U.S. Air Force soars to the cloud for $1B; Dell EMC bests Nutanix; Machine learning for networks.
Some New Year's resolutions are hard to keep, especially when it comes to the network.
Here’s a catalog of all the media I produced (or helped produce) in December 2017.
Here’s a catalog of all the media I produced (or helped produce) in December 2017.
Didn’t I just write the 2016 statistics post like…. last week? Another year has flown by and with it another year of attempting to prioritize my writing. I’ll be honest, I’m not optimistic about what I’m going to find when I compare 2017 to 2016. It was a year filled with a lot of change and opportunity so I’ll use that as my excuse as to why I didn’t write as much or as often as I had planned.
I was thinking though: every year I set a goal of writing more posts than the previous year, but that’s only 1 metric to go by. Most of my posts are very detailed and fleshed out. It’s nothing to write a post that’s 1000 words. I regularly eclipse 2000 words and have even hit 3000 words. Perhaps I should be thinking more about word count and not post count? Certainly a 2000 word post takes more effort than a 1000 word post. On the other hand, word count says nothing about quality and could easily lead to excessive wordiness and run-on posts just to tilt the metrics.
Enough musing. Let’s review the data!
Ack. Yep, Continue reading
Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I’ve again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I’m not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the “me” behind the scenes.
Let’s go through the list!
In January, I joined the CPOC team at Cisco based in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was something I worked towards over the course of many months in 2016 and was offered the position in late 2016. Come January of 2017, I had fully transitioned from my prior role and was working full time for CPOC. This change set the stage for everything that happened in my professional life during 2017 and if my gut can be trusted, will end up being a major turning point in my career.
The first thing that we had to do as a result of this new job…
…was planning to uproot Continue reading
Didn't I just write the 2016 statistics post like… last week? Another year has flown by and with it another year of attempting to prioritize my writing. I'll be honest, I'm not optimistic about what I'm going to find when I compare 2017 to 2016. It was a year filled with a lot of change and opportunity so I'll use that as my excuse as to why I didn't write as much or as often as I had planned.
I was thinking though: every year I set a goal of writing more posts than the previous year, but that's only 1 metric to go by. Most of my posts are very detailed and fleshed out. It's nothing to write a post that's 1000 words. I regularly eclipse 2000 words and have even hit 3000 words. Perhaps I should be thinking more about word count and not post count? Certainly a 2000 word post takes more effort than a 1000 word post. On the other hand, word count says nothing about quality and could easily lead to excessive wordiness and run-on posts just to tilt the metrics.
Enough musing. Let's review the data!
Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I've again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I'm not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the “me” behind the scenes.
Let's go through the list!
Recently, I have been asked to get working Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestria (DVB-T) tunner on Raspberry PI 3. The tunner is Cinergy DVB-T stick from Terratec. Below are my notes describing installation of the stick on Raspbian Linux 9.1 Stretch. I hope someone find them useful.
1. Copy Raspbian to SD CARD (on Ubuntu)
First, we need to copy Raspbian installation image to SD card. Below is the example using dd command on Linux.
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=2017-09-07-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress conv=fsync
Insert SD card to Raspberry and power on the box. The default user is pi with the password raspberry. Enable SSH and VNC server for remote box administration. Navigate to Menu-> Preferences-> Raspberry PI Configuration.
2. Install Firmware
Inspect kernel for any error message connected with DVB-T tunner.
$ dmesg
Picture 1 - Missing firmware isdbt_rio.imp
Download firmware file isdbt_rio.imp (md5 - 9b762c1808fd8da81bbec3e24ddb04a3) from here. I have also uploaded it to Google disk. You can download and copy the file to the directory /lib/firmware with the command below.
$ sudo wget https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1MwDGSG4ZEm3eeJuf0gS686Be-ngx4rKR -O /lib/firmware/isdbt_rio.inp
Reboot PI and check kernel for any other kernel error messages.
Picture 2 - Continue reading
One of the more frustrating things for me is when someone, or some company, attempts to control me. Typically having the desire for less responsibility, I have no desire to control individuals in this way. Recently, I started looking into what moving my alarm system to a new monitoring service would entail. The primary goal included eliminating the dependence on a landline and getting the flexibility to do reconfigurations myself. I own the alarm system and I felt like I should be able to make those changes.
Upon investigation, I found that my alarm system was a bit challenging to reset the installer code. Searching the Internet yielded several options to try–1234, 9876, 4112 and 6112. Unfortunately, none of those worked for my system and a call to my current alarm service company was met with, “We don’t provide those, we want to protect you from
making accidental changes.” They eventually agreed to try to change the code to another value and called me back a few times. Eventually, their remote effort fizzled out, but I’m
sure they would’ve changed them with an on-site visit and a $75 service fee.
A few searches on the internet suggested copying Continue reading
As just a couple of days remain in 2017, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the year’s highlights! It was an extraordinary year, with the Internet Society celebrating its 25th anniversary and launching a new website – while continuing to advocate for an Internet that is open, globally connected, and secure. These values were evident in the many projects undertaken throughout the year and in some of my favorite blog posts:
Access is fundamental.
We shared stories of people working to create community networks around the world, including remote Tusheti, Georgia, where pack horses carried equipment up mountain peaks; rural South Africa, where one of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the country became a telecom operator; and Yemen, where the Internet@MySchool project connected classrooms in four secondary schools. We also published resources such as Spectrum Approaches for Community Networks and the Small Island Developing States report, which offered practical solutions to building community networks. But access also means accessibility, and the Internet Society recently launched the Accessibility Toolkit, which aims to reduce barriers so that people with disabilities can get online.
So is privacy and trust.
The WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks Continue reading
Happy New Year! I was thinking back on the last year, reflecting on all of the changes in the IT industry, and in true nerd fashion, I opened a bottle of wine in search of the most poignant change that I expect to see in 2018. In the end, I ended up with two predictions linked to a common theme: the repeal of net neutrality.
First, I predict that we’ll start seeing effects of that legislation early in 2018, likely by the summer time. The anti net neutrality sponsors won’t be able to help themselves; they’ve got to institutionalize changes before the winds can blow in a different direction. I predict the first signs to emerge will be Internet access plans that distinguish based on access to content. These won’t be subtle plans — they’ll look a lot like your TV subscription in the flavor of something like “basic browsing” that will cost less than your current rate and a more expensive “streaming media” package that gives you access to content outside of that offered by your service provider.
The second is that we’ll see an emergence of one or more access/service providers that use this as a land grab Continue reading
Standards — once critical for achieving interoperability — have failed to adapt.