IBM: In 5 years, Watson A.I. will be behind your every decision

LAS VEGAS -- In the next five years, every important decision, whether it's business or personal, will be made with the assistance of IBM Watson. That's the vision of IBM president and CEO Ginni Rometty, in a keynote speech at IBM's World of Watson conference Wednesday. Watson, the company's artificial intelligence-fueled system, is working in fields like health care, finance, entertainment and retail, connecting businesses more easily with their customers, making sense of big data and helping doctors find treatments for cancer patients. The Watson system is set to transform how businesses function and how people live their lives. "Our goal is augmenting intelligence," Rometty said. "It is man and machine. This is all about extending your expertise. A teacher. A doctor. A lawyer. It doesn't matter what you do. We will extend it."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Dyn outage affected Cloudflare

Last Friday the popular DNS service Dyn suffered three waves of DDoS attacks that affected users first on the East Coast of the US, and later users worldwide. Popular websites, some of which are also Cloudflare customers, were inaccessible. Although Cloudflare was not attacked, joint Dyn/Cloudflare customers were affected.

Almost as soon as Dyn came under attack we noticed a sudden jump in DNS errors on our edge machines and alerted our SRE and support teams that Dyn was in trouble. Support was ready to help joint customers and we began looking in detail at the effect the Dyn outage was having on our systems.

An immediate concern internally was that since our DNS servers were unable to reach Dyn they would be consuming resources waiting on timeouts and retrying. The first question I asked the DNS team was: “Are we seeing increased DNS response latency?” rapidly followed by “If this gets worse are we likely to?”. Happily, the response to both those questions (after the team analyzed the situation) was no.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by tracyshaun

However, that didn’t mean we had nothing to do. Operating a large scale system like Cloudflare that Continue reading

Privacy group shoots legal arrow at Privacy Shield

Privacy Shield, the legal agreement allowing businesses to export Europeans' personal information to the U.S., is under fire.An Irish privacy advocacy group has challenged the adoption of the decision in the EU's second-highest court, Reuters reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the case.Privacy Shield entered effect in July, replacing the Safe Harbor framework, which had itself fallen victim to a legal challenge in October 2015. The new agreement supports transatlantic commerce worth US$260 billion, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker has said, and has consequences for many companies offering cloud services to consumers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Racing To 2.5 And 5 Gigabit Ethernet

SDN Post-Deployment Considerations

Why studying security in college is a waste of time

(Insider Story)

Happy 15th Birthday, iPod!

The iPod celebrates 15 yearsFifteen years ago this week, Apple released the original iPod, and the tech and music world was never the same.The iPod wasn’t an immediate hit, but it eventually helped kick-start the digital music revolution. In addition to changing the way the world listened to and eventually would buy music, the iPod helped transform Apple into a force to be reckoned with in the tech world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

To API or Not To API

One of my readers left this comment (slightly rephrased) on my Network Automation RFP Requirements blog post:

Given that we look up to our *nix pioneers as standard bearers for system automation, why do we demand an API from network devices? The API requirement would make sense if the vendor OS is a closed system. If an open system vendor creates APIs for applications running on their system (say for BGP configs) - kudos to them, but I no longer think that should be mandated.

He’s right - API is not a mandatory prerequisite for reliable network automation.

Samsung’s smartphone share hit by Note7 debacle, stiff competition

Samsung Electronics continued on top of the smartphone market in the third quarter but was battered by the impact of the Galaxy Note7 recall and increased competition in India, China and the U.S., according to Strategy Analytics.Overall the market grew by 6 percent annually to reach over 375 million units in the quarter, which was the smartphone industry’s fastest growth rate for a year, according to the research firm. Chinese brands Huawei, Oppo and Vivo posted strong growth rates in shipments even as Samsung and Apple saw volumes drop.“Samsung's worldwide slowdown is due to the sizeable loss of several million Note 7 shipments, combined with fierce competition from Chinese brands like OPPO in the huge China and India markets,” wrote Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics in an email. “Samsung is filling some, but not all, of the Note 7 gap with increased S7 and S7 edge promotions.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle takes Java copyright dispute with Google to appeals court

Oracle has taken its bid for up to US$9 billion in damages to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after a judge in a federal court in California recently struck down its bid for a retrial in a copyright infringement suit against Google over the use of Java code in the Android operating system.A jury had cleared Google of copyright infringement in May this year, upholding the company’s stand that its use of 37 Java APIs (application programming interfaces) in the Android mobile operating system constituted "fair use" under the Copyright Act, which allows copying of creative works under certain circumstances. Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California entered a final judgment in favor of Google on June 8.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Images of revamped MacBook Pro leak ahead of special event

On Thursday morning, Tim Cook and other Apple executives will appear on stage and introduce long-awaited changes to Apple's Mac lineup. With Apple understandably focused on iterating the iPhone every single year, Apple's lineup of desktops and notebooks haven't seen a meaningful refresh in quite some time. Thankfully, that is poised to change this week.Based on rumblings from the rumor mill, the keynote item from Apple's "Hello Again" media event will be a completely retooled MacBook Pro. By all accounts, the new MacBook Pro will be thinner and lighter than previous models. Additionally, the machines should offer improvements in battery life thanks to Intel's more power efficient SkyLake processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung sales, profits dive on Note 7 recall

Samsung's smartphone division struggled to breakeven between July and September as sales plunged due to the recall of its high-end Note 7.The smartphone giant said quarterly sales in its IT and Mobile Communications division were down 15 percent on the same period last year to 22.5 trillion Korean won (US$19.8 billion) while operating profit crashed 95 percent to 100 billion won.Problems with the Note 7 starting hitting sales shortly after it went on sale in mid-August. By early September, reports that several units had caught on fire prompted Samsung to begin a costly recall and replacement program. When it became clear that the replacements had the same problem, Samsung pulled the phone for good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

F5 Beats Q4 Predictions With Strong Sales in North America

Security seems to promise growth for the company.

VMware Emphasizes Cloud Even More, Promoting Two Execs

Two former EVPs will run the new Products and Cloud group.

DDoS attack overwhelmed Dyn despite mitigation efforts

Dyn says that the DDoS attack that swamped its DNS resolution service last week was backed by far fewer internet of things (IoT) devices than it thought before. Previously it said it was hit by traffic from tens of millions of IP addresses, some of which were likely spoofed, making the actual number of bots involved far fewer. “We are still working on analyzing the data but the estimate at the time of this report is up to 100,000 malicious endpoints,” the company says in a status update. The attacks, which knocked out access to some high-profile Web sites, threw as many packets at Dyn’s infrastructure as it could and the company responded with its own mitigation actions as well as cooperation from upstream internet providers who blocked some of the attack flow. “These techniques included traffic-shaping incoming traffic, rebalancing of that traffic by manipulation of [DNS querying] anycast policies, application of internal filtering and deployment of scrubbing services,” the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDoS attack overwhelmed Dyn despite mitigation efforts

Dyn says that the DDoS attack that swamped its DNS resolution service last week was backed by far fewer internet of things (IoT) devices than it thought before. Previously it said it was hit by traffic from tens of millions of IP addresses, some of which were likely spoofed, making the actual number of bots involved far fewer. “We are still working on analyzing the data but the estimate at the time of this report is up to 100,000 malicious endpoints,” the company says in a status update. The attacks, which knocked out access to some high-profile Web sites, threw as many packets at Dyn’s infrastructure as it could and the company responded with its own mitigation actions as well as cooperation from upstream internet providers who blocked some of the attack flow. “These techniques included traffic-shaping incoming traffic, rebalancing of that traffic by manipulation of [DNS querying] anycast policies, application of internal filtering and deployment of scrubbing services,” the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Juniper’s QFX10000 Keeping Margins Down?

Analysts seek a reason why Juniper's gross margins are down.

32% off Nomader Collapsible 22 Oz Water Bottle, Leak Proof Twist Cap, BPA Free – Deal Alert

Guaranteed to never shatter, leak or dent, the 22 ounce Nomader collapsible water bottle is healthy, versatile, stylish, and comes backed by a lifetime warranty. The Nomader bottle is certified BPA free and made from 100% food-grade material. It's engineered with a thick, soft silicone body and a rigid insulated sleeve. Foldable for compact travel, handles hot or ice cold drinks, and is dishwasher safe. A patented locking twist cap eliminates spills with a quick half-turn, and doubles as a hygienic and protective spout cover. Nomader claims this water bottle will be with you for many years and backs its claims with its lifetime warranty. Averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 500 people (read reviews), its typical list price of $24.95 has been reduced 32% to just $16.95 on Amazon, making it a good stocking stuffer consideration for this holiday season.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons learned from the DYN attack

Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not promote a product or service and has been edited and approved by Network World editors.The large scale DDoS attack on DYN last week interrupted access to many major web sites, and while the specifics of the attack have been widely analyzed, here are the important lessons learned:* DDoS attacks are alive and well: A few years ago DDoS attacks were hot news, but reports died down as the focus shifted to news about social engineering attacks, large scale data breachs and insider trading schemes. DDoS attacks seemed like yesterday’s risk but they are very much alive and well.  In fact, they are back and stronger than ever.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lessons learned from the DYN attack