Palo Alto Networks is reinforcing the security and operational features of its Prisma secure-access service edge (SASE) package.New features include the ability to adjust security settings for multiple software-as-a-service-based apps, new security capabilities, and AIOPs support. In addition the company is expanding its family of Ion SD-WAN security devices to provide additional configuration options.
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For network professionals looking to advance their career, cloud certifications can lead to more employment opportunities at higher salaries. In fact, the most in-demand certification across all of IT for 2022 is the entry level AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, according to the latest report from recruiting firm Robert Half.A credential can be exceptionally beneficial because it allows holders to demonstrate that they understand complex network designs and are able to help their organizations achieve business objectives in the cloud, says Ruby Nahal, cloud architect at Mission Cloud Services, a managed services provider.To read this article in full, please click here
For network professionals looking to advance their career, cloud certifications can lead to more employment opportunities at higher salaries. In fact, the most in-demand certification across all of IT for 2022 is the entry level AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, according to the latest report from recruiting firm Robert Half.A credential can be exceptionally beneficial because it allows holders to demonstrate that they understand complex network designs and are able to help their organizations achieve business objectives in the cloud, says Ruby Nahal, cloud architect at Mission Cloud Services, a managed services provider.To read this article in full, please click here
At Juniper Networks, we know that Juniper Apstra provides superior benefits to customers over the entire data center lifecycle, from Day 0 design and planning, to Day 1 deployment, through Day 2+ and ongoing operations. The problem? An assertion coming from a vendor sounds too salesy, even if our suspicions are right. So, we ran a detailed analysis through a third party, and it turns out, if anything, the results suggest we’ve been underselling the value Apstra can deliver. This blog is designed to walk through the findings. The conclusion? Those that aren’t shortlisting Juniper in the data center are likely leaving money – and capability – on the table.To read this article in full, please click here
At Juniper Networks, we know that Juniper Apstra provides superior benefits to customers over the entire data center lifecycle, from Day 0 design and planning, to Day 1 deployment, through Day 2+ and ongoing operations. The problem? An assertion coming from a vendor sounds too salesy, even if our suspicions are right. So, we ran a detailed analysis through a third party, and it turns out, if anything, the results suggest we’ve been underselling the value Apstra can deliver. This blog is designed to walk through the findings. The conclusion? Those that aren’t shortlisting Juniper in the data center are likely leaving money – and capability – on the table.To read this article in full, please click here
By: Derek Granath, Senior Director, SD-WAN Product and Technical Marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.A Quick History LessonBelieve it or not, the term Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) was first introduced back in 2014, practically ancient history when it comes to networking at the edge. It’s now well recognized and increasingly adopted as the cloud-first way to transform WAN architecture, improving application performance, enabling more efficient connectivity, and reducing network complexity.Secure Access Service Edge, known as SASE, describes the cloud-first architecture for both WAN and security functions, all delivered and managed in the cloud. In short, SASE is a blend of SD-WAN and cloud-delivered security.To read this article in full, please click here
The enterprise network is undergoing a fundamental transition from manual to automated, from hardware to software-defined, from tightly controlled to sprawling across SaaS, multi-cloud, remote work and IoT environments.Network professionals are expected to not only extend existing functionality across all of those environments, they must elevate the capabilities of the network to enable digital transformation. That means building a network that’s more agile, resilient, secure, scalable, observable and intelligent.To read this article in full, please click here
The cd command makes it easy to switch to another directory on Liniux, but only if you know where you’re heading. In this post, I discuss a couple of tricks for moving between known locations and provide a script for finding and “remembering” files or locations that you might want to reuse.One of the easiest things to do with the cd command is return to your home directory regardless of where you are sitting in the file system at the moment. Just type cd by itself, and you’ll be back in your home directory. Typing cd ~ will do the same thing, though adding the tilde won’t get you there any faster.To read this article in full, please click here
Like many of its competitors, Cisco’s quarterly and year-end financial results show the good and bad of the current economy—a record of new product orders alongside record backlogged orders.Cisco reported that for the period ending July 30, its quarterly revenue was basically flat year-over-year at $13.1 billion, but revenue for the 2022 fiscal year was up three percent to $51.6 billion.
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“Full year product orders and backlog are both at record highs,” Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins said in a written statement before the company’s quarterly and year-end Wall Street phone briefing.To read this article in full, please click here
Redundancy is essential for dealing with both planned and unplanned outages, and that includes having redundant dynamic host-configuration protocol (DHCP) servers to allow uninterrupted dynamic assignment of IP addresses.For those working in Windows environments, there are currently two options for setting up redundant DHCP servers: a failover scenario with a main server paired with another in hot standby; and a load-balancing scenario in which two DHCP servers actively handle client requests.
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Network visibility is getting murkier, and enterprises are investing in tools to cut through the fog, tighten security, and boost IT pros’ productivity.A majority (78%) of companies plan to increase their spending on network visibility tools over the next two years, according to Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). Traffic growth is the main impetus, due in large part to adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.Other factors driving the need for better visibility include increases in east-west data center traffic and greater use of encryption by bad actors to hide malicious traffic.To read this article in full, please click here
Tool sprawl is a daunting problem that plagues enterprise IT everywhere you look, from data center operations to cybersecurity to network reliability to application performance.Tool sprawl occurs when organizations acquire licenses (or not, in the case of open source) for multiple tools that tackle related, but not completely overlapping, issues. Layered security is the most obvious example of this, but the problem bedevils networking, DevOps, cloud teams, etc.To read this article in full, please click here
There are only a few special characters involved in working with character strings on the command line or in a script on Linux: the single quote, the double quote and the backslash. But the rules aren’t as obvious as one might think. In this post, we’ll look at the easy and the somewhat tricky uses of these special characters.Echoing text
The echo command doesn’t require any variety of quote characters much of the time. You can echo a phrase like this without bothering with quotes of any kind.To read this article in full, please click here
Growth in hyperscaler data centers and processor-intensive enterprise workloads, such as high-performance computing (HPC) and AI, is set to drive broadscale adoption of SmartNICs.The Ethernet controller and adapter market will grow from $3.2 billion in 2021 to $5 billion in 2026, with smartNICs contributing significantly to the growth, according to Dell’Oro Group. In addition, server network connectivity will transition to higher speeds, according to the research firm, which predicts 100 Gbps and higher-speed ports will account for 44% of the shipments in five years.To read this article in full, please click here
OK, you’re a CIO and when you go down to the data center, you see racks of routers, each with a maze of cabling. When you hear “virtual routers” you think of all of that gone, replaced by mystical router instances floating about somewhere in the ether, and you smile.Or you’re a CFO who gets a bill for hundreds of branch routers, each picking your pocket on service charges and maybe software licenses. You hear “virtual routers” and think of all those little hands going out of your pocket, and you smile.To read this article in full, please click here
A big lesson brought home early in the COVID-19 pandemic is that IT requirements can suddenly change at an explosive rate, and the only way to prepare for such events is to build as much flexibility as possible into corporate networks.Many large enterprises had already embraced this concept, but smaller ones with fewer financial resources had not. The pandemic moved the needle for many of them from viewing flexibility as a luxury to seeing it as a core functionality they can’t afford to be without.SD-WAN buyers guide: Key questions to ask vendors
So what goes into achieving the level of flexibility that lets business adjust on the fly to 100% of their employees working remotely or situations where critical staff can’t come into the office?To read this article in full, please click here
The term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless LANs, despite the fact it’s a specific trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group dedicated to certifying that products meet the IEEE’s wireless standards.In the IEEE’s naming convention, all standards that specify protocols for implementing wireless LANs fall under the 802.11umbrella. Individual standards are assigned alphabetically, 802.11a, 802.11b, etc. Thanks to the widespread acceptance of wireless LANs, new standards continue to be developed at a rapid pace, creating a confusing alphabet soup.To read this article in full, please click here
Internet shutdowns by governments across the world impacted 1.89 billion citizens globally in the first half of 2022, a 22% increase when compared with the second half of 2021.A recent report compiled by VPN service provider Surfshark found there were 66 state-mandated internet blackouts imposed across six countries and territories during the period: Burkina Faso, India, Jammu and Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Sudan. Local shutdowns were observed in India, Jammu and Kashmir region, and Pakistan, while Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, and Sudan chose to cut down internet connections nationwide.While there was an overall decrease in the number of internet shutdowns during the period—72 cases in the first half of 2022 compared with 84 reported in the second half of 2021—the number of people impacted was much higher, as reliance on the internet has increased globally.To read this article in full, please click here
One of the more unusual Linux commands is named “yes”. It’s a very simple tool intended to help you avoid having to answer a lot of questions that might be asked when you run a script or a program that needs a series of responses to do its work.If you type “yes” by itself at the command prompt, your screen is going to start filling up with the just the letter “y” (one per line) until you hit control-C to stop it. It’s also incredibly fast. Unlike what you see displayed below, yes will likely spit out more than a million y’s in the time it likely takes you to reach down and press control-C. Fortunately, that’s not all that this command can do.To read this article in full, please click here
Arista Networks has acquired Pluribus Networks with an eye toward bolstering its own Unified Cloud Networking service.There were no details such as cost of the acquisition nor what the deal means for the 140 Pluribus employees most based in Los Altos, Calif. What is SDN and where it's going
Pluribus is a software-defined networking pioneer, founded in 2010 and has morphed its original Netvisor One, a virtualized Linux-based NOS that provides Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking and distributed fabric intelligence into its Adaptive Cloud Fabric software-defined networking package.To read this article in full, please click here