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Category Archives for "Networking"

Some users will ‘kick and scream’ at paying with slower chip cards

Major U.S. banks have been rolling out new, secure smart chip debit and credit cards for months, but the real end-user impact hasn't yet been felt.Some experts say typical consumers will get confused and may even balk when first attempting to use these new "pin and chip" smart cards. As a result, customers may choose to rely on the less-secure magnetic stripe also on the new cards for in-store purchases.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch Or, customers could even turn to mobile wallet alternatives, like Apple Pay or the coming Android Pay, and skip the credit and debit card experience altogether.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Solving the “jabber-config.xml” File Mystery

The jabber-config.xml file is an essential piece of configuration for the Jabber client. Sure, the client has the ability to operate just fine without this file. Video calling, deskphone control, instant messaging, etc. all work flawlessly. However, if you need to add any additional options, policies, or directory integrations, the jabber-config.xml file becomes necessary. Within the realm of the CCIE Collaboration certification, we are specifically concerned about two different configurations: UDS Directory Integration and SIP URI Dialing.

User Data Service (UDS) simply put, is the name for the End User database within Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). It contains all relevant information about that user, as would any other directory. UDS, however, is not enabled by default on the Jabber client. In fact, Jabber is geared towards integration with an LDAP source “out of the box”. This means that we must instruct the Jabber client to use UDS if we would like to be able to search the CUCM database to communicate with other users. Since this will have to be done by using the jabber-config.xml file, we must first determine how to create it. Thankfully, the Cisco documentation does not disappoint in this regard. From the Continue reading

Juniper, Ruckus join hands with an eye on mobile growth

The alliance between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless announced on Tuesday underscores the importance of Wi-Fi in enterprises, where employees increasingly work and access cloud applications on mobile devices.Juniper and Ruckus say they’re joining forces to build integrated wired and wireless infrastructures while keeping their technologies open and standards-based. The companies focused on enterprises in announcing the partnership, but they will also integrate technologies for service-provider networks, Ruckus Vice President of Corporate Marketing David Callisch said.As Wi-Fi gets faster and more workers use laptops and other portable devices, more enterprises see wireless as a real alternative to traditional ethernet LANs, said Gartner analyst Tim Zimmerman. Some networks based on IEEE 802.11ac theoretically can deliver more speed than Gigabit ethernet, and the second wave of that technology now emerging will offer more than 6Gbps on the top end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple takes a greater role in Bluetooth development

Apple will be playing a larger role in the development of Bluetooth as the company pushes into wearable technology, home automation and more.The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, which oversees the development of the wireless communication standard, announced Tuesday that Apple has become a “promoter member” of the group, giving the company new power to guide Bluetooth’s development. Promoter members are given a continual seat on the group’s board of directors, and are also the only membership class that can vote on its corporate matters.Apple has been an associate board member of the group since 2011, and the company’s senior wireless architect, Joakim Linde. currently serves as the board’s secretary. In the past, Apple’s board membership was term limited. The current promoter members—Ericsson, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nokia, and Toshiba—voted unanimously to have Apple join their ranks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Instagram gets more Twitter-y with trending photos

Instagram, the popular app for sharing photos with friends, is broadening the reach of those photos.On Tuesday, the Facebook-owned app significantly expanded its service with new features around search and trending topics. The changes are aimed at letting users discover photos and videos related to popular events and places, and letting users more easily find photos taken in particular places.The changes are aimed at making Instagram not just an app to see friends’ photos, but an app for seeing other people’s photos related to local or global events. The changes put Instagram’s app more squarely in competition with Twitter, already known for its real-time feed of tweets around events, including photos and videos.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Adobe patches zero-day Flash Player flaw used in targeted attacks

Adobe Systems released an emergency security update for Flash Player Tuesday to fix a critical vulnerability that has been exploited by a China-based cyberespionage group.Over the past several weeks, a hacker group identified as APT3 by security firm FireEye has used the vulnerability to attack organizations from the aerospace, defense, construction, engineering, technology, telecommunications and transportation industries.The hacking group targeted the companies with generic phishing emails that contained a link to a compromised server, researchers from FireEye said in a blog post Tuesday. The server used JavaScript code to profile potential victims and then served the Flash exploit to the ones meeting attackers’ criteria, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Silver Peak Launches EdgeConnect SD-WAN Product

Silver Peak gets into the SD-WAN market with Unity EdgeConnect, a new product that aims to make it easier to provision, manage, and monitor WAN connectivity for remote and branch offices.

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Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.

The post Silver Peak Launches EdgeConnect SD-WAN Product appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

Arista Gets An SDN Strategy With CloudVision

In 2014, Arista was telling me that SDN was "Still Don't kNow" and "Still Does Nothing". In 2015, Arista releases their CloudVision™ SDN controller for cloud networks.

Author information

Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

The post Arista Gets An SDN Strategy With CloudVision appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

IT pros blast Google over Android’s refusal to play nice with IPv6

Two trains made of fiber, copper and code are on a collision course, as the widespread popularity of Android devices and the general move to IPv6 has put some businesses in a tough position, thanks to Android’s lack of support for a central component in the newer standard. DHCPv6 is an outgrowth of the DHCP protocol used in the older IPv4 standard – it’s an acronym for “dynamic host configuration protocol,” and is a key building block of network management. Nevertheless, Google’s wildly popular Android devices – which accounted for 78% of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the first quarter of this year – don’t support DHCPv6 for address assignment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Signs of the times: 2 unexpected ways technoloy is changing the world

Last week, I came across two technology stories so strange yet so compelling I felt like they should come from the Weekly World News or some schlocky science fiction novel. But no, they both showed up in the Gray Lady.Taken together, their appearance in that most mainstream of newspapers, the New York Times, points to a world where technology is forcing us to rethink just about everything we thought we knew about how things work.Forget about distracted driving First, there was this story about how Utah Valley University was so worried about students walking around campus with their noses buried in their smartphones that it created a texting-and-walking lane in a stairway in its campus life and wellness center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Signs of the times: 2 unexpected ways technology is changing the world

Last week, I came across two technology stories so strange yet so compelling I felt like they should come from the Weekly World News or some schlocky science fiction novel. But no, they both showed up in the Gray Lady. Taken together, their appearance in that most mainstream of newspapers, the New York Times, points to a world where technology is forcing us to rethink just about everything we thought we knew about how things work.Forget about distracted driving First, there was this story about how Utah Valley University was so worried about students walking around campus with their noses buried in their smartphones that it created a texting-and-walking lane in a stairway in its campus life and wellness center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting Started With Ansible for Cisco IOS

Ansible is well-known for it’s low entry threshold. All what’s required to get started is just one inventory file. However Cisco IOS devices require special considerations. Passwordless SSH RSA-based authentication is still a novelty and in most cases users are authenticated based on their passwords. Another problem is the lack of Python execution environment on IOS devices, which seriously limits the choice of Ansible modules that can be used. In this post I will show how to setup Ansible environment to control Cisco IOS devices

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The government is falling behind on application security

Government organizations are struggling when it comes to securing the computer software they use, which could partially explain the large data breaches reported in that sector over the past several years.Three out of four applications used by government organizations are not compliant with one of the primary software security policies and most of the flaws found in them never get fixed, according to a report released Tuesday by U.S.-based application security firm Veracode.The report is based on an analysis of more than 200,000 applications over the past 18 months that are used by organizations in various industries. The tests were performed using Veracode’s cloud-based application security testing platform that uses static analysis, dynamic analysis and manual penetration testing techniques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Report: ISPs slowing internet service on purpose

Major internet Service Providers (ISPs) like AT&T and Time Warner are intentionally slowing internet service for U.S. customers, according to the Guardian.The newspaper cites a study by BattleFortheNet, a pro-net neutrality activist internet group.Degraded service The report, released on Monday, "looked at results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers," the Guardian says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here