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Category Archives for "Networking"

FCC ends price caps on many business data lines

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to deregulate the providers of the business data lines connecting broadband service to many small businesses, schools, hospitals, and ATM machines.The deregulation of business data services, or BDS, could mean broadband price hikes for those businesses as well as for mobile phone customers, critics said. BDS provides the backhaul that connects mobile towers to the wired internet.The commission's 2-1 party-line vote ends price caps on much of the BDS market across the U.S., while retaining price regulations in about a third of the country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet evolution: Broadcom switches offer Time Sensitive Ethernet

Broadcom this week introduced a family of Ethernet switches that support new technology aimed at helping users address the rising network implications of the Internet of Things, automotive networking and video applications.+More on Network World: Ethernet: Are there worlds left to conquer?+Key to that strategy is that the new family -- Broadcom StrataConnect BCM53570 – features support for an emerging Ethernet protocol technology called Time Sensitive Networks that brings standard deterministic real-time communications over Ethernet. The IEEE TSN standards define extremely precise, predictable timing across the network. By adding features to Ethernet such as time synchronization, ingress policing, seamless redundancy, frame preemption, scheduled traffic, and stream reservation, TSN ensures mission-critical, time sensitive data is not held up on the network, promoting an interoperable ecosystem spanning across many industries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ethernet evolution: Broadcom switches offer Time Sensitive Ethernet

Broadcom this week introduced a family of Ethernet switches that support new technology aimed at helping users address the rising network implications of the Internet of Things, automotive networking and video applications.+More on Network World: Ethernet: Are there worlds left to conquer?+Key to that strategy is that the new family -- Broadcom StrataConnect BCM53570 – features support for an emerging Ethernet protocol technology called Time Sensitive Networks that brings standard deterministic real-time communications over Ethernet. The IEEE TSN standards define extremely precise, predictable timing across the network. By adding features to Ethernet such as time synchronization, ingress policing, seamless redundancy, frame preemption, scheduled traffic, and stream reservation, TSN ensures mission-critical, time sensitive data is not held up on the network, promoting an interoperable ecosystem spanning across many industries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: It’s Time: Why Cloud Applications Demand Moving to an SD-WAN

When I’m talking with customers, I hear about a lot of challenges their businesses experience with their legacy WANs.In particular, the network architects and administrators talk about the problems their WANs present as applications move from the data center to the cloud.The challenges occur whether it is SaaS replacing traditional applications, or specific applications migrating to an IaaS service.The benefits of cloud-based applications are often readily apparent to end users, and to most IT folks. But many networking staff see the cloud opportunity differently. They are the ones stuck trying to make the old WAN do the new tricks required to support cloud applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OK Google, let’s get personal

A hotly anticipated upgrade to Google Home will let users train the company’s virtual assistant to recognize different voices and provide personalized responses to each person.When users set up speaker recognition, their Home devices will ask that they say “OK Google” and “Hey Google” two times each. Whenever someone uses one of those phrases in the future to ask the Google Assistant a question, the Home device being addressed will check to see if that person is one of its recognized conversation partners.That means two different people in the same household can each log into a Google Home device and set it up with their calendars and other preferences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

20% off AIRFREE HD Indoor Antenna 50 Miles Range, USB Power Supply – Deal Alert

Cut the cable and get access to your local news, weather, sitcoms, kids and sports programs, educational programs and more for free. Enjoy crystal clear HDTV shows in 1080p. The antenna boasts a 50-mile range, and a generous 10-foot cable gives you the flexibility to find the best placement for maximum reception. The AIRFREE antenna currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 170 people on Amazon, where its typical list price of $19.99 has been temporarily reduced 20% to $15.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

By Djingo, there’s a new virtual assistant

How many virtual assistants can you fit in one smartphone? European network operator Orange is hoping there's room to squeeze in one more.With the right apps, you can already talk to Alexa, Cortana and Google through your smartphone -- and maybe also to Siri or Bixby if you went with one of the big brands.Orange wants to add Djingo to that list.Djingo will be able to answer questions, send text messages, place calls, play music and video from Orange's set-top box, and control smart home devices.It draws on the company's research into linguistics and artificial intelligence, and will even offer financial advice in conjunction with a new banking service Orange is launching, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How MLAG interacts with the host: LACP part 2

In part1, we discussed some of the design decisions around uplink modes for VMware and a customer scenario I was working through recently. In this post, we’ll explore multi-chassis link aggregation (MLAG) in some detail and how active-active network fabrics challenge some of the assumptions made.

Disclaimer: What I’m going to describe is based on network switches running Cumulus Linux and specifically some down-in-the-weeds details on this particular MLAG implementation. That said, most of the concepts apply to similar network technologies (VPC, other MLAG implementations, stacking, virtual-chassis, etc.) as they operate in very similar ways. But YMMV.

I originally set out to write this as a single article, but to explain the nuances it quickly spiraled beyond that. So I decided to split it up into a few parts.

Part1: Design choices – Which NIC teaming mode to select

• Part2: How MLAG interacts with the host (This page)
Part3: “Ships in the night” – Sharing state between host and upstream network

So let’s explore MLAG in some detail

If the host is connected to two redundant switches (which these days is all but assumed), then MLAG (and equivalent solutions) is a commonly deployed option. In simple terms, Continue reading

Flaws let attackers hijack multiple Linksys router models

Two dozen Linksys router models are vulnerable to attacks that could extract sensitive information from their configurations, cause them to become unresponsive and even completely take them over.The vulnerabilities were discovered by senior security consultant Tao Sauvage from IOActive and independent security researcher Antide Petit while working together to analyze the Linksys EA3500 Smart Wi-Fi wireless router.The two researchers found a total of 10 vulnerabilities that affect not only the EA3500, but two dozen different router models from Linksys' Smart Wi-Fi, WRT and Wireless-AC series. Even though these devices are marketed as consumer products, it's not unusual to find them running in small business and home office environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flaws let attackers hijack multiple Linksys router models

Two dozen Linksys router models are vulnerable to attacks that could extract sensitive information from their configurations, cause them to become unresponsive and even completely take them over.The vulnerabilities were discovered by senior security consultant Tao Sauvage from IOActive and independent security researcher Antide Petit while working together to analyze the Linksys EA3500 Smart Wi-Fi wireless router.The two researchers found a total of 10 vulnerabilities that affect not only the EA3500, but two dozen different router models from Linksys' Smart Wi-Fi, WRT and Wireless-AC series. Even though these devices are marketed as consumer products, it's not unusual to find them running in small business and home office environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook diversifies VR development with JavaScript framework React VR

If Rodney Dangerfield were an engineer, he would insult tool makers because inventors get respect, but tool makers none. Everyone remembers Thomas Edison for the invention of the light bulb and phonograph, but no one remembers Edison’s tool maker, Thomas Watson, except that Edison once recorded beckoning him on a phonograph cylinder.Like Watson, web development tool JavaScript gets no respect from some people who consider themselves serious developers. Nevertheless, JavaScript persists because it is the core to responsive web pages and because it is the most widely understood and used programming language in the world outside of the enterprise. It has also proved extensible, adapting to new uses faster than its critics can disparage it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bose accused of spying on users, illegal wiretapping via Bose Connect app

Those high-dollar Bose headphones? A lawsuit filed in Chicago contends Bose has been spying on users via the Bose Connect app, which enables users to remotely control their Bose headphones, and violating their privacy rights by selling the information about what they listen to without permission. Furthermore, Kyle Zak accused Bose of illegal wiretapping.The lawsuit claims the app also has a data miner called Segment.io. Segment, the company behind the data miner, advertises, “Collect all of your customer data and send it anywhere.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bose accused of spying on users, illegal wiretapping via Bose Connect app

Those high-dollar Bose headphones? A lawsuit filed in Chicago contends Bose has been spying on users via the Bose Connect app, which enables users to remotely control their Bose headphones, and violating their privacy rights by selling the information about what they listen to without permission. Furthermore, Kyle Zak accused Bose of illegal wiretapping.The lawsuit claims the app also has a data miner called Segment.io; Segment, the company behind the data miner, advertises, “Collect all of your customer data and send it anywhere.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Finding and protecting the crown jewels

Visibility and security controls for internet-based applications such as social media, file sharing and email have been widely adopted at the perimeter. As we transition from the legacy perimeter security model to a cloud security model, there is a need to ensure we don’t forget the principles we have established. Virtualization has changed how applications are built, deployed and used. It has also created challenges to how security is applied and deployed for these environments. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the result of these challenges has driven new innovation in the cloud security space.+ Also on Network World: The tricky, personal politics of cloud security + Discovering and mapping application communications and dependencies is one of the first steps in defining and creating security policies for east-west data center traffic. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of understanding about these relationships, making east-west security policies difficult to implement and often prone to misconfiguration. As a result, we still see an abundance of successful attacks and the loss of critical data, even with traditional perimeter security models in place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Finding and protecting the crown jewels

Visibility and security controls for internet-based applications such as social media, file sharing and email have been widely adopted at the perimeter. As we transition from the legacy perimeter security model to a cloud security model, there is a need to ensure we don’t forget the principles we have established. Virtualization has changed how applications are built, deployed and used. It has also created challenges to how security is applied and deployed for these environments. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the result of these challenges has driven new innovation in the cloud security space.+ Also on Network World: The tricky, personal politics of cloud security + Discovering and mapping application communications and dependencies is one of the first steps in defining and creating security policies for east-west data center traffic. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of understanding about these relationships, making east-west security policies difficult to implement and often prone to misconfiguration. As a result, we still see an abundance of successful attacks and the loss of critical data, even with traditional perimeter security models in place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here