IDG Contributor Network: The benefits of multi-cloud computing

Its application might be a tough concept to grasp, but the idea of multi-cloud computing is a simple one. It’s the choice of a business to distribute its assets, redundancies, software, applications and anything it deems worthy not on one cloud-hosting environment, but rather across several. At its surface, this concept might seem to be rubbing against the grain a bit. For security purposes alone, having all your company’s proverbial eggs in one basket appears the best way to keep your information from suffering leakage. Plus, many cloud-hosting companies will offer perks and discounts when your company use their services in totality.   However, the model of using multiple cloud services to house your business’s functions and features has an impressive list of advantages that can provide security, flexibility, cost-effectiveness and more to increase your business’s efficiency and ensure it stays up and running 24 hours a day. To read this article in full, please click here

Your online freedoms are under threat – 2017 Freedom on the Net Report

As more people get online everyday, Internet Freedom is facing a global decline for the 7th year in a row.

Today, Freedom House released their 2017 Freedom on the Net report, one of the most comprehensive assessments of countries’ performance regarding online freedoms. The Internet Society is one of the supporters of this report. We think it brings solid and needed evidence-based data in an area that fundamentally impacts user trust.

Looking across 65 countries, the report highlights several worrying trends, including:

• manipulation of social media in democratic processes
• restrictions of virtual private networks (VPNs)
• censoring of mobile connectivity
• attacks against netizens and online journalists

Elections prove to be particular tension points for online freedoms (see also Freedom House’s new Internet Freedom Election Monitor). Beyond the reported trend towards more sophisticated government attempts to control online discussions, the other side of the coin is an increase in restrictions to Internet access, whether through shutting down networks entirely, or blocking specific communication platforms and services.

These Internet shutdowns are at the risk of becoming the new normal. In addition to their impact on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, shutdowns generate severe economic costs, affecting entire economies [1] and Continue reading

Another Reason to Run Linux on Your Data Center Switches

Arista’s OpenFlow implementation doesn’t support TLS encryption. Usually that’s not a big deal, as there aren’t that many customers using OpenFlow anyway, and those that do hopefully do it over a well-protected management network.

However, lack of OpenFlow TLS encryption might become an RFP showstopper… not because the customer would really need it but because the customer is in CYA mode (we don’t know what this feature is or why we’d use it, but it might be handy in a decade, so we must have it now) or because someone wants to eliminate certain vendors based on some obscure missing feature.

Cloud Managed Wireless Solution : Cisco Meraki MR52

Cloud Managed Wireless Systems : Cisco Meraki MR52

Today I am going to talk about the Cisco Meraki solution which is totally a cloud based managed system and the product name is Cisco Meraki MR52. It is based on the next generation wireless systems that can be deployed in various departments like Education systems, Manufacturing units, Offices, Enterprise networks and so on. The way Cisco Meraki works is totally a next generation revolution where all management can be done via cloud and you just need to deploy the hardware in your network to work.

What is the purpose to deploy and how much time it takes to configure Cisco Meraki MR52 ?
Well if you have the requirement to have the wireless network with various SSIDs you should go with the site surveys and on the basis of it you should go with the suitable model of the wireless WLCs. If I talk about the Cisco Meraki cloud managed MR52, It is simple to deploy and self configured via cloud. So you need not to require any resource for the configuration of the Meraki MR52 at the remote sites.

Fig 1.1- Cisco Meraki MR25 Wireless Systems

What is the throughput of the Cisco Meraki MR52 ?
Well Cisco Meraki Continue reading

Ex-Googlers Launch LightStep, Extending APM Beyond Applications

The company's first product monitors whatever matters most to an enterprise.

Juniper Builds Turn-Key Telco Cloud with Contrail, Red Hat OpenStack

It migrated Contrail Cloud from Ubuntu OpenStack.

Nokia Adds Analytics, Automation to Security Management Software

Nokia says smartphone infections accounted for 72 percent of all mobile network infections in the first three months of 2017.

Manage user performance, not the network, with machine learning-based tools

Over the past decade, network management tools have evolved from being fault based to performance based. This has become a critical element in running infrastructure because faults don’t matter as much.That might seem like a strange thing to say, but consider the fact that critical infrastructure such as switches, routers, Wi-Fi access points and servers are deployed in a way to protect against outages. Infrastructure is built so redundantly today that any hardware device can go down and its likely no one will notice.Also on Network World: 7 must-have network tools A bigger problem is managing user performance. Often users calling about a certain application not working well, but when the engineer looks at the dashboard, everything is green. Performance problems are much harder to diagnose and can kill employee productivity. To read this article in full, please click here

Manage user performance, not the network, with machine learning-based tools

Over the past decade, network management tools have evolved from being fault based to performance based. This has become a critical element in running infrastructure because faults don’t matter as much.That might seem like a strange thing to say, but consider the fact that critical infrastructure such as switches, routers, Wi-Fi access points and servers are deployed in a way to protect against outages. Infrastructure is built so redundantly today that any hardware device can go down and its likely no one will notice.Also on Network World: 7 must-have network tools A bigger problem is managing user performance. Often users calling about a certain application not working well, but when the engineer looks at the dashboard, everything is green. Performance problems are much harder to diagnose and can kill employee productivity. To read this article in full, please click here

Real-time WiFi heat map

Worth Reading: Fog and Open Source

Edge computing, like public cloud at scale, requires a convenient, powerful cloud software stack that can be deployed in a unified, efficient and sustainable way. Open source is leading the way. — Mark Collier @ opensource.com

Next-Generation Assurance in NFV Networks

Download the Huawei White Paper,  In the digital era, communications service providers (CSPs) are undergoing a technological evolution, and network virtualization is playing a key role—in particular, network functions virtualization (NFV).  NFV offers reduced time to market, agility, innovation, an open ecosystem to avoid vendor lock-in, and future CAPEX and OPEX reduction. However, operational transformation... Read more →

Developing a Hybrid Plan for SD-WAN Q&A

Thanks to all who joined us for the Comcast Business 2017 SD-WAN and Virtual Edge Report webinar, Developing  a Hybrid Plan for SD-WAN, where they discussed how to ease into SD-WAN to test and experience new business capabilities across a distributed enterprise. After the webinar we took questions from the audience. Unfortunately we ran out... Read more →

Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic

Learn tips and tricks for building a high-performance WLAN!

I teamed up with the great staff at Ekahau to put together this infographic about how to design and deploy high capacity Wi-Fi. It's the second poster in the series, following the Wi-Fi Design Poster that focused on radio frequency (RF) factors.

The Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic covers:

• An overview of airtime and why it is important
• Understanding the two primary factors affecting airtime:
  1. Airtime within a cell
  2. Airtime across cells
• Methods to maximize airtime efficiency to get the most out of your WLAN
• Channel inventory as it relates to capacity
• How client capabilities affect airtime consumption, and hence capacity, in a WLAN
• Factors to consider when selecting infrastructure to deploy
• Factors to consider with infrastructure placement and configuration
• Features available within Ekahau Site Survey to set you up for success

Download the Wi-Fi Capacity Infographic today!

Alibaba Cloud Next-Gen Data Center Uses Cisco Tech

The companies will collaborate on other areas including data center interconnection in the future.

HPE, Rackspace to Sell Pay-as-You-Go OpenStack Private Cloud

They will offer similar pay-per-use private clouds based on VMware and Microsoft Azure Stack next year.

NetDevOpEd: The power of network verification

Microsoft just published information on their internal tool called “CrystalNet” which Microsoft defines as “a high-fidelity, cloud-scale network emulator in daily use at Microsoft. We built CrystalNet to help our engineers in their quest to improve the overall reliability of our networking infrastructure.” You can read more about their tool in this detailed ACM Paper. But what I want to talk about is how this amazing technology is accessible to you, at any organization, right now, with network verification using Cumulus VX.

What Microsoft has accomplished is truly amazing. They can simulate their network environment and prevent nearly 70% of the network issues they experienced in a two-year period. They have the ability to spin up hundreds of nodes with the exact same configurations and protocols they run in production. Then applying network tests, they verify if proposed changes will have negative impact on applications and services. This work took the team of Microsoft researchers over two years to develop. It’s really quite the feat!

What I find exciting about this is it validates exactly what we at Cumulus have been preaching for the last two years as well. The ability to make a 1:1 mirror of Continue reading

OneAccess OS Manages Physical, Virtual Network Functions

The telco journey “is going to take some time.”

Learning to Ask Questions

One thing I’m often asked in email and in person is: why should I bother learning theory? After all, you don’t install SPF in your network; you install a router or switch, which you then configure OSPF or IS-IS on. The SPF algorithm is not exposed to the user, and does not seem to really have any impact on the operation of the network. Such internal functionality might be neat to know, but ultimately–who cares? Maybe it will be useful in some projected troubleshooting situation, but the key to effective troubleshooting is understanding the output of the device, rather than in understanding what the device is doing.

In other words, there is no reason to treat network devices as anything more than black boxes. You put some stuff in, other stuff comes out, and the vendor takes care of everything in the middle. I dealt with a related line of thinking in this video, but what about this black box argument? Do network engineers really need to know what goes on inside the vendor’s black box?

Let me anser this question with another question. Wen you shift to a new piece of hardware, how do you know what you are Continue reading