Maybe MU-MIMO Matters
As 802.11ac becomes more widely deployed in environments I find myself looking to the next wave and the promise it brings. 802.11ac Wave 1 for me really isn’t that groundbreaking. It’s an incremental improvement on 802.11n. Wave 1 really only serves to wake up the manufacturers to the fact that 5 GHz radios are needed on devices now. The real interesting stuff comes in Wave 2. Wider channels, more spatial streams, and a host of other improvements are on the way. But the most important one for me is MU-MIMO.
Me Mi Mo Mum
Multi-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) is a huge upgrade over the MIMO specification in 802.11n. MIMO allowed access points to multiplex signals on different channels into one data stream. It accomplished this via Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM). This means that more antennas on an access point are a very good thing. It increases the throughput above and beyond what could be accomplished with just a single antenna. But it does have a drawback.
Single-user MIMO can only talk to one client at a time. All the work necessary to multiplex those data streams require the full attention of a single access point for Continue reading
IPv6 and the VCR
IPv6 isn’t a fad. It’s not a passing trend that will be gone tomorrow. When Vint Cerf is on a nationally televised non-technical program talking about IPv6 that’s about as real as it’s going to get. Add in the final depletion of IPv4 address space from the RIRs and you will see that IPv6 is a necessity. Yet there are still people in tech that deny the increasing need for IPv6 awareness. Those same people that say it’s not ready or that it costs too much. It reminds me of a different argument.
IPvcr4
My house is full of technology. Especially when it comes to movie watching. I have DVRs for watching television, a Roku for other services, and apps on my tablet so the kids can watch media on demand. I have a DVD player in almost every room of the house. I also have a VCR. It serves one purpose – to watch two movies that are only available on a video tape. Those two movies are my wedding and the birth of my oldest son.
At first, the VCR stated connected to our television all the time. We had some movies that we Continue reading
The Pain of Licensing
Frequent readers of my blog and Twitter stream may have noticed that I have a special loathing in my heart for licensing. I’ve been subjected to some of the craziest runarounds because of licensing departments. I’ve had to yell over the phone to get something taken care of. I’ve had to produce paperwork so old it was yellowed at the edges. Why does this have to be so hard?
Licensing is a feature tracking mechanism. Manufacturers want to know what features you are using. It comes back to tracking research and development. A lot of time and effort goes into making the parts and pieces of a product. Many different departments put work into something before it goes out the door. Vendors need a way to track how popular a given feature might be to customers. This allows them to know where to allocate budgets for the development of said features.
Some things are considered essential. These core pieces are usually allocated to a team that gets the right funding no matter what. Or the features are so mature that there really isn’t much that can be done to drive additional revenue from them. When’s the Continue reading
I Can’t Drive 25G
The race to make things just a little bit faster in the networking world has heated up in recent weeks thanks to the formation of the 25Gig Ethernet Consortium. Arista Networks, along with Mellanox, Google, Microsoft, and Broadcom, has decided that 40Gig Ethernet is too expensive for most data center applications. Instead, they’re offering up an alternative in the 25Gig range.
This podcast with Greg Ferro (@EtherealMind) and Andrew Conry-Murray (@Interop_Andrew) does a great job of breaking down the technical details on the reasoning behind 25Gig Ethernet. In short, the current 10Gig connection is made of four multiplexed 2.5Gig connections. To get to 25Gig, all you need to do is over clock those connections a little. That’s not unprecedented, as 40Gig Ethernet accomplishes this by over clocking them to 10Gig, albeit with different optics. Aside from a technical merit badge, one has to ask themselves “Why?”
High Hopes
As always, money is the factor here. The 25Gig Consortium is betting that you don’t like paying a lot of money for your 40Gig optics. They want to offer an alternative that is faster than 10Gig but cheaper than the next standard step up. By giving you a cheaper option Continue reading
Security Dessert Models
I had the good fortune last week to read a great post from Maish Saidel-Keesing (@MaishSK) that discussed security models in relation to candy. It reminded me that I’ve been wanting to discuss security models in relation to desserts. And since Maish got me hungry for a Snicker’s bar, I decided to lay out my ideas.
When we look at traditional security models of the past, everything looks similar to creme brûlée. The perimeter is very crunchy, but it protects a soft interior. This is the predominant model of the world where the “bad guys” all live outside of your network. It works when you know where your threats are located. This model is still in use today where companies explicitly trust their user base.
The creme brûlée model doesn’t work when you have large numbers of guest users or BYOD-enabled users. If one of them brings in something that escapes into the network, there’s nothing to stop it from wreaking havoc everywhere. In the past, this has caused massive virus outbreaks and penetrations from things like malicious USB sticks in the parking lot being activated on “trusted” computers internally.
A Slice Of Pie
A more modern security Continue reading