The IT team at Perkins+Will used to support a sprawling SAN environment for its complex commercial-building renderings.When the Chicago-based architecture firm – which has 2,500 employees in 30 locations around the world – outgrew its SAN environment, Perkins+Will chose to migrate away from on-premises data centers and edge devices to a cloud-based storage system. Suddenly CIO Murali Selvaraj faced a difficult challenge: How to restructure the firm's 50-person global IT organization to meet the needs of the hybrid cloud?To read this article in full, please click here
More and more networking pros need to familiarize themselves with Linux because the operating system underpins so many enterprise tools and platforms including software-defined networking and SD-WANs, cloud networking, network automation, and configuration management.And in the decades since it was first introduced, the number of distributions of Linux has blossomed as developers create versions that meet the needs of specific interest groups. While all the versions share a common core, they each have distinguishing characteristic suited to designated purposes.[ Also see Invaluable tips and tricks for troubleshooting Linux. ] This article takes a look at five of them – Debian, Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and Ubuntu - how to acquire and install them, and an assessment of what they might best be suited for.To read this article in full, please click here
I recently had the opportunity to talk to Mark Wutzke, chief solution architect with Allied Telesis, to learn about the company’s smart networking offerings. Perhaps you, like me, don’t know much about this networking company, though it’s been in business since 1987. That might be because the global company, until recently, has focused its efforts outside the U.S. However, that focus is beginning to change, so I wanted to learn what the company brings to the table that enterprises would be interested in.First, a little background on the company. Allied Telesis is headquartered in both Japan and the U.S. The company has global R&D centers and manufactures its own products. Among the products are intelligent switches and stackable chassis, industrial switches, wireless solutions, firewalls and routers, optics, NICs and media converters—basically end-to-end solutions from edge to core for LAN, WLAN and WAN. In addition, Allied Telesis writes its own operating system software for its equipment, as well as the network management software that provides many of the smart networking features the company is touting today.To read this article in full, please click here
There’s a major problem with today’s money-saving memory compression used for storing more data in less space. The issue is that computers store and run memory in predetermined blocks, yet many modern programs function and play out in variable chunks.The way it’s currently done is actually, highly inefficient. That’s because the compressed programs, which use objects rather than evenly configured slabs of data, don’t match the space used to store and run them, explain scientists working on a revolutionary new compression system called Zippads.The answer, they say—and something that if it works would drastically reduce those inefficiencies, speed things up, and importantly, reduce compute costs—is to compress the varied objects and not the cache lines, as is the case now. Cache lines are fixed-size blocks of memory that are transferred to memory cache.To read this article in full, please click here
Government regulations, safety and technical integration are all serious issues facing the use of IoT in medicine, but professionals in the field say that medical IoT is movingforward despite the obstacles. A vendor, a doctor, and an IT pro all spoke to Network World about the work involved.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
It takes some time working with Linux commands before you know which one you need for the task at hand, how to format it and what result to expect, but it’s possible to speed up the process.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Firewalls have been around for years, but the technology keeps evolving as the threat landscape changes. Here are some tips about what to look for in a next-generation firewall (NGFW) that will satisfy business needs today and into the future.Don't trust firewall performance stats Understanding how a NGFW performs requires more than looking at a vendor’s specification or running a bit of traffic through it. Most firewalls will perform well when traffic loads are light. It’s important to see how a firewall responds at scale, particularly when encryption is turned on. Roughly 80% of traffic is encrypted today, and the ability to maintain performance levels with high volumes of encrypted traffic is critical.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has taken the wraps off a family of WiFi 6 access points, roaming technology and developer-community support all to make wireless a solid enterprise equal with the wired world.“Best-effort’ wireless for enterprise customers doesn’t cut it any more. There’s been a change in customer expectations that there will be an uninterrupted unplugged experience,” said Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise networking at Cisco. “It is now a wired first world.” More about 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) Why 802.11ax is the next big thing in wireless FAQ: 802.11ax Wi-Fi Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is coming to a router near you Wi-Fi 6 with OFDMA opens a world of new wireless possibilities 802.11ax preview: Access points and routers that support Wi-Fi 6 are on tap Bringing a wired first enterprise world together is one of the drivers behind a new family of WiFi 6-based access points (AP) for Cisco’s Catalyst and Meraki portfolios. WiFi 6 (802.11ax) is designed for high-density public or private environments. But it also will be beneficial in internet of things (IoT) deployments, and in offices that use bandwidth-hogging applications like videoconferencing.To read this article in full, please click here
Robots and IoT devices are similar in that they both rely on sensors to understand their environment, rapidly process large streams of data and decide how to respond.That’s where the similarities end. Most IoT applications handle well-defined tasks, whereas robots autonomously handle anticipated situations. Let’s consider both from six different vectors:1. Sensor IoT – Binary output from stationary sensor. “Is the door open or closed?” Robots – Complex output from multiple sensors. “What is in front of me? How do I navigate around it?” 2. Processing IoT – Simple data stream of signals handled with well-known programming methods. Robots – Large complex data streams handled by neural network computing. 3. Mobility IoT – Sensors are stationary and signal processing is done in the cloud. Robots – The sensor laden robot is mobile and signal processing is done locally and autonomously. 4. Response IoT – The action to take in response to a situation is well defined. Robots – Multiple actions could be taken in response to a situation. 5. Learning IoT – The application typically does not ‘evolve’ on its own and develop new features. Robots – Machine learning and other techniques are used to let Continue reading
I recently shared my thoughts about the role of open source in networking. I discussed two significant technological changes that we have witnessed. I call them waves, and these waves will redefine how we think about networking and security.The first wave signifies that networking is moving to the software so that it can run on commodity off-the-shelf hardware. The second wave is the use of open source technologies, thereby removing the barriers to entry for new product innovation and rapid market access. This is especially supported in the SD-WAN market rush.To read this article in full, please click here
The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the standard for the next-generation of Wi-Fi and that standard is Wi-Fi 6.The first thing that people are thrown off by is the newer, uncommon naming convention. From basic consumers to techies alike, we are used to the 802.11 technology designations. I'm not saying the naming didn’t exist before, but the 802.11 standards designation was much more commonly used. To break it down simply, here is what Wi-Fi 6 translates to along with other well-known technologies: Wi-Fi 6→ 802.11ax Wi-Fi 5→ 802.11ac Wi-Fi 4→ 802.11n Wi-Fi 3→ 802.11g Wi-Fi 2→ 802.11a Wi-Fi 1→ 802.11b That being said, you can treat the Wi-Fi 6 designation as a generation number of sorts.To read this article in full, please click here
Build the picture: Visualize your dataThe Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, smart technology, virtual reality – all these applications guarantee one thing for communications service providers (CSPs): more data. As networks become increasingly overwhelmed by mounds of data, CSPs are on the hunt for ways to make the most of the intelligence collected and are looking for ways to monetize their services, provide more customizable offerings, and enhance their network performance.Customer analytics has gone some way towards fulfilling this need for greater insights, but with the rise in the volume and variety of consumer and IoT applications, the influx of data will increase at a phenomenal rate. The data includes not only customer-related data, but also device and network data, adding complexity to the picture. CSPs must harness this information to understand the relationships between any two things, to understand the connections within their data and to ultimately, leverage it for a better customer experience.To read this article in full, please click here
Hardware reigned supreme in the networking world until the emergence of software-defined networking (SDN), a category of technologies that separate the network control plane from the forwarding plane to enable more automated provisioning and policy-based management of network resources.SDN's origins can be traced to a research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley that ultimately yielded the OpenFlow protocol in the 2008 timeframe. [Learn more about the difference between SDN and NFV. Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters] OpenFlow is only one of the first SDN canons, but it's a key component because it started the networking software revolution. OpenFlow defined a programmable network protocol that could help manage and direct traffic among routers and switches no matter which vendor made the underlying router or switch. To read this article in full, please click here
Companies migrating to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) systems are usually doing so to simplify their virtualization environment. Since backup is one of the most complicated parts of virtualization, they are often looking to simplify it as well via their migration to HCI.Other customers have chosen to use HCI to simplify their hardware complexity, while using a traditional backup approach for operational and disaster recovery. Here’s a look at cover both scenarios.To read this article in full, please click here
Identifying files that share disk space relies on making use of the fact that the files share the same inode — the data structure that stores all the information about a file except its name and content. If two or more files have different names and file system locations, yet share an inode, they also share content, ownership, permissions, etc.These files are often referred to as "hard links" — unlike symbolic links that simply point to other files by containing their names. Symbolic links are easy to pick out in a file listing by the "l" in the first position and -> symbol that refers to the file being referenced.$ ls -l my* -rw-r--r-- 4 shs shs 228 Apr 12 19:37 myfile lrwxrwxrwx 1 shs shs 6 Apr 15 11:18 myref -> myfile -rw-r--r-- 4 shs shs 228 Apr 12 19:37 mytwin Identifying hard links in a single directory is not as obvious, but it is still quite easy. If you list the files using the ls -i command and sort them by inode number, you can pick out the hard links fairly easily. In this type of ls output, the first column shows the inode numbers.To read Continue reading
Nyansa announced today that their flagship Voyance product can now apply its AI-based secret sauce to IoT devices, over and above the networking equipment and IT endpoints it could already manage.Voyance – a network management product that leverages AI to automate the discovery of devices on the network and identify unusual behavior – has been around for two years now, and Nyansa says that it’s being used to observe a total of 25 million client devices operating across roughly 200 customer networks. More on IoT:To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has released a cloud-service program on its flagship software-defined networking (SDN) software that will let customers manage and secure applications running in the data center or in Amazon Web Service cloud environments.The service, Cisco Cloud ACI (application centric infrastructure) for AWS lets users configure inter-site connectivity, define policies and monitor the health of network infrastructure across hybrid environments, Cisco said.[ Check out What is hybrid cloud computing and learn what you need to know about multi-cloud. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] Specifically, this connectivity includes an "underlay network for IP reachability (IPsec VPN) over the Internet, or through AWS Direct Connect; an overlay network between the on-premises and cloud sites that runs BGP EVPN [Ethernet VPN] as its control plane and uses Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) encapsulation and tunneling as its data plane,” Cisco says.To read this article in full, please click here
If you use the internet (which you clearly do), you likely know how important it is to protect your data in an increasingly dangerous cyber environment. But like other essential tasks that tend to be tedious (like filing taxes early and brushing your teeth for the full two minutes), most installing and running a VPN can sound unappealing to many: sure, they encrypt your internet traffic and hide your location — but they can also run frustratingly slowly, delaying the way you’d usually use the internet for entertainment and work. That’s where Ivacy VPN is different: not only will the speedy service let you browse and stream lag-free, it also offers real-time threat detection technology, removing malware and viruses at the server level. It ensures that all your downloads and devices stay totally secure, so you can stay safe online without being inconvenienced.To read this article in full, please click here
Still struggling to get its Google Cloud business out of single-digit marketshare, Google this week introduced new partnerships with Lenovo and Intel to help bolster its hybrid cloud offerings, both built on Google’s Kubernetes container technology.At Google’s Next ’19 show this week, Intel and Google said they will collaborate on Google's Anthos, a new reference design based on the second-Generation Xeon Scalable processor introduced last week and an optimized Kubernetes software stack designed to deliver increased workload portability between public and private cloud environments.[ Read also: What hybrid cloud means in practice | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] As part the Anthos announcement, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said it has validated Anthos on its ProLiant servers, while Lenovo has done the same for its ThinkAgile platform. This solution will enable customers to get a consistent Kubernetes experience between Google Cloud and their on-premises HPE or Lenovo servers. No official word from Dell yet, but they can’t be far behind.To read this article in full, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has partnered with Nutanix to offer Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software available as a managed private cloud service and on HPE-branded appliances.As part of the deal, the two companies will be competing against each other in hardware sales, sort of. If you want the consumption model you get through HPE’s GreenLake, where your usage is metered and you pay for only the time you use it (similar to the cloud), then you would get the ProLiant hardware from HPE.If you want an appliance model where you buy the hardware outright, like in the traditional sense of server sales, you would get the same ProLiant through Nutanix.To read this article in full, please click here