Chuck Robbins is officially the chief executive officer of Cisco, but that doesn’t mean he’s totally in charge.Several sources inside and outside of Cisco say the company’s star engineers and key innovators – Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain and Luca Cafiero – continue to report to former CEO John Chambers, who became the executive chairman of Cisco July 26 when Robbins succeeded him. The three, along with marketer Soni Jiandani, founded three companies funded and then acquired by Cisco under its “spin-in” model to insert it into new or disruptive markets, like storage area networking, data center switching and SDNs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As women's soccer teams took the field for the final match of FIFA Women's World Cup Canada 2015 this summer, some fans enjoyed the games via 8K video - the most technologically advanced high-definition video technology on the market. Fox Sports and NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting organization, offered invitation-only 8K demos of the Japan vs. Cameroon game, and the U.S. vs. Nigeria match at the Fox Studio lot in Los Angeles. To top it off, FIFA and NHK produced the championship game in ultra-HD 8K and presented in live viewings in Japan, as well. Viewer response was positive, to say the least.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Comcast executive says the company is currently testing technology based on the DOCSIS 3.1 standard, which can transmit data at rates up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) in ideal environments, and is aiming to deploy the technology on a nationwide basis by 2018, according to a Fierce Cable article published last week. Comcast vice president of network architecture Robert Howald told Fierce Cable that the technology will enable the company to offer customers broadband speeds of 1 Gbps "and higher." From the article:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Time’s a-ticking, and we’re getting closer and closer to what is almost certainly the launch of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, though not the iPhone 7. The latest leaks, reported by Chinese website Daliulian, say that the new models to be revealed on September 9 will be available in a metallic pink finish for the first time. Reese Witherspoon’s character from Legally Blond ought to be thrilled.Whether others will be so thrilled with the new color option, and the new devices themselves, is a point of surprising importance as Apple’s stock price took an uncharacteristic nosedive on news that the Chinese smartphone market – second-largest in the world - dropped substantially in the second quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The upcoming movie about a NASA astronaut left for dead on Mars in the 2030s features a number of technologies NASA says are currently under development.NASA said the book and the movie, “The Martian,” merges fictional and factual chronicles about Mars, building upon the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and moving it into a future where NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to the red planet to live and explore.+More on Network World: 15 reasons why Mars is one hot, hot, hot planet+Indeed, as Matt Damon, who plays the central character Mark Watney in the movie says: “I have to make water and grow food on a planet where nothing grows” to basically stretch a couple months worth of food and supplies into four years becomes a modern day MacGyver in a spacesuit and uses some amazing technologies to try to survive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A fresh analysis of documents disclosed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden shows that AT&T has been a much closer and eager partner for the National Security Agency’s Internet spying activities than was previously known.AT&T has been by far the most critical telecom player in the NSA’s surveillance efforts and its willing participation in mass spying on both foreign and U.S. citizens has apparently been crucial in helping the U.S. agency take advantage of bulk record collection laws, according to a joint report in ProPublica and the New York Times.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Federal Aviation Administration this week said that a record number of drone sightings reported by airline pilots and others has increased dramatically this year -- from a total of 238 sightings in all of 2014, to more than 650 by August 9.The FAA said pilots of a variety of different types of aircraft – including many large, commercial air carriers – reported spotting 16 unmanned aircraft in June of 2014, and 36 the following month. This year, 138 pilots reported seeing drones at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet during the month of June, and another 137 in July.+More on Network World: Hot stuff: The coolest drones+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple and Intel are both making progress in their efforts to hire more women and minorities, according to figures released by the companies this week.In the first six months of the year, more than 43 percent of Intel’s hires in the U.S. were women and minorities, up from 32 percent at the end of 2014, the company reported in its first mid-year diversity report.At 43 percent, Intel said it was surpassing the 40 percent diversity hiring goal it set for itself for the full year.Apple, meanwhile, boosted its hiring of women by 65 percent globally over the past year, to 11,000, the company said in its second annual report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The US Naval Research Lab is developing an unmanned aircraft that can fly, land in the water and swim like a fish.The Navy calls its flying/swimmer FLIMMER and says it is a combination airplane/submarine that at first flies to a location, then lands on the water and submerges. After that it can swim like a fish.
+More on Network World: Hot stuff: The coolest drones+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Installing rogue firmware on embedded devices has long been a concern for security researchers, and it seems that such attacks have started to gain ground with hackers.In an advisory Tuesday, Cisco Systems warned customers that it is aware of a limited number of cases where attackers have replaced the boot firmware on devices running its IOS operating system. IOS runs on most Cisco routers and switches and provides a complex set of networking tools and features.MEET CISCO'S NEW CEO: The Real Chuck RobbinsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two days after announcing a sweeping reorganization, Google has detailed its first departure. Niantic Labs, an augmented reality unit of Google, will be spun off into an independent company.The split, which is unusual for Google, means that Niantic Labs won’t be part of Alphabet, the new holding company that is expected to be formed later this year to include Google and other parts of the company.The move was announced by Niantic Labs in a Google+ post on Wednesday, and confirmed by Winnie King, a spokeswoman for Google.She said the split would allow Niantic to accelerate its growth, “which will help them align more closely with investors and partners in the entertainment space,” but didn’t provide any more details.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon engineers have finished lab and field tests of a new fiber optic network capable of 10Gbps, or 10 times the speed of Google Fiber and some other currently-available networks.
A popular Verizon FIOS service now offering 75Mbps speeds can transfer a two-hour HD movie in 17 minutes; the new 10Gbps network can transfer the same movie in just 8 seconds, according to Shweta Jain, a FIOS engineer at Verizon. She spoke in a Verizon video to announce the successful testing.
Verizon hasn't said where the service will first be offered and at what cost. The company will seek proposals for equipment and software later this year to support commercial development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter has seen an increase in government demands for account information in the first half of this year, with the U.S. followed by Japan topping the list for such requests.The increase is the largest ever seen between reporting periods by Twitter, wrote Jeremy Kessel, Twitter’s senior manager for global legal policy, in a blog post Tuesday.The Transparency Report from the company indicated that government requests for account information in the first half were 52 percent more and affected 78 percent more account holders than in the second half of last year.The scope of the report has been expanded to include information on notices of alleged trademark violations and a section where users can check how different email providers handle the privacy and encryption of email messages from Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Google announced on Monday that it would create a new holding company called Alphabet, of which Google Inc. will be just one part, Larry Page said the new structure would allow the company to get more ambitious things done. But there was still a lot that he didn’t say.The move should free up time for Page and Sergey Brin to focus on Google’s forward looking projects like self-driving cars, and allow other leaders, like Sundar Pichai, to take care of the core businesses. It should also provide a bit more transparency for Google’s investors, allowing them to see better how those core businesses are performing.But there are questions too, about how Alphabet will evolve and which other companies might get their own CEOs. Here are four knowns and unknowns about what happened yesterday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In this post, I will demonstrate the power of Cisco VIRL when it comes to an emulation of the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance. In future posts, I will demonstrate other images that are available.
This post was created using the latest VIRL version and ASA image available at the time of this writing. That is VIRL 0.10.14.20 and the ASA 9.4.1-200 code. Be sure to check the specific codes available as you read this, since VIRL is consistently updated as are the images it runs.
To get started, I create a new blank topology in VIRL:
I then select and place the objects I need and connect them in the topology:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft will take a new step toward combating the spread of child pornography, by blocking images identified in partnership with an industry group.The companies will block images of child sexual abuse that have been identified by the Internet Watch Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit that aims to locate and stamp out such content online. The effort is aimed at speeding up the identification and removal of images of child sexual abuse worldwide, and preventing them from being uploaded in the first place.Only known child sexual abuse images identified by the IWF will be blocked. Each company will download a list of images that have been “hashed” by IWF analysts, under a process that creates a digital fingerprint of each image. The hashes are created from images that IWF’s analysts have assessed, which come from various online sources like reports from the public, and the U.K.’s Child Abuse Image Database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google may be best known for its ubiquitous search engine, but it has long been associated with seemingly whimsical ventures into areas as diverse as self-driving cars, drones and human aging. On Monday, it took a step toward making those “side” ventures more legitimate—and more transparent.Thus Alphabet was born, catapulting Google’s top executives into new roles with new titles. Cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are now president and CEO of the Alphabet holding company, respectively, while Sundar Pichai, formerly a vice president in charge of Android, Chrome and Google apps, will become Google’s CEO.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For Yahoo Mail users, some messages just won’t stay dead.Some users of the company’s popular Mail service report that messages they’ve deleted are reappearing in their inboxes, an issue that some say is a recurring problem.Since the beginning of July, more than 100 complaints have been posted in a forum devoted to Yahoo’s email service. Some users say hundreds if not thousands of emails that they had previously deleted have reappeared. Others say the emails continue to reappear after being deleted again.“I have deleted thousands of emails just to find them still in my inbox,” one user wrote on Monday. “I have better things to do than sit at this computer and do something over and over and over again,” the person wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Small mobile carriers lost a battle Thursday when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission declined to make it easier for them to get access to a reserved slice of spectrum during a 2016 auction of television spectrum.The FCC, in a 3-2 vote, approved a wide-ranging set of rules for the upcoming incentive auction in which U.S. TV stations have the option of giving up their current spectrum and moving to other channels or stop broadcasting over the air in exchange for a piece of the auction proceeds. The world’s first, two-way spectrum auction, with TV stations selling spectrum and mobile carriers buying, will begin March 29, 2016, the FCC announced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The average U.S. Internet connection speed continues to lag behind that of many other developed nations, according to the latest State of the Internet report from CDN and cloud service provider Akamai.
In the first quarter of 2015, Akamai said, the average U.S. Internet connection speed was 11.9Mbps - considerably below the 23.6Mbps mark posted by South Korea, which had the fastest average connection speed worldwide. The top 10 was dominated by countries from Europe and east Asia, including Ireland, Hong Kong, Sweden and the Netherlands. The U.S. placed 19th in the rankings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here