Cisco emboldens its disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum. [ Learn about how server disaggregation can boost data center efficiency and learn the how Windows Server 2019 embraces hyperconverged data centers . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco emboldens disaggregation strategy

The notion of disaggregation – separating the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware –  has always been a conundrum for Cisco.  In a nutshell, why would the company risk losing all of the millions of dollars in development and the key networking features tied up in current Cisco hardware and software packages?But in the new world of all-things software in which Cisco plans to be king, the disaggregation strategy is gaining momentum.[ Check out REVIEW: VMware’s vSAN 6.6 and hear IDC’s top 10 data center predictions . | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] This week the company took things a step further in announcing a variety of disaggregation steps enterprise and service provider customers could be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here

To understand big data, convert it to sound

Humans are far better at identifying data pattern changes audibly than they are graphically in two dimensions, researchers exploring a radical concept say. They think that servers full of big data would be far more understandable if the numbers were all moved off the computer screens or hardcopies and sonified, or converted into sound.That's because when listening to music, nuances, can jump out at you — a bad note, for example. And researchers at Virginia Tech say the same thing may apply with number crunching. Data-set anomaly spotting, or comprehension overall, could be enhanced.Also read: How tech giants are putting big data to work | Sign up: Receive daily Network World news updates The team behind a project to prove this is testing the theory with a recently built 129-loudspeaker array installed in a giant immersive cube in Virginia Tech’s performance space/science lab, the school's Moss Arts Center.To read this article in full, please click here

To understand big data, convert it to sound

Humans are far better at identifying data pattern changes audibly than they are graphically in two dimensions, researchers exploring a radical concept say. They think that servers full of big data would be far more understandable if the numbers were all moved off the computer screens or hardcopies and sonified, or converted into sound.That's because when listening to music, nuances, can jump out at you — a bad note, for example. And researchers at Virginia Tech say the same thing may apply with number crunching. Data-set anomaly spotting, or comprehension overall, could be enhanced.Also read: How tech giants are putting big data to work | Sign up: Receive daily Network World news updates The team behind a project to prove this is testing the theory with a recently built 129-loudspeaker array installed in a giant immersive cube in Virginia Tech’s performance space/science lab, the school's Moss Arts Center.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Building the smart city: 8 things that matter

What is a smart city? The answer depends on whom you ask.Solutions providers will tell you it’s smart parking, smart lighting or anything to do with technology. City officials may tell you it’s about conducting city business online, such as searching records or applying for permits. City residents may tell you it’s the ease of getting around, or about crime reduction.Everyone is right. A smart city, built properly, will have different value for different stakeholders. They may not even think of their city as a “smart” city. They know it only as a place they want to live in, work in, and be a part of.Technology is top of mind in the smart city. But it is just one layer of many in the smart city ecosystem. Each layer has a different but equally important role. No one layer is more relevant than another. For example, technology “powers” the smart city, but it is data that leads to insights and new services. However, to create relevant services, cities must be able to innovate the right solutions. To get the right outcomes that matter consistently and at scale, civic leaders must establish sensible technology and data policies. Finally, Continue reading

Mounting Complexity Pushes New GPU Profiling Tools

The more things change, the more they remain the same — as do the two most critical issues for successful software execution. First, you remove the bugs, then you profile. And while debugging and profiling are not new, they are needed now more than ever, albeit in a modernized form.

The first performance analysis tools were first found on early IBM platforms in the early 1970s.  These performance profiles were based on timer interrupts that recorded “status words” set at predetermined specific intervals in an attempt to detect “hot spots” inside running code.  

Profiling is even more critical today, …

Mounting Complexity Pushes New GPU Profiling Tools was written by James Cuff at The Next Platform.

“Enhancing IoT Security” Kicks off in Ottawa

While Internet-connected devices afford utility unseen in generations past, they may also create a host of security issues, ranging from insignificant to catastrophic in potential impact. In an effort to mitigate this risk, the Internet Society partnered with Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CANARIE, and CIPPIC to host a multistakeholder meeting on the security of IoT devices. The event takes place in Ottawa, Canada on April 4, 2018.

This meeting will be the first in a year-long process to develop recommendations for a set of norms and/or policies to secure IoT in Canada. This event will serve as an opportunity to begin planning and implementing a bottom-up, organic process to remedy existing and potential security challenges in Canada’s national IoT ecosystem.

This session will focus on IoT as it relates to two specific themes: consumer protection and network resiliency. The event will begin with presentations from engaged stakeholders in order to lay the groundwork for group discussion. Participants will then work in small groups to develop consensus on key IoT issues and determine what can be done to meaningfully impact consumer protection and network resiliency. This will create the basis of discussion Continue reading

IEEE Publishes IEEE 802.3cc-2017 25 Gb/s Ethernet Standard for Enhanced Enterprise and Metro Network Applications over Fiber

25G over SMF for 10–40Km

Patches for Meltdown and Spectre aren’t that bad after all

Internal tests from a leading industry vendor have shown that fixes applied to servers running Linux or Windows Server aren’t as detrimental as initially thought, with many use cases seeing no impact at all.The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, first documented in January, seemed like a nightmare for virtualized systems, but that is overblown. There are a lot of qualifiers, starting with what you are doing and what generation processor you are using.The tests were done on servers running Xeons of the Haswell-EP (released in 2014), Broadwell-EP (released in 2016), and Skylake-EP (released in 2017). Haswell and Broadwell were the same microarchitecture, with minor tweaks. The big change there was Broadwell was a die shrink. Skylake, though, was a whole new architecture, and as it turns out, that made the difference.To read this article in full, please click here

Patches for Meltdown and Spectre aren’t that bad after all

Internal tests from a leading industry vendor have shown that fixes applied to servers running Linux or Windows Server aren’t as detrimental as initially thought, with many use cases seeing no impact at all.The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, first documented in January, seemed like a nightmare for virtualized systems, but that is overblown. There are a lot of qualifiers, starting with what you are doing and what generation processor you are using.The tests were done on servers running Xeons of the Haswell-EP (released in 2014), Broadwell-EP (released in 2016), and Skylake-EP (released in 2017). Haswell and Broadwell were the same microarchitecture, with minor tweaks. The big change there was Broadwell was a die shrink. Skylake, though, was a whole new architecture, and as it turns out, that made the difference.To read this article in full, please click here

Patches for Meltdown and Spectre aren’t that bad after all

Internal tests from a leading industry vendor have shown that fixes applied to servers running Linux or Windows Server aren’t as detrimental as initially thought, with many use cases seeing no impact at all.The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, first documented in January, seemed like a nightmare for virtualized systems, but that is overblown. There are a lot of qualifiers, starting with what you are doing and what generation processor you are using.The tests were done on servers running Xeons of the Haswell-EP (released in 2014), Broadwell-EP (released in 2016), and Skylake-EP (released in 2017). Haswell and Broadwell were the same microarchitecture, with minor tweaks. The big change there was Broadwell was a die shrink. Skylake, though, was a whole new architecture, and as it turns out, that made the difference.To read this article in full, please click here

Does the Cisco 4000 router series redefine the traditional role of routers?

Last month it was Catalyst 9000 switches, and this month its routers. Yes, my project engineering staff have had a surprising amount of inquiries regarding routers.Routers vital to enterprise networks When looking at distribution for an enterprise network, well-planned routing is the key to success. Routers can be absolutely vital for networks, as they connect a large amount of worksites within one large, umbrella-like network. At the enterprise level, they provide redundant paths, connect ISPs, and can translate data between different media.To read this article in full, please click here

Does the Cisco 4000 router series redefine the traditional role of routers?

Last month it was Catalyst 9000 switches, and this month its routers. Yes, my project engineering staff have had a surprising amount of inquiries regarding routers.Routers vital to enterprise networks When looking at distribution for an enterprise network, well-planned routing is the key to success. Routers can be absolutely vital for networks, as they connect a large amount of worksites within one large, umbrella-like network. At the enterprise level, they provide redundant paths, connect ISPs, and can translate data between different media.To read this article in full, please click here

In Modern Datacenters, The Latency Tail Wags The Network Dog

The expression, the tail wags the dog, is used when a seemingly unimportant factor or infrequent event actually dominates the situation. It turns out that in modern datacenters, this is precisely the case – with relatively rare events determining overall performance.

As the world continues to undergo a digital transformation, one of the most pressing challenges faced by cloud and web service providers is building hyperscale datacenters to handle the growing pace of interactive and real-time requests, generated by the enormous growth of users and mobile apps. With the increasing scale and demand for services, IT organizations have turned …

In Modern Datacenters, The Latency Tail Wags The Network Dog was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Pivot3 Jumps Into Hybrid Cloud Game, Moves HCI Stack to AWS

The software uses a technology Pivot3 calls Intelligent Cloud Engine that extends policy-based management and automation to the cloud.

A Solution to Compression Oracles on the Web

CC 3.0 by Jean-Jacques MILAN

This is a guest post by Blake Loring, a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London. Blake worked at Cloudflare as an intern in the summer of 2017.

Compression is often considered an essential tool when reducing the bandwidth usage of internet services. The impact that the use of such compression schemes can have on security, however, has often been overlooked. The recently detailed CRIME, BREACH, TIME and HEIST attacks on TLS have shown that if an attacker can make requests on behalf of a user then secret information can be extracted from encrypted messages using only the length of the response. Deciding whether an element of a web-page should be secret often depends on the content of the page, however there are some common elements of web-pages which should always remain secret such as Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) tokens. Such tokens are used to ensure that malicious webpages cannot forge requests from a user by enforcing that any request must contain a secret token included in a previous response.

I worked at Cloudflare last summer to investigate possible solutions to this problem. The result is a project called cf-nocompress. The Continue reading

SDN Hasn’t Faded, It’s Just Evolved

SDN Hasn’t Faded, It’s Just Evolved

REVIEW: Network test tools from Fluke, NETSCOUT and SignalTEK

It’s not good enough to run cables and just hope they work, or simply say it’s all good if they provide a working network connection to the computer or device. You should double-check by testing or qualifying the cable runs before you call the job complete.You should use a tester to check if all the cable pairs are intact and correctly wired and see if the cable can truly handle the data rates you desire. Network testers can also be a lifesaver when troubleshooting network issues or making changes to the wired network.They could for instance tell you which cable pairs you might have mixed up when terminating the cable. Or if you’re working on someone else’s network install that didn’t document or label any cable runs, you can utilize the tester to help identify where the cables are running.To read this article in full, please click here

REVIEW: Network test tools from Fluke, NETSCOUT and SignalTEK

It’s not good enough to run cables and just hope they work, or simply say it’s all good if they provide a working network connection to the computer or device. You should double-check by testing or qualifying the cable runs before you call the job complete.You should use a tester to check if all the cable pairs are intact and correctly wired and see if the cable can truly handle the data rates you desire. Network testers can also be a lifesaver when troubleshooting network issues or making changes to the wired network.They could for instance tell you which cable pairs you might have mixed up when terminating the cable. Or if you’re working on someone else’s network install that didn’t document or label any cable runs, you can utilize the tester to help identify where the cables are running.To read this article in full, please click here