Your hardware order is ready. Do you want cables with that?

In a previous blog post, 5 reasons to buy refurbished Cisco equipment, I talked about five facts to keep in mind as you consider how to proceed with your Cisco hardware solutions.Well, my engineering group reminded me of something else to consider for any hardware solution, not just a Cisco solution.Cabling![ Read also: Getting grounded in intent-based networking ] It seems that cabling can be an afterthought. Sure, you just used a blended solution of new and pre-owned hardware, where each makes the most sense in your infrastructure and creates a unique and potentially game-changing opportunity to maximize value in your investments.To read this article in full, please click here

Your hardware order is ready. Do you want cables with that?

In a previous blog post, 5 reasons to buy refurbished Cisco equipment, I talked about five facts to keep in mind as you consider how to proceed with your Cisco hardware solutions.Well, my engineering group reminded me of something else to consider for any hardware solution, not just a Cisco solution.Cabling![ Read also: Getting grounded in intent-based networking ] It seems that cabling can be an afterthought. Sure, you just used a blended solution of new and pre-owned hardware, where each makes the most sense in your infrastructure and creates a unique and potentially game-changing opportunity to maximize value in your investments.To read this article in full, please click here

Watch live – June 6 panel on “Innovation, security, and the Internet of Things (IoT)” in Ottawa

As a side event before the 2018 G7 Summit this week in Canada, tomorrow, 6 June 2018, the Internet Society will hold a panel to not only talk about the risks and opportunities the Internet of Things (IoT) brings, but also what policy makers can do to build a connected future for everyone.

The panel, Innovation, security, and the Internet of Things, will take place in Ottawa Ontario. If you’re in Ottawa, you can join us from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 6 June, at the Alt Hotel Ottawa at 185 Slater St. If you’re somewhere else, the event will be
livestreamed.

Moderator David Akin (Global News) will facilitate a discussion between:

  • Jeff Wilbur, Director, Online Trust Alliance
  • Katie Watson, Policy Advisor, Internet Society
  • Jacques Latour, Chief Technology Officer, Canadian Internet Registration Authority
  • Mike Hoye, Engineering Community Manager, Mozilla

While the opportunities these connected devices can bring us are virtually unprecedented, the steps we must go through to protect ourselves online can feel overwhelming. At the Internet Society, we believe in a future where manufactures, software developers and service providers put people first and ensure user’s privacy and security is their top priority.

To understand Continue reading

For IoT, alternative location services are better than GPS

Traditional location positioning such as GPS isn’t going to be suitable for a Location of Things world filled with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, say experts. The centralized, anchor-like system we use now, as found in GPS, mobile network cell tower positioning services, and Wi-Fi-based location positioning, is going to be a problem. The usual suspects being bandwidth, excessive power use, and cost.The problem is IoT devices are required to communicate with positioning anchors, whether it be satellites or radio towers. That’s bandwidth-intensive; it can use a significant amount of power to cover the distances, as well as to power the multiple chips needed. The system is also conceivably susceptible to congestion as the numbers of devices increases — projections are for billions and billions of IoT things worldwide, ultimately.To read this article in full, please click here

For IoT, alternative location services are better than GPS

Traditional location positioning such as GPS isn’t going to be suitable for a Location of Things world filled with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, say experts. The centralized, anchor-like system we use now, as found in GPS, mobile network cell tower positioning services, and Wi-Fi-based location positioning, is going to be a problem. The usual suspects being bandwidth, excessive power use, and cost.The problem is IoT devices are required to communicate with positioning anchors, whether it be satellites or radio towers. That’s bandwidth-intensive; it can use a significant amount of power to cover the distances, as well as to power the multiple chips needed. The system is also conceivably susceptible to congestion as the numbers of devices increases — projections are for billions and billions of IoT things worldwide, ultimately.To read this article in full, please click here

Increased programmability brings more options to networks

Options. Everyone needs options. Whenever I travel somewhere with my wife, Christine, even if it’s for a weekend, she needs to check a bag. When I ask her why, she says, “A girl needs options,” hence the oversize luggage.While it’s been easy for someone like my wife to have options, network engineers have never really had the same luxury. Network switches were typically built with fixed functionality, so an organization would need to purchase a wide range of equipment to meet all their needs. Network professionals need greater flexibility from the network Recently, the chip manufacturers have been building more programmable, flexible products. One of the examples of this is the Cavium XPliant processor that is the silicon that powers Arista’s 7160 switch. Another example is the Barefoot Networks Tofino processor. In addition to being one of the most scenic places on the planet, Tofino is a powerful system on a chip with a fully programmable parser and pipeline. The chip supports 256x 25 Gig-E Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) at speeds of 1, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gig-E.To read this article in full, please click here

Increased programmability brings more options to networks

Options. Everyone needs options. Whenever I travel somewhere with my wife, Christine, even if it’s for a weekend, she needs to check a bag. When I ask her why, she says, “A girl needs options,” hence the oversize luggage.While it’s been easy for someone like my wife to have options, network engineers have never really had the same luxury. Network switches were typically built with fixed functionality, so an organization would need to purchase a wide range of equipment to meet all their needs. Network professionals need greater flexibility from the network Recently, the chip manufacturers have been building more programmable, flexible products. One of the examples of this is the Cavium XPliant processor that is the silicon that powers Arista’s 7160 switch. Another example is the Barefoot Networks Tofino processor. In addition to being one of the most scenic places on the planet, Tofino is a powerful system on a chip with a fully programmable parser and pipeline. The chip supports 256x 25 Gig-E Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) at speeds of 1, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gig-E.To read this article in full, please click here

Increased programmability brings more options to networks

Options. Everyone needs options. Whenever I travel somewhere with my wife, Christine, even if it’s for a weekend, she needs to check a bag. When I ask her why, she says, “A girl needs options,” hence the oversize luggage.While it’s been easy for someone like my wife to have options, network engineers have never really had the same luxury. Network switches were typically built with fixed functionality, so an organization would need to purchase a wide range of equipment to meet all their needs. Network professionals need greater flexibility from the network Recently, the chip manufacturers have been building more programmable, flexible products. One of the examples of this is the Cavium XPliant processor that is the silicon that powers Arista’s 7160 switch. Another example is the Barefoot Networks Tofino processor. In addition to being one of the most scenic places on the planet, Tofino is a powerful system on a chip with a fully programmable parser and pipeline. The chip supports 256x 25 Gig-E Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) at speeds of 1, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gig-E.To read this article in full, please click here

Exploring Kubernetes with Kubeadm, Part 1: Introduction

I recently started using kubeadm more extensively than I had in the past to serve as the primary tool by which I stand up Kubernetes clusters. As part of this process, I also discovered the kubeadm alpha phase subcommand, which exposes different sections (phases) of the process that kubeadm init follows when bootstrapping a cluster. In this blog post, I’d like to kick off a series of posts that explore how one could use the kubeadm alpha phase command to better understand the different components within Kubernetes, the relationships between components, and some of the configuration items involved.

Before I go any further, I’d like to point readers to this URL that provides an overview of kubeadm and using it to bootstrap a cluster. If you’re new to kubeadm, go read that before continuing on here.

<aside>Quick side note: it’s my understanding that at some point the intent is to move kubeadm alpha phase out of alpha, at which point the command might look more like kubeadm phase or similar (that hasn’t been fully determined yet as far as I know). If you’re reading this at some point in the future, just make note that this was written back Continue reading

BMC retools its service management offerings for AI, cloud era

Many if not most large enterprises run hybrid computing environments and are looking for management software flexible enough to run in and manage assets across private and public clouds.Against this backdrop, BMC has rebuilt its venerable IT service-management product suite to run on a range of cloud platforms while incorporating machine learning to enhance predictive-analysis capabilities.[ Now see who's developing quantum computers.] The BMC Helix Cognitive Service Management is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs on Amazon Web Services as well as BMC's own cloud. It will be available for Azure in the fourth quarter and for Google Public Cloud at the end of the year or beginning of next year, BMC said.To read this article in full, please click here

BMC retools its service management offerings for AI, cloud era

Many if not most large enterprises run hybrid computing environments and are looking for management software flexible enough to run in and manage assets across private and public clouds.Against this backdrop, BMC has rebuilt its venerable IT service-management product suite to run on a range of cloud platforms while incorporating machine learning to enhance predictive-analysis capabilities.[ Now see who's developing quantum computers.] The BMC Helix Cognitive Service Management is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs on Amazon Web Services as well as BMC's own cloud. It will be available for Azure in the fourth quarter and for Google Public Cloud at the end of the year or beginning of next year, BMC said.To read this article in full, please click here

Universal Cloud Networking with Arista 7170

There is a shift happening in the world of Artificial Intelligence requiring a new breed of servers, storage and cloud networks. Artificial intelligence applications for patterns, photos and speech recognition have driven a processor evolution from CPUs to NPUs to now, GPUs. Networking is witnessing a parallel evolution and pushing the scale of shuttling massive data between machines. It creates an ever-increasing need for control over the way networks are rebuilt. Building these networks requires both, programmable paths to drive intelligence and uncompromised performance. Doing both hasn’t been easy until now.

Universal Cloud Networking with Arista 7170

There is a shift happening in the world of Artificial Intelligence requiring a new breed of servers, storage and cloud networks. Artificial intelligence applications for patterns, photos and speech recognition have driven a processor evolution from CPUs to NPUs to now, GPUs. Networking is witnessing a parallel evolution and pushing the scale of shuttling massive data between machines. It creates an ever-increasing need for control over the way networks are rebuilt. Building these networks requires both, programmable paths to drive intelligence and uncompromised performance. Doing both hasn’t been easy until now.

Docker Enterprise Edition in Production: Stories from 9 Enterprise Organizations at DockerCon — Plus a Bonus!

One of the best things about conferences is meeting people and hearing their stories. I’ve been fortunate to work with several Docker customers this year on their DockerCon sessions. You’ll want to catch at least a few of these while you’re there next week. Make sure to add them to your schedule.

Here are the highlights from 9 amazing stories from Docker commercial customers that will be told at DockerCon, many from the world’s largest companies. There’s a bonus session, too!

Read on to learn more.

How Bosch built a “Container as a Service” platform. Till Schenk, IT Infrastructure Architect, will talk about building a centralized service based on Docker Enterprise Edition to serve a 62,000+ employee R&D organization. Hear about the architectural and operational decisions, the challenges Bosch faced, and how they’ve scaled up to 1,000 image repositories. 12:00 pm on Wednesday, June 13.

MetLife’s “ModSquad” talks about their production NoSQL DB on Docker. Jonell Taylor, a Platform Engineer on the MetLife internal innovation will explain the process they went through moving from traditional RDBMS to NoSQL on Docker Enterprise Edition. You’ll hear about the decisions they made impacting orchestration, availability, database replication, and disaster recovery. 1:50 pm on Continue reading

What happens if IoT security doesn’t get solved?

Sometimes, confirmation of the obvious can be really important. At least, that’s how I felt when I saw a new Bain & Company report, Cybersecurity Is the Key to Unlocking Demand in IoT. According to the consulting firm’s survey, 45 percent of Internet of Things (IoT) buyers say “concerns about security remain a significant barrier and are hindering the adoption of IoT devices.” Worries over IoT security are hardly news, of course. I’ve been writing about them here on Network World for a while, and a quick internet search for IoT security rains down more than a million hits.To read this article in full, please click here

What happens if IoT security doesn’t get solved?

Sometimes, confirmation of the obvious can be really important. At least, that’s how I felt when I saw a new Bain & Company report, Cybersecurity Is the Key to Unlocking Demand in IoT. According to the consulting firm’s survey, 45 percent of Internet of Things (IoT) buyers say “concerns about security remain a significant barrier and are hindering the adoption of IoT devices.” Worries over IoT security are hardly news, of course. I’ve been writing about them here on Network World for a while, and a quick internet search for IoT security rains down more than a million hits.To read this article in full, please click here