The Domain Name System remains under constant attack, and there seems to be no end in sight as threats grow increasingly sophisticated.DNS, known as the internet’s phonebook, is part of the global internet infrastructure that translates between familiar names and the numbers computers need to access a website or send an email. While DNS has long been the target of assailants looking to steal all manner of corporate and private information, the threats in the past year or so indicate a worsening of the situation.To read this article in full, please click here
If your wide-area network (WAN) has been with you for many years, it may be time to think about an upgrade, especially given the emergence of technologies such as software-defined WANs (SD-WAN). But rather than just dive in, assuming SD-WAN will be a good fit, it’s helpful to perform an assessment of your current situation and what outcomes you’d like to see out of an upgrade.Making this type of assessment means asking a series of questions, the answers to which may – or may not – lead you toward adopting SD-WAN technology. To learn what sort of questions to ask, I talked with Mike Lawson, Manager of SD-WAN/NFV Solutions Architecture for CenturyLink, a global network provider.Lawson spends his time in the trenches with network architects and customers, accumulating an excellent sense of whether a company is a good candidate for SD-WAN.To read this article in full, please click here
The public internet should migrate to a programmable backbone-as-a-service architecture, says a team of network engineers behind NOIA, a startup promising to revolutionize global traffic. They say the internet will be more efficient if internet protocols and routing technologies are re-worked and then combined with a traffic-trading blockchain.It’s “impossible to use internet for modern applications,” the company says on its website. “Almost all global internet companies struggle to ensure uptime and reliable user experience.”That’s because modern techniques aren’t being introduced fully, NOIA says. The engineers say algorithms should be implemented to route traffic and that segment routing technology should be adopted. Plus, blockchain should be instigated to trade internet transit capacity. A “programmable internet solves the web’s inefficiencies,” a representative from NOIA told me.To read this article in full, please click here
We are living in a hyperconnected world where anything can now be pushed to the cloud. The idea of having content located in one place, which could be useful from the management’s perspective, is now redundant. Today, the users and data are omnipresent.The customer’s expectations have up-surged because of this evolution. There is now an increased expectation of high-quality service and a decrease in customer’s patience. In the past, one could patiently wait 10 hours to download the content. But this is certainly not the scenario at the present time. Nowadays we have high expectations and high-performance requirements but on the other hand, there are concerns as well. The internet is a weird place, with unpredictable asymmetric patterns, buffer bloat and a list of other performance-related problems that I wrote about on Network Insight. [Disclaimer: the author is employed by Network Insight.]To read this article in full, please click here
User groups play an important role on Linux systems. They provide an easy way for a select groups of users to share files with each other. They also allow sysadmins to more effectively manage user privileges, since they can assign privileges to groups rather than individual users.While a user group is generally created whenever a user account is added to a system, there’s still a lot to know about how they work and how to work with them. [ Two-Minute Linux Tips: Learn how to master a host of Linux commands in these 2-minute video tutorials ]
One user, one group?
Most user accounts on Linux systems are set up with the user and group names the same. The user "jdoe" will be set up with a group named "jdoe" and will be the only member of that newly created group. The user’s login name, user id, and group id will be added to the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files when the account is added, as shown in this example:To read this article in full, please click here
The SD-WAN networking market is booming and is expected to grow to $17 billion by 2025, and no wonder. Software-defined wide-area networking eliminates the need for expensive routers and does all the network connectivity in the cloud.Among its advantages is the support for secure cloud connectivity, one area where multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) falls short. MPLS is a data protocol from before the internet took off and while ideal for communications within the corporate firewall, it doesn’t lend itself to cloud and outside communications well.To read this article in full, please click here
The supply chain of vendors that build servers and network communication devices is accelerating its shift of production out of China to Taiwan and North America, along with other nations not subject to the trade war between the U.S. and China.Last May, the Trump Administration levied tariffs on a number of imported Chinese goods, computer components among them. The tariffs ranged from 10-25%. Consumers were hit hardest, since they are more price sensitive than IT buyers. PC World said the average laptop price could rise by $120 just for the tariffs.To read this article in full, please click here
With interest in software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) heating up, companies are facing a key question: can they implement SD-WAN themselves or do they need a service provider to help?It’s a rather loaded question, with many issues to consider if you elect to go the do-it-yourself (DIY) route. In this post, we’ll examine some of the highest hurdles you’ll have to get over if you decide to DIY; paint a picture of what sort of company may be able to tackle an SD-WAN project; and define who will be better off with a managed service.To read this article in full, please click here
If a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) vendor calls you up and says you need their product because it will help you save money, hang up the phone. Okay, maybe you shouldn’t hang up the phone—but you should at least tell him that he’s selling his product wrong.It’s true that the early conversations about SD-WAN were all about cost savings, and those promised cost savings were to come via replacing MPLS with internet connectivity. To some extent, SD-WAN definitely delivers on this promise. That being said, saving money is not the real business driver for SD-WAN.To read this article in full, please click here
As enterprisesincreasingly focus on improving network performance to support applications and deliver a better customer experience, SD-WAN solutions are in the spotlight. One of the key components of providing ongoing IT support is ensuring that networks have the agility needed to adapt to changing business priorities at speed.In one recent IDG survey, 91% of enterprises that implemented SD-WAN technologies saw an increase in network speed. SD-WAN managed services have come to the forefront as a choice that allows enterprises to capture the benefits of SD-WAN, along with the expertise to make the most of the technology. Solutions offer access to the knowledge needed to design, deploy and manage SD-WAN networks, while letting the enterprise maintain visibility and control as desired.To read this article in full, please click here
The internet of things (IoT) needs its own infrastructure ecosystem — one that doesn't use external clouds at all, researchers at the University of Magdeburg say.The computer scientists recently obtained funding from the German government to study how to build a future-generation of revolutionary, emergent IoT systems. They say networks must be fault tolerant, secure, and traverse disparate protocols, which they aren't now.[ Read also: What is edge computing? and How edge networking and IoT will reshape data centers ]
The researchers say a smarter, unique, and organic infrastructure needs to be developed for the IoT and that simply adapting the IoT to traditional networks won't work. They say services must self-organize and function autonomously and that people must accept the fact that we are using the internet in ways never originally intended. To read this article in full, please click here
Intel has unveiled a new packaging innovation for creating 3D chip packages and multiple chip connections ahead of the Semicon West conference in San Francisco this week.The company is detailing its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technologies and Foveros 3D chip packages. This may sound like very inside baseball and best suited for the propellerhead crowd, but hear me out.[ Also read: What is quantum computing (and why enterprises should care) ]
Chip packaging has always played a critical role in semiconductors, and it’s getting more important as chipmakers such as Intel and AMD strain against the limits of Moore’s Law. The chip’s package is how the chip’s electrical signals and power are routed.To read this article in full, please click here
A supercomputer deployed in 2012 is going into retirement after seven years of hard work, but the task of decommissioning it is not trivial.The Cray XK7 “Titan” supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is scheduled to be decommissioned on August 1 and disassembled for recycling.At 27 petaflops, or 27 quadrillion calculations per second, Titan was at one point the fastest supercomputer in the world at its debut in 2012 and remained in the top 10 worldwide until June 2019.[ Also read: 10 of the world's fastest supercomputers | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ]
But time marches on. This beast is positively ancient by computing standards. It uses 16-core AMD Opteron CPUs and Nvidia Kepler generation processors. You can buy a gaming PC with better than that today.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM's acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion is now a done deal, and statements from the leadership of both companies sound extremely promising. But some in the Linux users have expressed concern.Questions being asked by some Linux professionals and devotees include:
Will Red Hat lose customer confidence now that it’s part of IBM and not an independent company?
Will IBM continue putting funds into open source after paying such a huge price for Red Hat? Will they curtail what Red Hat is able to invest?
Both companies’ leaders are saying all the right things now, but can they predict how their business partners and customers will react as they move forward? Will their good intentions be derailed?
Part of the worry simply comes from the size of this deal. Thirty-four billion dollars is a lot of money. This is probably the largest cloud computing acquisition to date. What kind of strain will that price tag put on how the new IBM functions going forward? Other worries come from the character of the acquisition – whether Red Hat will be able to continue operating independently and what will change if they cannot. In addition, a few Linux devotees hark Continue reading
Businesses could find themselves repositioning wireless access points and even facing increased bandwidth demands as Wi-Fi 6 hits the market in the coming months, according to a white paper released today by the Wireless Broadband Alliance.Nevertheless, the news is mostly good for prospective business users. Thanks to Wi-Fi 6’s array of coexistence, power-saving and smart management features, a new network based on the technology shouldn’t pose many deployment problems.The time of 5G is almost here
Key to the enterprise WLAN use case, the white paper says, is deployment planning – Wi-Fi 6 can offer different optimal placement options than previous-generation Wi-Fi, so it could behoove upgraders to consider changing AP locations, instead of just swapping out existing devices in the same locations.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM has finalized its $34 billion purchase of Red Hat and says it will use the Linux powerhouse's open-source know-how to enable larger scale customer projects and to create a web of partnerships to simplify carrying them out."A lot of our mutual clients are interested in doing a lot more," says Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud & Cognitive Software in a blog post. "Many see this as an opportunity for us to create large industry ecosystems with other providers who are optimized on this common infrastructure. ...If Red Hat were to do this on their own, there would be a limit to how much they can scale. Together, we can put a lot more resources into optimizing other partners."To read this article in full, please click here
In the past few years, edge computing has been revolutionizing how some very familiar services are provided to individuals like you and me, as well as how services are managed within major industries. Try to get your arms around what edge computing is today, and you might just discover that your arms aren’t nearly as long or as flexible as you’d imagined. And Linux is playing a major role in this ever-expanding edge.One reason why edge computing defies easy definition is that it takes many different forms. As Jaromir Coufal, principal product manager at Red Hat, recently pointed out to me, there is no single edge. Instead, there are lots of edges – depending on what compute features are needed. He suggests that we can think of the edge as something of a continuum of capabilities with the problem being resolved determining where along that particular continuum any edge solution will rest.To read this article in full, please click here
Looking to bulk-up its optical systems portfolio, Cisco says it intends to buy Acacia Communications for approximately $2.6 billion. The deal is Cisco’s largest since it laid out $3.7B for AppDynamics in 2017.Acacia develops, manufactures and sells high-speed coherent optical interconnect products that are designed to transform networks linking data centers, cloud and service providers. Cisco is familiar with Acacia as it has been a “significant” customer of the optical firm for about five years, Cisco said.To read this article in full, please click here
Forty seven percent of CEOs say they are being “challenged” by their board of directors to show progress in shifting toward a digital business model according to the Gartner 2018 CIO Agenda Industry Insights Report. By improving IT operations, organizations can progress and even accelerate their digital transformation initiatives efficiently and successfully. The biggest barrier to success is that IT currently spends around 78 percent of their budget and 80 percent of their time just maintaining IT operations, leaving little time and resource left for innovation according to ZK Research*.To read this article in full, please click here
Data center workloads are moving but not only to the cloud. Increasingly, they are shifting to colocation facilities as an alternative to privately owned data centers.What is colocation?
A colocation facility or colo is a data center in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing hardware that they purchase but that the colo provider manages.Read about IPv6 and cloud-access security brokers
The colo company provides the building, cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security. Space is leased by the rack, cabinet, cage or room. Many colos started out as managed services and continue to offer those specialized services.To read this article in full, please click here