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Category Archives for "Networking"

The granular control over Layer 2 in today’s smart switches might surprise net veterans

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

In the gap between plug and play unmanaged Ethernet switches and fully managed enterprise switches, vendors added the so called “smart switch,” which offer light management features to unmanaged gigabit Ethernet devices. Today, smart switches targeted at small-to-medium-size business run the gamut in terms of manageability and feature sets. 

The appeal of basic network management features for a small business stems from the need for performance and security. Plug and play and start right away—that’s what every start up wants—then later on, they need basic configurations and features to accommodate growth as needed.

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What makes IT pros happy? One thing ranks higher than pay

Coworkers can make or break a good job. For IT pros, it’s all about their peers, managers, and end users.“I tossed out money as a contributor to happiness a long time ago,” said IT pro Michael Studte. “Although my salary, work hours, and vacation time are important to the equation, I’ve been the happiest in companies where management will listen and take my recommendations seriously, and where I’m able to build a good rapport with my users.”Spiceworks shared Studte’s comments along with results of its latest survey, which polled IT pros from the U.S. and U.K. on the topic of job satisfaction. (Related: 10 reasons to look for a new job)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’

Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’

Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ed Meyercord’s plan for Extreme Networks proves to be ‘better than most’

Any fan of the PGA Tour will never forget the “better than most” call by NBC’s Gary Koch. On March 24, 2001, Tiger Woods stepped up to execute one of the most difficult putts of his career. Halfway to the hole, Koch uttered the words “better than most” as it looked like his putt was going to be a good one. It wound up going in, and that become yet another notable moment in Tiger’s illustrious career where great execution was becoming the norm. In the highly tumultuous networking market, Extreme Networks’ CEO, Ed Meyercord, continues to make moves that are “better than most,” putting his company in a position to be a long-term share gainer in a market that badly needs more strong vendors. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

8 great testing tools for mobile app developers

8 great testing tools for mobile app developersImage by geralt via PixabayThe rapid proliferation of mobile devices presents a particular nasty testing issue for mobile app developers. With so many operating system versions, browsers, and devices in circulation, ensuring a quality experience across all combinations can be nearly impossible, especially when you have a limited number of devices on hand.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What Microsoft failed to deliver in the Windows 10 Creators Update

If the Windows 10 Creators Update had worked out as Microsoft had promised, we all would be taking 3D selfies, importing them to Windows, and then sharing them among our closest friends and coworkers via Office presentations and mixed-reality headsets.Microsoft sold us that vision as part of the Creators Update launch last fall. But somewhere between then and the Creators Update rollout announcement April 29, key pieces went missing. Microsoft previously said that its My People experience would be left for the “Redstone 3” update in the fall. The company never warned us, however, that we wouldn't see the Windows Capture app, which creates 3D objects simply by tapping your smartphone. If there’s a way to share 3D objects within the Holotour app within the HoloLens, I haven’t seen it. And, of course, neither the HoloLens nor the third-party mixed-reality devices are commercially available yet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IP theft: Declining, or just more stealthy?

Eighteen months ago, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced, with considerable fanfare, an agreement aimed at curbing economic espionage.According to the Sept. 25, 2015 White House press release, “neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.”So, with Xi due to meet with President Trump in early April, an obvious question is: Has the agreement been effective?The reviews on that are mixed, but there is general agreement that while it hasn’t stopped, the theft of intellectual property (IP) by the Chinese against the US is not as rampant as it was several years ago when The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated total losses, including jobs, competitiveness, stock value, market share, in the hundreds of billions, and former National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander famously called it, “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IP theft: Declining, or just more stealthy?

Eighteen months ago, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced, with considerable fanfare, an agreement aimed at curbing economic espionage.According to the Sept. 25, 2015 White House press release, “neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.”So, with Xi due to meet with President Trump in early April, an obvious question is: Has the agreement been effective?The reviews on that are mixed, but there is general agreement that while it hasn’t stopped, the theft of intellectual property (IP) by the Chinese against the US is not as rampant as it was several years ago when The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated total losses, including jobs, competitiveness, stock value, market share, in the hundreds of billions, and former National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander famously called it, “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 Creators Update: The 5 biggest changes

Windows 10 just keeps getting bigger and better.Microsoft just announced that the Windows 10 Creators Update will start rolling out on April 11, building upon the foundation laid by vanilla Windows 10 and its subsequent “November” and “Anniversary” updates. While not every feature that Microsoft promised at the Creators Update’s reveal last fall actually made the final cut, it’s still overflowing with helpful new extras that polish rough edges and just plain make things more fun.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open-source developers targeted in sophisticated malware attack

For the past few months, developers who publish their code on GitHub have been targeted in an attack campaign that uses a little-known but potent cyberespionage malware.The attacks started in January and consisted of malicious emails specifically crafted to attract the attention of developers, such as requests for help with development projects and offers of payment for custom programming jobs.The emails had .gz attachments that contained Word documents with malicious macro code attached. If allowed to execute, the macro code executed a PowerShell script that reached out to a remote server and downloaded a malware program known as Dimnie.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open-source developers targeted in sophisticated malware attack

For the past few months, developers who publish their code on GitHub have been targeted in an attack campaign that uses a little-known but potent cyberespionage malware.The attacks started in January and consisted of malicious emails specifically crafted to attract the attention of developers, such as requests for help with development projects and offers of payment for custom programming jobs.The emails had .gz attachments that contained Word documents with malicious macro code attached. If allowed to execute, the macro code executed a PowerShell script that reached out to a remote server and downloaded a malware program known as Dimnie.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware patches critical virtual machine escape flaws

VMware has released critical security patches for vulnerabilities demonstrated during the recent Pwn2Own hacking contest that could be exploited to escape from the isolation of virtual machines.The patches fix four vulnerabilities that affect VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation Pro and Player and VMware Fusion.Two of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2017-4902 and CVE-2017-4903 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, were exploited by a team from Chinese internet security firm Qihoo 360 as part of an attack demonstrated two weeks ago at Pwn2Own.The team's exploit chain started with a compromise of Microsoft Edge, moved to the Windows kernel, and then exploited the two flaws to escape from a virtual machine and execute code on the host operating system. The researchers were awarded $105,000 for their feat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware patches critical virtual machine escape flaws

VMware has released critical security patches for vulnerabilities demonstrated during the recent Pwn2Own hacking contest that could be exploited to escape from the isolation of virtual machines.The patches fix four vulnerabilities that affect VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation Pro and Player and VMware Fusion.Two of the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2017-4902 and CVE-2017-4903 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, were exploited by a team from Chinese internet security firm Qihoo 360 as part of an attack demonstrated two weeks ago at Pwn2Own.The team's exploit chain started with a compromise of Microsoft Edge, moved to the Windows kernel, and then exploited the two flaws to escape from a virtual machine and execute code on the host operating system. The researchers were awarded $105,000 for their feat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encryption is key for a trusted Internet

One of the few regrets of Vint Cerf, who is often referred to as the 'father of the Internet', is the fact that encryption using public cryptography was not baked in the original ARPANET design. While the early Internet was meant to meet a number of requirements such as resilience and openness, encryption was not one of them. Some of this was because of the high cost associated with encryption, and some if it was for other reasons.

Walid Al-Saqaf

Arista EOS telemetry

Arista EOS switches support industry standard sFlow telemetry, enabling hardware instrumentation supported by merchant silicon to export hardware interface counters and flow data. The latest release of the open source Host sFlow agent has been ported to EOS, augmenting the telemetry with standard host CPU, memory, and disk IO metrics.

Linux as a Switch Operating System: Five Lessons Learned identifies benefits of using Linux as the basis for EOS. In this context, the Linux operating system made it easy to port the Host sFlow agent, use standard Linux package management (RPM Package Manager), and gather metrics using standard Linux APIs. A new eAPI module automatically synchronizes the Host sFlow daemon with the EOS sFlow configuration.

The following sflowtool output shows the additional metrics contributed by a Host sFlow agent installed on an Arista switch:
startDatagram =================================
datagramSourceIP 172.17.0.1
datagramSize 704
unixSecondsUTC 1490843418
datagramVersion 5
agentSubId 100000
agent 10.0.0.90
packetSequenceNo 714
sysUpTime 0
samplesInPacket 1
startSample ----------------------
sampleType_tag 0:2
sampleType COUNTERSSAMPLE
sampleSequenceNo 714
sourceId 2:1
counterBlock_tag 0:2001
counterBlock_tag 0:2010
udpInDatagrams 1459
udpNoPorts 16
udpInErrors 0
udpOutDatagrams 4765
udpRcvbufErrors 0
udpSndbufErrors 0
udpInCsumErrors 0
counterBlock_tag 0:2009
tcpRtoAlgorithm 1
tcpRtoMin 200
tcpRtoMax 120000
tcpMaxConn 4294967295
tcpActiveOpens 102
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PodPi makes STEM education exciting!

When I was a kid, the way science was taught was, on the whole, pretty boring … well, except for chemistry where the class chemistry wiz would “accidentally” blow things up or make horrible smells every now and then. Science was a class to get through with gritted teeth and even today, getting kids interested in STEM education (Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics) is still difficult. The problem is how to make topics that appear dry and complicated into something kids can get excited about. Five years ago, Stéphane Côme, the founder, chairman, and chief technology officer of LCS Technologies, a consulting firm specializing in Oracle database wrangling, decided that he wanted to give back to the community and that his focus should be on inspiring children to get involved with computers and software. Côme told me he started off by establishing a Meetup group to teach children and their parents through hands-on technology projects:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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