Updates To The CCIE/CCDE Evolving Technologies

Cisco just rolled out the Evolving Technologies v1.1 update, which will affect anyone taking their CCIE certification exams on, or after, August 30, 2018. Fortunately, the v1.1 updates are fairly minor. The CCIE/CCDE Evolving Technologies section still includes three overall categories; Cloud, Network Programmability and Internet of things, and still makes up 10% of all CCIE/CCDE written exams. However, changes can be found in the specific topics tested in each of the evolving technologies categories.

Cloud – v1.1

Compare and contrast public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud design considerations

  • Infrastructure, platform, and software as a service (XaaS)
  • Performance, scalability, and high availability
  • Security implications, compliance, and policy
  • Workload migration

Describe cloud infrastructure and operations

  • Compute virtualization (containers and virtual machines)
  • Connectivity (virtual switches, SD-WAN and SD-Access)
  • Virtualization functions (NFVi, VNF, and L4/L1)
  • Automation and orchestration tools (cloud center, DNA-center, and Kubernetes)

Network Programmability (SDN) – v1.1

Describe architectural and operational Considerations for a programmable network

  • Data models and structures (YANG, JSON and XML)
  • Device programmability (gRPC, NETCONF and RESTCONF)
  • Controller based network design (policy driven configuration and northbound/ southbound APIs)
  • Configuration management tools (agent and agent-less) and version control systems (Git and SVN)

Internet of Things (IOT) Continue reading

Indigenous Communities: “Stuck…Between Technology and Tradition”

In November 2017, the Internet Society hosted the inaugural Indigenous Connectivity Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event brought together community network operators, Internet service providers, community members, researchers, policy makers, and Indigenous leadership to work together to bridge the connectivity gap in indigenous communities in North America. One of the participants shared her story.

Christel White, geographic information system (GIS) specialist for the Pueblo of Cochiti, is no stranger to intertribal dynamics. White is an enrolled member of the Onondaga people and grew up on the Seneca Nation reservation in New York State. In her current role, she ponders how the specific culture and needs of the people of Cochiti impacts the role of connectivity. “I want to bring in GIS online, but we don’t want cultural sites out in circulation,” explains White. “Do we want new land on there?”

The lack of Internet speed in tribal offices means White currently works from home, but says that it impacts her ability to interact with the public. If someone comes into the office with a question, White is not always physically there, but she can’t otherwise complete her work without a better connection.  “Indigenous communities are often stuck on Continue reading

IoT gets smarter but still needs backend analytics

One way of looking at IoT deployments is this – a large array of not-particularly-sophisticated endpoints, mindlessly sending individual data points like temperature and pressure levels to either an edge device somewhere on a factory floor, or all the way out to a cloud back-end or data center.And that’s largely correct, in many cases, but it’s increasingly not the whole story – IoT endpoints are getting closer and closer to the ability to do their own analysis, leading to simpler architectures and more responsive systems. It’s not the right fit for every use case, but there are types of IoT implementation that are already putting the responsibility for the customizing their own metrics on the devices themselves, and more that could be a fit for such an architecture.To read this article in full, please click here

VMware has edge, AI, blockchain ambitions

Fully baked products weren’t the only technologies on display at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas this week; VMware previewed three in-the-works projects related to edge computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise blockchain.The first is Project Dimension, which aims to deliver the functionality of VMware’s cloud offerings to the edge as a managed service. Project Dimension will combine the elements of VMware Cloud Foundation – including software-defined services for compute, storage, network and security, along with cloud management capabilities – in a hyperconverged form factor that’s operated by VMware. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ] Just as VMware Cloud on AWS manages a customer’s infrastructure in the Amazon cloud, Project Dimension will manage a customer’s on-premises data-center and edge locations, such as branch offices and warehouse sites.To read this article in full, please click here

VMware has edge, AI, blockchain ambitions

Fully baked products weren’t the only technologies on display at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas this week; VMware previewed three in-the-works projects related to edge computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise blockchain.The first is Project Dimension, which aims to deliver the functionality of VMware’s cloud offerings to the edge as a managed service. Project Dimension will combine the elements of VMware Cloud Foundation – including software-defined services for compute, storage, network and security, along with cloud management capabilities – in a hyperconverged form factor that’s operated by VMware. [ Read also: How to plan a software-defined data-center network ] Just as VMware Cloud on AWS manages a customer’s infrastructure in the Amazon cloud, Project Dimension will manage a customer’s on-premises data-center and edge locations, such as branch offices and warehouse sites.To read this article in full, please click here

Intel’s Exascale Dataflow Engine Drops X86 And Von Neuman

With Moore’s Law running out of steam, the chip design wizards at Intel are going off the board to tackle the exascale challenge, and have dreamed up a new architecture that could in one fell swoop kill off the general purpose processor as a concept and the X86 instruction set as the foundation of modern computing.

Intel’s Exascale Dataflow Engine Drops X86 And Von Neuman was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at .

Chip shrinking hits a wall: what it means for you

The semiconductor world is buzzing over the news that custom semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, the foundry born when AMD divested itself of its fabrication facilities, announced the sudden decision to drop its 7nm FinFET development program and restructure its R&D teams around “enhanced portfolio initiatives.”For now, GlobalFoundries will stick to 12nm and 14nm manufacturing. All told, approximately 5 percent (of roughly 18,000 employees) will lose their jobs. But it also sets back AMD, a GlobalFoundries customer, in its bid to get ahead of Intel, which has struggled for two years to get to 10nm and won’t get there until 2020.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] “The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law,” said Thomas Caulfield, who was named CEO of GlobalFoundries last March, in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here

Chip shrinking hits a wall: what it means for you

The semiconductor world is buzzing over the news that custom semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, the foundry born when AMD divested itself of its fabrication facilities, announced the sudden decision to drop its 7nm FinFET development program and restructure its R&D teams around “enhanced portfolio initiatives.”For now, GlobalFoundries will stick to 12nm and 14nm manufacturing. All told, approximately 5 percent (of roughly 18,000 employees) will lose their jobs. But it also sets back AMD, a GlobalFoundries customer, in its bid to get ahead of Intel, which has struggled for two years to get to 10nm and won’t get there until 2020.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] “The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law,” said Thomas Caulfield, who was named CEO of GlobalFoundries last March, in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here

Chip shrinking hits a wall — what it means for you

The semiconductor world is buzzing over the news that custom semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, the foundry born when AMD divested itself of its fabrication facilities, announced the sudden decision to drop its 7nm FinFET development program and restructure its R&D teams around “enhanced portfolio initiatives.”For now, GlobalFoundries will stick to 12nm and 14nm manufacturing. All told, approximately 5 percent (of roughly 18,000 employees) will lose their jobs. But it also sets back AMD, a GlobalFoundries customer, in its bid to get ahead of Intel, which has struggled for two years to get to 10nm and won’t get there until 2020.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] “The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law,” said Thomas Caulfield, who was named CEO of GlobalFoundries last March, in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here

Chip shrinking hits a wall — what it means for you

The semiconductor world is buzzing over the news that custom semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, the foundry born when AMD divested itself of its fabrication facilities, announced the sudden decision to drop its 7nm FinFET development program and restructure its R&D teams around “enhanced portfolio initiatives.”For now, GlobalFoundries will stick to 12 and 14nm manufacturing. All told, approximately 5 percent (of roughly 18,000 employees) will lose their jobs. But it also sets back AMD, a GlobalFoundries customer, in its bid to get ahead of Intel, which has struggled for two years to get to 10nm and won’t get there until 2020.“The vast majority of today’s fabless customers are looking to get more value out of each technology generation to leverage the substantial investments required to design into each technology node. Essentially, these nodes are transitioning to design platforms serving multiple waves of applications, giving each node greater longevity. This industry dynamic has resulted in fewer fabless clients designing into the outer limits of Moore’s Law,” said Thomas Caulfield, who was named CEO of GlobalFoundries last March, in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here