IDG Contributor Network: Another 911 outage. Does any accountability exist?

AT&T Wireless customers who tried to reach 911 in the evening hours of Wednesday, March 8, were left stranded in more than a dozen major cities. Based on unconfirmed, but widespread reports, the problem may have affected callers nationwide, with AT&T only sending out tweets again and again, stating: [AT&T is aware] of issue affecting some calls to 911 for wireless customers. Working to resolve ASAP. We apologize to those affected.  With no root cause offered, several public safety agencies and citizens were left confused on what to do. In what has become a natural reaction to any traumatic event, both the general public and several agencies took to Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets on the web as the go-to place for help, as well as an outlet for frustration—with many announcing their intentions to switch carriers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

48% off ZeroLemon ToughJuice USB-C 30000mAh Power Bank Charger for Apple MacBook, iPhone, Google Pixel XL, Samsung & More – Deal Alert

ZeroLemon describes their ToughJuice power bank as the world's toughest external battery pack, with 30000mAh capacity and a rugged anti-shock exterior. With enough juice to get you up and running again and again on a single charge, ToughJuice provides up to ten charges to a smartphone, two charges to a tablet or multiple charges to nearly any other device. It features four USB ports (1 QuickCharge 2.0 port, with legacy 5V/2A support and 3 Ports for 1A charging) but more importantly it features USB-C/Type-C Compatibility: the USB-C/Type-C port makes the battery pack compatible with the new MacBook, charging at 5V/2.5A and other USB-C powered devices. The device averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 250 people (read reviews), and its list price is currently discounted to $67.99. See the discounted ZeroLemon ToughJuice power bank now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The NSA’s foreign surveillance: 5 things to know

A contentious piece of U.S. law giving the National Security Agency broad authority to spy on people overseas expires at the end of the year. Expect heated debate about the scope of U.S. surveillance law leading up to Dec. 31.One major issue to watch involves the way the surveillance treats communications from U.S. residents. Critics say U.S. emails, texts, and chat logs -- potentially millions of them -- are caught up in surveillance authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).U.S. residents who communicate with foreign targets of the NSA surveillance have their data swept up in what the NSA calls "incidental" collection. The FBI can then search those communications, but it's unclear how often that happens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The NSA’s foreign surveillance: 5 things to know

A contentious piece of U.S. law giving the National Security Agency broad authority to spy on people overseas expires at the end of the year. Expect heated debate about the scope of U.S. surveillance law leading up to Dec. 31.One major issue to watch involves the way the surveillance treats communications from U.S. residents. Critics say U.S. emails, texts, and chat logs -- potentially millions of them -- are caught up in surveillance authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).U.S. residents who communicate with foreign targets of the NSA surveillance have their data swept up in what the NSA calls "incidental" collection. The FBI can then search those communications, but it's unclear how often that happens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The big CBRS promise: private enterprise LTE wireless networks

If you can get past that unappealing acronym, you just might find that CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) is worth paying attention to as a serious wireless network alternative for enterprises in the not-too-distant future. It’s been hard to ignore CBRS of late, as everyone from Google to the big carriers to GE has been touting the potential benefits of indoor and outdoor LTE services within shared 3.5 GHz spectrum opened up by the FCC for commercial use. We’re talking carrier-based cellular service extensions, cable companies looking to get into wireless as well as private LTE networks within enterprises, sports stadiums and conference centers. Such services promise to complement -- and in some cases replace -- Wi-Fi, as well as pave the way for 5G wireless servicesTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CBRS: Your ticket for building a private enterprise LTE wireless network

If you can get past that unappealing acronym, you just might find that CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) is worth paying attention to as a serious wireless network alternative for enterprises in the not-too-distant future. It’s been hard to ignore the so-called CBRS "innovation band" of late, as everyone from Google to the big carriers to GE has been touting the potential benefits of indoor and outdoor LTE services within shared 3.5 GHz spectrum opened up by the FCC for commercial use. We’re talking carrier-based cellular service extensions, cable companies looking to get into wireless as well as private LTE networks within enterprises, sports stadiums and conference centers. Such services promise to complement -- and in some cases replace -- Wi-Fi, as well as pave the way for 5G wireless services. (See also: "FAQ: What in the wireless world is CBRS?")To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CBRS: Your ticket for building a private enterprise LTE wireless network

If you can get past that unappealing acronym, you just might find that CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) is worth paying attention to as a serious wireless network alternative for enterprises in the not-too-distant future.It’s been hard to ignore the so-called CBRS "innovation band" of late, as everyone from Google to the big carriers to GE has been touting the potential benefits of indoor and outdoor LTE services within shared 3.5 GHz spectrum opened up by the FCC for commercial use. We’re talking carrier-based cellular service extensions, cable companies looking to get into wireless as well as private LTE networks within enterprises, sports stadiums and conference centers. Such services promise to complement -- and in some cases replace -- Wi-Fi, as well as pave the way for 5G wireless services. (See also: "FAQ: What in the wireless world is CBRS?")To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams

In November 2011, I wrote a blog post called SharePoint User Adoption Strategy: Team Member “Service Level Agreement.” In that post, I talked about how important it is to start off any project with a shared agreement about how the team is going to work together, including how to organize, tag, and name files in the SharePoint team site. With today’s exciting announcement of the general availability of Microsoft Teams, I offer some updates to that post to ensure that your organization gets the most value out of Microsoft Teams.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft ratchets up group chat competition with Teams launch

Microsoft’s work chat app Teams hit general availability on Tuesday, as part of the company’s push to compete with Slack, HipChat, Google and other players in the group chat market.Teams is designed to help groups of people collaborate at work by letting them communicate in real time. Users can take part in multiple Teams, which provide space for group conversations in a series of channels.Each channel can include integrations of third-party developer content, so users can do things like manage Asana tasks, edit OneNote notebooks and view HootSuite social feeds without leaving Teams. In addition, teams can use the app for group audio and video meetings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Fat Finger Folly

You see, many newly created production systems, when they first come online, focus more on functionality and less on supportability. They are built to provide a specific capability. Of course, the services must be maintained, but maintaining these services often involve manual tasks by operations individuals, tasks such as logging on to servers and rebooting them, or terminating processes, or updating a configuration file. For many production systems, this is how they are maintained. Individuals login to the production servers and high privileged or “superusers” and manually perform necessary actions. This is, unfortunately, a very common process in the industry. —The New Stack

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My Data. Your Business.

Head-scratching ways companies screw up Wi-Fi

Network World has been covering network technologies for 30+ years now, and sometimes we assume that everyone knows what they’re doing when it comes to installing, configuring and using this stuff. But then we run across some examples where consumers and businesses are still not completely familiar with the gear.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

VMware’s Gabriele Di Piazza Talks Hot Trends at MWC

In this interview, Gabriele Di Piazza, vice president of solutions, Telco NFV Group at VMware, shares his insights on the biggest trends that he saw at MWC 2017.

IBM on Security Analytics and Operations (SOAPA) Part 2

Last week, I posted this blog describing my interview with IBM security GM, Marc van Zadelhoff, where we talked about his perspective about the transition from security analytics and operations point tools to an integrated event-based security analytics and operations platform architecture (SOAPA). Here’s a link to the initial blog I wrote back in November that describes SOAPA – what it is and why it is becoming so popular with enterprise organizations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s position on Security Analytics and Operations (SOAPA), part 2

Last week, I wrote about my interview with IBM security general manager Marc van Zadelhoff, where we talked about his perspective about the transition from security analytics and operations point tools to an integrated event-based security analytics and operations platform architecture (SOAPA). In part 2 of the interview, we talked about SOAPA requirements, intelligence and the need for SOAPA to scale. You can view the interview here. Some of the highlights include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM’s position on Security Analytics and Operations (SOAPA), part 2

Last week, I wrote about my interview with IBM security general manager Marc van Zadelhoff, where we talked about his perspective about the transition from security analytics and operations point tools to an integrated event-based security analytics and operations platform architecture (SOAPA). In part 2 of the interview, we talked about SOAPA requirements, intelligence and the need for SOAPA to scale. You can view the interview here. Some of the highlights include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons learned from trying to recite the digits of Pi

Today is Pi Day (3/14), which is a pretty big deal around here at Network World. Our resident Pi expert, Brandon Butler, has been chronicling the holiday for readers with ideas of how to celebrate the day for the past five years.As mentioned in a previous Cool Tools blog post, we were looking for ways to celebrate the day today that was a bit different, as well as add some video elements to our coverage. The first thing we did was to put together an animated video highlighting the origins of the day, which you can see here:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Noction IRP web hooks support for Slack API

Slack is a great communication platform that simplifies and streamlines day-to-day operations of various teams around the world. Integrating the tools that

The post Noction IRP web hooks support for Slack API appeared first on Noction.

Intel takes aim at NVIDIA with Mobileye acquisition

Platform shifts kill companies. Mainframe companies missed the shift to minicomputers, minicomputers to desktops, and desktops to mobile. Machine learning is the next platform shift. Hardware platforms for machine learning have yet to be defined.Creating the machine learning models that power the next generation of self-driving cars, home assistants and language translation will require novel new hardware architectures that are significantly faster and address much larger memory spaces.+ Also on Network World: 5G will help autonomous cars cruise streets safely + To ensure it doesn’t miss out on this platform shift, Intel spent $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye. Its goal is to gain early entry into the self-driving car market that will consume even more silicon than cars do today for self-driving, safety and convenience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

There Won’t Be A CCIE: SDN. Here’s Why

There’s a lot of work that’s been done recently to bring the CCIE up to modern network standards. Yusuf and his team are working hard to incorporate new concepts into the written exam. Candidates are broadening their horizons and picking up new ideas as they learn about industry stalwarts like OSPF and spanning tree. But the biggest challenge out there is incorporating the ideas behind software defined networking (SDN) into the exam. I don’t believe that this will ever happen. Here’s why.

Take This Broken Network

If you look at the CCIE and what it’s really testing, the exam is really about troubleshooting and existing network integration. The CCIE introduces and tests on concepts like link aggregation, routing protocol redistribution, and network service implementation. These are things that professionals are expected to do when they walk in the door, either as a consultant or as someone advising on the incorporation of a new network.

The CCIE doesn’t deal with the design of a network from the ground up. It doesn’t task someone with coming up with the implementation of a greenfield network from scratch. The CCIE exam, especially the lab component, only tests a candidate on their ability to work Continue reading