Last month it was Catalyst 9000 switches, and this month its routers. Yes, my project engineering staff have had a surprising amount of inquiries regarding routers.Routers vital to enterprise networks When looking at distribution for an enterprise network, well-planned routing is the key to success. Routers can be absolutely vital for networks, as they connect a large amount of worksites within one large, umbrella-like network. At the enterprise level, they provide redundant paths, connect ISPs, and can translate data between different media.To read this article in full, please click here
It’s not good enough to run cables and just hope they work, or simply say it’s all good if they provide a working network connection to the computer or device. You should double-check by testing or qualifying the cable runs before you call the job complete.You should use a tester to check if all the cable pairs are intact and correctly wired and see if the cable can truly handle the data rates you desire. Network testers can also be a lifesaver when troubleshooting network issues or making changes to the wired network.They could for instance tell you which cable pairs you might have mixed up when terminating the cable. Or if you’re working on someone else’s network install that didn’t document or label any cable runs, you can utilize the tester to help identify where the cables are running.To read this article in full, please click here
Troubleshooting WiFi problems has been the bane of the network engineer’s existence for nearly a decade. So often these problems go undiagnosed that clients have even since stopped reporting them. Bad WiFi chalked up as just part of everyday life.Yet the role enterprise WLAN plays has literally become a critical part of an ever-growing ecosystem of both end user and IoT devices. Add to that the technology advancements in 802.11 and the task of maintaining a reliable WiFi network has become nearly out of reach of the average WLAN engineer. To solve this conundrum WLAN vendors, have a long history of attempting to solve the problem with hardware sensors and detailed active site surveys.To read this article in full, please click here
You might think that the Internet of Things (IoT) was custom made for the insurance industry. After all, what could be more useful to all those actuarial tables than detailed, real-world information from billions of IoT sensors in a wide variety of devices? In fact, we’re already seeing the beginnings of insurance uses of IoT, including auto insurance companies that give discounts for drivers willing to have their vehicles—and their driving habits—tracked.But according to a new IoT and the State of the Insurance Industry Study from LexisNexis, the message hasn’t penetrated very far into the famously conservative field. Top-line results from the survey reveal a clear disconnect between what insurance companies think about IoT and what they’re actually doing about it.To read this article in full, please click here
Linux systems can provide more help with your schedule than just reminding you what day today is. You have a lot of options for displaying calendars — some that are likely to prove helpful and others that just might boggle your mind.date To begin, you probably know that you can show the current date with the date command.$ date Mon Mar 26 08:01:41 EDT 2018 cal and ncal You can show the entire month with the cal command. With no arguments, cal displays the current month and, by default, highlights the current day by reversing the foreground and background colors.$ cal March 2018 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Also read: 5 top Linux server distros for enterprises | Sign up: Receive daily Network World updates If you want to display the current month in a “sideways” format, you can use the ncal command.To read this article in full, please click here
[Note: The author of this article is not a lawyer and this article should not be considered legal advice. Please consult a privacy specialist.]The basic news The GDPR covers all personal data your company stores on data subjects in the EU – whether or not your company has nexus in the EU. Personal data is defined as data that can be used to identify a person. It’s similar to the concept of personally identifiable information (PII) that we have in the US, but it is broader. PII typically includes actual identifying elements like your name, social security number, and birthday, focusing mainly on the data required to fake your identity with a lender. Personal data includes what the US calls PII, plus any data that can be used to identify you in any way, which includes things as basic as an email address, online personality (e.g. twitter handle), or even the IP address where you transmitted a message from.To read this article in full, please click here
It was time to get a handle on BACnet traffic at Penn State.BACnet is a communications protocol for building automation and control (BAC) systems such as heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, access control and fire detection. Penn State standardized on BACnet because of its openness.[ For more on IoT see tips for securing IoT on your network, our list of the most powerful internet of things companies and learn about the industrial internet of things. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] “Any device, any manufacturer – as long as they talk BACnet, we can integrate them,” says Tom Walker, system design specialist in the facility automation services group at Penn State. “It’s a really neat protocol, but you have to know the quirks that come with deploying it, especially at scale.”To read this article in full, please click here
The market for IoT security products is set to grow sharply, as the general IoT market becomes ever more ubiquitous, according to a report released this month by Gartner Research. While there are numerous drivers behind the increased demand for IoT security, a growing sense that regulatory compliance will shortly become an issue is one of the most pressing.The report lists security as the top barrier to success for IoT initiatives, according to a survey on IoT adoption conducted by Gartner. A big part of the problem, the report said, is that businesses often don’t have full control over which devices and software are being used at each level of a given IoT project.To read this article in full, please click here
With a thrilling win over the New England Patriots, the Philadelphia Eagles are this year’s Super Bowl Champions, the first championship in their franchise’s history. Game-changers weren’t exclusively on the field during this year’s game; they were in the stands as well and they come with unique post-game analysis.For the 5th straight year, Extreme Networks was named the Official Wi-Fi Analytics provider of the Super Bowl. ExtremeAnalytics provides granular insights into how the network performed throughout the event, as well as providing a detailed understanding of the mobile engagement behaviors of connected fans.To read this article in full, please click here
Broadband data-over-light, sent through lighting fixtures commonly seen in commercial buildings, moves a step closer to possible mass adoption through an apparently functioning smart-office installation in Paris.Li-Fi uses light waves for data communications, as opposed to Wi-Fi, which uses microwave radio. Li-Fi has 10,000 times Wi-Fi radio’s RF spectrum, experts say. The pilot installation by Philips is at a French real-estate company’s office.Philips Lighting, the giant lighting-system maker, says it is now offering Li-Fi modems installed within its existing LED luminaires, such as its downlighters. A luminaire is the building-industry term for a complete lighting fixture.To read this article in full, please click here
Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming important to remain competitive for almost every industry out there. Business goals for implementing IoT can range from improving internal operations to offering completely new services to improving regulatory compliance. But who at each company should be responsible for digging into this new world and defining how to implement IoT? We’ve learned that it’s important to have supporters across several groups to develop a truly successful IoT solution:1. Initiative lead Those who lead initiatives should always keep a pulse on competition, market conditions, changes in business models, risk assessment and supporting technologies among many other trends. This high-level perspective means executives should be the internal champions of initiatives like adopting IoT into an organization. Their involvement, however can range from setting high level direction and enabling teams within the organization to executing on an initiative directly.To read this article in full, please click here
In December 2017, Versa Networks in tandem with Dimensional Research conducted a survey examining hundreds of participants across five continents with the primary goal of capturing how companies are managing and securing their network across branch locations. In addition, the research also investigated the expected benefits and challenges of a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and revealed trends when compared to a similar survey conducted in 2016.The survey found that network administrators face many hurdles when it comes to their organization’s WAN. Increasing costs due to the growing traffic volume over existing MPLS networks represented a major headache, followed by information security risks at the branch that could later erupt into a cyberattack or data breach.To read this article in full, please click here
Microsoft is set to make Windows Server 2019 generally available in the second half of the year, opening up access to its preview build through its Insiders program now and targeting data centers with new features to handle hybrid cloud setups and hyperconverged infrastructure.The next version of Windows Server also adds new security features and enhances support for containers and Linux.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] If you want to check out the release for yourself, sign up for the Insiders program.To read this article in full, please click here
Microsoft is set to make Windows Server 2019 generally available in the second half of the year, opening up access to its preview build through its Insiders program now and targeting data centers with new features to handle hybrid cloud setups and hyperconverged infrastructure.The next version of Windows Server also adds new security features and enhances support for containers and Linux.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] If you want to check out the release for yourself, sign up for the Insiders program.To read this article in full, please click here
This industry likes to abandon technologies as soon as it adopts them, but a few find a way to hang around. I recently purchased a car, and in the finance office was a dot matrix printer, chugging away at the same multipage forms I saw used more than 25 years ago.Tape backup is also hanging in there. With data being produced in ever-increasing numbers, it has to be stored somewhere, and hard drives aren’t enough. For true mass backup, enterprises are still turning to tape backup, and the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs) say 2017 shipments grew 12.9 percent over 2016 to 108,457 petabytes (PB) of tape capacity.Read also: The future of storage: Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo shares his predictions | Sign up: Receive daily network news updates LTO TPCs is a group consisting of three tape backup providers: HPE, IBM, and Quantum. There are other tape backup providers, such as Oracle, which inherited the StorageTek business from Sun Microsystems and still sells them, but it was not included in the count.To read this article in full, please click here
As spring finally rolls around and the frost melts away (except here in New England), the change in seasons not only brings us ultraviolet B-induced vitamin D, but also shines some healthy sunlight on the clutter the long winter leaves behind in its wake, including both at home and in the data center. With spring, comes an opportunity to reevaluate data center cleaning habits and question whether a more practical, day-to-day strategy would benefit data center managers in the long run.Instead of enduring the spring cleaning process in the data center, data center managers should rethink their current cleaning strategy, which often leads to seasonal operational overhauls, and instead consider a new and more efficient method that benefits from granular operational data and analytics. So, with the spring solstice upon us, here are a few tips to enable data center managers to reap the advantages of “year-round cleaning” rather than looking for that old and tired broom.To read this article in full, please click here
Cloud technology has been incredibly beneficial for organizations of every size and type. However, as the use of cloud increases, some common misperceptions are setting the stage for substantial operational problems in the future. The first misperception, and perhaps the most notable, is the belief held by many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) utilizing cloud services that they don’t have to worry about their on-premises IT equipment and ensure it is housed in a reliable and protected physical environment.The reality is that ignoring your IT infrastructure and the physical hardware that supports it is as risky for SMBs that are heavily cloud dependent as it is for those with on-premises solutions. The primary reason is that the network infrastructure to support the cloud will have substantial demands for new features/capabilities, increased bandwidth, reliability, and scalability. Similar to traditional IT architectures, the cloud also requires more than a 1990s wiring closet or a section of the break room for IT hardware. You need a modern physical infrastructure to ensure your critical network and IT hardware are highly reliable, have effective thermal management, and can scale up to meet your needs for new cloud services.To read this article in full, Continue reading
IBM has launched the latest effort to bring the nature of the cloud to the on-premises data center with Cloud Private for Data. It's an integrated data science, engineering and development platform designed to help companies gain insights from data sources such IoT, online commerce, and mobile data.Cloud Private for Data builds on IBM Cloud Private, a private cloud platform IBM introduced in November that brought Kubernetes into the data center. Cloud Private for Data expands on that greatly, adding IBM Streams for data ingestion, IBM Data Science Experience, Information Analyzer, Information Governance Catalogue, Data Stage, Db2, and Db2 Warehouse. All run on the Kubernetes platform, allowing services to be deployed “in minutes,” IBM claimed, and to scale up or down automatically as needed.To read this article in full, please click here
The role of Wi-Fi has changed in most companies and is no longer something that’s merely convenient. Rather, it’s critical to a business’s ability to ensure its customer are happy and workers are productive.Given the growing importance of Wi-Fi, it’s essential vendors make products that are easy to set up, particularly for small businesses where the technical acumen of the person setting the product up is likely to be low.HPE had inquires as to the importance of having the product be easy to setup and manage, and I said that I felt it was the most important attribute. In fact, I chose the solution for my house — which includes four indoor access points (APs), one outdoor AP, and a 48 port Ethernet switch — based on how easy the product was to operate. I'm very technical, but I really can't be bothered to fiddle around with doing things in a CLI.To read this article in full, please click here
The thing about MPLS is that it’s a technique, not a service — so it can deliver anything from IP VPNs to metro Ethernet. It's expensive, so with the advent of SD-WAN enterprises are trying to figure how to optimize its use vs. less expensive connections like the internet.Did you ever order something online from a distant retailer and then track the package as it makes strange and seemingly illogical stops all over the country.That’s similar to the way IP routing on the Internet works. When an internet router receives an IP packet, that packet carries no information beyond a destination IP address. There is no instruction on how that packet should get to its destination or how it should be treated along the way.To read this article in full, please click here