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Category Archives for "Networking"

What is the Industrial IoT? And why the stakes are so high

Everyone’s heard of the IoT – smart thermostats, Internet-connected refrigerators, connected lightbulbs – but there’s a subset called industrial IoT that has a much more significant day-to-day impact on businesses, safety and even lives.The term IIoT refers to the Industrial Internet of Things. In broad strokes, it’s the application of instrumentation and connected sensors and other devices to machinery and vehicles in the transport, energy and industrial sectors.What that means in practice varies widely. One IIoT system could be as simple as a connected rat trap that texts home to say that it’s been activated, while another might be as complicated as a fully automated mass production line that tracks maintenance, productivity and even ordering and shipping information across a huge, multi-layered network.To read this article in full, please click here

Live Training at Safari Books: How the Internet Really Works

I will be teaching my first live training course at Safari Books Online on the 9th of March, starting at noon ET: How the Internet Really Works. It’s hard to describe the level and background for this training, as it will be all over the place; this is a bit of an experiment in this realm. The course description is—

This live training will provide an overview of the systems, providers, and standards bodies important to the operation of the global Internet, including the Domain Name System (DNS), the routing and transport systems, standards bodies, and registrars. For DNS, the process of a query will be considered in some detail, who pays for each server used in the resolution process, and tools engineers can use to interact DNS. For routing and transport, the role of each kind of provider will be considered, along with how they make money to cover their costs, and how engineers can interact with the global routing table (the Default Free Zone, of DFZ). Finally, registrars and standards bodies will be considered, including their organizational structure, how they generate revenue, and how to find their standards.

You can find more information here.

Is ACI Coming For The CLI?

I’m soon to depart from Cisco Live Barcelona. It’s been a long week of fun presentations. While I’m going to avoid using the words intent and context in this post, there is one thing I saw repeatedly that grabbed my attention. ACI is eating Cisco’s world. And it’s coming for something else very soon.

Devourer Of Interfaces

Application-Centric Infrastructure has been out for a while and it’s meeting with relative success in the data center. It’s going up against VMware NSX and winning in a fair number of deals. For every person that I talk to that can’t stand it I hear from someone gushing about it. ACI is making headway as the tip of the spear when it comes to Cisco’s software-based networking architecture.

Don’t believe me? Check out some of the sessions from Cisco Live this year. Especially the Software-Defined Access and DNA Assurance ones. You’re going to hear context and intent a lot, as those are the key words for this new strategy. You know what else you’re going to hear a lot?

Contract. Endpoint Group (EPG). Policy.

If you’re familiar with ACI, you know what those words mean. You see the parallels between the data center Continue reading

This History Of Networking, from The Network Collective

I mentioned The Network Collective previously when I responded to the very first episode of the videocast/podcast (what TWiT would call a netcast). Since then the three founders and co-hosts (Jordan, Eyvonne and Phil) have published an impressive 20 community roundtable episodes and have somehow also found time to launch a History of Networking series co-hosted by Russ White (yes, that Russ White).

The Network Collective

History Of Networking

I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to computer history, and I love reading books that give the inside story about the birth of the personal computer, the story of Silicon Valley, the rise and fall of technology companies and so on. However, the history of networking is nowhere near as well covered, which is a real shame. Thankfully, The Network Collective are filling that gap handsomely with a list of guests so far that blows my mind. For example:

Paul Vixie

Paul Vixie on the History of Networking

If you’ve ever heard of Vixie cron, BIND DNS, DNSSEC, the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), you’ve found things Mr Vixie has had his hands all over. It’s fascinating to hear him talking about the history of DNS adoption, and his role in maintaining BIND in a nascent Continue reading

How we made our page-load optimisations even faster

In 2017 we made two of our web optimisation products - Mirage and Rocket Loader - even faster! Combined, these products speed up around 1.2 billion web-pages a week. The products are both around 5 years old, so there was a big opportunity to update them for the brave new world of highly-tuned browsers, HTTP2 and modern Javascript tooling. We measured a performance boost that, very roughly, will save visitors to sites on our network between 50-700ms. Visitors that see content faster have much higher engagement and lower bounce rates, as shown by studies like Google’s. This really adds up, representing a further saving of 380 years of loading time each year and a staggering 1.03 petabytes of data transfer!

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Cycling image Photo by Dimon Blr on Unsplash.

What Mirage and Rocket Loader do

Mirage and Rocket Loader both optimise the loading of a web page by reducing and deferring the number of assets the browser needs to request for it to complete HTML parsing and rendering on screen.

Mirage

Get 3 Years of NordVPN Service for Just $2.75 Per Month

NordVPN promises a private and fast path through the public internet, with no logs and unmetered access for 6 simultaneous devices. They are currently running a promotion, but you'll have to use this link to find it. Its typical price has been discounted to $99 for 3 years of service. That's a good deal at just $2.75 per month.  See the $2.75/month NordVPN holiday deal here. To read this article in full, please click here

Get 3 Years of NordVPN Service for Just $2.75 Per Month

NordVPN promises a private and fast path through the public internet, with no logs and unmetered access for 6 simultaneous devices. They are currently running a promotion, but you'll have to use this link to find it. Its typical price has been discounted to $99 for 3 years of service. That's a good deal at just $2.75 per month.  See the $2.75/month NordVPN holiday deal here. To read this article in full, please click here

Looks like Veritas has big plans for data and information management

The world is becoming more dynamic and distributed, and that’s having a profound impact on the vendor landscape.Some traditional vendors, such as Microsoft were able to make the shift to the cloud and have thrived, although it required dumping Steve Ballmer. Others are stuck in the legacy world and could have a hard time adjusting the business to meet the demands of their customers. For example, Dell-EMC went private to re-tool and in the midst of transforming itself. Time will tell if it’s successful.One company that I considered to be part of the legacy world is storage management vendor Veritas. It’s essentially still a backup and recovery company. Recently though, the company has made some moves and said some things that make me wonder if there’s something big coming from them.To read this article in full, please click here

Looks like Veritas has big plans for data and information management

The world is becoming more dynamic and distributed, and that’s having a profound impact on the vendor landscape.Some traditional vendors, such as Microsoft were able to make the shift to the cloud and have thrived, although it required dumping Steve Ballmer. Others are stuck in the legacy world and could have a hard time adjusting the business to meet the demands of their customers. For example, Dell-EMC went private to re-tool and in the midst of transforming itself. Time will tell if it’s successful.One company that I considered to be part of the legacy world is storage management vendor Veritas. It’s essentially still a backup and recovery company. Recently though, the company has made some moves and said some things that make me wonder if there’s something big coming from them.To read this article in full, please click here

5 Months After the Hurricanes, the World Must Do More to Reconnect the Caribbean

2017 was one of the most active hurricane seasons in the Caribbean on record. Five months after the major storms Irma and Marie devastated parts of the Caribbean, there are still far too many people without access to the Internet and everything it offers. In our view, this is unacceptable. Today we published a snapshot of the current situation from the region in a new document, Report from the Field: Post-Hurricane Connectivity in the Caribbean.

The international response to this natural disaster has been mixed at best, and while several entities reached out to the region, a number of challenges impeded smooth and rapid assistance, such as lack of coordination. In some instances, the response from authorities has been either slow or insufficient, or both. The current reality that parts of the Caribbean are still without Internet connectivity this long after the hurricanes wrought their damage is a clear indication that the world’s response to this disaster has fallen short. The robustness of the telecommunications’ infrastructures in certain countries, which form the basis for Internet services, can also be questioned.

The world has the resources to do more.

We ask governments, businesses, educational institutions, NGOs and others, both in the Continue reading

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