IDG Contributor Network: Mean time to innocence – using AI to uncover the truth behind perceived WiFi issues

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is a common term in IT that represents the average time required to repair a failed component or device. In networking, MTTR is often longer than desired because there are many interdependencies, whereby an issue in one part of the network may cause a problem much farther downstream. Furthermore, a configuration change might appear to create a new issue, when in fact it just exposed something that was there all along but hidden. It takes quite a bit of forensics to get to the root cause of a network problem. In the meantime (pun intended), there is plenty of blame to go around. The Wi-Fi network seems to be at the top of the list when the accusations fly – more so than any other section of the network. Why is that?To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mean time to innocence – using AI to uncover the truth behind perceived WiFi issues

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is a common term in IT that represents the average time required to repair a failed component or device. In networking, MTTR is often longer than desired because there are many interdependencies, whereby an issue in one part of the network may cause a problem much farther downstream. Furthermore, a configuration change might appear to create a new issue, when in fact it just exposed something that was there all along but hidden. It takes quite a bit of forensics to get to the root cause of a network problem. In the meantime (pun intended), there is plenty of blame to go around. The Wi-Fi network seems to be at the top of the list when the accusations fly – more so than any other section of the network. Why is that?To read this article in full, please click here

Navigating The Revenue Streams And Profit Pools Of AWS

It will not happen for a long time, if ever, but we surely do wish that Amazon Web Services, the public cloud division of the online retailing giant, was a separate company. Because if AWS was a separate company, and it was a public company at that, it would have finer grained financial results that might give us some insight into exactly what more than 1 million customers are actually renting on the AWS cloud.

As it is, all that the Amazon parent tells Wall Street about its AWS offspring is the revenue stream and operating profit levels for each

Navigating The Revenue Streams And Profit Pools Of AWS was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

There has been much recent talk about the near future of code writing itself with the help of trained neural networks but outside of some limited use cases, that reality is still quite some time away—at least for ordinary development efforts.

Although auto-code generation is not a new concept, it has been getting fresh attention due to better capabilities and ease of use in neural network frameworks. But just as in other areas where AI is touted as being the near-term automation savior, the hype does not match the technological complexity need to make it reality. Well, at least not

AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Machine Learning and Network Traffic Management

A while ago Russ White (answering a reader question) mentioned some areas where we might find machine learning useful in networking:

If we are talking about the overlay, or traffic engineering, or even quality of service, I think we will see a rising trend towards using machine learning in network environments to help solve those problems. I am not convinced machine learning can solve these problems, in the sense of leaving humans out of the loop, but humans could set the parameters up, let the neural network learn the flows, and then let the machine adjust things over time. I tend to think this kind of work will be pretty narrow for a long time to come.

Guess what: as fancy as it sounds, we don’t need machine learning to solve those problems.

Read more ...

Intentional Infrastructure

I gave a presentation at the recent Network Field Day 17 (on my 3rd day working for Juniper). My main goal for this presentation was just to get people excited about building stuff. We tend to focus on vendor-provided solutions in this industry, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, but it’s also good to stay sharp and be able to build your own solution to fill gaps where necessary.

Intentional Infrastructure

I gave a presentation at the recent Network Field Day 17 (on my 3rd day working for Juniper). My main goal for this presentation was just to get people excited about building stuff.

We tend to focus on vendor-provided solutions in this industry, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, but it’s also good to stay sharp and be able to build your own solution to fill gaps where necessary. One reason I joined Juniper is that much of what we offer is built on a highly programmable foundation. So you get the best of both worlds - high-level products to solve the hard problems, but you still have the ability to insert your own custom tooling at various points in the stack.

In the above video, I outlined a simple Github-available demo for applying policies to a vSRX based on the existing services running in Kubernetes, and then verifying those policies are actually working by again using Kubernetes to determine what applications should be available.

My demo is designed to be self-sufficient, meaning you should be able to follow the README and get a working demo. Feel free to watch the above video first for context, then Continue reading

Intentional Infrastructure

I gave a presentation at the recent Network Field Day 17 (on my 3rd day working for Juniper). My main goal for this presentation was just to get people excited about building stuff.

We tend to focus on vendor-provided solutions in this industry, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, but it’s also good to stay sharp and be able to build your own solution to fill gaps where necessary. One reason I joined Juniper is that much of what we offer is built on a highly programmable foundation. So you get the best of both worlds - high-level products to solve the hard problems, but you still have the ability to insert your own custom tooling at various points in the stack.

In the above video, I outlined a simple Github-available demo for applying policies to a vSRX based on the existing services running in Kubernetes, and then verifying those policies are actually working by again using Kubernetes to determine what applications should be available.

My demo is designed to be self-sufficient, meaning you should be able to follow the README and get a working demo. Feel free to watch the above video first for context, then Continue reading

77 Facts About Cyber Crimes One Should Know In 2018

I am pleased to publish an infographic called "77 Facts About Cyber Crimes One Should Know In 2018." The infographic includes the top 10 biggest data breaches of the 21st century, top cyber crimes, stats of cyber attacks, fun facts and a ton more interesting info.

 I am glad to thank BestVPNs for kind permission to republish the original article on my blog.

Note: Click image to enlarge.

77 Facts About Cyber Crimes One Should Know In 2018

I am pleased to publish an infographic called "77 Facts About Cyber Crimes One Should Know In 2018." The infographic includes the top 10 biggest data breaches of the 21st century, top cyber crimes, stats of cyber attacks, fun facts and a ton more interesting info.

 I am glad to thank BestVPNs for kind permission to republish the original article on my blog.

Note: Click image to enlarge.

Blame privacy activists for the Memo??

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa @AshaRangappa_ has a smart post debunking the Nunes Memo, then takes it all back again with an op-ed on the NYTimes blaming us privacy activists. She presents an obviously false narrative that the FBI and FISA courts are above suspicion.

I know from first hand experience the FBI is corrupt. In 2007, they threatened me, trying to get me to cancel a talk that revealed security vulnerabilities in a large corporation's product. Such abuses occur because there is no transparency and oversight. FBI agents write down our conversation in their little notebooks instead of recording it, so that they can control the narrative of what happened, presenting their version of the converstion (leaving out the threats). In this day and age of recording devices, this is indefensible.

She writes "I know firsthand that it’s difficult to get a FISA warrant". Yes, the process was difficult for her, an underling, to get a FISA warrant. The process is different when a leader tries to do the same thing.

I know this first hand having casually worked as an outsider with intelligence agencies. I saw two processes in place: one for the flunkies, and Continue reading

Top 5 moments from Networking Field Day 2017

Did you miss Cumulus Networks’ session at Networking Field Day 2017 on February 26th? Or maybe you tuned in, and you want to reminisce on the best moments? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Check out our top five favorite highlights from Technical Marketing Engineer Pete Lumbis’ presentation about managing EVPN/VXLAN. (You can also watch the whole session here, if you’d prefer to hear it from the man himself. Prepare for an intelligent demonstration peppered with some good laughs!)

5) The Legos of Linux

It makes sense to start with the basics, and that’s exactly how we begin the presentation. In a daring move, Pete decides to illustrate Cumulus Linux’s capabilities sans-Powerpoint, and whiteboards the architecture of a Mellanox switch running our OS.

managing EVPN/VXLAN

One of the great things about Cumulus technology is that it’s all based in Linux. So, any configurations you would make on a Linux device are exactly the same on Cumulus Linux. Simple, right? That’s exactly our goal — allowing customers to easily customize their network as they see fit with basic building blocks. As Pete describes it, building the network is like “taking those Lego pieces and turning them into Saturn V.” Continue reading

What It Takes to Build a Quantum Computing Startup

If you thought the up-front costs and risks were high for a silicon startup, consider the economics of building a full-stack quantum computing company from the ground-up—and at a time when the applications are described in terms of their potential and the algorithms still in primitive stages.

Quantum computing company, D-Wave managed to bootstrap its annealing-based approach and secure early big name customers with a total of $200 million over the years but as we have seen with a range of use cases, they have been able to put at least some funds back in investor pockets with system sales

What It Takes to Build a Quantum Computing Startup was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.