Thoughts before CLEUR 2019

In just 3 days time I will be leaving for Cisco Live 2019 in Barcelona. Im thinking about what sort of event it will be and what to expect in term of announcements.

Especially one thought keeps reappearing and thats the thought of the transformation of Cisco. It is no longer a company with a future in just selling hardware. It itself has been disrupted by the emergence of “everything software” and merchant silicon.

The issues and consequences of merchant silicon has been discussed in many places, so I won’t mention them in this post, other than saying it has in some way forced Cisco’s hands in going down the route of being a software and services company.

Especially the software component will be huge this year. If you need proof of this, just look at the very large following as well as events from the Cisco DevNet community. But is this transformation smooth sailing from here? — I think not.

Traditionally Cisco’s reputation in the industry when it comes to software has been very flaky, to say the least. Something a lot of engineers hope will change in the coming years.

That being said, I think a lot of Continue reading

Introducing a new software platform that offers improved Chapter management functionality and much more

On 31 January, 2019, we will be launching our new association management software (AMS) that will offer many new capabilities to Internet Society members and Chapters.

During the roll-out of the new platform, the current AMS will be offline for several days (details below).

Internet Society members will be familiar with our current AMS if you have ever clicked on the “Member Login” link in the upper right corner of this web page. You also used the AMS if you logged into our Connect member forums or took an online course using our Inforum system. Chapter leaders have become very familiar with our AMS over the years, as it is the way they have interacted with their members and performed administrative functions for the Chapter.

Due to some functional limitations with the current AMS, we are replacing the system with a new AMS that will provide:

  • A more modern system with enhanced functionality and user interface
  • Core chapter management functionality to meet long-standing requirements/requests of our chapters
  • Improved global/regional performance, particularly in low-bandwidth environments, through the use of a content delivery network (CDN)
  • Events management capabilities
  • Complete server and software management by the vendor – consistent and timely updates/upgrades Continue reading

Do frog croaks hold the key to creating the perfect IoT network?

Internet of Things (IoT) research firm Berg Insight recently released figures indicating the installed base of wireless IoT devices in industrial automation reached 21.3 million in 2018. That number could be 50.3 million connections by 2023, the company says. It’s a lot of new industrial wireless nodes coming, and potentially a lot of data packet collisions if the new networks aren’t thought out for handling a snowballing scale.Copying frogs is the answer, say researchers at Osaka University in Japan. They say they’ve discovered that the calling patterns of male Japanese tree frogs don’t overlap, and thus replicate how one would ideally like to see a network function — no packets crashing. The leaping amphibians collectively orchestrate their croaking and silences.To read this article in full, please click here

Do frog croaks hold the key to creating the perfect IoT network?

Internet of Things (IoT) research firm Berg Insight recently released figures indicating the installed base of wireless IoT devices in industrial automation reached 21.3 million in 2018. That number could be 50.3 million connections by 2023, the company says. It’s a lot of new industrial wireless nodes coming, and potentially a lot of data packet collisions if the new networks aren’t thought out for handling a snowballing scale.Copying frogs is the answer, say researchers at Osaka University in Japan. They say they’ve discovered that the calling patterns of male Japanese tree frogs don’t overlap, and thus replicate how one would ideally like to see a network function — no packets crashing. The leaping amphibians collectively orchestrate their croaking and silences.To read this article in full, please click here

Wi-Fi 6 Is A Stupid Branding Idea

You’ve probably seen recently that the Wi-Fi Alliance has decided the rebrand the forthcoming 802.11ax standard as “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6”, henceforth referred to as “Wi-Fi 6”. This branding decision happened late in 2018 and seems to be picking up steam in 2019 as 802.11ax comes closer to ratification later this year. With manufacturers shipping 11ax access points already and the consumer market poised to explode with the adoption of a new standard, I think it’s time to point out to the Wi-Fi Alliance that this is a dumb branding idea.

My Generation

On the surface, the branding decision looks like it makes sense. The Wi-Fi alliance wants to make sure that consumers aren’t confused about which wireless standard they are using. 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax are all usable and valid infrastructure that could be in use at any one time, as 11n is 2.4GHz, 11ac is 5GHz, and 11ax encompasses both. According to the alliance, there will be a number displayed on the badge of the connection to denote which generation of wireless the client is using.

Except, it won’t be that simple. Users don’t care about speeds. They care about having the biggest Continue reading

Overview of Network Automation Mechanisms

I know many networking engineers who went into networking because they didn’t want to write code the rest of their lives. I also know a few awesome engineers who decided to keep coding while designing networks.

Andrea Dainese (author of UNetLab – the tool you might know as EVE-NG) is one of the latter and practiced network automation for years, dealing with all sorts of crappy device configuration and monitoring mechanisms, from screen- and web scraping to broken REST APIs.

He decided to write a series of articles describing individual mechanisms, starting with an overview and zero-touch provisioning.

Continue reading

How to monitor activity on your Linux server

Linux systems provide a number of commands that make it easy to report on system activity. In this post, we're going to look at several commands that are especially helpful.The watch command The watch command is one that makes it easy to repeatedly examine a variety of data on your system — user activities, running processes, logins, memory usage, etc. All the command really does is run the command that you specify repeatedly, each time overwriting the previously displayed output, but this lends itself to a very convenient way of monitoring what's happening on your system. [ Two-Minute Linux Tips: Learn how to master a host of Linux commands in these 2-minute video tutorials ] To start with a very basic and not particularly useful command, you could run watch -n 5 date and see a display with the current date and time that updates every 5 seconds. As you likely have guessed, the -n 5 option specifies the number of seconds to wait between each run of the command. The default is 2 seconds. The command will run and update a display like this until you stop it with a ^c.To read this article in full, please Continue reading

How to monitor activity on your Linux server

Linux systems provide a number of commands that make it easy to report on system activity. In this post, we're going to look at several commands that are especially helpful.The watch command The watch command is one that makes it easy to repeatedly examine a variety of data on your system — user activities, running processes, logins, memory usage, etc. All the command really does is run the command that you specify repeatedly, each time overwriting the previously displayed output, but this lends itself to a very convenient way of monitoring what's happening on your system. [ Two-Minute Linux Tips: Learn how to master a host of Linux commands in these 2-minute video tutorials ] To start with a very basic and not particularly useful command, you could run watch -n 5 date and see a display with the current date and time that updates every 5 seconds. As you likely have guessed, the -n 5 option specifies the number of seconds to wait between each run of the command. The default is 2 seconds. The command will run and update a display like this until you stop it with a ^c.To read this article in full, please Continue reading

How to monitor activity on your Linux server

Linux systems provide a number of commands that make it easy to report on system activity. In this post, we're going to look at several commands that are especially helpful.The watch command The watch command is one that makes it easy to repeatedly examine a variety of data on your system — user activities, running processes, logins, memory usage, etc. All the command really does is run the command that you specify repeatedly, each time overwriting the previously displayed output, but this lends itself to a very convenient way of monitoring what's happening on your system. [ Two-Minute Linux Tips: Learn how to master a host of Linux commands in these 2-minute video tutorials ] To start with a very basic and not particularly useful command, you could run watch -n 5 date and see a display with the current date and time that updates every 5 seconds. As you likely have guessed, the -n 5 option specifies the number of seconds to wait between each run of the command. The default is 2 seconds. The command will run and update a display like this until you stop it with a ^c.To read this article in full, please Continue reading

Time to stock up on memory; prices to fall 20% this quarter

Contract prices for server DRAM are expected to fall by more than 20 percent this quarter over the same period in 2018, even more than the earlier forecast of 15 percent, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce.The demand outlook remains weak due to high inventory levels, seasonal buying patterns, a tapering in demand, and uncertainties over the U.S-China trade war and the possibility of tariffs.Mark Liu, senior analyst at DRAMeXchange, said the main reason for price decline is because DRAM makers are having difficulty reducing inventory. The DRAM suppliers’ fulfillment rate went from 90 percent last quarter to 120 percent in this quarter, which means there is an oversupply.To read this article in full, please click here

Time to stock up on memory; prices to fall 20% this quarter

Contract prices for server DRAM are expected to fall by more than 20 percent this quarter over the same period in 2018, even more than the earlier forecast of 15 percent, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce.The demand outlook remains weak due to high inventory levels, seasonal buying patterns, a tapering in demand, and uncertainties over the U.S-China trade war and the possibility of tariffs.Mark Liu, senior analyst at DRAMeXchange, said the main reason for price decline is because DRAM makers are having difficulty reducing inventory. The DRAM suppliers’ fulfillment rate went from 90 percent last quarter to 120 percent in this quarter, which means there is an oversupply.To read this article in full, please click here

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