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Category Archives for "Networking"

BrandPost: SD-WANs Are Necessary For Success With The Internet Of Things

It’s my belief that we will look back at 2017 as a tipping point for the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has certainly been something that most business and IT leaders talk about, but to date, deployments have been limited to key verticals that have been connecting things for years, although we called it machine-to-machine (M2M) before it became cool to say IoT.I’ve long felt that one could tell when a technology tipping point is happening when it no longer seems like a big deal. Remember the early days of virtualization?  IT leaders had to explain why it was better to run workloads on VMs and had to prove it wouldn’t impair application performance. Today, no one thinks about these issues anymore because it’s now the norm. In the consumer world, people used to “ooh” and “ahh” when they saw an iPhone.  Now, no one bats an eye, as they are pervasive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 still does a lot of snooping

Microsoft has been roundly beaten up for the aggressive telemetry gathering in Windows 10 (a.k.a. spying) in many quarters, including here. However, the company has proven it’s not tone deaf by working to add greater controls over privacy in its recent updates to the operating system. However, one veteran security analyst and Microsoft MVP said that even a very restricted setup of Windows 10 Enterprise Edition doesn’t go far enough to keep Windows 10 from connecting to Redmond with user data.Mark Burnett, a seven-time MVP and long-time Windows developer (along with many other bonafides), conducted an experiment with Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, the one designed for IT shops with the greatest controls over privacy. He notes that even with documentation, turning off settings can be confusing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Anycast and Latency

One of the things I hear from time to time is how smaller Internet facing service deployments, with just a few instances, cannot really benefit from anycast. Particularly in the active-active data center use case, where customers can connect to one data center or another, the cost of advertising the service as an anycast, and the resulting requirement to keep the backend databases tightly synchronized, is often played as a eating a lot of complexity for the simplicity of having a single address in the DNS system, and hence not losing customer interaction time while the DNS records are timing out so the customer can reconnect to the service.

There is, in fact, some interesting recent research in this area. The research is directed at the DNS root servers themselves, probably because they are publicly accessible, and a well known system that has relied on anycast for many years (so the operators of the root DNS servers are probably well versed in the ways of anycast). One interesting chart from the post over at APNIC’s blog is—

The C root has 8 servers, while the L root has around 144 (according to the article pointed to above). Why is it Continue reading

Interop 2017 Reflections

Interop is changing, thats a good thing. After 31 years, the Interop conference is one of the last independent conferences where the focus is on the person paying for the ticket and less “rolling sales thunder” from the vendors. Thats good for attendees who get to hear genuine, thoughtful content that hasn’t been selected based […]

The post Interop 2017 Reflections appeared first on EtherealMind.

IDG Contributor Network: 3 ways big firms can compete with startups for top tech talent

CIOs looking to hire good talent risk being caught in a pincer as fast rising demand runs up against falling supply. Ever more companies and functions need staff with strong tech skills, while the number of STEM graduates in developed countries is in decline. Yet perhaps the most difficult part of the challenge is competition with startups. Startups offer much of what IT employees prioritize when considering an employer – compensation, future career opportunities and ongoing development, according to data from CEB, now part of Gartner (Disclosure: I am employed by CEB, now Gartner).In addition to a competitive salary, many startups attract top talent by offering the opportunity to own a stake in the company. They give employees the opportunity to move ideas quickly from conception to commercialization and to move careers forward at a similar pace, instead of waiting several years. While most big companies talk a good game about innovation and creativity, in reality caution usually comes first. In contrast, creative and independent work is the lifeblood of many startups.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The future of IoT: Where it’s heading, what to expect

The subject of the Internet of Things (IoT) has an extremely broad range of interpretations. Some immediately think of the “thing” itself as a connected thermostat. Others see it as a means to extend products into services. Most interpretations gravitate toward financial reward through data collection and analysis.I recently attended IoT World in Santa Clara, California, and was struck by this diversity. Every conversation I witnessed had a five-minute preamble/negotiation just to agree on a common perspective. It’s kind of like the three blind men and the elephant parable, but instead of three men, it’s 1,000 people touching a sculpture made of wet clay.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Leveraging SD-WAN for Mergers & Acquisitions

A colleague recently asked me if SD-WAN could be leveraged to expedite network integration as a result of a merger or acquisition. His thoughts were that this could potentially provide a means to securely integration networks in a short amount of time.  At first I thought this made no sense — SD-WAN is not related to this challenge […]

The post Leveraging SD-WAN for Mergers & Acquisitions appeared first on Overlaid.

Area 1 Security stops phishing campaigns before they become attacks

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe.Anyone who has spent any amount of time trying to secure their organization’s endpoints or network would not be surprised to learn that phishing is now the #1 delivery vehicle for malware and ransomware.According to Mandiant, phishing was used in about 95 percent of the cases of successful breaches where an attacker has been able to get into a target network and do something malicious. A phishing campaign is likely to have a 90 percent success rate—i.e., someone takes the bait—when the campaign is sent to 10 or more people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Area 1 Security stops phishing campaigns before they become attacks

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe.Anyone who has spent any amount of time trying to secure their organization’s endpoints or network would not be surprised to learn that phishing is now the #1 delivery vehicle for malware and ransomware.According to Mandiant, phishing was used in about 95 percent of the cases of successful breaches where an attacker has been able to get into a target network and do something malicious. A phishing campaign is likely to have a 90 percent success rate—i.e., someone takes the bait—when the campaign is sent to 10 or more people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here