Worth Reading: What network management can learn from Google Maps

Those of you who have been following my blog posts know that I find Network Management tools intensely frustrating, basically because in 25+ years they seem to have evolved so little. I comprehend the economics behind network management products; it is a small market compared to Servers and now Security, so budgets cap R&D. Even so, I’m left feeling that surely we could do better, a lot better! —NetCraftsmen

The post Worth Reading: What network management can learn from Google Maps appeared first on 'net work.

17% off Bose CineMate 15 Home Theater Sound Bar Speaker System – Deal Alert

The CineMate 15 from Bose is a highly rated soundbar system that is easy to set up and promises the kind of full, rich sound with deep bass that you have come to expect from Bose. The soundbar itself is no longer than a ruler and simply sits in front of your TV, connecting with a single cable. The accoustic mass module can be placed out of site. Together, the system works with Bose TrueSpace signal processing to spread sound far and wide, fully immersing you in the action. The CineMate 15 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews). With the current 17% off deal, it's regular list price of $599 has been temporarily discounted to $499. See the discounted CineMate 15 Home Theatre System now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Blessay: Proof of Concept Testing Should Never Happen

Its “best practice” to assume that IT vendor products are faulty, have serious bugs and will fail in normal operation at anytime.

The post Blessay: Proof of Concept Testing Should Never Happen appeared first on EtherealMind.

JFrog Develops X-Ray Vision for Containers

Xray was the star of jFrog's annual user conference.

Packet Pushers Podcast Gets Techical About VMware NSX with Hutto Independent School District

Based in Texas, the Hutto Independent School District comprises more than 6,000 K-12 students on 8 campuses. When they decided to virtualize their network, they had a number of factors to keep in mind. Would the technology support VDI implementation? How would a virtual network affect business as usual? Could they deploy NSX themselves? Could they deploy NSX alongside Cisco ACI?

If you’re familiar with VMware NSX, you may have an inkling about the answers to these questions. But that’s no reason not to listen to this entertaining episode of the Packet Pushers Podcast, our favorite podcast geared toward IT practitioners and professionals.

In this episode, hosts Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks sit down with representatives from theHutto ISD—Director of Technology Travis Brown; Network Administrator Keith Reynolds; and Network Administrator Christopher Harding—to talk about why Hutto decided to virtualize the network, and why they chose to #RunNSX

Take a listen!

The post Packet Pushers Podcast Gets Techical About VMware NSX with Hutto Independent School District appeared first on The Network Virtualization Blog.

IDG Contributor Network: Most online tracking is from Google-owned properties

All of the top five tracking tools found on websites are from Google-owned properties.And new, cookie-replacing methods of identifying computers, called fingerprinting, is being used by advertisers, a new study found. Fingerprinting can work by sending audio files to individual web browsers. The method identifies the PC, Princeton University explains in its research (PDF).Princeton says its study, completed in January, is the biggest assessment of online tracking ever. The university trawled a million of the “top” websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Most online tracking is from Google-owned properties

All of the top five tracking tools found on websites are from Google-owned properties.And new, cookie-replacing methods of identifying computers, called fingerprinting, is being used by advertisers, a new study found. Fingerprinting can work by sending audio files to individual web browsers. The method identifies the PC, Princeton University explains in its research (PDF).Princeton says its study, completed in January, is the biggest assessment of online tracking ever. The university trawled a million of the “top” websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What Language Should You Learn?

So you’ve decided, for all the reasons given in my last post on this topic, that you want to learn to code. The next, obvious, question is: what language should you learn? Remember the goal isn’t just to learn to code, but to learn the mindset, tools, and structure of coding; to dog past the simple ability to kick off scripts, and actually pick up an overview of the ground level “stuff” necessary, the “stuff” that is going to transfer from being able to code to being a good engineer. You don’t want to waste your time just learning a new skill, you want to what you learn to intersect with what your main learning goals are in a way that ultimately supports them.

If you’re a bit confused by all this mumbo-jumbo, go back and take a look at one of the first posts on this blog: Jack of All Trades.

To answer the question—which languages should I learn—I need to look beyond what’s “easiest to learn,” or “most popular right now,” or any of the “standard” ways people make this sort of decision. To relate this back to network engineering terms, I want to learn routing, not how Continue reading

Network Break 88: Cisco’s Big Quarter, Dell’s Debt Deal

Take a Network Break! On today's episode we parse Cisco's latest quarterly earnings and future strategy, examine Dell's latest efforts to raise money for its EMC acquisition, and more.

The post Network Break 88: Cisco’s Big Quarter, Dell’s Debt Deal appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Network Break 88: Cisco’s Big Quarter, Dell’s Debt Deal

Take a Network Break! On today's episode we parse Cisco's latest quarterly earnings and future strategy, examine Dell's latest efforts to raise money for its EMC acquisition, and more.

The post Network Break 88: Cisco’s Big Quarter, Dell’s Debt Deal appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The sad reality about Windows Phones

Everybody loves smartphones, but almost nobody loves Windows smartphones.A majority (78 percent) of all mobile phones sold worldwide between January and March were smartphones, and smartphones sales grew by 4 percent compared to the same time period the year previous, according to a recent report by market research firm Gartner. Yet with all that smartphone activity, Windows phone sales fell even further. Actually, the word “fell” is being generous. The truth is they crashed.Hard.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier Windows mobile device market share fell below the one percent mark worldwide to 0.7 percent during the first quarter of 2016, according to Gartner. Just one year ago, Windows device sales were anemic at 2.5 percent, but that’s still many times better compared to where they are now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to go back to Windows 7 or 8 after an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade

Microsoft’s putting away the carrots and breaking out the sticks in its quest to migrate 1 billion users to Windows 10 over the next couple of years.After pushing out the free upgrade as a Recommended update to Windows 7 and 8 users earlier this year—which means that you downloaded the initial installation bits if you use the default Windows Update, like most people should—Microsoft changed its nagging pop-up prompt in an insidious way over the past week. For the past six months, the “Get Windows 10” pop-up asked permission to start an update, but lacked a “No thanks” option, so the only way to avoid it was to close the window by pressing the X in the upper-right hand corner. Now, the pop-up says “We will upgrade you at this time,” and pressing the X counts as consent. You need to click a small, easily missed link in the pop-up to cancel the upgrade, instead.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Join GNS3 & Solarwinds Tomorrow to Test Drive Network Performance Monitor in a Risk-Free Virtual Environment

Learn how to set up and configure a virtual network for testing and optimizing network performance monitoring software.

Microsoft updates Dynamics CRM with a new IoT twist

There's an update available for Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 2016, and it brings with it a brand-new tool to help companies tap the Internet of Things for their customer-service efforts.Announced on Monday, the Spring 2016 Wave of Dynamics CRM adds Connected Field Service, a new tool companies can soon use to leverage the potential of predictive maintenance via IoT devices.Available as a preview in June, Connected Field Service continuously monitors IoT-enabled devices for anomalies, generating alerts that trigger automated actions or service tickets and workflow according to service level agreements. Service technicians with the right skills and tools are then matched against the service requirement based on availability and proximity and routed to customer locations for preventive action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enhancing Network Security With SDN Automation

Quarantine and monitoring can strengthen your SDN security position.

Worth Reading: Ambry Open Source Object Store

Today, we are announcing that Ambry is now available as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license. Ambry is optimized to store and serve media. Media content has become critical for any website to increase user engagement, virality and monetization. Media pipelines will need to be supported by more companies, especially with the advancement of video and virtual reality. -LinkedIn Engineering Blog

The post Worth Reading: Ambry Open Source Object Store appeared first on 'net work.

What are hackers up to these days?

The long answer is more complex, but security vendor Trustwave offered some insights in its 2016 Trustwave Global Security Report, which was released last month."Criminals are getting a lot savvier," says Karl Sigler, Trustwave's threat intelligence manager. "We're seeing their tactics changing a little bit."New bad news In the study, Trustwave found that compromises affecting corporate and internal networks hit 40 percent in 2015, up from 18 percent from the year before."Criminals are discovering that if they can get themselves embedded into a corporate network, there's a wealth of monetizable data in those networks," says Sigler. This could also be a result of what he calls a "drastic decline" in the rate of point-of-sale breaches, which dropped by 18 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, according to the study. "Criminals don't go away. They just shift targets," he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What are hackers up to these days?

The long answer is more complex, but security vendor Trustwave offered some insights in its 2016 Trustwave Global Security Report, which was released last month."Criminals are getting a lot savvier," says Karl Sigler, Trustwave's threat intelligence manager. "We're seeing their tactics changing a little bit."New bad news In the study, Trustwave found that compromises affecting corporate and internal networks hit 40 percent in 2015, up from 18 percent from the year before."Criminals are discovering that if they can get themselves embedded into a corporate network, there's a wealth of monetizable data in those networks," says Sigler. This could also be a result of what he calls a "drastic decline" in the rate of point-of-sale breaches, which dropped by 18 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, according to the study. "Criminals don't go away. They just shift targets," he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How data virtualization delivers on the DevOps promise

Using live data in development means you can test real workloads and get realistic results in transactions and reports. It’s also a significant security risk, as U.K. baby retailer Kiddicare recently found out: The company used real customer names, delivery addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers on a test site, only to have the data extracted and used to send phishing text messages to customers.In 2015, Patreon CEO Jack Conte admitted the names, shipping addresses and email addresses for 2.3 million users of the crowdfunding site had been breached, also “via a debug version of our website that was visible to the public” that had a “development server that included a snapshot of our production database.” And earlier this year a developer at Sydney University in Australia lost a laptop containing an unencrypted copy of a database with the personal and medical details of 6,700 disabled students.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How data virtualization delivers on the DevOps promise

Using live data in development means you can test real workloads and get realistic results in transactions and reports. It’s also a significant security risk, as U.K. baby retailer Kiddicare recently found out: The company used real customer names, delivery addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers on a test site, only to have the data extracted and used to send phishing text messages to customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)