EU law makers to discuss whether Facebook qualifies as critical infrastructure

European legislators are about to reopen a debate on whether Facebook and Twitter should be subject to the same rules as power grids and payment services for protecting critical IT infrastructure and the data it carries.The proposed rules require providers of essential energy, transport, banking and healthcare services to protect their communications networks from hacking and intrusion, and to disclose security breaches. “Key Internet enablers” such as e-commerce platforms and search engines might also have to comply with the rules.Which companies the new law will cover, though, is a focus of upcoming negotiations between the three European Union law-making bodies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why is Apple avoiding wireless charging?

First, the iPhone 6 arrived last year without it. Now, comes the Apple Watch. Same story. Wireless charging seems to be something Apple's going to wait on even as major mobile manufacturers adopt it.Last week, Samsung announced that its Galaxy 6 and S6 Edge smartphones will have wireless charging. Two years ago, the Windows Phone 8-based Lumia 920 smartphone had wireless charging. So it's not as if it's not becoming a more mainstream technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What caused the Google service interruption?

This morning people on twitter reported that they were unable to reach Google services. Businessinsider followed up with a story in which they mentioned that the Google service interruption primarily involved European and Indian users.

In this blog we’ll take a quick look at what exactly happened by looking at our BGP data. The first clue comes from David Roy and Franck Klopfenstein ‏on twitter who noticed traffic was re-routed towards AS9498 in India. Digging through our BGP data we are able to indeed confirm that routing paths for many google prefixes changed to a path that includes the Indian AS 9498 between 08:58 UTC and 09:14 UTC.

Let’s take a look at an example. In my case www.google.com resolves to the following addresses:
www.google.com has address 74.125.226.19
www.google.com has address 74.125.226.20
www.google.com has address 74.125.226.17
www.google.com has address 74.125.226.16
www.google.com has address 74.125.226.18
www.google.com has IPv6 address 2607:f8b0:4006:806::1014

The IPv4 addresses are all in the 74.125.226.0/24 range. If we now look at the BGP announcements for that Continue reading

10 common Android annoyances, solved

When you stop and think about it, smartphones are a lot like cars: They're fun, they're functional, and we always feel lost without them. But no matter how much we love 'em, they all occasionally do things that drive us crazy.As a certified Guy Who Writes About Android, I hear all about people's most pesky phone-related annoyances. From insufficient storage and wonky auto-brightness to less-than-stellar stamina, certain problems seem to pop up often. And nine times out of 10, there's a pretty easy fix -- or at least some steps that can help make things a little bit better.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

12 early Apple Watch apps for business

Apple Watch Apps for BusinessImage by Apple/Shutterstock On March 9, Apple at last revealed more specifics about the much-anticipated Apple Watch. CEO Tim Cook said that following the release of the company's WatchKit SDK in November, developers created "thousands of new apps," a few of which were showed off by Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch. (You can jump to the 68-minute mark of the presentation video to see Lynch demo Watch apps.) Apple also revealed the new Apple Watch software, which is part of iOS 8.2 (now available) and lets you browse, buy and download apps for the watch.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Thursday, March 12

High-end phones on the way with LG, Huawei next in lineIf you were disappointed with the shortage of new flagship smartphones at Mobile World Congress last week, just hang on until next month. LG Electronics is expected to announce the highly anticipated successor to its good-looking G3—the G4?—that may sport a 1620 x 2880 pixel display. Huawei has started to post teasers for an event on April 8 for its P8, likely to offer a screen that’s a bit larger than the Ascend P7’s 5 inches, better battery life and an improved camera. Even Sony, which badly needs a big hit, may jump in the fray, with the Xperia Z4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Thursday, March 12

High-end phones on the way with LG, Huawei next in lineIf you were disappointed with the shortage of new flagship smartphones at Mobile World Congress last week, just hang on until next month. LG Electronics is expected to announce the highly anticipated successor to its good-looking G3—the G4?—that may sport a 1620 x 2880 pixel display. Huawei has started to post teasers for an event on April 8 for its P8, likely to offer a screen that’s a bit larger than the Ascend P7’s 5 inches, better battery life and an improved camera. Even Sony, which badly needs a big hit, may jump in the fray, with the Xperia Z4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper rewires the data center

Juniper Networks this week rolled out new data center switches to help customers address opportunities and challenges presented by cloud computing.The new switches are yet another line of data center spine switches that have virtually no integration with Juniper’s three-and-a-half year old QFabric portfolio.Juniper says there will be 7.6 billion Internet users with 50 billion connected devices by 2020, continually accessing data around the globe. This necessitates higher levels of network performance, automation and scale for both enterprises and service providers to address growing demands on their IT infrastructure.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Juniper unveils new fabric switch, architecture +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper rewires the data center

Juniper Networks this week rolled out new data center switches to help customers address opportunities and challenges presented by cloud computing.The new switches are yet another line of data center spine switches that have virtually no integration with Juniper’s three-and-a-half year old QFabric portfolio.Juniper says there will be 7.6 billion Internet users with 50 billion connected devices by 2020, continually accessing data around the globe. This necessitates higher levels of network performance, automation and scale for both enterprises and service providers to address growing demands on their IT infrastructure.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Juniper unveils new fabric switch, architecture +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reducing BGP SNMP Traps in DMVPN Networks

One of my readers decided to build a large DMVPN network with BGP as the WAN routing protocol (good choice!) and configured BGP SNMP traps with snmp-server enable traps bgp command on the hub router to detect spoke router failures. Turns out that’s not exactly a good idea.

What is your opinion about the new blog design ?

As you might notice I changed the blog design, and I want your feedback about the new design from all the points (speed, simplicity, look and feel,etc…). Your suggestion and feedback is highly appreciated to enhance the blog. Did you like it ? Was the old design better ? Based on the comments we will… Read More »

The post What is your opinion about the new blog design ? appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Networks! Now, With More DevOps!

TL;DR – buzzwords suck and I want to rant about that.

I’ve been doing a lot of posts lately on the skillsets and technologies needed to move networking into the same level of productivity that other disciplines have reached. During this process, I’ve had time to contemplate labels and buzzwords.

By itself, I don’t see much value in the term “DevOps”, whether it’s succeeded by the phrase “for networking” or not. These days, the person using this term might just mean “automation”, or be describing a technical position.

As in “We’re looking for an experienced DevOp.” I know, right?

Just today I heard yet another story that illustrated a total misuse of this term, undoubtedly confusing all involved. I say, what’s in a name?

DevOps For Networks

This leads me down the path of considering that the phrase “DevOps for networking” is just as useless. Although I’m sure this was certainly not intended, this phrase implies that there is a special sector of the DevOps movement that is specific to networking. Unless you’re focusing on specific tools (which you shouldn’t be) then this isn’t the case. The underlying business value is precisely the same.

The DevOps culture and tooling that came Continue reading

Networks! Now, With More DevOps!

TL;DR - buzzwords suck and I want to rant about that.

I’ve been doing a lot of posts lately on the skillsets and technologies needed to move networking into the same level of productivity that other disciplines have reached. During this process, I’ve had time to contemplate labels and buzzwords.

By itself, I don’t see much value in the term “DevOps”, whether it’s succeeded by the phrase “for networking” or not. These days, the person using this term might just mean “automation”, or be describing a technical position.

As in “We’re looking for an experienced DevOp.” I know, right?

Just today I heard yet another story that illustrated a total misuse of this term, undoubtedly confusing all involved. I say, what’s in a name?

DevOps For Networks

This leads me down the path of considering that the phrase “DevOps for networking” is just as useless. Although I’m sure this was certainly not intended, this phrase implies that there is a special sector of the DevOps movement that is specific to networking. Unless you’re focusing on specific tools (which you shouldn’t be) then this isn’t the case. The underlying business value is precisely the same.

The DevOps culture and tooling that came Continue reading

Introducing New VCE VxBlock Systems with Integrated VMware NSX

Last month, we outlined VMware’s vision for helping customers achieve one cloud for any application and any device. We believe the prevailing

The EMC Federation

model for cloud adoption will be the hybrid cloud, and the best architecture for achieving the hybrid cloud is through a software-defined data center architecture.

The fastest path to building reliable infrastructure for the hybrid cloud is through the use of converged infrastructure systems, and no company has been more successful at delivering on the promise of converged infrastructure than our partner VCE.

Now, the ability to procure and deploy the VMware NSX network virtualization platform with VCE converged infrastructure is about to get whole lot easier.

Today, VCE launched VCE VxBlock Systems, a new family of converged infrastructure systems that will factory-integrate VMware NSX for software-defined data center deployments. The new VxBlock Systems will include VCE pre-integration, pre-testing and pre-validation of VMware NSX, with seamless component-level updates, ongoing lifecycle assurance, and unified single-call support from VCE.

As I wrote previously, VMware NSX already runs great on existing Vblock Systems. Customers today are deploying VMware NSX with their existing Vblocks, and customers will be able to extend VMware NSX environments across their entire Continue reading

Alibaba investing $200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is investing US$200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat, following a string of prior investments in U.S. tech companies.The companies did not publicly comment on the deal. But a person familiar with the matter confirmed the investment on Thursday.The e-commerce firm has been funding both U.S. and Chinese tech companies, as a way to grow the company’s global ecosystem, the source said.Previous deals made in the U.S. include investing in messaging app Tango, online retail site ShopRunner, and ride-sharing service Lyft.The activity has sparked speculation that the Chinese e-commerce company is preparing to buy its way into the U.S. market. Last week, Alibaba announced it was opening its first data center in Silicon Valley to target the U.S. cloud computing sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Alibaba investing $200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is investing US$200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat, following a string of prior investments in U.S. tech companies.The companies did not publicly comment on the deal. But a person familiar with the matter confirmed the investment on Thursday.The e-commerce firm has been funding both U.S. and Chinese tech companies, as a way to grow the company’s global ecosystem, the source said.Previous deals made in the U.S. include investing in messaging app Tango, online retail site ShopRunner, and ride-sharing service Lyft.The activity has sparked speculation that the Chinese e-commerce company is preparing to buy its way into the U.S. market. Last week, Alibaba announced it was opening its first data center in Silicon Valley to target the U.S. cloud computing sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google researchers hack computers using DRAM electrical leaks

Google researchers have written the first-ever attack code that takes advantage of electrical interference between densely packed memory cells, a unique style of attack that could require changes in chip design.The work builds on a paper published last year by Carnegie Mellon University and Intel, which found it was possible to change binary values in stored memory by repeatedly accessing nearby memory cells, a process called “bit flipping.”DRAM memory is vulnerable to such electrical interference because the cells are so closely packed together, a result of engineers increasing a chip’s memory capacity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Twitter bans stolen nude photos and revenge porn

Twitter has amended its policies to ban the posting of intimate photos and videos taken without the person’s permission.“You may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent,” the company added to its rules on Wednesday. Twitter otherwise allows pornographic content, but not in people’s profiles, headers or background images.Content that is identified as violating Twitter’s policies will be hidden from public view, and users posting it will have their accounts locked. Users will be required to delete the content in question before they can return to using the site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Networks! Now, With More DevOps!

What the *, traceroute?

If you've ever done a traceroute from one IOS box to another, you've undoubtedly seen output like this:

R8# traceroute 192.168.100.7
Tracing the route to 192.168.100.7
VRF info: (vrf in name/id, vrf out name/id)
  1 192.168.0.1 4 msec 3 msec 4 msec
  2 192.168.100.7 4 msec *  0 msec

That msec * msec output. Why is the middle packet always lost?? And why only on the last hop??