BrandPost: Think chip shots, not moon shots, for SD-WANs

Rarely do I have a conversation about networking when the topic of software-defined WANs (SD-WANs) does not come up. It’s far and away the thing that network professionals care most about, even ahead of data center SDNs.In a data center, enterprises can steer people out of problems as there’s always an abundance of experienced engineers locally available to tackle any issue big or small. That luxury does not exist with the WAN because branch offices can be scattered across the globe and often, the best one can hope for in terms of a local resource is a branch administrator or someone who can check lights or confirm things are plugged in and powered up. Also, for many geographically distributed organizations, the WAN is their business – so having an agile, dynamic WAN that enables applications to perform better is a top priority.To read this article in full, please click here

The Future of Programming GPU Supercomputers

There are few people as visible in high performance computing programming circles as Michael Wolfe—and fewer still with level of experience. With 20 years working on PGI compilers and another 20 years before that working on languages and HPC compilers in industry, when he talks about the past, present and future of programming supercomputers, it is worthwhile to listen.

In his early days at PGI (formerly known as The Portland Group) Wolfe focused on building out the company’s suite of Fortran, C, and C++ compilers for HPC, a role that changed after Nvidia Tesla GPUs came onto the scene and …

The Future of Programming GPU Supercomputers was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Casting Call: Angling for Good Tech and Good Conversation – Coming to YouTube SOON!

The idea started forming in my head 3 years ago at CiscoLive Europe 2018 in Barcelona.  I was asked to be a roving reporter for the event.  I had never done anything like that before…. so to say I was... Read More ›

The post Casting Call: Angling for Good Tech and Good Conversation – Coming to YouTube SOON! appeared first on Networking with FISH.

BrandPost: Mobile coverage: How SD-WAN improves performance

More than 100,000 attendees from around the world recently descended on Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona. They were able to witness many new and exciting communications technologies, including IoT, 5G, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning and SD-WAN.MWC also provided an opportunity to showcase how service providers are expanding their existing services footprint with tiered managed SD-WAN services. By leveraging existing Long Term Evolution (LTE) infrastructures, service providers are now offering new mobility-based 4G LTE managed SD-WAN services. In fact, Silver Peak and TPx Communications announced a new strategic agreement at MWC that underscores how TPx plans to expand their managed SD-WAN services into global markets with 4G LTE as one of the key underlying transport network choices for their global customers.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: 3 Security Features to Look for in SD-WAN Solutions

The increasing adoption of SaaS and IaaS applications and infrastructure has been a catalyst for the rapid adoption of SD-WAN architectures. Directly connecting users to SaaS/IaaS instances from branch offices using lower cost internet services to augment (or even replace) MPLS provides the highest performance and user experience.But, since all web traffic is not created equal, active use of internet connections demands a new approach to security.At the same time, it’s simply not tenable to deploy an expensive, next-generation firewall at every branch. Therefore, a more intelligent, application-driven security model is enabled by more advanced SD-WAN solutions, such as Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect. These solutions place just the right amount of inspection at the branch and enable easy, cost-effective service chaining to more advanced – and more expensive – security services deployed in the cloud or in the enterprise data center.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco continues its CSR efforts, invests $50M in Destination: Home

Cisco is well known for many things. It’s the world’s largest networking vendor, it has typically been the bell weather for IT spending, as it’s often predicted upticks or downticks in spending before other vendors, and its ability to catch market transitions has been remarkable, which is why it has a market leading position in so many technology areas adjacent to the network.I’ve always felt that one of the more under-appreciated attributes of Cisco is the work its corporate social responsibility (CSR) group does in trying to solve some of the globe’s biggest problems. Cisco has been very active at the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland, where world leaders, celebrities, and business leaders gather to discuss issues such as ending hunger and creating greater equality.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco continues its CSR efforts, invests $50M in Destination: Home

Cisco is well known for many things. It’s the world’s largest networking vendor, it has typically been the bell weather for IT spending, as it’s often predicted upticks or downticks in spending before other vendors, and its ability to catch market transitions has been remarkable, which is why it has a market leading position in so many technology areas adjacent to the network.I’ve always felt that one of the more under-appreciated attributes of Cisco is the work its corporate social responsibility (CSR) group does in trying to solve some of the globe’s biggest problems. Cisco has been very active at the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland, where world leaders, celebrities, and business leaders gather to discuss issues such as ending hunger and creating greater equality.To read this article in full, please click here

Worth Reading: Magical thinking on Internet security

Most of us expect Internet security spending to increase from $70B to $140B by the end of this decade. But even at $70B, our spending is in the same order of magnitude as our losses. —Paul Vixie @Far Sight Security

Data Center Network Equipment Revenue Hit $13.7B in 2017

Bare metal switch revenue was up 60 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2017. And it’s projected to reach $3.6 billion in 2022, with cloud deployments as the primary driver.

ONF Operator Members are Tired of Vendor Inertia

Step up or get out of the way, say the operator board members of ONF, including AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Group, Telefonica, and Turk Telekom.

Video Series: Modernizing Java Apps for Developers Part 3

Moving a monolithic application to a modern cloud architecture can be difficult and often result in a greenfield development effort. However, it is possible to move towards a cloud architecture using Docker Enterprise Edition with no code changes and gain choice , security and operational agility in the process.

Part 3 of the series begins the modernization process. I’ll take one aspect of the current application and break it out into a microservice. As written, the application writes to the database directly, but direct writes to the database can easily overwhelm the application by a large number of requests.

One solution is to implement a messaging queue. As in the part 2, I’ll follow several guidelines:

1. Leave existing code in place.
2. Design the new code as a separate and reusable application
3. Deploy the microservice locally using Docker Enterise Edition
4. Test the code

In this part of the modernization process, I add a message queue comprised of a REST interface that writes to a Redis database. The user data is held in Redis until it’s requested by a worker service that does the write to the database. The message queue uses Spring Boot to implement both the REST interface and the Redis database functions. Continue reading

Intent-Based Management Will Revolutionize the Storage Industry

Looking into the world of manufacturing and how its modernizing can help to understand the intricacies of intent-based approaches and how they can be applied to storage.

IDG Contributor Network: Are client-troubleshooting WiFi sensors really necessary?

Troubleshooting WiFi problems has been the bane of the network engineer’s existence for nearly a decade. So often these problems go undiagnosed that clients have even since stopped reporting them. Bad WiFi chalked up as just part of everyday life.Yet the role enterprise WLAN plays has literally become a critical part of an ever-growing ecosystem of both end user and IoT devices. Add to that the technology advancements in 802.11 and the task of maintaining a reliable WiFi network has become nearly out of reach of the average WLAN engineer. To solve this conundrum WLAN vendors, have a long history of attempting to solve the problem with hardware sensors and detailed active site surveys.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are client-troubleshooting WiFi sensors really necessary?

Troubleshooting WiFi problems has been the bane of the network engineer’s existence for nearly a decade. So often these problems go undiagnosed that clients have even since stopped reporting them. Bad WiFi chalked up as just part of everyday life.Yet the role enterprise WLAN plays has literally become a critical part of an ever-growing ecosystem of both end user and IoT devices. Add to that the technology advancements in 802.11 and the task of maintaining a reliable WiFi network has become nearly out of reach of the average WLAN engineer. To solve this conundrum WLAN vendors, have a long history of attempting to solve the problem with hardware sensors and detailed active site surveys.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are client-troubleshooting WiFi sensors from Satan?

Troubleshooting WiFi problems has been the bane of the network engineer’s existence for nearly a decade. So often these problems go undiagnosed that clients have even since stopped reporting them. Bad WiFi chalked up as just part of everyday life.Yet the role enterprise WLAN plays has literally become a critical part of an ever-growing ecosystem of both end user and IoT devices. Add to that the technology advancements in 802.11 and the task of maintaining a reliable WiFi network has become nearly out of reach of the average WLAN engineer. To solve this conundrum WLAN vendors, have a long history of attempting to solve the problem with hardware sensors and detailed active site surveys.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Are client-troubleshooting WiFi sensors from Satan?

Troubleshooting WiFi problems has been the bane of the network engineer’s existence for nearly a decade. So often these problems go undiagnosed that clients have even since stopped reporting them. Bad WiFi chalked up as just part of everyday life.Yet the role enterprise WLAN plays has literally become a critical part of an ever-growing ecosystem of both end user and IoT devices. Add to that the technology advancements in 802.11 and the task of maintaining a reliable WiFi network has become nearly out of reach of the average WLAN engineer. To solve this conundrum WLAN vendors, have a long history of attempting to solve the problem with hardware sensors and detailed active site surveys.To read this article in full, please click here

Reaction: The importance of diversity of sources

If you are like the rest of the world in the way you consume news, you are probably reading this because you followed a link in social media. If this is true, I have a request: set up an RSS reader, and start following technical and social content through feeds rather than exclusively through social networks. Why?

On Wednesday, Digg announced that it will be shutting down Digg Reader on March 26. The RSS reader, for me and likely many others, was a godsend after the 2013 shuttering of Google Reader. The rest of Digg is safe, rest assured, and the site gave no reason for discontinuing Digg Reader, but it’s likely as simple as “that’s not how people consume the internet anymore.”

Don’t get me wrong—I believe social media networks are important. Social media networks are a great place to keep up with people and products, with larger movements discovered by neural networks and put on your RADAR through a news feed.

But social media networks should not be the only place you learn about network engineering—or anything else of importance in your life. It is a bit like when I used to have a collection of Continue reading

AT&T Plans 60,000 dNOS-Powered White Boxes to Support 5G

The white box routers are part of a “radical realignment” of AT&T's network architecture and means the carrier will no longer rely on proprietary silicon and feature roadmaps from traditional vendors.

IDG Contributor Network: Filter this

Few of us think about filters until we take our car in for its 50,000-mile service. Looking at the service invoice, there’s an air filter, oil filter, fuel filter, cabin air filter, transmission filter…Sheesh, how many filters does this thing have?!We may also think about them at family dinners. All of us have at least one relative who could use a filter. I’m looking at you, Aunt Sondra.But most of the time, filters are out of sight, out of mind. Most people are gobsmacked when they discover we carry a dozen or more around in our pockets – and they’re not for pocket lint, Snapchat or Instagram.The basics of RF filters Filters, like antennas, are an increasingly important part of the networking mix.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Filter this

Few of us think about filters until we take our car in for its 50,000-mile service. Looking at the service invoice, there’s an air filter, oil filter, fuel filter, cabin air filter, transmission filter…Sheesh, how many filters does this thing have?!We may also think about them at family dinners. All of us have at least one relative who could use a filter. I’m looking at you, Aunt Sondra.But most of the time, filters are out of sight, out of mind. Most people are gobsmacked when they discover we carry a dozen or more around in our pockets – and they’re not for pocket lint, Snapchat or Instagram.The basics of RF filters Filters, like antennas, are an increasingly important part of the networking mix.To read this article in full, please click here