Steam Link Is 60% Off – Mirror Your Gaming Setup to TV at 1080p – Deal Alert

The Steam Link allows existing Steam gamers to expand the range of their current gaming set up via their home network. Just connect your Steam PC or Steam Machine to your home network, plug into a TV, and stream your games to the Link at 1080p. Video and audio data is sent from your computer to the Steam Link, while your controller input is sent back in real time. Virtually every game that your computer runs can be played on your TV. Steam Controller, Xbox One USB wired, Xbox 360 USB wired, Xbox 360 wireless, PS4, PS3 wired and Wii-U Pro controllers are compatible, as are many third-party Xbox controllers. Steam Link's typical price is $50, but right now you can get it on Amazon for just $20. See the significantly discounted Steam Link on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Azure now runs Kubernetes, for managing lots of containers

Microsoft today announced that the open source Kubernetes container management platform is now generally available to control clusters of containers in the Azure public cloud.Increasingly developers are, or want to, use containers when writing new applications. It’s a way of packaging the code that makes up an application into a container, which can then be run in the cloud, on a developer’s laptop or wherever the container runtime is supported.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: How Philips is turning toothbrushes and MRI machines into IoT devices +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

TCP, Congestion Control, and Buffer Bloat

Cardwell, Neal, Yuchung Cheng, C. Stephen Gunn, Soheil Hassas Yeganeh, and Van Jacobson. “BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control.” Queue 14, no. 5 (October 2016): 50:20–50:53. doi:10.1145/3012426.3022184.

Article available here
Slides available here

In the “old days,” packet loss was a major problems; so much so that just about every routing protocol has a number of different mechanisms to ensure the reliable delivery of packets. For instance, in IS-IS, we have—

  1. Local reliability between peers using CSNPs and PSNPs
  2. On some links, a periodic check using CSNPs to ensure no packets were dropped
  3. Acknowledgements for packets on transmission
  4. Periodic timeouts and retransmissions of LSPs

It’s not that early protocol designers were dumb, it’s that packet loss was really this much of a problem. Congestion in the more recent sense was not even something you would not have even thought of; memory was expensive, so buffers were necessarily small, and hence a packet would obviously be dropped before it was buffered for any amount of time. TCP’s retransmission mechanism, the parameters around the window size, and the slow start mechanism, were designed to react to packet drops. Further, it might be obvious to think that any particular stream might provide Continue reading

How to fix 3 common resume mistakes

Your resume is the first impression you will make on a potential. How can you make sure that your resume stands out enough to a recruiter or hiring manager to make it to the interview stage?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Java and Python FTP attacks can punch holes through firewalls

The Java and Python runtimes fail to properly validate FTP URLs, which can potentially allow attackers to punch holes through firewalls to access local networks.On Saturday, security researcher Alexander Klink disclosed an interesting attack where exploiting an XXE (XML External Entity) vulnerability in a Java application can be used to send emails.XXE vulnerabilities can be exploited by tricking applications to parse specially crafted XML files that would force the XML parser to disclose sensitive information such as files, directory listings, or even information about processes running on the server.Klink showed that the same type of vulnerabilities can be used to trick the Java runtime to initiate FTP connections to remote servers by feeding it FTP URLs in the form of ftp://user:password@host:port/file.ext.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Java and Python FTP attacks can punch holes through firewalls

The Java and Python runtimes fail to properly validate FTP URLs, which can potentially allow attackers to punch holes through firewalls to access local networks.On Saturday, security researcher Alexander Klink disclosed an interesting attack where exploiting an XXE (XML External Entity) vulnerability in a Java application can be used to send emails.XXE vulnerabilities can be exploited by tricking applications to parse specially crafted XML files that would force the XML parser to disclose sensitive information such as files, directory listings, or even information about processes running on the server.Klink showed that the same type of vulnerabilities can be used to trick the Java runtime to initiate FTP connections to remote servers by feeding it FTP URLs in the form of ftp://user:password@host:port/file.ext.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco deepens enterprise network virtualization, security detection of DNA suite

Cisco today announced a variety of hardware, software and services designed to increase network virtualization and bolster security for campus, branch office and cloud customers.The products, which include a Network Functions Virtualization branch office device and improved security network segmentation software, fall under Cisco’s overarching Digital Network Architecture plan. DNA offers integrated networking software—virtualization, automation, analytics, cloud service management and security under a single suite.+More Cisco News on Network World: Cisco reserves $125 million to pay for faulty clock component in switches, routers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco deepens enterprise network virtualization, security detection of DNA suite

Cisco today announced a variety of hardware, software and services designed to increase network virtualization and bolster security for campus, branch office and cloud customers.The products, which include a Network Functions Virtualization branch office device and improved security network segmentation software, fall under Cisco’s overarching Digital Network Architecture plan. DNA offers integrated networking software—virtualization, automation, analytics, cloud service management and security under a single suite.+More Cisco News on Network World: Cisco reserves $125 million to pay for faulty clock component in switches, routers+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cisco Rapid Threat Containment quickly detects, removes infected end points

Many of the readers of this blog are aware that ever since Cisco acquired SourceFire, and cybersecurity industry legends such as Marty Roesch took leadership roles within the company, Cisco's initiative is for all security products to be open and to interoperate with other products.Another very large acquisition was OpenDNS, and the CEO from OpenDNS now leads all of the security business at Cisco. The culture is all about Cisco products, as well as non-Cisco products, working better together. + Also on Network World: Cisco ONE simplifies security purchasing + For many, it's shocking to think about Cisco as a vendor pushing for openness and standards. I'm not sure why because Cisco has spent its life creating networking protocols and then helping them to become standards available to all. But I digress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cisco Rapid Threat Containment quickly detects, removes infected end points

Many of the readers of this blog are aware that ever since Cisco acquired SourceFire, and cybersecurity industry legends such as Marty Roesch took leadership roles within the company, Cisco's initiative is for all security products to be open and to interoperate with other products.Another very large acquisition was OpenDNS, and the CEO from OpenDNS now leads all of the security business at Cisco. The culture is all about Cisco products, as well as non-Cisco products, working better together. + Also on Network World: Cisco ONE simplifies security purchasing + For many, it's shocking to think about Cisco as a vendor pushing for openness and standards. I'm not sure why because Cisco has spent its life creating networking protocols and then helping them to become standards available to all. But I digress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s Atom is underwhelming no more: New chip packs 16 cores

Intel's Atom was mostly known as a low-end chip for mobile devices that underperformed. That may not be the case anymore.The latest Atom C3000 chips announced on Tuesday have up to 16 cores and are more sophisticated than ever. The chips are made for storage arrays, networking equipment, and internet of things devices.The new chips have features found mostly in server chips, including networking, virtualization, and error correction features.Networking and storage devices don't require a lot of horsepower, so the low-power Atom chips fit right in. Only a handful of Intel server chips have more than 16 cores, but the number of Atom cores means the chip can handle more streams of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s Atom is underwhelming no more: New chip packs 16 cores

Intel's Atom was mostly known as a low-end chip for mobile devices that underperformed. That may not be the case anymore.The latest Atom C3000 chips announced on Tuesday have up to 16 cores and are more sophisticated than ever. The chips are made for storage arrays, networking equipment, and internet of things devices.The new chips have features found mostly in server chips, including networking, virtualization, and error correction features.Networking and storage devices don't require a lot of horsepower, so the low-power Atom chips fit right in. Only a handful of Intel server chips have more than 16 cores, but the number of Atom cores means the chip can handle more streams of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Internet of Things as an Attack Tool

Akamai has published its Q4 2016 State of the Internet/Security report As always, an interesting read and an opportunity to look at trends in attacks.

Not all trends are up and to the right. As the report states, Q4 2016 was "the third consecutive quarter where we noticed a decrease in the number of attack triggers". Still, "the overall 2016 attack count was up 4% as compared to 2015". Also, the volume and number of "mega-attacks" is on the rise.

Andrei Robachevsky

Don’t wait for 5G: LTE could be your key to IoT

One of the many whiz-bang features promised in 5G is a new way of connecting millions of small, low-powered IoT devices. But there's no need to wait: Two forms of LTE tuned for IoT have entered a market that's already heating up with rapidly expanding specialist networks.The new standards, LTE-M and NB-IoT, were completed last year and will share the spotlight at Mobile World Congress next week with an array of network miracles envisioned for the next generation of cellular, due for commercial launches in 2020.As major carriers now upgrade LTE to serve IoT applications, more companies are likely to find available LPWANs (low-power, wide-area networks) in the areas where they want to deploy IoT. The new technologies add to a list of options some enterprises can already buy. They're here just in time for enterprises to start comparing networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Don’t wait for 5G: LTE could be your key to IoT

One of the many whiz-bang features promised in 5G is a new way of connecting millions of small, low-powered IoT devices. But there's no need to wait: Two forms of LTE tuned for IoT have entered a market that's already heating up with rapidly expanding specialist networks.The new standards, LTE-M and NB-IoT, were completed last year and will share the spotlight at Mobile World Congress next week with an array of network miracles envisioned for the next generation of cellular, due for commercial launches in 2020.As major carriers now upgrade LTE to serve IoT applications, more companies are likely to find available LPWANs (low-power, wide-area networks) in the areas where they want to deploy IoT. The new technologies add to a list of options some enterprises can already buy. They're here just in time for enterprises to start comparing networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Modernization Webinar Now Available Online

On February 8th I gave a webinar on network modernization initiatives with Doug Nash, the Deputy Chief Information Officer, Operations & Infrastructure at the USDA. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to speak with Doug and discuss some of the new directions that various Federal agencies are undertaking to create more modernized and agile networks. This webinar is now available …