G7 Leaders, the World is looking at you to make the right decisions

As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gets ready to host the G7 Summit this week, renewed tensions around trade remind us how vulnerable the global economy is, and how working together is more important than ever to solve these complex issues.

And today, the world is looking to G7 leaders to make the right decisions.

The connected future is here. While the Internet has yet to reach its full potential (half of the world’s population remains offline), there’s little doubt that it’s already changing the landscape of trade, jobs, and the digital economy. According to data from McKinsey, the Internet accounts on average for 3.4 % GDP across the large economies that make up 70 % of global GDP. The global network offers a unique space where data, goods and services can flow and fuel the next wave of global growth, where anyone can take part and benefit from new economic opportunities.

One of the values of this connected world is our ability to interconnect — the way we live our lives, the way we socialize, and we interact with the world. Everything from clothes to toys and toothbrushes are coming online as well. The International Data Continue reading

Reaction: The Power of Open APIs

Disaggregation, in the form of splitting network hardware from network software, is often touted as a way to save money (as if network engineering were primarily about saving money, rather than adding value—but this is a different soap box). The primary connections between disaggregation and saving money are the ability to deploy white boxes, and the ability to centralize the control plane to simplify the network (think software defined networks here—again, whether or not both of these are true as advertised is a different discussion).

But drivers that focus on cost miss more than half the picture. A better way to drive the value of disaggregation, and the larger value of networks within the larger network technology sphere, is through increased value. What drives value in network engineering? It’s often simplest to return to Tannenbaum’s example of the station wagon full of VHS backup tapes. To bring the example into more modern terms, it is difficult to beat the bandwidth of an overnight box full of USB thumb drives in terms of pure bandwidth.

In this view, networks can primarily be seen as a sop to human impatience. They are a way to get things done more quickly. In the Continue reading

NSX Cloud: A New and Improved Model for Multi-cloud Networking and Security

Remember the headlines years ago, asking what would win: public cloud or private cloud? Or hybrid cloud? And everyone had different definitions for each? Of course, as it often is with technology trends, our “or” questions have “and” answers. Let’s imagine current day, where you might see one group running an application on-premises with absolutely zero plans for it to go anywhere. In a far-away land, several desks or cubes away, some savvy developers are building a new innovation – it could be a new service type, a new app, a new feature on a website – directly in AWS. A few desks further, and someone indeed may believe that AWS app belongs back on premises. Finally, in the same organization, an IT group is looking at how Microsoft Azure is offering a compelling alternative to hosting an app they’re just not interested in maintaining anymore.

This is just one example of a potential multi-cloud scenario. Each organization’s specific needs are different, yet this array of parallel cloud uses is not a foreign one to many organizations. In fact, in this year’s “State of the Cloud” report, RightScale found that organizations use five clouds on average.

 

 

At Continue reading

Introducing DNS Resolver for Tor

Introducing DNS Resolver for Tor

Introducing DNS Resolver for Tor

In case you haven’t heard yet, Cloudflare launched a privacy-first DNS resolver service on April 1st. It was no joke! The service, which was our first consumer-focused service, supports emerging DNS standards such as DNS over HTTPS:443 and TLS:853 in addition to traditional protocols over UDP:53 and TCP:53, all in one easy to remember address: 1.1.1.1.

As it was mentioned in the original blog post, our policy is to never, ever write client IP addresses to disk and wipe all logs within 24 hours. Still, the exceptionally privacy-conscious folks might not want to reveal their IP address to the resolver at all, and we respect that. This is why we are launching a Tor hidden service for our resolver at dns4torpnlfs2ifuz2s2yf3fc7rdmsbhm6rw75euj35pac6ap25zgqad.onion and accessible via tor.cloudflare-dns.com.

Introducing DNS Resolver for Tor

NOTE: the hidden resolver is still an experimental service and should not be used in production or for other critical uses until it is more tested.

Crash Course on Tor

What is Tor?

Imagine an alternative Internet where, in order to connect to www.cloudflare.com, instead of delegating the task of finding a path to our servers to your internet provider, you had to go through the following Continue reading

The Internet of Food is on the table

The food sector is one of the few large remaining sectors that have not been radically transformed by new technologies yet. Up to now, the Internet in particular was not involved as much as other sectors. However, in a not-too-distant future, the everyday question “what’s for dinner?” will be answered by algorithms managed by the next generation of food companies. When these algorithms are governing the food industry, they will also be governing people as well as their health and well-being.

As food is online, we will start realizing how important network design has become for our existence. The question “what’s for dinner?” will be replaced by “who decides what we eat?”. The Internet Society members, Johan Jörgensen, Michael Daun and Patrik Fältström, assure that this is the most profound question that the tech revolution has asked so far. That is the reason why they created a Special Interest Group on Internet of Food to focus on general discussions around the future infrastructure and standards for the digital world of food.

The project leader Johan Jörgensen explains: “The initial work in the SIG has been about discussing which standards already exist in the food Continue reading

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

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

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