Voyager and the speed of whitebox development

We are thrilled to announce that, with the Cumulus Linux 3.6.2 release, the Facebook Voyager packet-optical device is now generally available. That’s certainly an exciting development as the industry’s first packet-optical whitebox, but I actually wanted to discuss something else: how we were able to get support for the device up and running so quickly and what that means for Cumulus Linux. There’s a large number of devices that we support, which are listed on our Hardware Compatibility List. Those devices, however, are all “normal” Ethernet devices. Usually we can get those to market rapidly, but Voyager was more complicated.

First, as you may know, Facebook Voyager is a device with a Broadcom Tomahawk chip supporting 12 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as an additional 4 200 Gigabit DWDM ports supported from 2 Acacia AC400 modules (for more details on the underlying specifics, see the Voyager Tech Docs). I mention the chipset explicitly as that’s one of the most critical – and time-consuming – components to support as we port to a new device. In this case, of course, we already supported the Tomahawk, so that was an immediate “leg up” on the work.

Those Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Where service health meets system health

As agility becomes a primary competitive advantage for the modern business, I’m seeing more enterprises adopt new technologies for quicker innovation and faster time to value. Public cloud, containers, microservices and serverless computing help you increase speed of execution and increase organizational flexibility, because the ability to react quickly is now part of the customer experience. In the era of digital transformation, speed has clearly become a competitive differentiator.For the last twenty years, technology companies catering to the needs of IT operations and service management teams, have been trying to support this need for speed. Their challenge? The underlying technology, processes and customer expectations are constantly shifting. Standard IT operations management (ITOM) has been focused on system health and uptime in an increasingly dynamic environment. Meanwhile, IT service management (ITSM) approaches have been built around the process of managing tickets and remediating individual incidents. Historically, these two teams have acted separately within the core of the enterprise IT team.To read this article in full, please click here

Internet Drone and Balloon Projects Move Forward

Two innovative ideas to bring Internet access to hard-to-serve areas of the world – using drones and high-altitude balloons – seem to be progressing, even though the two companies pushing the projects aren’t offering a lot of details.

Facebook’s Aquila, using solar-powered drones as wireless Internet relays, and Google sister company X’s Project Loon, using large hot-air balloons in a similar way, both received significant attention when announced earlier in the decade.

In recent years, both projects have plugged along, even as some critics have doubted their long-term viability. While the projects have garnered less attention in recent years, Facebook launched test flights of an Aquila drone in June 2016 and May 2017.

Recent weeks have brought new updates about both initiatives, although the companies still aren’t talking much.

On June 27, Facebook announced it will stop building its own drones. While some early news reports suggested that Facebook was shutting down its drone-based Internet initiative, the company emphasized that it would instead depend on other companies to build aircraft.

“Going forward, we’ll continue to work with partners like Airbus on [high-altitude] connectivity generally, and on the other technologies needed to make this system work, like flight control computers and Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For July 27th, 2018

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

Startup opportunity? Space Garbage Collection service. 18,000+ known Near-Earth Objects. (NASA)

 

Do you like this sort of Stuff? Please lend me your support on Patreon. It would mean a great deal to me. And if you know anyone looking for a simple book that uses lots of pictures and lots of examples to explain the cloud, then please recommend my new book: Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10. They'll love you even more.

 

The Road to QUIC

The Road to QUIC

QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) is a new encrypted-by-default Internet transport protocol, that provides a number of improvements designed to accelerate HTTP traffic as well as make it more secure, with the intended goal of eventually replacing TCP and TLS on the web. In this blog post we are going to outline some of the key features of QUIC and how they benefit the web, and also some of the challenges of supporting this radical new protocol.

The Road to QUIC

There are in fact two protocols that share the same name: “Google QUIC” (“gQUIC” for short), is the original protocol that was designed by Google engineers several years ago, which, after years of experimentation, has now been adopted by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) for standardization.

“IETF QUIC” (just “QUIC” from now on) has already diverged from gQUIC quite significantly such that it can be considered a separate protocol. From the wire format of the packets, to the handshake and the mapping of HTTP, QUIC has improved the original gQUIC design thanks to open collaboration from many organizations and individuals, with the shared goal of making the Internet faster and more secure.

So, what are the improvements QUIC provides?

Built-in security (and Continue reading

How BCG Gamma is Transforming Analytics with Docker

Changing the culture and service offerings of a big consulting firm isn’t easy, but BCG has been on that path for the past five years. BCG has evolved from traditional consulting services into a digital transformation powerhouse with six divisions that deliver strategic and technical services to clients.

One of those divisions, BCG Gamma, is a global team of world-class data scientists who build data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence solutions for the firm’s clients. But building and shipping analytics, ML and AI applications to clients is challenging. Andrea Gallego, CTO of the division, is charged with creating an infrastructure that can support delivering high-quality ML and AI models at scale.

The Challenge: Shipping ML and AI Software to Clients at Scale

The big question on her mind was how BCG Gamma could not only build models, but deliver them to clients at the edge with real-time orchestration, monitoring and updates. GDPR and other regulations also meant she had to do this while ensuring integrity, consistency and lineage across data models.

Andrea and her team launched the BCG GammaX initiative, a core team of 30 engineers specializing in analytics software engineering, data engineering, UX design, distributed systems, and Continue reading

Google finally throws some weight behind on-premises services

One of the early knocks on Google’s cloud services is that it assumed a pure cloud play for every customer and had virtually nothing for supporting on-premises systems. While that might work for smaller businesses looking to shut down their data center and move to the cloud, those customers were in the minority.At this week's Google Cloud Next '18 show, Google reversed course and acknowledged the on-premises market with the announcement of the Cloud Services Platform, an integrated suite of cloud services designed for organizations with workloads that are staying on premises.To read this article in full, please click here

Google finally throws some weight behind on-premises services

One of the early knocks on Google’s cloud services is that it assumed a pure cloud play for every customer and had virtually nothing for supporting on-premises systems. While that might work for smaller businesses looking to shut down their data center and move to the cloud, those customers were in the minority.At this week's Google Cloud Next '18 show, Google reversed course and acknowledged the on-premises market with the announcement of the Cloud Services Platform, an integrated suite of cloud services designed for organizations with workloads that are staying on premises.To read this article in full, please click here

Is it time to start climbing the ladder to Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is one of the most important innovations to hit Linux in decades — and one that's making big changes in how critical services are being deployed. It’s not an operating system, an app, or a container, but a container-specific management environment — and it's making applications and services remarkably more manageable.You can think of Kubernetes as a portable cloud platform, as a container platform, or as a microservices platform that takes advantage of both the simplicity of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and the flexibility of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Regardless of how you define it, what you get by investing your time and technology in Kubernetes will be some very impressive options for:To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Liquid Spectrum. Let the Benefits Flow.

Improved visibility. Automated processes. And increased network capacity and service availability from any given WDM investment. These are the benefits of leveraging Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum™, which combines variable bit-rate coherent optics, a flexible grid reconfigurable photonic layer, and SDN control in an open architecture.Scale. Agility. Operational Simplicity. Your network can have it all. Requirements for the network are shifting, thanks to the content on networks today and changing consumption models. In this constantly evolving, on-demand world, the network still needs to scale for massive capacity growth, but it now also needs to be more agile and programmable to better respond and handle unpredictable traffic requirements associated with cloud connectivity and the proliferation of mobile devices.To read this article in full, please click here

Disruption Tolerant Networking could change the internet

Internet architecture doesn't need continuous paths between endpoints, says NASA in an announcement that may one day change the way the internet is envisioned.The U.S. government space agency says Delay or Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) — something it’s been working on for disruption-prone space internet applications — doesn’t need continuous network connectivity, unlike traditional internet.Importantly, it says the delay and fault-tolerant technology could be used down on Earth, too. The networking protocol suite concept would be particularly well suited to internet in remote locations, it says in a press release, related to demonstrations of the technology.To read this article in full, please click here

Disruption Tolerant Networking could change the internet

Internet architecture doesn't need continuous paths between endpoints, says NASA in an announcement that may one day change the way the internet is envisioned.The U.S. government space agency says Delay or Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) — something it’s been working on for disruption-prone space internet applications — doesn’t need continuous network connectivity, unlike traditional internet.Importantly, it says the delay and fault-tolerant technology could be used down on Earth, too. The networking protocol suite concept would be particularly well suited to internet in remote locations, it says in a press release, related to demonstrations of the technology.To read this article in full, please click here

Building Awareness of Digital Violence Against Barbadian Women

Research carried out primarily in North America and Europe shows that the most severe forms of online harassment are especially affecting women and girls. While anecdotal evidence suggests this is also true in Barbados, there is no available research to highlight the prevalence of online abuse against Barbadian women. Though legislation against online abuse exists in Barbados, few cases have been heard in court, and victims perceive the response of law enforcement to be inadequate.

The Internet Society Barbados Chapter, supported by Beyond the Net Funding Programme, has taken a major step towards ensuring online abuse awareness in their community through the project C.A.R.E – Combating (online) Abuse through Research and Education. The initiative, being hailed as the first of its kind in Barbados, will conduct an awareness campaign about the effects of online abuse on women and girls and create a dialog between law enforcement and victims.

“The project is managed by registered charity No! to Online Abuse and Harassment (NOAH) and all team members are members of the ISOC Barbados Chapter,” explains Ashell Forde, project manager and President of NOAH.

“There is a clear need for stronger strategies to help women Continue reading

BrandPost: When Storage Capacity Hits the Wall: A Tale of Two Organizations

Without upgrades and enhancements, nearly every company at some point reaches the natural limits of its IT infrastructure. That threshold seems to hit sooner rather than later when it comes to storage, thanks to escalating volumes of data and increasing workloads.To avoid capacity problems and ensure continued business growth, it’s critical to modernize storage infrastructure. Here’s how two different organizations reached that conclusion and the paths they took toward upgrading.A Lesson in ScaleMesa Community College (MCC) in Arizona enrolls more than 40,000 students each year. Like many organizations, its IT environment included multiple systems from multiple vendors, and the college has a lean IT staff to manage it all.To read this article in full, please click here

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