Google’s Cloud Spanner Global Database Is Now Actually Global

The new release adds multi-region support.

MEF 3.0 Looks to Take Best From Carrier Ethernet and the Internet

MEF 3.0 is supposed to be the "biggest and boldest" framework yet.

47% off HDMI Female to Female Coupler 2-Pack, Gold Plated High Speed Adapter – Deal Alert

Here's an adapter that's always good to have on hand. Pop one of them on the end of an HDMI cable and extend your back-of-the-tv HDMI port around front where it's easier to access. Or use them to couple multiple HDMI cables together for extended reach. Supports 3D and 4k signals. The list price of $10.99 has been reduced to just $5.89 for the two-pack. See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full, please click here

AT&T Makes its SD-WAN ‘Dynamic’

The operator architected its SD-WAN through the AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC).

Is There a Future for Blockchain-Enabled SD-WAN?

The combination could mitigate the audit and regulatory risk involved in each transaction.

Dell EMC’s Jeffrey Baher on the Past, Present and Future for Open Networking

Dell EMC recently expanded its Open Networking initiative, which focuses on abstracting and decoupling hardware and software networking elements, beyond the data center core. The goal is to enable an end-to-end, software-defined architecture, where mix-and-match software from innovative third-parties can run on agnostic hardware to help service provider and enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,... Read more →

rule 11 reader 2017-11-14 18:00:50

The 2017 APM/NPM Report Survey is Here!

Take survey and enter to win one of two $300 Gift Cards redeemable at various retailers including Amazon, Target, Visa Virtual Card, etc.

Versa Optimizes SD-WAN Voice and Video from User’s Perspective

Versa wants to bring SD-WAN value up the stack.

Cray picks Cavium processors for ARM-based supercomputers

Cray has picked Cavium’s ThunderX2 processor for its first ARM-based supercomputer, quite a win for the little guy coming just a week after the 800-pound gorilla that is Qualcomm formally introduced its ARM-based server processor, the Centriq.The Cavium ThunderX2 processor is based on 64-bit Armv8-A architecture and will be used in the Cray XC50 supercomputer. Cray customers will have a complete ARM-based supercomputer with all of the company’s software tools, including the Cray Linux Environment, the Cray Programming Environment, and Arm-optimized compilers, libraries, and tools for running today’s supercomputing workloads.To read this article in full, please click here

Cray picks Cavium processors for ARM-based supercomputers

Cray has picked Cavium’s ThunderX2 processor for its first ARM-based supercomputer, quite a win for the little guy coming just a week after the 800-pound gorilla that is Qualcomm formally introduced its ARM-based server processor, the Centriq.The Cavium ThunderX2 processor is based on 64-bit Armv8-A architecture and will be used in the Cray XC50 supercomputer. Cray customers will have a complete ARM-based supercomputer with all of the company’s software tools, including the Cray Linux Environment, the Cray Programming Environment, and Arm-optimized compilers, libraries, and tools for running today’s supercomputing workloads.To read this article in full, please click here

Worth Reading: GPL Licenses

The GPL family of licenses is unique among open source licenses in how past, current, and future versions of the license may apply to the software program. By not fully understanding this unique license feature, open source software developers may inadvertently create ambiguity. — Jeffrey Robert Kaufman @ oensource.com

Big Switch Named A Career-Launching Company by Wealthfront

How To Access Devices with Unsupported SSL Ciphers

With the HeartBleed bug effectively killing off SSLv3 and vulnerabilities in cipher block chaining ruling out another whole swathe of SSL ciphers, network engineers may have found themselves trying to connect to a device and either getting no response (Safari), or getting a response like this (Chrome):

Or this (Firefox):

Once upon a time, it was possible to go into settings and enable the old, insecure ciphers again, but in more recent updates, those ciphers no longer exist within the code and are thus inaccessible. So what to do? My answer was to try a proxy.

Charles Proxy

The first proxy I looked at seemed promising. Although not free, Charles Proxy offers a 30 day free trial, and that seemed like a good thing to try. It’s limited additionally by only running for 30 minutes at a time before it has to be reloaded, but for my testing purposes that was not a problem.

During installation I declined to give Charles Proxy permission to configure the system proxy settings. Instead, I manually updated just my Firefox browser to use the proxy which was now listening on port 127.0.0.1:8888. Since I was making an SSL connection, I also Continue reading

Forrester predicts what’s next for IoT

What’s in store for the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2018? That’s the question on many people’s minds in the fast-growing IoT industry. One set of answers can be found in a new report from Forrester, called Predictions 2018: IoT Moves From Experimentation To Business Scale. According to Forrester and published reports last week, that journey means many things, but apart from the usual superheated speculation about IoT’s incredible growth and increasing impact, here’s what I think is most interesting. To read this article in full, please click here

Forrester predicts what’s next for IoT

What’s in store for the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2018? That’s the question on many people’s minds in the fast-growing IoT industry. One set of answers can be found in a new report from Forrester, called Predictions 2018: IoT Moves From Experimentation To Business Scale. According to Forrester and published reports last week, that journey means many things, but apart from the usual superheated speculation about IoT’s incredible growth and increasing impact, here’s what I think is most interesting. To read this article in full, please click here

AMD charges back into the HPC fray with new systems

After years of watching its presence shrink on the Top 500 supercomputer list, AMD is battling back with a new set of EPYC-based server processors and specially-tuned GPUs for high-performance computing (HPC) in a complete server system.The company and its partners announced new servers with the EPYC 7601 processor, which it claims is three times more performance-efficient than Intel’s best Xeon server processors, the Xeon Platinum 8180M1, as measured by SPECfp[i] benchmark. The news came at the Supercomputing ’17 show taking place in Denver.Target workloads for AMD solutions include machine learning, weather modeling, computational fluid dynamics, simulation and crash analysis in aviation and automotive manufacturing, and oil and gas exploration, according to the company.To read this article in full, please click here

AMD charges back into the HPC fray with new systems

After years of watching its presence shrink on the Top 500 supercomputer list, AMD is battling back with a new set of EPYC-based server processors and specially-tuned GPUs for high-performance computing (HPC) in a complete server system.The company and its partners announced new servers with the EPYC 7601 processor, which it claims is three times more performance-efficient than Intel’s best Xeon server processors, the Xeon Platinum 8180M1, as measured by SPECfp[i] benchmark. The news came at the Supercomputing ’17 show taking place in Denver.Target workloads for AMD solutions include machine learning, weather modeling, computational fluid dynamics, simulation and crash analysis in aviation and automotive manufacturing, and oil and gas exploration, according to the company.To read this article in full, please click here

The Super Secret Cloudflare Master Plan, or why we acquired Neumob

We announced today that Cloudflare has acquired Neumob. Neumob’s team built exceptional technology to speed up mobile apps, reduce errors on challenging mobile networks, and increase conversions. Cloudflare will integrate the Neumob technology with our global network to give Neumob truly global reach.

It’s tempting to think of the Neumob acquisition as a point product added to the Cloudflare portfolio. But it actually represents a key part of a long term “Super Secret Cloudflare Master Plan”.

CC BY 2.0 image by Neil Rickards

Over the last few years Cloudflare has been building a large network of data centers across the world to help fulfill our mission of helping to build a better Internet. These data centers all run an identical software stack that implements Cloudflare’s cache, DNS, DDoS, WAF, load balancing, rate limiting, etc.

We’re now at 118 data centers in 58 countries and are continuing to expand with a goal of being as close to end users as possible worldwide.

The data centers are tied together by secure connections which are optimized using our Argo smart routing capability. Our Quicksilver technology enables us to update and modify the settings and software running across this vast network in seconds.

Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How patchable software can secure the IoT

As the Internet of Things continues to grow, delving further into every corner of our markets and societies, the ability to secure it from malevolent attackers and massive data-breaches will become more vital towards its survival. Today’s IoT security landscape is a confused mess, with vulnerabilities running rampant and paltry little being done to make it more secure. So how can IoT experts and tech enthusiast alike contribute to a safer IoT?The answer lies in patchable software. By embracing more industry standards and fostering the greater implementation of patchable software, IoT enthusiast can ensure that this much-beloved connectivity phenomenon lives on to serve us for years to come.To read this article in full, please click here