As an ever present staple of technology in the inventory of any major enterprise, WAN optimizers have begun to lose their luster. While there are still probably thousands in widespread use throughout the world, evolution has conspired to put them on the endangered species list. Do you remember thicknet, thinnet, or token ring? Yup! That kind of endangered! Continue reading
Linux is a tried-and-true, open source operating system released in 1991 for computers, but its use has expanded to underpin systems for cars, phones, web-servers and, more recently, networking gear.It’s longevity, maturity and security make it one of the most trusted OSes available today, meaning it is ideal for commercial network devices as well as enterprises that want to use it and its peripherals to customize their own network and data center infrastructure.That in turn makes Linux skills highly sought after by IT hiring managers. Many of the new technologies associated with DevOps, for example, such as containers, OpenSource infrastructure and SDN controllers are built on Linux.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Flash Memory Summit is taking place in the Silicon Valley, and SSD vendors are showing off some impressive new enterprise-scale drives with greater capacity and performance.Seagate showed off some new products in its Nytro line with 3D NAND, raising capacity four-fold, and also showed off a PCI Express-based card with 64TB capacity. Conveniently, the company did not give the price. Seagate Nytro 5000 SSD line
The Nytro 5000 product line is an upgrade to Seagate’s existing XM1440 line of SSDs. These drives range in capacity from 400GB to 2TB. All use the M.2 interface. M.2 is a design that’s different from traditional SATA drives. A typical SATA SSD looks like a 2.5-inch hard disk and uses a SATA interface. M.2 is about the size of a stick of gum and plugs into the motherboard. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Once, there was a pin factory. It employed ten workers – each of whom performed a different task. This organizational structure allowed them to generate 48,000 pins every day. If the people working at the plant were working independently, the output of each would have been limited to 20 pins at most – totaling 200 pins. This story describing division of labor was used in Adam Smith’s 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, as an example of operational excellence (OE).If your company is to survive in a competitive market, OE must be sought, explained Faisal Hoque in Fast Company. In other words, the enterprise must “identify, understand and create the capabilities, behaviors and focuses necessary for repeatable, continuous and measurable operational improvement,” said Hoque.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Single wireless networks will be separated into many, layered virtual networks when 5G is launched, experts say. The technique, called network slicing, is of a similar concept to software-defined networking (SDN), found now in some fixed networking, where managers program network behavior.The way dynamic network slicing will work is that communications specific to a particular 5G application, such as those found in Internet of Things (IoT) sensors or video, will be layered over the top of a common infrastructure, then software will manage the different service types.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The development of artificial intelligence has made staggering leaps forward in recent years, with products like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa now dotting living rooms and businesses across the nation. While AI has wasted little time in shaking up the foundations of most established industries, the field of healthcare, in particular, stands to be fundamentally transformed by this burgeoning technology.So what exactly does the future of AI hold for the healthcare industry? How are doctors and industry insiders preparing themselves, and what might it mean for patients' futures?Harnessing the power of machines
More and more prudent investors are realizing that emerging data analytics capabilities are only the start of a forthcoming revolution. As health records are increasingly digitized, doctors and nurses will find themselves capable of ordering AI programs to sift through huge swaths of data to find meaningful trends that lie below the surface. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are able to perfectly archive and retrieve even the most complex sets of data, often doing so with greater efficiency than humans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wi-Fi has had an enormous impact on mobile computing use, enabling employees to access corporate networks from anywhere and turning coffee shops into offices for independent workers. It also has its shortcomings, which is where a new standard, Li-Fi, could one day fill in the gaps, assuming it can make it to market.The trouble with Wi-Fi? It doesn’t travel far, especially through walls. It is notoriously insecure and easy to spoof by hackers. And even with the bandwidth increases over the years, an access point can be overwhelmed rather easily when too many people try to access it at the same time.+Related: Does MU-MIMO really expand Wi-Fi system capacity?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo has done a bang-up job in taking over IBM’s old PC business and turning it into a rousing success. Or at least as much of a success as can be had in an era of declining PC sales. Its luck with the server business? Not so much.Lenovo picked up IBM’s x86 server business in 2014 after some grumbling and consternation from the government. It seemed the government and military had quite an installed base of IBM servers and wasn’t keen on the Chinese taking ownership of them. But the deal went through after some assurances. Looks like that was the least of their problems. According to Gartner, in the first quarter of 2017, Lenovo sales fell 16 percent and its market share dropped to just 5.8 percent. Lenovo was fifth, behind HPE, Dell EMC, IBM (which is only selling Power-based RISC systems and mainframes) and Cisco. In fact, Lenovo had been ahead of Cisco in terms of units sold. When you fall behind Cisco in servers, a business Cisco didn’t even enter until a decade ago, you have a problem. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When I began this blog in October of last year, my goal was to help readers understand both the magnitude of the digital transformation currently underway and its implications for companies and IT professionals in every industry. In particular, I focused on the role of the network in enabling digital business and best practices for transforming the network from a cost center to a growth driver.This is a subject near and dear to my heart because the networking industry has been my home for many years, and it has seen a lot of change. Come this fall, it’s likely so see a bit more. Last November, my company, Brocade, announced that it is being acquired by Broadcom Ltd., and in the next few months, that transaction is expected to be completed. I’m a perfect example of the fact that you can never fully predict how things will change; you can only know things will change. So I want to wrap up this blog series with a look back at some of the most important things you need to consider today to make sure you’re ready for whatever changes digital transformation may send in your direction.To read this Continue reading
With the depletion of IPv4 addresses, more organizations are encouraged to transition over to using IPv6 addresses. Many organizations are noticing the benefits of the built-in security features of IPv6. Also, enterprise IT managers are observing that their service providers are successfully using IPv6, and this encourages them to move forward with it.To continue to ignore IPv6 could cause any number of potential problems, including an inability to immediately migrate to IPv6 when there is no longer a choice, loss of internet connectivity, and not being able to compete with organizations whose systems are configured for IPv6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The rapid spread of the internet of things quickly revolutionized how companies operated and how consumers interacted with their favorite apps and devices. Today, cars, homes, and even thermostats are all digitally connected, sharing information with one another and making consumer’s lives easier than ever before. But is this stunning phenomenon now in danger?The Federal Communications Commission has put forward a proposal under the guise of “internet freedom” that could very well spell out the end of the internet of things. The gutting of net neutrality rules could pave the way towards an unregulated future, in which the fate of the internet rest in the hands of massive corporations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dead zones have plagued users since the dawn of wireless networks.I know my wife is making or answering a call when she runs for the kitchen window. Sometimes I even find her outside, pointing her smartphone at the sky as she desperately searches for a cellular signal.We’ve all been there. And the struggle to find a strong connection now goes beyond cellular to Wi-Fi and the Internet of Things (IoT). But why?One answer is standards – or lack thereof. Until recently, there were no guidelines for integrating wireless networks directly into homes. Thick walls, frame and cement block many wireless signals. Most architects and builders don’t design around radio frequency (RF), and few people position their Wi-Fi router where they’re spending most of their connected time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
My kids use the expression “easy, peasy” to describes something that is super simple. For example, I might ask my youngest child, “How was your math test?” And because high school math is beyond simple, he would respond, “Easy, peasy.” In life, there are things that should be easy, but we often overcomplicate them. One thing that should be easy every time is signing on to guest Wi-Fi. The fact that it isn’t, makes it one of my biggest pet peeves.+ Also on Network World: 9 free Wi-Fi stumbling and surveying tools +
Before I get into the why, I’ll take a step back and define guest Wi-Fi. Webopedia describes it as “a wireless router feature that is designed to allow users to easily grant visitor access to your wireless Internet connection.” Not to nitpick, but it’s more a Wi-Fi feature than a router feature, but most readers of this will get that. Also, note the word EASY in the definition, so all you Wi-Fi administrators out there, take note. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
GNU's aspell is a very useful tool for fixing potential typos in files. It not only picks out your misspellings and displays them to you; it offers you a list of potential corrections and applies your changes as instructed. And it often remembers the fixes that you've applied.Hopefully, you’ve spotted the typo in this post’s image. If you had a file containing the word “appertizers”, this clever utility would help you to spot and replace it.Say you had a file named "oops" that contained this typo:
$ cat oops
Please list the appertizers in alphabeticle order.
If you asked aspell to check this file with the command “apsell check oops”, it would present the file contents with the word “appertizer” highlighted and offer the list below as options for correcting the error.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
GNU's aspell is a very useful tool for fixing potential typos in files. It not only picks out your misspellings and displays them to you, but it offers you a list of potential corrections and applies your changes as instructed. And it often remembers the fixes that you've applied.Hopefully, you’ve spotted the typo in this post’s image. If you had a file containing the word “appertizers,” this clever utility would help you to spot and replace it.Say you had a file named "oops" that contained this typo:$ cat oops
Please list the appertizers in alphabeticle order.
If you asked aspell to check this file with the command “apsell check oops”, it would present the file contents with the word “appertizer” highlighted and offer the list below as options for correcting the error.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Picking the right network-monitoring platform can result in better network performance, more efficient use of IT staff and improved end-user productivity, so it’s important to pick the right one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
The data transformation tool known as ETL, or extract, transfer and load, is slowing down companies’ ability to do real-time data analysis, costing those companies business opportunities and making their analytics inefficient. That is the result of a survey of 502 IT professionals conducted by IDC on behalf of InterSystems Corp., a high-performance database management vendor. The survey also found that Changed Data Capture (CDC) technology is also slowing companies down and impeding their ability to do real-time data analysis. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big data is shaking up the ways our entrepreneurs start their businesses, our healthcare professionals deliver care, and our financial services render their transactions. Now, big data’s reach has expanded so far that it’s revolutionizing the way our scientist search for gas, oil, and even valuable minerals.Searching under the surface of the earth for valuable mineral deposits has never been easy, but by exploiting recent innovations in big data that allow scientist to gleam the signal from the noise, experts are now capable of discovering and categorizing new minerals more efficiently than ever before.A new type of mining
By mining big data, or by crunching huge sums of numbers to predict trends, scientist are now capable of mapping mineral deposits in new and exciting ways. Network theory, which has been used with great success in fields ranging from healthcare to national security, is one big data tool that scientist are coming to rely on more and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The installed capacity of solar power in the U.S. now exceeds all other forms of power generation.Generating solar power at scale with thousands of panels requires new approaches to monitoring and management. Since 2004, SunPower has designed, constructed, managed and supplied high performance solar power plants around the world. More than 3 gigawatts of solar plants rely on SunPower technology today. How does SunPower monitor thousands of solar panels across hundreds of power plants? How are performance issues remotely diagnosed and troubleshot in real-time? How are false alerts distinguished from real ones? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here