I was in the local Best Buy the other day and overheard a conversation between a saleswoman and a father looking to buy a computer for his daughter. Apparently, the daughter is a designer, which of course requires lots of heavy graphics work. Anyway, the saleswoman was trying to explain how he should invest a little bit more in an expensive graphics card because of her work. The father wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted the least expensive machine possible.It was a mistake.Part of the art of life is knowing when and where to invest your resources for maximum return. Sometimes less is, well, less and investing a bit more really can make a difference. I know you didn’t come to this blog for self-help advice, but life’s truism has real-world implications for wide area networks and, in particular, when selecting the Internet infrastructure underlying your SD-WAN.To read this article in full, please click here
When choosing the wireless LAN gear to be used in enterprises, it's important to look at security, reliability and ease of system management, and that's exactly what a group of Aruba and Aerohive customers have done.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
In the world of wireless, the term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless access in general, despite the fact that it is a specific trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group dedicated to certifying that Wi-Fi products meet the IEEE’s set of 802.11 wireless standards.These standards, with names such as 802.11b (pronounced “Eight-O-Two-Eleven-Bee”, ignore the “dot”) and 802.11ac, comprise a family of specifications that started in the 1990s and continues to grow today. The 802.11 standards codify improvements that boost wireless throughput and range as well as the use of new frequencies as they become available. They also address new technologies that reduce power consumption.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has advanced its intent-based networking gear so now it can both verify that networks are actually running according to the intentions set by admins and also so it can help to find and resolve network problems faster on both wired and wireless networks.The company says this is a new phase in the evolution of its IBN in which it is addressing assurance – the ability to assess whether the intentions that have been translated into policies and orchestrated throughout the network by configuring individual devices are carrying out the intentions they are supposed to.+DON'T MISS:Getting grounded in intent-based networking; A deep dive into Cisco's intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here
When February rolls around each year, every football fan knows what’s right around the corner – it’s time for the Super Bowl! This game brings together the two best teams in the National Football League to compete for the title, with all 32 teams battling throughout the year to earn that top spot. Believe it or not, this same competition is very similar to the data center industry.In fact, the NFL and data centers have many similarities. From the fundamental skills needed to be successful, to the strong team-centric leadership required and the same competition always at the top of their league or industry, below are a few examples of how the NFL and data centers have more in common than you may think.To read this article in full, please click here
Billions of terabytes of data could be stored in one small flask of liquid, a group of scientists believe. The team from Brown University says soon it will be able to figure out a chemical-derived way of storing and manipulating mass-data by loading it onto molecules and then dissolving the molecules into liquids.If the method is successful, large-scale, synthetic molecule storage in liquids could one day replace hard drives. It would be a case of the traditional engineering that we’ve always pursued for storage being replaced by chemistry in our machines and data centers.Also on Network World: The future of storage: Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo shares his predictions
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the Brown team $4.1 million to work out how move the concept forward.To read this article in full, please click here
The science behind a lot of today’s newest trends is actually pretty old.John McCarthy is considered the father of AI after he coined the phrase in 1955 and then held the first academic conference on the topic the next year.The term “virtual reality” was first used in the mid-1980s, but the attempts to use electronics to develop simulated environments also reach back to the 1950s.Then, there’s the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a hot topic now, but it’s been nearly 20 years since the phrase was introduced in 1999. And the first connected “thing” (a toaster created by John Romkey and Simon Hackett) actually debuted even earlier, in 1990.To read this article in full, please click here
The father of the Linux operating system has once again blasted Intel for its handling of the Spectre and Meltdown chip vulnerabilities due to the sloppiness of some of the patches. While he has a point, he’s also being a bit unfair, as well as unreasonable.Linus Torvalds is known for his blistering comments on the Linux mailing lists and frequently expresses his dissatisfaction with high levels of acidity. In this case, he was responding to an Amazon engineer on the Linux kernel mailing list regarding recent patches that have resulted in some systems randomly rebooting.To read this article in full, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has partnered with Kubernetes container vendor Portworx to provide a reference configuration for enterprises to launch stateful container workloads on Kubernetes.Containers are a lightweight form of virtualization, where just what is needed is loaded rather than the full operating system like in a virtualized environment. Docker was the first with containers, but it has been steamrolled by Kubernetes, which was developed by Google. Google just had way more resources to bring to bear than Docker, a startup that has relied on venture funding.Also on Network World: Will containers kill the virtual machine?
One of the big changes as containers have evolved is adopting the stateful condition. Initially they were stateless, meaning the data was erased from memory when the container was shut down at the completion of its workload. Stateful applications, on the other hand, are services that require retention of data, usually through a connection to a back-end database so they have persistent storage.To read this article in full, please click here
The latest and greatest innovation in tech was on display this month at CES, with top brands showing off the newest, hottest gadgets, appliances and machines. Where in years past we’ve seen the introduction of IoT devices or smart assistant capabilities, this year we saw the convergence of IoT, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, with Alexa-enabled smart mirrors, new AR headsets with smart assistants and connected ovens. What’s more - Samsung vowed again that all their products with be IOT compatible by 2020. These AI-enabled connected devices, along with the rise in augmented reality, require significant data and computing capabilities. Their introduction and adoption will drive the need for real-time computation to the edges of the internet, which will decentralize enterprise cloud deployments. DNS solutions that offer intelligent traffic management and high velocity automation will enable organizations to deliver the user experience expected for these technologies.To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) is everywhere these days, a status cemented by IoT technology’s star turn at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.Notably, that’s true even as many enterprises struggle to develop workable IoT devices and applications as they deal with multiple incompatible platforms, operating systems and standards. Making things even harder, many IoT systems need to work in harsh, remote, space-constrained and low-power environments. Those are just some of the reasons why IoT development often takes six months to a year and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars—especially for global markets.To read this article in full, please click here
This powerful micro-cut shredder from AmazonBasics turns a letter-sized sheet into 2,235 pieces of confetti, up to 6 sheets at a time (5/32 by 15/32 inches; security level P-4). Inserted one at a time, it also destroys credit cards, rendering them completely unusable. It features a generous 4.1-gallon waste bin that is easy to manage. This micro-cut shredder averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,900 people (72% rate a full 5 stars: read reviews). Its typical list price of $50 has been reduced 29% to $36. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full, please click here
One must be able to walk into a room, including those in data centers, and not only access information about every facet of it, but also importantly, have it automatically solve all of its problems on its own.Site 1001, which specializes in artificial intelligence-run facilities management systems, says the problem should be achieved through neural networks that copy how humans and animals think.The company, a spin-off of JE Dunn Construction Co., demonstrated its all-listening, predictive building maintenance at CES 2018 last week. It says its big data, AI-driven system will ultimately produce smarter and healthier buildings.To read this article in full, please click here
If it weren’t for wide-area networks, it wouldn’t be possible to create unified networks for organizations with far-flung locations, to telecommute, or to do online anything. But WANs do exist and have for decades, constantly evolving to carry more and more traffic faster as demands increase and technology becomes more powerful.What is a WAN?
A WAN is a network that uses various links – private lines, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), virtual private networks (VPNs), wireless (cellular), the Internet – to connect smaller metropolitan and campus networks in diverse locations into a single, distributed network. The sites they connect could be a few miles apart or halfway around the globe. In an enterprise, the purposes of a WAN could include connecting branch offices or even individual remote workers with headquarters or the data center, in order to share corporate resources and communications.To read this article in full, please click here
Fog computing is the concept of a network fabric that stretches from the outer edges of where data is created to where it will eventually be stored, whether that's in the cloud or in a customer’s data center.Fog is another layer of a distributed network environment and is closely associated with cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT). Public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud vendors can be thought of as a high-level, global endpoint for data; the edge of the network is where data from IoT devices is created.Fog computing is the idea of a distributed network that connects these two environments. “Fog provides the missing link for what data needs to be pushed to the cloud, and what can be analyzed locally, at the edge,” explains Mung Chiang, dean of Purdue University’s College of Engineering and one of the nation’s top researchers on fog and edge computing.To read this article in full, please click here
For some time now, server unit sales have been steadily dropping for the major x86 server vendors as enterprises draw down their on-premises hardware in favor of cloud services.The response from the hardware vendors is if you can’t beat ‘em, clone ‘em. Vendors are adopting a pay-as-you-go model not unlike that of a cloud provider, where you pay for how much compute time you use and hand back the hardware when you are done rather than buying it outright.+Check out our review of rack servers from HP, Dell and IBM and tips on calculating the true cost of cloud migration+To read this article in full, please click here
Legacy manual and barcode systems are still in widespread use, but many organizations are turning to the internet of things, specifically RFID tags, to streamline asset tracking in the data center.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
The early days of offering a managed SD-WAN service that provides basic network connectivity are drawing to a close. There is clearly burgeoning demand from customers to manage the network providers and network types that make up the growing mix of SD-WAN bandwidth options.As customers see the value of having different network providers and networks to improve reliability and overall cost per megabit for bandwidth, service providers increasingly will be needed to manage those networks and providers. This is one of the basic tenets for revenue opportunities from SD-WAN services. And with many providers, those revenue opportunities may include the use of wholesale agreements to improve the margin of network services along with the revenue inherent in managing multiple providers for customers.To read this article in full, please click here
As an IoT platform and middleware analyst, I am asked constantly about the benefits of IoT platforms and “what makes a great IoT platform.” In response, I often ask these curious inquirers if they’ve ever used IoT platforms themselves. Walking on the edge is exhilarating, but having hands-on insights, data and expertise on how to survive the journey is even better.What do users actually experience when they use IoT edge platforms?IoT edge computing is a technology architecture that brings certain computational and analytics capabilities near the point of data generation. IoT edge platforms provide the management capabilities required to deliver data from IoT devices to applications while ensuring that devices are properly managed over their lifetimes. Enterprises use edge platforms for factory automation, warehousing/logistics, connected retail, connected mining and many other solutions. With IoT platform revenue slated to grow to USD63.4 billion by 2026, IoT edge is one of the most highly relied upon enterprise IoT platform approaches. To read this article in full, please click here