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Category Archives for "Networking"

IDG Contributor Network: The definition of work is shifting—here’s what you need to know

Back in the late 1990s, when I started my career with a job helping to develop IBM’s first ecommerce payment product, the term “work” was rather strictly defined. For the most part, my colleagues and I conformed to regular office hours, stationed at our desks on site. But even so, it was impossible to ignore the signs portending how the workplace was poised to change. My Nokia handset offered an exciting new kind of 24/7 connectivity, audio conferencing was gaining in popularity, and “telecommuting” was on the rise (to name just a few).+ Also on Network World: A mobile-first strategy improves employee productivity, study finds + Fast forward to today, and it’s clear that the definition of work is continuing to morph, now even faster than before. Savvy employers realize there is little time to waste and that they must adapt to a variety of cultural and technological changes if they want to attract and retain talent, improve employee performance and maintain a competitive advantage. Here’s what you need to know about this shifting landscape:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Botnets: Is your network really protected?

The tech world moves at a tremendous pace, unleashing wave after wave of innovation intended to improve our everyday lives. Many new devices, from security cameras to fridges, or TVs to baby monitors, are now internet connected. This affords us remote access and facilitates the collection of data, which is ostensibly used to make our systems “smarter.”However, it also opens new doors into our offices and homes through which hackers can come uninvited.There were around 6.4 billion connected things in use worldwide in 2016, and that’s set to grow to 8.4 billion this year, according to Gartner. There’s no doubt that the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring many benefits, but it also brings greater risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Botnets: Is your network really protected?

The tech world moves at a tremendous pace, unleashing wave after wave of innovation intended to improve our everyday lives. Many new devices, from security cameras to fridges, or TVs to baby monitors, are now internet connected. This affords us remote access and facilitates the collection of data, which is ostensibly used to make our systems “smarter.”However, it also opens new doors into our offices and homes through which hackers can come uninvited.There were around 6.4 billion connected things in use worldwide in 2016, and that’s set to grow to 8.4 billion this year, according to Gartner. There’s no doubt that the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring many benefits, but it also brings greater risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Slow Internet? Firebind can sniff out the problem

We found Firebind to be an effective tool for reaching into branch office networks to diagnose internet-based performance problems. Firebind has a simple agent installation procedure and uses email-based alerting, so network managers won’t find it a burden to install or operate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: Slow Internet? Firebind can sniff out the problem

We found Firebind to be an effective tool for reaching into branch office networks to diagnose internet-based performance problems. Firebind has a simple agent installation procedure and uses email-based alerting, so network managers won’t find it a burden to install or operate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user. Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Worth Reading: Building an OpenStack Private Cloud

It’s uncommon to find an organization that succeeds in building a private OpenStack-based cloud. It’s extremely rare to find one that documented and published the whole process like Paddy Power Betfair did with their OpenStack Reference Architecture whitepaper.

I was delighted to see they decided to do a lot of things I was preaching for ages in blog posts, webinars, and lately in my Next Generation Data Center online course.

Highlights include:

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NASA Pi Day Challenge 2017: Don’t crater…

NASA is encouraging teachers to share its Pi Day Challenge with students on March 14, which is known in mathematical circles as Pi Day (i.e., 3.14). After all, who can't get fired up to learn more about the mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter?Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the fourth straight year has created an illustrated quiz aimed at students in grades 6 through 12 features four math problems (using pi) that NASA scientists and engineers must solve to understand space.Topics touched on in the quiz include Mars craters, a total solar eclipse, Saturn and the search for life beyond Earth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Configuring Cisco IOS XE With YANG-based YAML Files

One thing that puts a lot of network engineers off NETCONF and YANG is the complexity of the device configuration process. Even the simplest change involves multiple tools and requires some knowledge of XML. In this post I will show how to use simple, human-readable YAML configuration files to instantiate YANG models and push them down to network devices using a single command.

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Ansible For Networking Part 2

This is part two of a series on Anisble for network engineers. In this part of the series we will take the playbook from part one and convert it into roles. Roles in Ansible allow for easy re-use and sharing of code and it is important to understand them as they will use role based...

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: The Great iPhone 8 freak-out, no worries about Galaxy S8, new concept design

This past week featured the Great iPhone 8 freak-out, with more rumors that the 10th anniversary Apple smartphone would be delayed past September and that it might not even be called the iPhone 8 or the iPhone X. No, instead the Apple Watch-esque iPhone Edition is the latest possible name to be bandied about.THE NEW EDITION  Forbes picked up on a report from hit or miss Japanese site Mac Otakara that Apple is mulling iPhone Edition as the name for its next flagship smartphone. This name for the speculated to be $1,000 device would align with the top-end Apple Watch, dubbed Watch Edition. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On web’s 28th anniversary, its creator Tim Berners-Lee takes aim at fake news

Today, on the 28th anniversary of the web, its creator warned of three trends that must die for the web to be all that it should be. One of those is the spreading of fake news.On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted his original proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web. 28 years later, in an open letter, Berners-Lee said that in the last 12 months, “I’ve become increasingly worried about three new trends, which I believe we must tackle in order for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity.” We’ve lost control of our personal data. It’s too easy for misinformation to spread on the web. Political advertising online needs transparency and understanding. As it stands now for most of the web, people get free content in exchange for their personal data. Once companies have our data, we no longer have control over with whom it is shared. We can’t pick and choose what gets shared; it’s generally “all or nothing.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here