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told reporters in Tokyo early Wednesday that job cuts at Sprint will be "in the thousands" as part of a restructuring plan.His comments came as SoftBank, which owns more than 70% of Sprint, reported its quarterly earnings."Sprint is now in the position to increase the pace of user acquisition while cutting costs," Son said, according to Bloomberg and other news sources. "We will also cut staff. The cuts will be in the thousands."Son's comments are not out of line with things Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure has been telling Sprint workers for months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group that certifies Wi-Fi products for interoperability, has highlighted the importance of the technology to the daily lives of Americans ahead of a testing summit that will try to shed some light on potential conflicts between Wi-Fi and a carrier technology called LTE-U.
LTE-U is a technology that some U.S. wireless carriers want to use to take the pressure off their networks – using the same unlicensed spectrum as Wi-Fi networks. While LTE-U proponents insist that the coexistence features built into the technology will avoid any conflicts, critics aren’t convinced, arguing that LTE-U could disrupt Wi-Fi networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Juniper Networks this week unveiled a new access switch supporting 25/50G Ethernet as well as an open version of its Junos operating system for it.
Juniper says it disaggregated Junos so it can enable third-party application and service support, and enhanced programmability. Disaggregation is the industry practice of breaking the dependencies of hardware and software on each other so they can be sold independently, giving customers more choice in what they purchase and operate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Guadalajara, Mexico -- Smart Cities are the best response to the global urban future, according to the IEEE, which bills itself as “the world's largest professional association for the advancement of technology.”Gilles Betis, IEEE Smart City Initiative Chair, said the population in cities will grow from 3.5 billion today to 7.2 billion by 2050.“Doubling the number of people in cities is not an adjustment, this is a transition,” he said.Betis made the remarks in his keynote speech at the first IEEE Smart Cities Conference last week in Guadalajara, “the Silicon Valley of Mexico.”The city was the first of five “core cities” the association is focusing on for research grants and development projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network professionals continue to be among the toughest IT talent to find and hire – a situation that will drive up salaries in the coming year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Google's crusade to light up U.S. cities with gigabit speed Google Fiber has expanded to potentially include Oklahoma City and Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.In a blog posted Wednesday, Google said it invited the capital city of Oklahoma and the two Florida cities to "explore" bringing faster fiber to their communities.In September, Google also invited San Diego and Irvine, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., to explore bringing Google Fiber to their communities.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD How Google Fiber is disrupting the broadband deployment model +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft continues to put out Technical Previews of Windows Server 2016 with as-yet-unseen features. The latest Technical Preview, TP3, introduced a number of new features, such as Docker integration and Windows Server Containers, along with improvements to features introduced in previous previews. It also brings new security capabilities such as Shielded VMs, which protect virtual machine contents in a multitenant environment.The TP2 release debuted Nano Server and a number of Hyper-V, networking, and storage features. It introduced a new Windows Server role named Host Guardian Service, which flags trusted Hyper-V hosts, and included a Windows Server Antimalware feature not found in previous previews. Forthcoming Technical Previews will bring more new features, notably Hyper-V Containers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Wednesday Verizon launched ThingSpace, a development platform for companies of all sizes to create Internet of Things applications more efficiently and then later manage those apps.The carrier also announced it is creating a new dedicated network core for IoT connections that can scale far beyond the ability of its existing networks with the intent to reach billions of sensors and devices."Continued innovation in smart cities, connected cars and wearables demonstrates that IoT is the future for how we will live and work," said Mike Lanman, senior vice president of enterprise products at Verizon during an event held at Verizon's San Francisco Innovation Center. He said Verizon is taking a "holistic approach" to help expand the IoT market from millions of connections to billions. The event was webcast.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Oct. 14, Microsoft announced the preview release of Azure Active Directory Domain Services or, as I like to call it, a domain in a cloud.Next up, you will need to either create a new virtual network or select an existing virtual network. This network has to be in the U.S. or Asia Azure regions. (These are the only geographic locales that the preview supports; of course, this feature will likely be available globally when the code comes out of the preview phase).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
A wireless network planned for San Francisco could once again make the local library the best place to go for information.The data collected there won’t be much fun to read, but it may help consumers, businesses and local agencies take advantage of connected objects. The city agreed to install antennas at its libraries as part of a pilot project by French vendor SigFox to build a network for the Internet of Things. Each antenna will cover a broad swath of the city, and it could allow San Francisco to expand the IoT services it offers today.The city is no stranger to IoT. It already uses connected sensors and meters to determine the demand for parking on certain streets and periodically adjust hourly rates so drivers are more likely to find a space when they arrive. Rates go up on more crowded blocks and down on less crowded ones, but no more than once per month. The program is active in seven pilot areas around the city and uses an app to show drivers the current rates.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Smart TVs in conference rooms. Brainy heating and air-conditioning systems. Internet-connected light bulbs. Intelligent devices controlling manufacturing processes. Smart watches and fitness devices everywhere.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)