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Category Archives for "Networking"

How to boost Wi-Fi performance: Experts talk planning, troubleshooting

With wireless now the preferred, default, and increasingly only access in the majority of in-building, campus, metro-scale hotspot and wide-area settings, achieving optimal performance is a key objective for IT departments.Since radio-frequency (RF) propagation always involves a high degree of variability, it’s often difficult to predict the precise behavior of a given installation. Variables include operating conditions, user and application traffic demands, and the capabilities and settings of individual vendor products. When mobility, Wi-Fi testing and verification are also taken into consideration, performance evaluation can become very complex indeed.To read this article in full, please click here

Docker Certified Plugins From Networking Partners

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The Docker Certified Technology Program is designed for ecosystem partners and customers to recognize Containers and Plugins that excel in quality, collaborative support and compliance. Docker Certification gives organizations enterprises an easy way to run trusted software and components in containers on the Docker Enterprise container platform with support from both Docker and the publisher.  

In this review, we’re looking at Docker Network Plugins. Networking has long been a vertical in the enterprise cloud and data center that has no shortage of complexity. Just as an overarching goal of Docker Enterprise is to make deploying and operating containers as simple as possible, the same goal applies to making Swarm networking as simple as possible. This powerful abstraction of complexity, is applicable regardless of whether in the customers data center or spread across multiple clouds. In some cases Docker Enterprise solves customer problems by shipping built-in plugins and in other scenarios the user’s needs are solved by innovations from the extensive Docker ecosystem. These solutions are validated by both Docker and the partner company and integrated into a seamless support pipeline that provide customers the world class support they have become accustomed to when working with Docker.

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802.11: Wi-Fi speeds and standards explained

In the world of wireless, the term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless access in general, despite the fact that it is a specific trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group dedicated to certifying that Wi-Fi products meet the IEEE’s set of 802.11 wireless standards.These standards, with names such as 802.11b (pronounced “Eight-O-Two-Eleven-Bee”, ignore the “dot”) and 802.11ac, comprise a family of specifications that started in the 1990s and continues to grow today. The 802.11 standards codify improvements that boost wireless throughput and range as well as the use of new frequencies as they  become available. They also address new technologies that reduce power consumption.To read this article in full, please click here

802.11: Wi-Fi speeds and standards explained

In the world of wireless, the term Wi-Fi is synonymous with wireless access in general, despite the fact that it is a specific trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group dedicated to certifying that Wi-Fi products meet the IEEE’s set of 802.11 wireless standards.These standards, with names such as 802.11b (pronounced “Eight-O-Two-Eleven-Bee”, ignore the “dot”) and 802.11ac, comprise a family of specifications that started in the 1990s and continues to grow today. The 802.11 standards codify improvements that boost wireless throughput and range as well as the use of new frequencies as they  become available. They also address new technologies that reduce power consumption.To read this article in full, please click here

Salt Use Cases for Cumulus Linux

A talking point I often lean on when speaking to customers is, “It’s Linux, so use whatever tool you like.” This approach can be especially paralyzing for customers that are just getting started with automating their network and compute infrastructure in a uniform way. In those particular situations, diving into the numerous articles that pit the various automation tools against each other can be counterproductive. Instead, I often find the most value in looking at a few examples of a particular tool in action that is addressing a use case which is relevant to me, while following along hands-on.

Salt frequently comes up as one of the options in the infrastructure configuration management conversation, however its main differentiator is the message bus architecture and the ability to react to events in real time. While that sounds a bit abstract, the main question we should be asking ourselves is how will this simplify the day to day management of my infrastructure? In this post, we’ll step through getting the configuration on a couple Cumulus switches under full management with Salt, and end with a practical event-based workflow for adding and replacing devices in our infrastructure.

Configuration Management

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Tapping the brakes on 802.11ac wave 2

802.11ac wave 2 is the splashy new kid in the wireless technology pool, but some experts caution that you might not want to let it play without lifeguards present just yet.Wave 2 access points are now available from major wireless vendors, and have started to make inroads into the enterprise. The technology has been gaining ground in sales statistics recently, to the point where it’s starting to undercut sales of first-gen 802.11ac gear.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Study shows 802.11ac wave 2 APs gaining sales ground + US lawmakers question police use of facial recognition techTo read this article in full, please click here

Why 802.11ax is the next big thing in Wi-Fi

I know, I know, I’ve heard it before. A new technology comes along, and it promises to be the next big thing. Consumers and businesses buy it, and what happens? It fails to live up to the hype. In my opinion, almost every iPhone release over the past five years has been that way. Sure there were some cool new features, but overall it’s not something I’d say was game changing. One technology that does promise to live up to the hype is 802.11ax, the next standard for wireless LANs. I say that because this next generation of Wi-Fi was engineered for the world we live in where everything is connected and there’s an assumption that upload and download traffic will be equivalent. Previous generations of Wi-Fi assumed more casual use and that there would be far more downloading of information than uploading. To read this article in full, please click here

Intel’s FPGA strategy comes into focus

Three years after acquiring FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion, Intel’s strategy and positioning is coming into focus with the disclosure of its plans for Stratix 10 hardware and accompanying application development and acceleration stack.Altera made two FPGAs, chips that are reprogrammable to do different functions. The Arria 10, which is the low-end card, and Stratix 10, the high-performance card. The two are aimed at different target markets and use cases.“Each has its own tier, its own sweet spot for features and form factor,” said Sabrina Gomez, director of product marketing at Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group. “Arria is smaller, fits in 1U form factors. Stratix is dual PCI card. The power draw for Arria is 75 watts, while it’s 225 watts for Stratix.”To read this article in full, please click here

Intel’s FPGA strategy comes into focus

Three years after acquiring FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion, Intel’s strategy and positioning is coming into focus with the disclosure of its plans for Stratix 10 hardware and accompanying application development and acceleration stack.Altera made two FPGAs, chips that are reprogrammable to do different functions. The Arria 10, which is the low-end card, and Stratix 10, the high-performance card. The two are aimed at different target markets and use cases.“Each has its own tier, its own sweet spot for features and form factor,” said Sabrina Gomez, director of product marketing at Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group. “Arria is smaller, fits in 1U form factors. Stratix is dual PCI card. The power draw for Arria is 75 watts, while it’s 225 watts for Stratix.”To read this article in full, please click here

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