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Category Archives for "Networking"

Orange Matter: Why Your Infrastructure Sucks For Automation

Orange Matter Logo

I’ve been blogging for Solarwinds recently, posting on Orange Matter, with a cross-post to the Thwack Geek Speak forum. Let’s face it, unless we get to build an infrastructure from the ground up, our existing mass of one-off solutions and workarounds makes automating our infrastructure an absolute nightmare.

This post appeared on Orange Matter as “Why Your Infrastctructure Sucks For Automation“, but I’m also linking to the version posted on Thwack, because that version of the post includes pretty pictures. And who doesn’t like a pretty picture?

I’d love it if you were to take a moment to visit and read, and maybe even comment!

If you liked this post, please do click through to the source at Orange Matter: Why Your Infrastructure Sucks For Automation and give me a share/like. Thank you!

Cisco software to make networks smarter, safer, more manageable

SAN DIEGO—Cisco injected a number of new technologies into its key networking control-point software that makes it easier to stretch networking from the data center to the cloud while making the whole environment smarter and easier to manage.At the company’s annual Cisco Live customer event here it rolled out software that lets customers more easily meld typically siloed domains across the enterprise and cloud to the wide area network. The software enables what Cisco calls multidomain integration that lets customers set policies to apply uniform access controls to users, devices and applications regardless of where they connect to the network, the company said.To read this article in full, please click here

6 ways to make enterprise IoT cost effective

There’s little question that the internet of things (IoT) holds enormous potential for the enterprise, in everything from asset tracking to compliance.But enterprise uses of IoT technology are still evolving, and it’s not yet entirely clear which use cases and practices currently make economic and business sense. So, I was thrilled to trade emails recently with Rob Mesirow, a principal at PwC’s Connected Solutions unit, about how to make enterprise IoT implementations as cost effective as possible.To read this article in full, please click here

Making progress in Cloudflare’s EMEA operations, and looking ahead to a bright future

Making progress in Cloudflare's EMEA operations, and looking ahead to a bright future

Cloudflare’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have seen great progress over the past few years and the future looks even brighter. I joined as Head of EMEA Sales, taking responsibility for our customer-facing activity across the region, just over a year ago. I am encouraged by what we are building while being even more motivated by what lies ahead for our customers, our partners and our employees.

Cloudflare has a rich history in EMEA where London was one of the earliest bases for both the company’s engineering and also its customer-facing activities. In the subsequent years, we have expanded our customer-facing activity to include coverage into all the major EMEA countries and regions. We’ve built up a team of professional sales and business development people, capable systems engineers, dedicated customer success managers, thoughtful marketeers and a responsive customer support team who serve our existing customers and develop new ones as a committed and focused team.

Making progress in Cloudflare's EMEA operations, and looking ahead to a bright future

We work on developing brand awareness for Cloudflare and extending our reach into the market through communications, events and most of all through ongoing close engagement with customers, prospective customers and partners. We carry the Cloudflare mission of helping build a Continue reading

A New Survey Shows Few Actively Encrypting More Because of Internet Distrust

A new survey shows that only a handful of people who said they distrust the Internet are actively choosing encryption in response.

The survey, called the CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust, was conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Canadian think tank the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). The Internet Society (ISOC) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) are partners in the survey, which is now in its fifth year.

The survey asked more than 25,000 individuals in 25 economies their opinion on Internet security, privacy, and trust.

Trust is very personal. The word “trust” may mean different things to different people. What we consider to be trust is constantly evolving and is shaped by many factors including our culture, our education, and our experience. 

The survey asked users how much they agree or disagree with the statement “Overall, I trust the Internet”. We did not ask users how much they trust the Internet to perform in specific ways or to provide a specific user experience. However, the question provides a rough indicator of positive or negative attitudes towards the Internet.

74% of respondents in 2019 agreed with the statement Continue reading

Use Per-Link Prefixes in Network Data Models

We got pretty far in our data deduplication in network data model journey, from initial attempts to network modeled as a graph… but we still haven’t got rid of all the duplicate information.

For example, if we have multiple devices connected to the same subnet, why should we have to specify IP address and subnet mask for every device (literally begging the operators to make input errors). Wouldn’t it be better (assuming we don’t care about exact IP addresses on core links) to assign IP addresses automatically?

Keep reading

IPv6 upsides: Faster connections, richer data

The business advantages of IPv6 are many, including direct customer access to websites, faster end-user experiences with Internet applications, and the opportunity to gather data about visitors to applications as well as measure visitors’ engagement and conversion.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Americans Deserve Better User Privacy

On May 15th, the White House tweeted it had created a new online surveying tool for Americans to report instances of social media censorship due to political bias. Setting aside the politics of this move, there are serious privacy and security concerns that come with hosting such a survey on its website.

When users visit the reporting site, they’re required to give personal information including their name, citizenship status, zip code, phone number, and email address, all before any questions are actually asked about the alleged social media bias. They are then prompted to include links to their social media platforms, usernames, and other digitally-intrusive information.

Sound fishy? It should.

That is a significant amount of personal, highly-identifiable information to give up as a part of a selective survey. The irrelevance of most of this information to the survey’s purpose begs the question: why does the government need it and what will they use it for?

Neither question is answered anywhere in the survey or its related materials. That alone poses a serious privacy concern. If users don’t know how their data will be used, how can they trust that their information is secure and being used only for the Continue reading

Viavi Enterprise Provides Unexpected Network Insights

Many of us will have experienced the challenges of taking a performance alert (or user complaint) and drilling down to root cause. Performance issues can be intermittent, and it can be difficult to get visibility of what caused a problem at a particular time. Viavi Enterprise thinks it has the answer, combining analysis of packet feeds (e.g. from taps and mirror ports) and IPFix, xFlow and cloud service flow logs to monitor application performance as it would be experienced by a user. Sounds good? It looked pretty good, too.

Johnny Five Need Input!

Nothing can happen without data, and that comes from a number of potential sources.

Observer Gigastor

The Observer Gigastor product is available as a virtualized solution (to capture east-west traffic in virtualized environments), a portable appliance for tactical deployment, and two hardware appliance models (in a charming shade of purple) which can provide from 96TB to 1.2PB of storage. The idea of Gigastor is to capture packets at line rate and retain the raw packet data in case it’s needed later. The packets are analyzed, and that metadata is fed to the reporting and visualization system, Observer Apex.

Observer GigaFlow

It’s not always possible Continue reading

The CCIE Times Are A Changing

Today is the day that the CCIE changes. A little, at least. The news hit just a little while ago that there are some changes to the way the CCIE certification and recertification process happens. Some of these are positive. Some of these are going to cause some insightful discussion. Let’s take a quick look at what’s changing and how it affects you. Note that these changes are not taking effect until February 24, 2020, which is in about 8 months.

Starting Your Engines

The first big change comes from the test that you take to get yourself ready for the lab. Historically, this has been a CCIE written exam. It’s a test of knowledge designed to make sure you’re ready to take the big lab. It’s also the test that has been used to recertify your CCIE status.

With the new change on Feb. 24th, the old CCIE written will go away. The test that is going to be used to qualify candidates to take the CCIE lab exam is the Core Technology exam from the CCNP track. The Core Technology exam in each CCNP track serves a dual purpose in the new Cisco certification program. If you’re Continue reading

BrandPost: Empowering Charitable Work with Scalable Cloud Networking Technology

Like most charitable organizations, The Salvation Army relies on volunteer help. Volunteers around the world serve people in need at service centers, retail stores, and satellite offices in metropolitan cities, rural communities, and at the scene of disaster areas. All of these locations have to stay online, connected, and sharing data, but with such a wide range of sites, networking is a challenge. Add in staff with varying levels of expertise and locations ranging in size from with one person at a small satellite office to hundreds at international headquarters, and you quickly have a very complicated situation on your hands.The wide variety of spaces and available talent to manage IT infrastructure has created a nightmare for network administrators trying to keep data flowing where it needs to go. That is, until the organization began upgrading to next-level networking, making configuration, setup, and maintenance of networks at each location far easier, and freeing up personnel—volunteer and otherwise—for more productive work.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Building the Network to Grow a Global Virtual Reality Company

This decade saw the spectacular rise of mobile devices as the platform of choice for everything from social media and gaming to customer service and online payments. Now it’s time for a new platform to revolutionize the way consumers and businesses engage with digital content. It’s time for the world to be introduced to the next generation of entertainment, shopping, healthcare, and more: augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).According to research firm McKinsey, immersive computing could actually replace mobile devices. While it’s difficult to imagine anything approaching today’s ubiquity of smartphones, Goldman Sachs estimates that the emerging AR and VR industry could see up to $182 billion in annual revenue by 2025 –  a figure that far surpasses the current $88 billion in combined in-home entertainment and movie box office revenues.To read this article in full, please click here

Reaction: Overly Attached

In a recent edition of ACM Queue, Kate Matsudaira has an article discussing the problem of being overly attached to a project or solution.

The longer you work on one system or application, the deeper the attachment. For years you have been investing in it—adding new features, updating functionality, fixing bugs and corner cases, polishing, and refactoring. If the product serves a need, you likely reap satisfaction for a job well done (and maybe you even received some raises or promotions as a result of your great work).

Attachment is a two-edged sword—without some form of attachment, it seems there is no way to have pride in your work. On the other hand, attachment leads to poorly designed solutions. For instance, we all know the hyper-certified person who knows every in and out of a particular vendor’s solution, and hence solves every problem in terms of that vendor’s products. Or the person who knows a particular network automation system and, as a result, solves every problem through automation.

The most pernicious forms of attachment in the network engineering world are to a single technology or vendor. One of the cycles I have seen play out many times across the last Continue reading

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