Verizon’s Fixed 5G Plan Is Just 1 Slice of Its 5G Deployment Picture
The carrier sees an addressable market of some 30 million homes for its fixed 5G service plans, but it will also support slices for mobile and enterprise services.
Innovative Licensing Approaches: Enabling Access in Hard-to-Reach Places Through Collaborative Partnerships
In the Republic of Georgia, high in the mountains of the Tusheti region, a community network has been built to bring faster Internet connectivity to those that did not have it. The story is compelling, not only for the determination of people to make sure that the Internet is available in one of the remotest places in the world, but also for their strong belief of what connecting to the Internet could bring to the people of Tusheti. “Tourism is a beacon of hope for us,” said Ia Buchaidze, who owns a local bakery, “and the Internet is very important for that.”
The project was a true collaborative partnership involving many parties: the Georgian Government, the Internet Society and its Georgia Chapter, the Small and Medium Telecom Operators Association of Georgia, LTD Freenet, and the Tusheti Development Fund (TDF). This network did not need a license, but it did need an authorization from the Georgian Government for it to be built and for the spectrum to be used. The objective was to provide access to a remote region through a locally-built and developed community network.
Similarly, in Mexico, a community network has been built in a remote and Continue reading
Fortanix Scores Partnerships with IBM Cloud and Equinix, Encrypts Data in Use
The encryption software only runs on Intel hardware now, but the startup isn’t ruling out support for other vendors in the future.
Contrail’s Founder Raises $25M for Volterra, a New Startup Focused on Business Use Cases
Ankur Singla says that solving business problems has more value than simply selling a technology.
Trump Intervenes in ZTE Drama to Get Company ‘Back in Business, Fast’
President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that he and Chinese President Xi were in talks to resolve, or potentially lessen, the ban imposed on the Chinese firm last month.
Research: Bridging the Air Gap
Way back in the old days, the unit I worked at in the US Air Force had a room with a lot of equipment used for processing classified information. Among this equipment was a Zenith Z-250 with an odd sort of keyboard and a very low resolution screen. A fine metal mesh embedded in a semi-clear substrate was glued to the surface of the monitor. This was our TEMPEST rated computer, on which we could type up classified memos, read classified email, and the like. We normally connected it to the STU-3 through a modem (remember those) to send and receive various kinds of classified information.
Elovici, Mordechai Guri, Yuval. “Bridgeware: The Air-Gap Malware.” Accessed May 13, 2018. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/4/226377-bridgeware/abstract.
The idea of TEMPEST begins way back in 1985, when a Dutch researcher demonstrated “reading” the screen of a computer using some relatively cheap, and easy to assemble, equipment, from several feet away. The paper I’m looking at today provides a good overview of the many ways which have been discovered since this initial demonstration to transfer data from one computer to another across what should be an “air gap.” For instance, the TEMPEST rated computer described Continue reading
Creating Infrastructure for Self-Sovereign Identity Online
Several organizations are assembling the technologies to enable self-sovereign identity, a way for individuals to control who they are online. Blockchain is one of those essential components.
Network Break 184: Arista’s Core Switch Challenges Cisco; Qualcomm Reconsiders Servers
Take a Network Break! Arista challenges Cisco in the campus with a new a new core switch, Qualcomm is reportedly considering backing away from data center server processors, and a security survey shows woeful patching habits.
Another security survey reveals that three quarters of respondents have been breached at least once in 2017, Apple abandons a planned data center site in Ireland, and ZTE halts major operations because of a US export ban on parts and software from American companies.
Finally, Google acquires cloud onboarding startup VeloStrata, while Google’s Duplex voice assistant raises hackles.
Get links to all these stories after our sponsor messages.
Sponsor: InterOptic
InterOptic offers high-performance, high-quality optics at a fraction of the cost. Find out more at InterOptic.com, and if you re attending Interop 2018 in Vegas, stop by the InterOptic booth to learn how they can help you spec the right optics for your network.
Sponsor: Cisco Systems
Find out how Cisco and its trusted partners Equilibrium Security and ePlus/IGX can help your organization tackle the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. Tune into Packet Pushers Priority Queue episode 147 to get practical insights on how to get your arms around these wide-ranging rules.
Coffee Continue reading
EXFO Ontology’s Benedict Enweani on Service Assurance Automation
In this interview, Benedict Enweani, director of business development, systems and analytics at EXFO Ontology, discusses challenges in achieving effective and efficient service assurance in modern service provider networks, as well as the benefits of automation.
Tracking CDN Usage Through Historical DNS Data
With Mother’s Day having just passed, some e-commerce sites likely saw an associated boost in traffic. While not as significant as the increased traffic levels seen around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these additional visitors can potentially impact the site’s performance if it has not planned appropriately. Some sites have extra infrastructure headroom and can absorb increased traffic without issue, but others turn to CDN providers to ensure that their sites remain fast and available, especially during holiday shopping periods.
To that end, I thought that it would be interesting to use historical Internet Intelligence data (going back to 2010) collected from Oracle Dyn’s Internet Guide recursive DNS service, to examine CDN usage. As a sample set, I chose the top 50 “shopping” sites listed on Alexa, and looked at which sites are being delivered through CDNs, which CDN providers are most popular, and whether sites change or add providers over time. Although not all of the listed sites would commonly be considered “shopping” sites, as a free and publicly available list from a well-known source, it was acceptable for the purposes of this post.
The historical research was done on the www hostname of the listed Continue reading
End-to-End Segmentation with NSX SD-WAN and NSX Data Center
As you may have read earlier this month, NSX Data Center and NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud are part of the expanded VMware NSX portfolio to enable virtual cloud networking. A Virtual Cloud Network provides end-to-end connectivity for applications and data, whether they reside in the data center, cloud or at the edge. I wanted to follow up, and walk through an example using NSX Data Center and NSX SD-WAN of how one could build an end to end segmentation model from the data center to the branch.
NSX SD-WAN Segmentation
NSX SD-WAN SegmentationBeyond lowering cost and increasing agility and simplicity of branch connectivity, one of the key values provided by NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud is enterprise segmentation, which provides isolated network segments across the entire enterprise, enabling data isolation or separation by user or line of business, support for overlapping IP addresses between VLANs and support for multiple tenants. NSX SD-WAN provides this segmentation using a VRF-like concept with simplified, per-segment topology insertion. This is accomplished by inserting a “Segment ID” into the SD-WAN Overlay header as traffic is carried from one NSX SD-WAN Edge device to another Edge. Networks on the LAN-side of an NSX SD-WAN Edge with different Continue reading
The Week in Internet News: Artificial Intelligence Heads to the Final Frontier
Coming to a space station near you: Artificial intelligence is going to space – maybe not a space station, but a satellite – predicts an aerospace executive, quoted in SpaceNews.com. So-called geospatial intelligence, housed on satellites, will collect massive amounts of data in space and analyze it, she says.
More blockchain believers: Tech giant Oracle plans to release its own blockchain software with a platform-as-a-service product coming this month and decentralized ledger-based applications coming next month, Bloomberg notes. Oracle is working with Banco de Chile to log inter-bank transactions on a hyperledger and with the government of Nigeria to document customs and import duties on blockchain.
Does blockchain even lift? Blockchain can help improve the sports and fitness industry by allowing instructors to securely stream workouts, allowing customers to avoid that annoying trip to the gym, Forbes suggests.
Social media eyes encryption: Facebook and Twitter are both looking at encrypting some user communications, according to news reports. Facebook has voiced support for end-to-end encryption on its blog, apparently in response to concerns it was moving to weaken encryption on its WhatsApp messaging service, BGR.com notes. However, Facebook hasn’t enabled encryption by default on it Messenger service, the story Continue reading
5 Campus Network Upgrade Planning Tips
Campus network design has become complex with cloud adoption and increased telecommuting. Here are some top considerations for ensuring a high-performing network.