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Category Archives for "Networking"

Cisco Shrinks in Switching, Routing and DC

Cisco shrinking overall ~2% per quarter (fifth straight down quarter). 10% down in routing, 5% down in switching, 4% down in DC. Increases dividend, investors happy.

Cisco reported $11.6 billion in revenue for Q2 2017 on February 15, 2017, a 2% YoY decrease, but in line with guidance of a 2-4% YoY decline.

Revenue breakout:

Product, $8.49B (down 5.5%); Service, $3.09B (up 4.9%).

By segment:

Switching, $3.31B (down 5%); NGN Routing, $1.82B (down 10%); Collaboration, $1.06B (up 4%); Data Center, $790M (down 4%); Wireless, $632M (up 3%); Security, $528M (up 14%); Service provider video, $241M (down 41%); other, $116M (up 53%

“Cash” of $71.8 billion at the end of Q2 2017, with only $9.6 billion in the US. The introduction of a Corporate Tax Holiday could have huge positive ramifications for Cisco.

The Q3 2017 outlook calls for revenue to decline by 2% or to remain flat YoY.

Data Center

Total product revenue was down 4% and let me walk through each of the product areas. Switching declined 5%, driven by weakness in Campus partially offset by strength in the ACI portfolio, which was up 28%

Cisco ACI is holding Continue reading

US legislation revived to curb warrantless geolocation tracking

U.S. legislators have reintroduced bills that would place curbs on warrantless access by the government to electronically generated geolocation information of Americans, including on the use of cell-site simulators that can capture cellphone data.Bicameral legislation introduced Wednesday, called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, aims to create clear rules for when law enforcement agencies can acquire an individual’s geolocation information, generated from electronic devices like smartphones, GPS units and Wi-Fi equipped laptops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US legislation revived to curb warrantless geolocation tracking

U.S. legislators have reintroduced bills that would place curbs on warrantless access by the government to electronically generated geolocation information of Americans, including on the use of cell-site simulators that can capture cellphone data.Bicameral legislation introduced Wednesday, called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, aims to create clear rules for when law enforcement agencies can acquire an individual’s geolocation information, generated from electronic devices like smartphones, GPS units and Wi-Fi equipped laptops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Making the case for hybrid MPLS/IPSec VPNs

IDC recently made a strong case for enterprise adoption of hybrid network-based IP virtual private network (VPN) services that combine Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled VPNs for larger sites and IPSec network-based VPNs for smaller locations. Many enterprises rely on MPLS for high-performance, critical communications. With an ability to support multiple protocols and to direct traffic more speedily from point to point, such as between data centers and major office hubs, MPLS has been a preferred option for knitting together enterprise virtual private networks (VPNs) over wide area networks (WANs). But, as enterprises have decentralized their workforces, they have adopted IPSec VPNs to accommodate remote and mobile workers using a variety of devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Manufacturer tools up virtualized network functions

Moving fast is a fundamental requirement in today’s business environment; flexibility and responsiveness are essential. New Zealand manufacturer Fisher & Paykel is leveraging new networking technologies to help it keep up with market changes. “We have large manufacturing sites in five countries; we sell in over 50; and distribute around the world,” says Jon White, general manager of IT for Fisher & Paykel, which has been manufacturing high quality appliances since 1934. “Technology helps us where we have distributed design centers, so we can allow people to collaborate on designs, and also make sure we that we reduce costs,” says White.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Correlating OVS and Guest Domain Interfaces

I’ve written a fair amount about Open vSwitch (OVS), including some articles on using it with KVM and Libvirt. One thing I haven’t discussed in such environments, though, is the potential challenge of mapping network interfaces in a guest domain to the corresponding OVS interface (for the purposes of troubleshooting, for example). There is no single command that will provide a guest-to-OVS interface map (as far as I know), but this information is easily gathered using a couple commands.

Gathering Information About the Guest Interface

First, we’ll need to gather some information about the interface from the guest domain’s perspective. There are two ways we can do this: from within the guest OS itself, or by interrogating Libvirt.

Working from Within the Guest OS

Inside the guest domain (I’m assuming you’re using a relatively recent Linux distribution), you only need to use standard commands like ip link list or ip addr list. The goal is to obtain the MAC address assigned to the particular guest interface. So, for example, if you wanted to get the MAC address for the guest “eth0” interface, you’d run:

    ip link list eth0

To isolate only the MAC address from the output of that Continue reading

A.I. faces hype, skepticism at RSA cybersecurity show

Vendors at this week's RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco are pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning as the new way to detect the latest threats, but RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan is giving visitors a reality check."I think it (the technology) moves the needle," he said on Wednesday. "The real open question to me is how much has that needle actually moved in practice?"It's not as much as vendors claim, Ramzan warned, but for customers it won't be easy cutting through the hype and marketing. The reality is that a lot of the technology now being pushed isn’t necessarily new.In particular, he was talking about machine learning, a subfield in A.I. that’s become a popular marketing term in cybersecurity. In practice, it essentially involves building algorithms to spot bad computer behavior from good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A.I. faces hype, skepticism at RSA cybersecurity show

Vendors at this week's RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco are pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning as the new way to detect the latest threats, but RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan is giving visitors a reality check."I think it (the technology) moves the needle," he said on Wednesday. "The real open question to me is how much has that needle actually moved in practice?"It's not as much as vendors claim, Ramzan warned, but for customers it won't be easy cutting through the hype and marketing. The reality is that a lot of the technology now being pushed isn’t necessarily new.In particular, he was talking about machine learning, a subfield in A.I. that’s become a popular marketing term in cybersecurity. In practice, it essentially involves building algorithms to spot bad computer behavior from good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bruce Schneier: Public-service technologists are needed to tame the IoT

The internet of things needs to be regulated and soon before it becomes even more of a tool to facilitate cyberattacks, and that means coming up with civic-minded technologists to help formulate government policies, security expert Bruce Schneier told an RSA Conference 2017 audience.+More on Network World: RSA: Watch out for a new weapon - your own data | Hot products at RSA 2017 +The problem is governments lack the technological expertise to understand the mindset of the makers of IoT devices and the markets in which they are sold.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bruce Schneier: Public-service technologists are needed to tame the IoT

The internet of things needs to be regulated and soon before it becomes even more of a tool to facilitate cyberattacks, and that means coming up with civic-minded technologists to help formulate government policies, security expert Bruce Schneier told an RSA Conference 2017 audience.+More on Network World: RSA: Watch out for a new weapon - your own data | Hot products at RSA 2017 +The problem is governments lack the technological expertise to understand the mindset of the makers of IoT devices and the markets in which they are sold.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

23% off EVGA Supernova G3 750W 220-G3-0750-X1 Fully Modular Power Supply – Deal Alert

Unleash the next generation in power with the EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G3 Power Supply. Based on the award winning G2 series Power Supplies from EVGA, This power supply features 80 PLUS Gold rated efficiency, and clean, continuous power to every component. The ECO Thermal Control Fan System offers fan modes to provide zero fan noise during low load operations. This provides improved efficiency for longer operation, less power consumption, reduced energy costs and minimal heat dissipation.  This power supply is highly rated with 4.6 out of 5 stars from over 3,000 people (read reviews). It's typical list price of $129.99 has been reduced 23% to $99.99 . See the discounted power supply now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why I Enthusiastically Switched from Cacti to Zabbix for System Monitoring

Cacti is a “complete network graphing solution” according to their website. It has also been a thorn in my side for a long time.

See what I did there? Thorn… because it’s a cactus… never mind.

When Cacti is in a steady state–when I could get it to a steady state–it was good. Not great, because there was a lot of effort to get it into what I consider “steady state”, but good. The rest of the time… thorny.

There are five major things that have driven me up the wall. In no particular order:

Round Robin Database (RRD) sucks

The concept behind RRD is cool: a fixed-size, circular database (oldest data overwritten by the newest data) makes good sense for the type of data that a network graphing solution collects. In practice, using RRD means:

  • Another software dependency that needs to be updated, patched, and integrated in the Cacti ecosystem
  • Manually managing all of the RRD files that are generated for all of the data sources you’re collecting. RRD stores its data in individual files on the file system, you see, and the more data sources you collect with Cacti, the more RRD files you have Continue reading
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