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Proof that our customers’ success is our success

From the start, one mission has driven us: to bring the economics and agility that the web-scale giants enjoy in networking to companies of all sizes.

We announced Cumulus Express at the start of the year with that mission front of mind. The response has exceeded our expectations and reaffirmed our belief that web-scale IT is something companies across the spectrum are serious about. open chassis based on Facebook Backpack — has helped us attract some amazing new customers within the Fortune 100, helping us boost bookings by more than 20%. An interesting insight from speaking to our customers is that established enterprises are looking to create a web-scale architecture with fixed and modular platforms. Both our fixed-form Cumulus Express offering as well as our modular platforms like Backpack cater to companies like those that need a joint solution that is easy to procure and quick to deploy. On average, the availability of Cumulus Express has cut the time it takes from initial conversation to live proof of concept (PoC) in half, meaning that our customers are seeing value faster.

But it isn’t just the Fortune 100 taking an interest; we’ve also seen uptake among other mainstream enterprises. For example, both Healthcare Realty, a major real estate trust, and Perth Radiological Clinic chose Express as a means of quickly expanding their existing Cumulus deployments. What’s more, we’re speaking to a whole range of other companies that are interested in following in their footsteps.

So how did we get here? Simple: we listened.

Many cloud architects we spoke with in the process of developing this product wanted more choice. Many companies were eager to build modern, web-scale networks, but needed the ability to deploy a PoC quickly before committing to the disaggregated model. This was particularly true among large, established enterprises. Others were already on board, but were used to buying their networking system as an appliance. We needed to create an option that would make buying Cumulus Linux — and getting a PoC up and running — quick and easy in both instances.

Enter Cumulus Express. With it, you get a fixed or modular switch preloaded with Cumulus Linux and a set of certified cables and optics. Offering our open networking software and high performance switching hardware in one ready-to-run package was one more way we could make web-scale networking more accessible to more companies and help them be successful.

It’s been a great year for us so far, but we never feel our work is done. I’ve always been steadfast in my belief that building great, enduring companies requires great products — built by listening to customers — so that’s what we’re going to continue to do. Keep sharing your feedback and ideas with us, because it fuels us to keep improving.

Alongside Cumulus Express, we’ve worked extremely hard to bring other standard-setting products like Host Pack to market and build further on our mission of bringing web-scale to the masses. What Cumulus Networks now has is the most mature offering on the market, so we’re perfectly placed to serve the demand for web-scale for years to come.

The post Proof that our customers’ success is our success appeared first on Cumulus Networks Blog.

Community Networks: By Indigenous Communities, for Indigenous Communities

At the Internet Society, we believe that the Internet is for everyone. We’re standing by that belief by supporting network development and deployment for indigenous communities that face Internet access challenges.

Community networks, communications infrastructure deployed and operated by local people, offer indigenous communities a way to access the Internet to meet their own needs. These community networks offer a connection to health, education, and economic strength. For many, affordable, high-quality Internet access means community sustainability. In addition, community networks encourage policymakers and regulators to examine new ways and means to fill local digital divides, like supporting local content in the appropriate language(s).

These benefits are not theoretical; we have seen great changes through small projects and united community members working toward a common goal. There are many success stories of indigenous community networks around the world. Take a look at how some of our partners have been working with indigenous communities to develop community networks:

  • The First Mile Connectivity Consortium supports remote and rural First Nations developing and innovating with information and communication technologies (ICT) through research, policy, and outreach. Their website highlights stories of people like Bruce Buffalo, who developed a system that offers four free Internet access Continue reading

IoT can learn from smartphone security

The massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices over the next one to three years should give us pause. As companies rush to get to market first, are we seeing a “dumbing down” of basic device principals that we have been working with for years, particularly enhanced security and privacy. With so many distinct applications, device scope and diversity represent a unique security challenge that so far has not been met.I estimate that 85 percent or more of current IoT devices deployed in the real world do not have adequate security installed, and it’s likely that the vast majority of those will never be upgraded (or are not even capable of being upgraded). That means not only do current devices being installed pose a risk, but over the next one to two years, the vast majority of devices that will be deployed also pose a risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT can learn from smartphone security

The massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices over the next one to three years should give us pause. As companies rush to get to market first, are we seeing a “dumbing down” of basic device principals that we have been working with for years, particularly enhanced security and privacy. With so many distinct applications, device scope and diversity represent a unique security challenge that so far has not been met.I estimate that 85 percent or more of current IoT devices deployed in the real world do not have adequate security installed, and it’s likely that the vast majority of those will never be upgraded (or are not even capable of being upgraded). That means not only do current devices being installed pose a risk, but over the next one to two years, the vast majority of devices that will be deployed also pose a risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Making a Clickable HTML Network Diagram using OmniGraffle

As a Mac user, I have to give my diagramming love to OmniGraffle and I try not to envy the Visio users too much. I maintain that Graffle diagrams subjectively look nicer than Visio, but in terms of features, Visio wins the day. Despite that, sometimes poor old Graffle does so something helpful and in this case, it’s being able to export a diagram as an image with an HTML image map.

The Plan For A Web-Based Network Diagram

My plan was to create a web-based network diagram for my home network where I could click on any device on the diagram and be connected to it using the appropriate protocol handler (e.g. SSH or HTTPS). This hypothetical page would not serve as a diagram of the network, but might also provide useful information for my long-suffering, geek wife, who tells me with despair in her eyes that she has no idea what the network looks like any more after I’ve messed around with it so much. She has a point. After considering making something in HTML, I realized that OmniGraffle would do the hard work for me, and it would be much easier to update later, too.

For Continue reading

Apstra intent-based networking bridges the physical, virtual

Intent-based systems have been all the rage since Cisco announced its “Network Intuitive” solution earlier this year. For Cisco customers, its solution is certainly interesting. But what about businesses that want an alternative to Cisco? Or companies that want to run a multi-vendor environment?Over a year before Cisco’s launch, a start-up called Apstra shipped the closed-loop, intent-based solution. It was designed to be multi-vendor in nature with support for Cisco but also Arista, Juniper, HP and others, including white box. Apstra operates as an overlay to networks built on any of the leading vendors to deliver intent-based networking in heterogeneous environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apstra intent-based networking bridges the physical, virtual

Intent-based systems have been all the rage since Cisco announced its “Network Intuitive” solution earlier this year. For Cisco customers, its solution is certainly interesting. But what about businesses that want an alternative to Cisco? Or companies that want to run a multi-vendor environment?Over a year before Cisco’s launch, a start-up called Apstra shipped the closed-loop, intent-based solution. It was designed to be multi-vendor in nature with support for Cisco but also Arista, Juniper, HP and others, including white box. Apstra operates as an overlay to networks built on any of the leading vendors to deliver intent-based networking in heterogeneous environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apstra bridges the physical — virtual network divide

Intent-based systems have been all the rage since Cisco announced its “Network Intuitive” solution earlier this year. For Cisco customers, its solution is certainly interesting. But what about businesses that want an alternative to Cisco? Or companies that want to run a multi-vendor environment?Over a year before Cisco’s launch, a start-up called Apstra shipped the closed-loop, intent-based solution. It was designed to be multi-vendor in nature with support for Cisco but also Arista, Juniper, HP and others, including white box. Apstra operates as an overlay to networks built on any of the leading vendors to deliver intent-based networking in heterogeneous environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Set up a dedicated virtualization server on Packet.net

Packet is a hardware-as-a-service vendor that provides dedicated servers on demand at very low cost. For me and my readers, Packet offers a solution to the problem of using cloud services to run complex network emulation scenarios that require hardware-level support for virtualization. Packet users may access powerful servers that empower them to perform activities they could not run on a normal personal computer.

In this post, I will describe the procedure to set up an on-demand bare metal server and to create and maintain persistent data storage for applications. I will describe a generic procedure that can be applied to any application and that works for users who access Packet services from a laptop computer running any of the common operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. In a future post, I will describe how I run network emulation scenarios on a Packet server.

Table of Contents

  1. Packet.net
    1. Controlling costs when using bare metal servers
    2. Create a Packet account and Login
    3. Create a project
  2. Generate SSH Keys
    1. Windows
    2. Mac
    3. Linux
    4. Copy public key to Packet.net
  3. Deploy a Server
  4. SSH Server on local machine
    1. Windows
    2. Mac
    3. Linux
  5. Set up the remote server
    1. Test X11 forwarding
  6. Create block storage
    1. Create Continue reading

Time to rethink how much customer data you store

Does the company you work for (or own) retain data on customers? Odds are pretty high that it does, at least in some form (often fairly extensively). It's often attractive to do so for both marketing and functionality purposes.But here's the thing, storing that data is probably a bad business decision. One that could cost your business a huge amount of money and, even worse, potential loss of trust by your most valuable customers.Storage costs  Just from the IT infrastructure point of view: As your business grows and the amount of data you store on each customer slowly expands (it always does), your cost for storing that data also grows. Rather quickly. Even if your data center is already well equipped, this is a not-insignificant recurring expense (failing drives, energy costs, other equipment needs, etc.).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Time to rethink how much customer data you store

Does the company you work for (or own) retain data on customers? Odds are pretty high that it does, at least in some form (often fairly extensively). It's often attractive to do so for both marketing and functionality purposes.But here's the thing, storing that data is probably a bad business decision. One that could cost your business a huge amount of money and, even worse, potential loss of trust by your most valuable customers.Storage costs  Just from the IT infrastructure point of view: As your business grows and the amount of data you store on each customer slowly expands (it always does), your cost for storing that data also grows. Rather quickly. Even if your data center is already well equipped, this is a not-insignificant recurring expense (failing drives, energy costs, other equipment needs, etc.).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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