Microsoft still plans to ship two Windows 10 upgrades in 2017

Microsoft this month reaffirmed that it will issue two Windows 10 upgrades this year, twice the number of 2016 but still shy of the firm's original target.In a presentation 11 days ago at a Microsoft technical conference held in Australia, Bill Karagounis, a director of program management, pointed to a follow-on upgrade that will appear sometime after the Creators Update, which is expected to finalize and ship next month.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ] A slide Karagounis showed during the session -- which was webcast from Microsoft's Channel 9 website -- included another upgrade this year after Creators. It lacked a release date and a more descriptive name other than "Second Update in 2017."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No new HoloLens hardware until 2019

A new report from a usually reliable site says there will be no new version of the Microsoft HoloLens, its virtual reality/augmented reality headset, until 2019. Not only that, but the company is skipping the second version design and going straight to the third version In a lengthy report on Thurrott.com, Brad Sims details how Microsoft decided that version 2 of HoloLens would feature only small, incremental improvements over the original version and that it wasn't right to come to market with a minor bump. Instead the company decided to shelve V2 and go straight to V3, which would feature a bigger leap in technology, and that meant taking a little longer to get it done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to migrate existing applications to VMware NSX

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

VMware’s NSX virtual network technology can help organizations achieve a greater level of network security, but how you approach deployment will vary depending on whether you are working with new applications (greenfield) or are moving applications from existing infrastructure to NSX (brownfield).

NSX’s micro-segmentation capabilities essentially allow placement of virtual firewalls around every server to control East-West traffic, thereby limiting lateral exploration of networks by hackers, and making it significantly easier to protect applications and data.  It can enable a level of security that previously would have been prohibitively expensive and complicated using traditional hardware.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple to unveil new iPads, a red iPhone 7 and a revamped iPhone SE in March

With all eyes understandably focused on Apple's iPhone 8 unveiling, an event that will presumably take place this coming September, it appears we won't have to wait seven more months before being able to feast our eyes on a slew of new Apple hardware.According to a fresh report from MacOtakara, Apple in March will not only unveil a slew of new iPad hardware, but some new iPhone models as well.Starting with Apple's upcoming iPhone products, the report relays that Apple in March will roll out a revamped iPhone SE. If history is any indication, the new iPhone SE will incorporate all of the same specs as the iPhone 7, albeit in the iPhone 5s' smaller form factor. A 128GB model is also said to be in the works. A revamped iPhone SE is certainly intriguing because there remains a large contingent of users who simply find the larger-screened iPhone models a bit too unwieldy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple to unveil new iPads, a red iPhone 7, and a revamped iPhone SE in March

With all eyes understandably focused on Apple's iPhone 8 unveiling, an event that will presumably take place this coming September, it appears that we won't have to wait 7 more months before being able to feast our eyes on a slew of new Apple hardware.According to a fresh report from MacOtakara, Apple in March will not only unveil a slew of new iPad hardware, but some new iPhone models as well.Starting with Apple's upcoming iPhone products, the report relays that Apple in March will roll out a revamped iPhone SE. If history is any indication, the new iPhone SE will incorporate all of the same specs as the iPhone 7, albeit in the iPhone 5s' smaller form factor. A 128GB model is also said to be in the works. A revamped iPhone SE is certainly intriguing because there remains a large contingent of users who simply find the larger-screened iPhone models a bit too unwieldy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The cloud is growing 7 times faster than the rest of IT

The public cloud just keeps on growing, with increases in spending on cloud services and infrastructure easily outpacing overall IT spending. And it isn’t even close.  The latest update to International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide projects worldwide investments in the public cloud “will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4 percent over 2016. Those are big numbers, obviously, but to put them in full perspective, IDC noted that growth rate is nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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