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Category Archives for "Networking"

What is 802.11ax Wi-Fi, and what will it mean for 802.11ac

Each new Wi-Fi standard has brought significant improvements in performance, with the most recent, 802.11ac, offering an impressive theoretical maximum rate of 1.3Gbps.  Unfortunately, these gains have not been enough to keep pace with demand, leading to that exasperated cry heard across airports, malls, hotels, stadiums, homes and offices: “Why is the wireless so slow?”The IEEE is taking another crack at boosting Wi-Fi performance with a new standard called 802.11ax or High-Efficiency Wireless, which promises a fourfold increase in average throughput per user.RELATED: Can MU-MIMO really boost wireless capacity? 802.11: Wi-Fi standards and speeds explained Wi-Fi 2018: What does the future look like? 802.11ax is designed specifically for high-density public environments, like trains, stadiums and airports. But it also will be beneficial in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, in heavy-usage homes, in apartment buildings and in offices that use bandwidth-hogging applications like videoconferencing.To read this article in full, please click here

What is 802.11ax Wi-Fi, and what will it mean for 802.11ac

Each new Wi-Fi standard has brought significant improvements in performance, with the most recent, 802.11ac, offering an impressive theoretical maximum rate of 1.3Gbps.  Unfortunately, these gains have not been enough to keep pace with demand, leading to that exasperated cry heard across airports, malls, hotels, stadiums, homes and offices: “Why is the wireless so slow?”The IEEE is taking another crack at boosting Wi-Fi performance with a new standard called 802.11ax or High-Efficiency Wireless, which promises a fourfold increase in average throughput per user.RELATED: Can MU-MIMO really boost wireless capacity? 802.11: Wi-Fi standards and speeds explained Wi-Fi 2018: What does the future look like? 802.11ax is designed specifically for high-density public environments, like trains, stadiums and airports. But it also will be beneficial in Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, in heavy-usage homes, in apartment buildings and in offices that use bandwidth-hogging applications like videoconferencing.To read this article in full, please click here

EVPN’s 4 critical benefits for digital transformation

Digital transformation demands more of everything: speed, throughput, agility and scalability. That’s why organizations are rethinking traditional layer 2 switched data center architectures and moving towards intelligent layer 3 routed network designs. With a layer 3 architecture, your data center can use proven routing protocols to simplify troubleshooting, facilitate upgrades, scale efficiently and converge traffic.

But what about the applications, storage appliances and multi-tenant environments that still require traditional layer 2 connectivity? Legacy protocols that enable layer 2 traffic to run over a layer 3 routed infrastructure have significant limitations that become serious obstacles when the data center must scale, accommodate multiple vendors’ systems or support multi-tenancy. Fortunately, there’s a scalable, simple, non-proprietary solution. Enter EVPN.

Cumulus’ unique Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) solution offers unmatched interoperability and efficiency. By adding VXLAN distributed routing, Cumulus EVPN undoes all of the complications of layer 2 connectivity and frees you from reliance on proprietary controllers. Looking for proof that EVPN delivers on that promise? We’ve got plenty of evidence, so here’s four major advantages of utilizing EVPN to meet the demands of digital transformation.

1) Accommodate growth without disruption

With Cumulus EVPN, you can quickly and Continue reading

memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations

ASERT Threat Summary: memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations Date/Time: 27022018 1645UTC Title/Number: memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations – February 2018 – v1.3. Severity: Critical Distribution: TLP WHITE (see <https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp>) Categories: Availability Authors: Roland Dobbins & Steinthor Bjarnason Contributors: Luan Nguyen, […]

memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations

ASERT Threat Summary: memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations Date/Time: 27022018 2325UTC Title/Number: memcached Reflection/Amplification Description and DDoS Attack Mitigation Recommendations – February 2018 – v1.4. Severity: Critical Distribution: TLP WHITE (see <https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp>) Categories: Availability Authors: Roland Dobbins & Steinthor Bjarnason Contributors: Keshav […]

BrandPost: Delivering “Always-On” Technology to Meet the Demands of Today’s Business

Virtually every small and medium-sized business is now driven by digital technologies. From our phones and PCs to the critical business applications that form the basis of business operations, our workday has become dependent on devices and the systems they are connected to. In addition to supporting employees, our customers and partners are constantly interacting with our systems. Outages are unacceptable. If our systems go down, business stops. This impacts employees, partners, and customers. And it’s not just an inconvenience; it costs the business money.Unfortunately, many businesses with 100-1,000 employees are using legacy server rooms or data centers that were built in the days before “always-on” became the requirement. A decade ago, downtime was hidden from customers and partners, and employees could work around a problem, staying somewhat productive. That’s no longer the case. Downtime is a disaster. And in many cases, downtime can result in lost data and corrupt systems, making the cost of recovery even greater. In some industries, data lost during an outage also creates a “compliance event,” which is never “career enhancing” for an IT professional.To read this article in full, please click here

CEO Succession at the Internet Society – Status update (Feb 2018)

This is a status update on where we are in the CEO search process. In my last note to the community, I explained that we were finishing the selection of a search firm to support us during the process and that we were planning to launch an open call for candidates in February.

After issuing an RFP and conducting a set of interviews with several firms, the CEO Search Committee selected a search firm. The selected firm is Perrett Laver.

Based on, among other things, all the community feedback we have received on the following email address (you can still send your input to that address), the CEO Search Committee has developed a draft job description:

[email protected]

In order to refine the job description and to make sure we gather all the input we need, the search firm is going to conduct informational interviews with the leadership of our communities. Accordingly, they are going to interview the chairs of the OMAC (Organization Advisory Council), the ChAC (Chapters Advisory Council), and the IETF (the chairs of the IAB and the IAOC will also be interviewed). ISOC’s executive team (staff) will also be interviewed. You can also talk with Continue reading

Startup Concertio offers AI-optimized server configuration

For about as long as there has been personal computers, there has been an aftermarket of system optimization software. Even MS-DOS, which was about as basic as an operating system gets, had QEMM to get the most out of your 640K of memory. These days, there is a healthy market of Windows optimization utilities to speed up your PC.For servers, though, it gets a little more complicated. Actually, it gets very complicated. Not only does each server have to operate at peak efficiency on its own, but it then has to interact with the network, with other servers, and potentially with a public cloud service provider.Also on Network World: What will AI mean to the traditional data center? And usage models change over time. There might be peak use times when certain processes are not run, such as backups, and slow times of day when other tasks can be run. So an optimal configuration at one point in the day is not optimal at a different time of the day.To read this article in full, please click here

Startup Concertio offers AI-optimized server configuration

For about as long as there has been personal computers, there has been an aftermarket of system optimization software. Even MS-DOS, which was about as basic as an operating system gets, had QEMM to get the most out of your 640K of memory. These days, there is a healthy market of Windows optimization utilities to speed up your PC.For servers, though, it gets a little more complicated. Actually, it gets very complicated. Not only does each server have to operate at peak efficiency on its own, but it then has to interact with the network, with other servers, and potentially with a public cloud service provider.Also on Network World: What will AI mean to the traditional data center? And usage models change over time. There might be peak use times when certain processes are not run, such as backups, and slow times of day when other tasks can be run. So an optimal configuration at one point in the day is not optimal at a different time of the day.To read this article in full, please click here

International Cooperation Needed to Create an “Increasingly Beneficial Internet”

New norms of behavior are needed for Internet users, and it’s time for governments, companies, other organizations, and individuals to work together to define those standards, Internet advocates say.

Even as the Internet gives more and more people new ways to express themselves and improve their standard of living, it also creates problems that demand international and multistakeholder cooperation, speakers at the Global Internet and Jurisdiction Conference 2018 in Ottawa, Canada, said Monday.

The Internet has driven forward the ideas of globalization and equal opportunity for everyone, but technological advances have also created complexity that many people weren’t prepared for, said Kathy Brown, president and CEO of Internet Society.

“We now face enormous challenges as the pace of change has accelerated faster than did our human institutions, societal and existing global agreements,” she said during the first day of the conference.

Many governments have looked toward heavy regulation and censorship as a way to deal with this complex environment, Brown added.

Governments in some countries “are doubling down on what they know how to do — shut it down, shut it off, censor users, regulate creators,” she added. “The global Internet community, itself, is in danger of splintering into predictable commercial, Continue reading

Memcrashed – Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211

Memcrashed - Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211

Memcrashed - Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211CC BY-SA 2.0 image by David Trawin

Over last couple of days we've seen a big increase in an obscure amplification attack vector - using the memcached protocol, coming from UDP port 11211.

In the past, we have talked a lot about amplification attacks happening on the internet. Our most recent two blog posts on this subject were:

The general idea behind all amplification attacks is the same. An IP-spoofing capable attacker sends forged requests to a vulnerable UDP server. The UDP server, not knowing the request is forged, politely prepares the response. The problem happens when thousands of responses are delivered to an unsuspecting target host, overwhelming its resources - most typically the network itself.

Memcrashed - Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211

Amplification attacks are effective, because often the response packets are much larger than the request packets. A carefully prepared technique allows an attacker with limited IP spoofing capacity (such as 1Gbps) to launch very large attacks (reaching 100s Gbps) "amplifying" the attacker's bandwidth.

Memcrashed

Obscure amplification attacks happen all the time. We often see "chargen" or "call Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: What does SD-Branch mean for security, storage and IoT?

We’ve started to hear a lot about SD-Branch as a natural successor to SD-WAN, which makes sense as the centrally-orchestrated model is attractive to many enterprises. However, just as we saw with SD-WAN, the term “SD-Branch” is being adopted by many different vendors and service providers to mean what they want, in the absence of any “official” definition.What is SD-Branch anyway? Based on most definitions, SD-Branch means delivering more IT infrastructure to branches under a programmable, centrally orchestrated model. Think of it as “SD-WAN plus” – just as you can create templates or profiles in an SD-WAN network, an entire branch template could be generated that defines how the LAN is configured, what wireless LANs are used, how they integrate with the WAN, and what additional compute-based services need to be deployed at the branch.To read this article in full, please click here