Increasing the capacity of fiber-optic cables might one day be possible through the exploitation of a part of the signal commonly thought of as substandard. That imperfect element in a carrier, called “noise” is usually something one tries to avoid—it can muddy the accurate reading of the data.However, scientists now suggest that one could, in fact, embrace the rubbishy, and thus far unusable, part of the signal to hold data and allow it to be decoded. The ordinarily data-obscuring hubbub could potentially be harnessed and used to increase data capacity in light waves.“Information is encoded in the correlated noise between spatially separated light waves,” writes Oliver Morsch in an article on the website of ETH Zurich, a technical and scientific university. “The new coding technology, developed by ETH researchers, makes it possible to make better use of the transmission capacity of optical fibers.”To read this article in full, please click here
Take a glance at the wrists of your co-workers, and you’re likely to see more and more of them adorned with smartwatches, fitness trackers, and other wearable technology. In meetings, you increasingly see colleagues surreptitiously glancing at their tiny screens, hoping in vain that no one is noticing.It isn’t just you. The latest smartwatch numbers all say that smartwatch shipments are growing fast, and the internet-connected devices are beginning to achieve mainstream acceptance: Last month, The NPD Group's new Smartwatch Total Market Report noted that smartwatch unit sales jumped 61 percent in 2018, while dollar volume rose 51 percent to approach $5 billion in sales. Some 16 percent of U.S. adults now own a smartwatch, the report said, up from 12 percent at the end of 2017.To read this article in full, please click here
IT professionals have been honing their data center management expertise for decades. However, migrating these best practices to an edge computing environment can be challenging.That’s because many workers located in edge environments, such as retail store clerks, lack the necessary data center expertise to ensure edge sites are properly maintained. Complicating matters is the fact that edge data centers can be expensive and complex to run.Clearly, organizations need a new way forward. Fortunately, cloud-based platforms are designed for the edge, and can simplify remote monitoring and management. Here’s what every business should look for in a solution:To read this article in full, please click here
After months of speculation, Mellanox found a suitor -- and it was a surprise, to say the least. GPU leader Nvidia snatched up the networking vendor for $6.9 billion, topping a rumored previous offer of $6 billion from Nvidia’s nemesis, Intel.The acquisition ends months of rumors of a suitor for Mellanox. Intel, Microsoft, and Xilinix were all reportedly bidding for the Israeli company, which specializes in high-speed networking. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ]
Mellanox Technology was formed in 1999 by a former Intel executive and was a pioneer in the early adoption of InfiniBand interconnect technology, which along with its high-speed Ethernet products is now used in over half of the world’s fastest supercomputers and in many leading hyperscale data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
IPsec is a critical element in building a scalable and secure SD-WAN fabric. The right IPsec is key to making it happen.Robert Sturt published an article title “SD-WAN vs. VPN: How do they compare?” While Robert tried to illustrate when and how to use SD-WAN vs. VPN, the objective of this blog is to look deeper into existing IPsec approaches and challenges in building and securing an SD-WAN fabric, and how IPsec UDP can help address these challenges. At the end of this blog, I have included a link to a Silver Peak white paper that provides a detailed explanation of IPsec options.To read this article in full, please click here
(Editor’s note: Recent research by Enterprise Management Associates takes a look at how enterprises regard cloud management tools. This article by Shamus McGillicuddy, EMA’s research director for network management, details highlights of “Network Engineering and Operations in the Multi-Cloud Era,” a report based on EMA’s survey of 250 IT professionals and telephone interviews with a half dozen IT leaders.) Three-out-of-four network managers say that at least one of their network monitoring tools has failed to address their requirements for monitoring the public cloud environments – perilous, given the extent of public-cloud adoption today.To read this article in full, please click here
VMware has taken the wraps off a firewall it says protects enterprise applications and data inside data centers or clouds.Unlike perimeter firewalls that filter traffic from an unlimited number of unknown hosts, VMware says its new Service-defined Firewall gains deep visibility into the hosts and services that generate network traffic by tapping into into its NSX network management software, vSphere hypervisors and AppDefense threat-detection system.To read this article in full, please click here
SD-WAN is the hottest new technology in networking and many distributed organizations have already or will soon adopt SD-WAN solutions. Here are 10 essential considerations for IT organizations weighing whether to adopt or expand their SD-WANs. To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
There are plenty of reasons for organizations to embrace edge computing. By moving applications, data, and computing services to the edge of a network, as opposed to a large data center or cloud, organizations can lower operating costs, improve application performance, reduce network traffic, and achieve real-time data analytics.As more organizations come to know the advantages of edge of network devices, many are eyeing deployments. In fact, according to the IDG 2018 State of the Network, 56% of networking professionals have plans for edge computing in their organizations.To read this article in full, please click here
IP addresses on Linux systems are often assigned automatically by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers. These are referred to as "dynamic addresses" and may change any time the system is rebooted. When a system is a server or will be remotely administered, however, it is generally more convenient for these systems to have static addresses, providing stable and consistent connections with users and applications.Fortunately, the steps required to change a Linux system's IP address from dynamic to static are fairly easy, though they will be a little different depending on the distribution you are using. In this post, we'll look at how this task is managed on both Red Hat (RHEL) and Ubuntu systems.To read this article in full, please click here
Juniper has entered into an agreement to buy advanced wireless-gear-maker Mist Systems for $405 million. For Juniper the Mist buy could be significant as it currently depends on agreements with partners such as Aerohive and Aruba to deliver wireless, according to Gartner. Mist, too, is a partner of and recently announced joint product development with VMware that integrates Mist WLAN technology and VMware’s VeloCloud-based NSX SD-WAN.
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802.11ax preview: Access points and routers that support Wi-Fi 6 are on tap
“Wireless was a hole that Juniper needed to plug to fill out its enterprise story,” said Ritesh Patel, wireless LAN analyst at Dell’Oro. “It also needs strong wireless technology in order to effectively compete against other enterprise networking players such as Cisco, HP/Aruba, Extreme and other players such as Fortinet.”To read this article in full, please click here
WAVE Life Sciences was barreling toward its commercial launch when it hit a critical speedbump. The company’s network, a key part of the launch, received a negative assessment and would need to be re-architected. Anthony Murabito, vice president of IT at the Cambridge, Mass. biotechnology company, only wanted one thing from the IT pros that would be helping him fix the issue fast – to be Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIE).“We needed to do a major refresh and replacement on our network and, when I looked around, I had no network skills available in the organization,” Murabito says. Cisco’s top-tier certification would serve for Murabito and his hiring team as an indicator of a candidate’s expertise.To read this article in full, please click here
The primary driver cited is an aging worker pool and the overwhelming male makeup of this sector.Other factors contributing to skill shortages include a lack of:
Hybrid IT skills
New skills like managing SLAs for off-premise workloads
Software skills with adoption of software-defined technologies
Fewer young men and women entering the field
How is this affecting branch office networks?
The data center IT skill set shortage is spilling over from the data center to the management and administration of branch office infrastructure. The two go hand in hand as most skills are leveraged across both areas; branch office networks are merely a “miniature architecture” of the data center network. Branch office networks typically include switches, routers, WAN optimization appliances, firewalls, and other networking gear that all require similar IT knowledge and skills as the data center.To read this article in full, please click here
WAVE Life Sciences was barreling toward its commercial launch when it hit a critical speedbump. The company’s network, a key part of the launch, received a negative assessment and would need to be re-architected. Anthony Murabito, vice president of IT at the Cambridge, Mass. biotechnology company, only wanted one thing from the IT pros that would be helping him fix the issue fast – to be Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIE).To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
WAVE Life Sciences was barreling toward its commercial launch when it hit a critical speedbump. The company’s network, a key part of the launch, received a negative assessment and would need to be re-architected. Anthony Murabito, vice president of IT at the Cambridge, Mass. biotechnology company, only wanted one thing from the IT pros that would be helping him fix the issue fast – to be Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIE).To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Cisco is warning organizations with remote users that have deployed a particular Cisco wireless firewall, VPN and router to patch a critical vulnerability in each that could let attackers break into the network.The vulnerability, which has an impact rating of 9.8 out of 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System lets a potential attacker send malicious HTTP requests to a targeted device. A successful exploit could let the attacker execute arbitrary code on the underlying operating system of the affected device as a high-privilege user, Cisco stated.
More about edge networking
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Edge computing best practices
How edge computing can help secure the IoT
The vulnerability is in the web-based management interface of three products: Cisco’s RV110W Wireless-N VPN Firewall, RV130W Wireless-N Multifunction VPN Router and RV215W Wireless-N VPN Router. All three products are positioned as remote-access communications and security devices.To read this article in full, please click here
Molecular electronics, where charges move through tiny, sole molecules, could be the future of computing and, in particular, storage, some scientists say.Researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) point out that a molecule-level computing technique, if its development succeeds, would slam Gordon Moore’s 1965 prophesy — Moore's Law — that the number of transistors on a chip will double every year, and thus allow electronics to get proportionally smaller. In this case, hardware, including transistors, will conceivably fit on individual molecules, reducing chip sizes much more significantly than Moore ever envisaged.[ Now read: What is quantum computing (and why enterprises should care) ]
“The intersection of physical and chemical properties occurring at the molecular scale” is now being explored, and shows promise, an ASU article says. The researchers think Moore’s miniaturization projections will be blown out of the water.To read this article in full, please click here
Now that edge computing has emerged as a major trend, the question for enterprises becomes how to migrate the data center management expertise acquired over many years to these new, remote environments.Enterprise data centers have long provided a strong foundation for growth. They enable businesses to respond more quickly to market demands. However, this agility is heavily dependent on the reliability and manageability of the data center. As data center operational complexity increases, maintaining uptime while minimizing costs becomes a bigger challenge.To read this article in full, please click here
Given the Internet of Things’ (IoT) perch atop the hype cycle, IoT trend-spotting has become a full-time business, not just an end-of-the-year pastime. It seems every major — and minor — IoT player is busy laying out its vision of where the technology is going. Most of them harp on the same themes, of course, from massive growth to security vulnerabilities to skills shortages.[ Also on Network World: Six IoT predictions for 2019 ]
Those are all real concerns, but Chris Nelson, vice president of engineering at operational intelligence (OT) vendor OSIsoft, shared some more unique viewpoints via email. In addition to his contention that the IoT will blur the lines between IT, which runs the customers’ systems and email, and OT, which runs the technology behind the production systems, he talked about what will drive the IoT in the next year.To read this article in full, please click here
Looking to ease deployments of software-defined networks while reinforcing automation and security for hybrid and multicloud customers, VMware has taken the wraps off of a major release of its NSX-T Data Center software.While the NSX-T 2.4 announcement includes over 100 upgrades, VMware said the release anoints NSX-T as the company’s go-to platform for future software-defined cloud developments.[ Also see How to plan a software-defined data-center network and Efficient container use requires data-center software networking.]
“This is NSX-T’s coming out party—it is now our primary platform and includes all the tools, services, security and support for future growth,” said Tom McCafferty, VMware’s senior director of product marketing for NSX.To read this article in full, please click here