A Cisco-Salesforce deal means collaboration will come to you

The hardest thing about adopting an enterprise collaboration platform can be adoption itself – getting employees to actually start up the new software and then turn to it whenever they need to communicate.Putting the software inside something that workers already use is one way to drive adoption and also make the communication tools more valuable. Cisco Systems knows this, and on Thursday the company announced a strategic alliance with Salesforce, its second big partnership in that direction after its headline-grabbing Apple iOS integration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sneak peek: 15 gadgets to put on your holiday wish list

Start making the list and checking it twiceThe calendar may say it’s the beginning of fall, but that won’t prevent us from giving you a sneak peek at some of the hottest devices and gadgets that will top your holiday wish list. Here’s a bunch of cool stuff that we’re hoping to get our hands on to present in our 17th annual Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guide (coming Nov. 14). Keep in mind that these devices are not yet reviewed, so we’re not giving these our official seal of approval for cool yule goodness, but rather an indication of some things that could be in the final guide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Evolving Enterprise WAN

Why Would I Use BGP and not OSPF between Servers and the Network?

While we were preparing for the Cumulus Networks’ Routing on Hosts webinar Dinesh Dutt sent me a message along these lines:

You categorically reject the use of OSPF, but we have a couple of customers using it quite happily. I'm sure you have good reasons and the reasons you list [in the presentation] are ones I agree with. OTOH, why not use totally stubby areas with the hosts being in such an area?

How about:

Cisco: Yes, cosmic radiation could have caused router bug

Yesterday we reported on the reaction to a Cisco bug report that speculated “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers was possibly triggered by “cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Reaction to that contention on a Reddit forum ranged from the obvious -- acknowledgment that cosmic radiation is an issue -- to sharp-tongued skepticism and tales of the cosmic radiation villain being used as a tongue-in-cheek place-holder meaning “we really don’t know what caused the problem yet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco: Yes, cosmic radiation could have caused router bug

Yesterday we reported on the reaction to a Cisco bug report that speculated “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers was possibly triggered by “cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Reaction to that contention on a Reddit forum ranged from the obvious -- acknowledgment that cosmic radiation is an issue -- to sharp-tongued skepticism and tales of the cosmic radiation villain being used as a tongue-in-cheek place-holder meaning “we really don’t know what caused the problem yet.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Centec Raises $47M to Battle Broadcom

Centec is producing Ethernet switching chips.

T-Mobile Taps Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung for 5G Tests

Although T-Mobile hasn’t talked about SDN, it is working closely with Deutsche Telekom.

How to watch the 2016 Ig Nobels

If you can't make it to the annual Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard University on Thursday night to celebrate the most unusual and imaginative breakthroughs in science, you can follow along online instead.That includes right here, we're we've embedded code for the live webcast, which starts at 6pm, EST, Sept. 22. MORE: Why there's no Nobel Prize in ComputingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New legislation seeks to prevent US voting systems from being hacked

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced two bills to protect voting systems from hacking, amid fears that Russian cyber spies may be interfering with this year's presidential election.Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat serving Georgia, is proposing a moratorium on state purchases of electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper trail. His Election Integrity Act, introduced Wednesday, would also prohibit voting systems from being connected to the internet as a way to prevent online tampering.The high-profile hack of the Democratic National Committee publicized in June has citizens worried that U.S. election systems may be vulnerable, Johnson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New legislation seeks to prevent US voting systems from being hacked

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced two bills to protect voting systems from hacking, amid fears that Russian cyber spies may be interfering with this year's presidential election.Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat serving Georgia, is proposing a moratorium on state purchases of electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper trail. His Election Integrity Act, introduced Wednesday, would also prohibit voting systems from being connected to the internet as a way to prevent online tampering.The high-profile hack of the Democratic National Committee publicized in June has citizens worried that U.S. election systems may be vulnerable, Johnson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile apps still have long way to go in state governments

A new survey released this week reveals that while a little more than half of state CIOs surveyed consider mobile devices and apps an essential or high priority, relatively few state government apps are mobile ready or are being used by employees and external users on mobile devices.The 2016 State CIO Survey: The Adaptable State CIO, released at the annual National Association of State CIO (NASCIO) conference this week in Orlando and produced by NASCIO, accounting/consulting firm Grant Thornton and trade association CompTIA, covers a range of topics beyond mobile, including cybersecurity, the internet of things, cloud computing and hiring.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The lean and antifragile data center

Cloud is a new technology domain, and data centre engineering is still a developing discipline. I have interviewed a top expert in cloud infrastructure, senior leader and consultant, Pete Cladingbowl of Skozo. He has a vision of the ‘lean’ data centre and a better kind of Internet for users to reach it. He also has a roadmap for how these can be practically realised. The key is to apply established theories of value flow from more mature industries. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: The lean and antifragile data center appeared first on 'net work.

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security: Intel EPID simplifies authentication of IoT devices

Did you know that over 75 million tourists visit the United States every year? Or that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) screens over 2 million people daily? The TSA processes 150 passengers per security lane. Imagine the public outrage if it took 20 minutes to screen a passenger and the process publicly disclosed personal information. That’s the average time and result of installing an IoT device today. What lessons can be applied from security screenings to accelerate IoT device adoption? How can the authentication and installation of new IoT devices be streamlined?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security: Intel EPID simplifies authentication of IoT devices

Did you know that over 75 million tourists visit the United States every year? Or that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) screens over 2 million people daily?The TSA processes 150 passengers per security lane. Imagine the public outrage if it took 20 minutes to screen a passenger and the process publicly disclosed personal information. That’s the average time and result of installing an IoT device today.What lessons can be applied from security screenings to accelerate IoT device adoption? How can the authentication and installation of new IoT devices be streamlined?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Wi-Fi and LTE-U live together? The tests are ready

The moment of truth has arrived for a hotly contested project to make sure LTE and Wi-Fi can share the same frequencies.On Wednesday, the Wi-Fi Alliance released a test plan for LTE-Unlicensed products, which would bring 4G cellular to unlicensed spectrum bands that Wi-Fi users depend on. The group also said it is qualifying an independent lab where LTE-U vendors can take their equipment for testing.LTE-U could give smartphones and other cellular devices more frequencies to use, potentially bringing better service to more users in crowded areas. But some makers and operators of Wi-Fi gear, including cable operators using Wi-Fi to compete with mobile carriers, warn that the new technology could crowd out Wi-Fi and hurt its performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Talos: Spam at levels not seen since 2010

Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Talos: Spam at levels not seen since 2010

Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Virtualizing WAN capabilities

Virtualization has dramatically transformed data center infrastructure and now it’s time for wide area networking (WAN) to undergo a similar transformation.Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) heralds a new era of networking in which WANs are software-centric, rather than tied to proprietary, inflexible hardware devices.“NFV eliminates the need for proprietary hardware; and enables routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, content delivery systems, end-user devices, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) nodes, and almost any other network function to run as software on virtual machines,” according to Roopashree Honnachari, industry director of business communications services with Frost & Sullivan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenDaylight Unleashes Boron, its Fifth Code Iteration

It includes increased contributions from operators.