Latest Packet Pushers Podcast Offers a New Perspective on Networking

What’s more likely to spawn change and innovation in networking? A highly-concentrated team working on a small project, or a multi-disciplinary team working on a massive project? Multiple small teams working on 100’s of projects around the globe, or one big massive team banking on a single idea? These questions and more are posed by Bruce Davie, the recently appointed CTO for Asia Pacific and Japan at VMware, and a long time contributor, collaborator, and friend of the Packet Pushers (Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks).

In a brand new Packet Pushers podcast, Bruce, Greg and Ethan take you along for an in-depth look at various networking approaches, and the changes in store for networking as a whole Hear how networking will continue to evolve: namely, how distributed application architectures and other factors are driving big-time industry shifts. Every topic is fair game, and these networking stalwarts aren’t afraid of challenging status quo thought processes to uncover new theories. So, prepare yourself for a lively discussion and debate that transcends the present, and heads straight into the future of networking.

Take a listen!

For those who haven’t already hurried to plug in, here’s a preview of a couple topic areas Continue reading

The Linux Migration: Other Users’ Stories, Part 1

Shortly after I announced my intention to migrate to Linux as my primary desktop OS, a number of other folks contacted me and said they had made the same choice or they had been encouraged by my decision to also try it themselves. It seems that there is a fair amount of pent-up interest—at least in the IT community—to embrace Linux as a primary desktop OS. Given the level of interest, I thought it might be helpful for readers to hear from others who are also switching to Linux as their primary desktop OS, and so this post kicks off a series of posts where I’ll share other users’ stories about their Linux migration.

In this first post of the series, you’ll get a chance to hear from Roddy Strachan. I’ve structured the information in a “question-and-answer” format to make it a bit easier to follow.

Q: Why did you switch to Linux?

I was a heavy Windows user due to corporate requirements. It was just easy to run Windows. I never ran the standard corporate build, but instead ran my own managed version of Windows 10; this worked well. I switched because I wanted to experiment with Linux Continue reading

‘Meet’ Google’s new videoconferencing service for the enterprise

Google appears to have accidentally revealed its new group videoconferencing service for businesses on Tuesday, a week before a big user conference. The service, called Meet, appears to be its offering for businesses that want to do group meetings over the Internet. According to a saved iOS App Store listing captured by AppAnnie, it will support high-definition video meetings with up to 30 participants. That’s an upgrade over the company’s existing Hangouts instant messaging and video calling service, which only allows meetings of up to 10 people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 will feature a curved OLED display

By all accounts, Apple's 10th anniversary iPhone, a device that will presumably be called the iPhone 8, is going to be incredible. Echoing previous rumors, a new report from the Wall Street Journal -- which typically has a stellar record when it comes to Apple rumors -- claims that the aforementioned iPhone 8 will ship with a curved OLED display. This jibes with other reports indicating that Apple's next-gen smartphone will feature an edge to edge display with minimal bezels."Apple Inc. has decided to adopt a flexible display for one model of the new iPhone coming out this year," the Journal notes, "and has ordered sufficient components to enable mass production, people familiar with the matter said."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft may owe you $100 if you bought from the Microsoft Store

Microsoft has settled a class-action lawsuit regarding sales at its Microsoft Store outlets. And if you made a purchase at one of those stores, you might be owed as much as $100.The lawsuit alleged that Microsoft Store receipts contained too much information. The lead plaintiff’s receipt listed the buyer’s name, the name of the salesperson and the first six and last four digits of the buyer’s payment card number—more than half the numbers on the card. According to the 2003 U.S. Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), retailers may print only the last five numbers of a payment card on the receipt. Retailers had until 2006 to comply with this restriction, and the Microsoft Stores are much newer than that. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft may owe you $100 if you bought from the Microsoft Store

Microsoft has settled a class-action lawsuit regarding sales at its Microsoft Store outlets. And if you made a purchase at one of those stores, you might be owed as much as $100.The lawsuit alleged that Microsoft Store receipts contained too much information. The lead plaintiff’s receipt listed the buyer’s name, the name of the salesperson and the first six and last four digits of the buyer’s payment card number—more than half the numbers on the card. According to the 2003 U.S. Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), retailers may print only the last five numbers of a payment card on the receipt. Retailers had until 2006 to comply with this restriction, and the Microsoft Stores are much newer than that. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ericsson’s Ekholm Says Company Will Be No. 1 Again

Details on the company's turnaround strategy are vague so far.

Five Functional Facts About OSPF

It’s funny, in my exerperience, OSPF is the most widely used interior gateway protocol because it “just works” and it’s an IETF standard which means it interops between different vendors and platforms. However, if you really start to look at how OSPF works, you realize it’s actually a highly complex protocol. So on the one hand you get a protocol that likely works across your whole environment, regardless of vendor/platform, but on the other you’re implementing a lot of complexity in your control plane which may not be intuitive to troubleshoot.

This post isn’t a judgement about OSPF or link-state protocols in general. Instead it will detail five functional aspects of OSPF in order to reveal–at least in part–how this protocol works, and indirectly, some of the complexity lying under the hood.

1. OSPF Has Its Own Best Path Decision Process

Ever looked closely at OSPF routes in the show ip route output? You’ll notice flags such as O or O IA beside the route.

O     10.1.14.0 255.255.255.0
        [110/21] via 123.1.0.18, 00:00:07, Ethernet0/0
O IA  11.11.11.0 [110/20] via 123.1.0.18, 00:00:07, Ethernet0/0
O IA  123.1. Continue reading

Aruba’s top exec, large customers talk about Wi-Fi’s present and future at Atmosphere

Aruba kicked off its annual Atmosphere conference on Tuesday in Nashville with a keynote from CTO Keerti Melkote that featured CTOs and CIOs from several of the company’s most prominent customers.One of the key points made by Melkote, now the sole head honcho of the company following the departure of then-CEO Dominic Orr in January, was that the HPE-owned wireless equipment maker is working hard to unify Aruba’s offerings over the past year.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Coolest new Android phones at Mobile World Congress 2017To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google reveals Microsoft bug affecting IE and Edge

Google is pretty strict about its Project Zero rules when it comes to disclosure: a company has 90 days to fix the bug after it is informed by Google, after which it is announced to the public. Google did it last week with the announcement of two unpatched bugs, and now it's doing it again. A security flaw in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer was first reported to Microsoft Nov. 25, 2016. Microsoft was offered the standard 90-day lead to patch the issue before Google announced it to the world. With the cancellation of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft failed to issue a fix, and now the bug is out there for the whole world to see. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google reveals Microsoft bug affecting IE and Edge

Google is pretty strict about its Project Zero rules when it comes to disclosure: a company has 90 days to fix the bug after it is informed by Google, after which it is announced to the public. Google did it last week with the announcement of two unpatched bugs, and now it's doing it again. A security flaw in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer was first reported to Microsoft Nov. 25, 2016. Microsoft was offered the standard 90-day lead to patch the issue before Google announced it to the world. With the cancellation of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft failed to issue a fix, and now the bug is out there for the whole world to see. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MEF, TM Forum, and Service Providers to Standardize LSO APIs

The goal is to be able to orchestrate services across multiple networks.

Mobile World Congress 2017: Mobility monsters

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, there are eight huge halls, not to mention the vendor-decked hallways, plus another sub-convention center to visit. Mobile World Domination is a better word for the event. I’m reminded of the old days of CeBIT where 800,000 people made it to Hannover, Germany, in the late 1990s and early 2000s.No more.The GSMA has adroitly herded all things mobile to Barcelona instead. The recognizable big guns are here, minus a large Microsoft presence, and Apple is the invisible 800-pound gorilla.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Moto G5 Plus will make you rethink buying an iPhone 7

Motorola’s designers are always poised to strike when component prices drop, creating an opportunity to deliver more smartphone for the same money. This time they struck with the Moto G5 Plus with a better camera and faster processor, improving on the G4 Plus. The G5 Plus’ camera and price are the top two reasons to choose it as an alternative to the iPhone 7—or almost any phone.Moto G5 Plus' camera The Moto G5 Plus predecessor, the Moto G4 Plus, scored an 84 with DxOMark, equivalent to the iPhone 6s that consumers are still buying for $550. The specifications of the G5 Plus’ camera sensor top the iPhone 7’s. The 12 megapixels sensor with 1.4μm-sized pixels exceeds the iPhone 7’s at 12 megapixels with 1.22μm pixels. A subtle difference, but pixel size in most situations matters more than the number of pixels because larger pixels capture more light, producing better photos.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Containers 101

As containers and microservices become more mainstream, you may wonder how to pave the way to adoption. How can you use containers to automate application deployments? What tools do you need to help your path to adoption? How can you get there faster, with fewer chances for errors and re-work?A new Geek Guide sponsored by Puppet, Containers 101, covers everything you need to know about:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Making it easy to share annotations on the ‘web

The W3C has announced the publication of three new standards aimed to enable an ecosystem of interoperable products that let the world comment on, describe, tag, and link any resource on the Web. Many websites already allow comments, but current annotation systems rely on unique, usually proprietary technologies chosen and provided by publishers. Notes cannot be shared easily across the Web and comments about a Web page can only be saved and viewed via a single website. Readers cannot select their own tools, choose their own service providers or bring their own communities. The adoption of the Web Annotation standards will spell the end of the phrase “Don’t read the comments!”, returning power to the readers decide where and how they provide and consume such feedback. —W3C

The post Worth Reading: Making it easy to share annotations on the ‘web appeared first on 'net work.

Moscow’s smart tech includes 160,000 cameras to detect traffic violators

BARCELONA -- Moscow has rolled out new technologies to make the city safer, including 160,000 outdoor cameras focused on traffic and areas of possible crime.The effort is one of the largest municipal camera installations in Europe. Moscow, with 12 million residents, has installed enough cameras in the last 18 months to rival the number of traffic and public cameras used in London. There, the use of CCTV cameras ignited a public outcry over privacy invasions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon S3 Internet outage unleashes flood of apologies — from others

While Amazon Web Services hasn't yet issued an apology via its social media channels regarding big problems today with its Simple Storage Service (S3), the company's customers have turned to Twitter and Facebook to apologize to their own customers -- while pointing the finger at AWS.AWS, via its @awscloud Twitter account, did alert customers that "S3 is experiencing high error rates. We are working hard on recovering." That was posted a bit after 2pm EST and Amazon has since posted a few updates, including a note about the status dashboard recovering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft adds Store app-only restriction as option in Windows 10

Microsoft has added a setting to Windows 10 that will let users restrict new software installation to only those apps hosted in the Windows Store.The option debuted in the latest version of Windows 10 Insider, the preview program which gives participants an early peek at the next feature upgrade as Microsoft builds it. That version, labeled 15042, was released Friday.[ Related: Fix Windows 10 problems with these free Microsoft tools ] With the setting at its most stringent, Windows 10 will block the installation of Win32 software -- the traditional legacy applications that continue to make up the vast bulk of the Windows ecosystem -- and allow users to install only apps from the Windows Store, Microsoft's marketplace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

containerd summit recap: slides, videos and meeting notes

Last week, we hosted a containerd summit for contributors and maintainers. Containerd is a core container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness and portability. It is available as a daemon for Linux and Windows, which can manage the complete container lifecycle of its host system: image transfer and storage, container execution and supervision, snapshot storage for container filesystems and a few other things to make the management of containers robust.

We started off by getting everyone up to speed on the project, roadmap and goals before diving down into specific issues and design of containerd.  We had a couple breakout sessions where we discussed blocking issues and feature requests by various members of the community. You can see a summary of the breakout sessions in last week’s development report in the containerd repository and the various presentations below:

Deep Dive into containerd by Michael Crosby, Stephen Day, Derek McGowan and Mickael Laventure (Docker)

Driving containerd operations with gRPC by Phil Estes (IBM)

containerd and CRI by Tim Hockin (Google)

We ended the day with discussions around governance and extension model. Watch this video recording to learn more about why and how core contributors are thinking about integrating containerd with other Continue reading