Overheard At Interop, Day 1

China’s booming middle class augurs well for Apple, says Tim Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook still sees great potential in the Chinese market despite a drop in its revenue from the country in the first quarter.In an interview to Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money program, Cook said Monday that the middle class in China is expected to boom from 50 million people five years ago to almost 500 million in the next five years. “This is an unprecedented growth of the middle class,” said Cook, adding that he “could not be more optimistic about China.”To a question from Cramer, Cook said it was an error by him not to to mention the figures about the burgeoning Chinese middle class during the company’s recent earnings call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CiscoLive 2016: ‘Summer Camp for Geeks’

The other day I was talking with a friend about my summer plans. As we were talking about July….. my face apparently lit up and my voice got all excited and happy when I mentioned CiscoLive.

“What exactly is CiscoLive?” she asked.

I answered, “CiscoLive is my absolute favorite work week of the entire year. Has been since my first one back in 2006.”

“What do you like so much about it?” she asked.  ……

My answer to her? 

“It’s like a week long Summer Camp for Geeks”

Why I Love Cisco Live US

1. Learning & Sharing Knowledge
   1. Breakouts, Technical Seminars, and Labs
   2. Meet the Expert
   3. Lunch and Learn (Formerly Table Topics)
2. Social Media Fun

Learning & Sharing Knowledge

Learning… learning… learning ….. learning.   I just love learning!  For me… learning from others and passing that on is one of my passions in life.

And WOW is there knowledge to learn at CiscoLive!

Of course, I have never been to a CiscoLive as a non Cisco employee.  Nor have I ever gone and not been a speaker.  So, for me, CiscoLive has always involved me prioritizing technical knowledge sharing/teaching with CiscoLive Continue reading

Microsoft’s CEO explains why his company sued the U.S. government

Microsoft surprised the world last month when it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that the frequent practice of attaching gag orders to search warrants for customer data violates the U.S. Constitution.On Monday, CEO Satya Nadella told a group of tech luminaries why the company did so: Microsoft has a strong view on its privacy promises to users, and the company will fight to prevent government overreach that, in its view, compromises the principles of privacy. Governments have a compelling need to help preserve public safety, but Microsoft wants to make sure that users' privacy is also preserved, Nadella said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s CEO explains why his company sued the U.S. government

Microsoft surprised the world last month when it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that the frequent practice of attaching gag orders to search warrants for customer data violates the U.S. Constitution.On Monday, CEO Satya Nadella told a group of tech luminaries why the company did so: Microsoft has a strong view on its privacy promises to users, and the company will fight to prevent government overreach that, in its view, compromises the principles of privacy. Governments have a compelling need to help preserve public safety, but Microsoft wants to make sure that users' privacy is also preserved, Nadella said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Label Switched Multicast — Packet Walk

This post is going to follow a multicast packet as it moves through a sample MPLS network using Label Switched Multicast (LSM). I'll show how the packet moves through the network by looking at the forwarding tables on different routers and also by doing some packet captures.

This post is part of a series I'm writing on LSM and if you're not already familiar with LSM, I recommend you go back and read the previous posts.

After reading this post you will be able to precisely describe how LSM forwarding works in the data plane and will be able to do some basic troubleshooting.

Let's get into the lab!

Can Oracle buy its way into the cloud?

It wasn't so long ago that Oracle dismissed cloud computing as "gibberish." Today, it's singing a different tune.Through a string of acquisitions, the database giant has been buying a presence in the cloud in much the same way it built up its on-premises portfolio decades ago. What remains to be seen is whether that strategy can work as well in this new setting.Acquisitions of companies such as PeopleSoft and Siebel played a key role in fleshing out Oracle's traditional applications portfolio back in the mid-2000s, helping the company become a major player in enterprise software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot Since I have been working in IT for many years there are a few traits that generally separate a good engineer from a great engineer. One of those traits is troubleshooting. For those of you out there who have been doing this a long time would […]

The post Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot Since I have been working in IT for many years there are a few traits that generally separate a good engineer from a great engineer. One of those traits is troubleshooting. For those of you out there who have been doing this a long time would […]

The post Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Boston Globe publishes pictures taken by lawyer of suspect in famous art heist

The Boston Globe, whose Pulitzer-winning work behind the Oscar-honored movie “Spotlight” earned it a shout-out from President Obama this weekend, today is relying upon the photographic skills of a mobster’s attorney to illustrate a breaking news story about the FBI’s latest attempt to solve the famous Gardner Museum art heist.The photos, credited to attorney A. Ryan McGuigan, show FBI vehicles and work tents in front of the Connecticut home of McGuigan’s client. And while it is my opinion that a screen capture would represent fair use in this instance … did I mention that the photos were taken by an attorney?From the Globe story, which is behind a pay wall:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Azure Releases IoT SDK in Beta & Preview Device Tool

Microsoft Azure's IoT philosophy is to support different operating systems and hardware.

Coming to Terms With OpenStack

Every six months or so, the OpenStack community seems to swing between euphoria and despair – depending on the amount of progress being made in deploying OpenStack in production environments.

Microsoft Surface Phone is expected in 2017

Microsoft's rumored Surface Phone, the replacement for its disastrous Windows Phone line, is rumored to be one year away. The April 2017 launch is expected to coincide with Redstone 2, the second major upgrade to Windows 10 for PC and mobile.The source of the rumors is Windows Central, which has been quite tenacious in pursuing this story. It notes a big gap between the quality of the Surface tablet and Lunia 950 phones, both launched last year, with glowing reviews for the tablet and thumbs-down for Lumia. The result has been dismal sales, just 23 million phones sold in FY 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

14% off Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband – Deal Alert

Track workouts, heart rate, distance, calories burned, floors climbed, active minutes, and steps with the popular Fitbit Charge HR. Sync data wirelessly and automatically back to your computer or smartphone, where it can be viewed and analyzed securely online. Fitbit Charge HR also tracks your sleep, and can wake you with a silent alarm. The unit averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 24,000 people (read reviews). With a regular list price of $149.99, you can save $21 and pick it up now for $128.71. See the discounted Fitbit Charge HR Wireless Activity Wristband now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell plus EMC has a name: Dell Technologies

Dell’s planned US$67 billion acquisition of EMC will create a broad collection of businesses called Dell Technologies.Under that umbrella, the pure Dell name will live on in the company’s client business, including its PCs, while its enterprise infrastructure division will be called Dell EMC, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell announced on Monday at EMC World in Las Vegas.Dell Technologies will be the only company selling everything from edge devices to core data centers and cloud infrastructure, a mission that rival HP backed away from when it split into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc., Dell said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Neutron Networking

Neutron server, residing in a control node, is responsible for orchestrating and provisioning of all virtual networks within an OpenStack environment. Its goal is to enable end-to-end reachability among the VMs and between the VMs and external subnets. To do that, Neutron uses concepts that should be very familiar to every network engineer like subnet, router, firewall, DHCP and NAT.

The post Worth Reading: Neutron Networking appeared first on 'net work.

Oracle is paying $532 million to snatch up another cloud service provider

Hard on the heels of a similar purchase last week, Oracle has announced it will pay $532 million to buy Opower, a provider of cloud services to the utilities industry.Once a die-hard cloud holdout, Oracle has been making up for lost time by buying a foothold in specific industries through acquisitions such as this one. Last week's Textura buy gave it a leg up in engineering and construction."It’s a good move on Oracle’s part, and it definitely strengthens Oracle’s cloud story," said Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google buys Synergyse to teach customers how to use Apps

Google Apps is getting a new set of tutorials. The tech giant announced Monday that it has acquired Synergyse, a startup that offered businesses a guided tutorial for Google Apps.Synergyse's technology allowed businesses to give their users step-by-step interactive guides to doing things inside Google Apps like sending emails in Gmail, setting up appointments in Calendar and getting started with Docs. The tutorials are frequently updated with new features that Google releases, so users can stay current with new functionality that gets added to the different services. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Securing BGP: A Case Study (9)

There are a number of systems that have been proposed to validate (or secure) the path in BGP. To finish off this series on BGP as a case study, I only want to look at three of them. At some point in the future, I will probably write a couple of posts on what actually seems to be making it to some sort of deployment stage, but for now I just want to compare various proposals against the requirements outlined in the last post on this topic (you can find that post here).

The first of these systems is BGPSEC—or as it was known before it was called BGPSEC, S-BGP. I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining how S-BGP works, as I’ve written a series of posts over at Packet Pushers on this very topic:

Part 1: Basic Operation
Part 2: Protections Offered
Part 3: Replays, Timers, and Performance
Part 4: Signatures and Performance
Part 5: Leaks

Considering S-BGP against the requirements:

• Centralized versus decentralized balance:S-BGP distributes path validation information throughout the internetwork, as this information is actually contained in a new attribute carried with route advertisements. Authorization and authentication are implicitly centralized, however, with the Continue reading

Yes, a weasel knocked out the Large Hadron Collider … but, no, a weasel is not a rodent

The worst part of this mistake – other than the pain caused to innocent weasels – is that it should have been avoided, at least here. After all, as I was typing last Friday’s post about an electrocution-sparked electrical outage at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the question did occur to me: Is a weasel actually a rodent, as I am about to allege?Unfortunately, I failed to act upon that inquisitive impulse and the answer to the question is no, a weasel is not a rodent. And I am hearing about it from those who know better.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here