As with PCs, you can now customize Raspberry Pi-like computers

The Raspberry Pi 3 is a great product, but it can't be customized. People may desire more storage or a faster processor, but have to settle for features on the board computer.The lack of customization with board computers is driven by their low prices. Buyers get features commensurate with the low price of boards like the US$35 Raspberry Pi and $15 Pine64.No one's complaining about the low prices, but the one-size-fits-all nature may not be for everyone. Taking a page from PC makers, Via Technology is now making it possible to configure board computers to specific needs through its website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encrypted email service ProtonMail is now accessible over Tor

The creators of encrypted email service ProtonMail have set up a server that's only accessible over the Tor anonymity network as a way to fight possible censorship attempts in some countries.ProtonMail was created by computer engineers who met while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The service provides end-to-end encrypted email through a web-based interface and mobile apps, but the encryption is performed on the client side, and the ProtonMail servers never have access to plaintext messages or encryption keys.On Thursday, Proton Technologies, the Geneva-based company that runs ProtonMail, announced that it has set up a Tor hidden service, or onion site, to allow users to access the service directly inside the Tor anonymity network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Encrypted email service ProtonMail is now accessible over Tor

The creators of encrypted email service ProtonMail have set up a server that's only accessible over the Tor anonymity network as a way to fight possible censorship attempts in some countries.ProtonMail was created by computer engineers who met while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The service provides end-to-end encrypted email through a web-based interface and mobile apps, but the encryption is performed on the client side, and the ProtonMail servers never have access to plaintext messages or encryption keys.On Thursday, Proton Technologies, the Geneva-based company that runs ProtonMail, announced that it has set up a Tor hidden service, or onion site, to allow users to access the service directly inside the Tor anonymity network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Under the hood: Lots of tech connecting self-driving cars

At CES earlier this month, I stepped into an autonomous car for the first time. Sure, there was a driver who was there in case something went wrong (it didn’t), but the most interesting part of the ride (other than when Sven, our driver, took his hands off the wheel and the car kept moving just fine) was learning more about all of the other connected technologies that will be needed or that will work along with the autonomous driving.The “test drive” I took was part of a collaborative effort between companies in this space – Microsoft, NXP Semiconductors, Swiss Re, Esri, IAV and Cubic Telecom (see video, above). Each company provided some of their technology to showcase how human beings will interact with (and benefit from) autonomous, self-driving cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Can the network help my cloud? Can cloud help my network?

I’m a life-long Trekkie, and one of the many great things about Star Trek is that the characters always face a big, nearly insurmountable challenge—and, of course, the heroes win in the end.If your organization is like many I see, the new year is ushering in a renewed urgency to embrace the possibilities of digital transformation. It probably feels like a big, perhaps insurmountable, challenge. Whether your organization is leading or being pushed into digital business, the cloud and the network are critical components in this business transformation.+ Also on Network World: More proof the cloud is winning big + As I shared in this blog, while moving applications to the cloud can be a helpful step in evolving IT, that by itself is not digital transformation. These apps running on your private cloud or in a public cloud service are important to running your business; however, most are likely not the source of your competitive advantage. Digital transformation is about accelerating the creation of new value for your customers and, most powerfully, helping your customers and partners create value for one another. But rest assured, the cloud and the network both play an important role.To read Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Can the network help my cloud? Can cloud help my network?

I’m a life-long Trekkie, and one of the many great things about Star Trek is that the characters always face a big, nearly insurmountable challenge—and, of course, the heroes win in the end.If your organization is like many I see, the new year is ushering in a renewed urgency to embrace the possibilities of digital transformation. It probably feels like a big, perhaps insurmountable, challenge. Whether your organization is leading or being pushed into digital business, the cloud and the network are critical components in this business transformation.+ Also on Network World: More proof the cloud is winning big + As I shared in this blog, while moving applications to the cloud can be a helpful step in evolving IT, that by itself is not digital transformation. These apps running on your private cloud or in a public cloud service are important to running your business; however, most are likely not the source of your competitive advantage. Digital transformation is about accelerating the creation of new value for your customers and, most powerfully, helping your customers and partners create value for one another. But rest assured, the cloud and the network both play an important role.To read Continue reading

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: iPhone X, leaving rivals in its dust & a classy new concept design

Dropping your iPhone in the toilet could soon be something you can laugh instead of cry about if the latest Apple iPhone 8 rumors are to be believed.That new phone line can't come soon enough for Apple, which Wall Street firms say is suffering iPhone 7 and 7 Plus revenue declines due to people holding out for the AMOLED curved-screen next big thing.WATER & DUST Apple Insider and others picked up on a Korea Herald report that the next big iPhone will be able to withstand being submerged at almost 5 feet for 30 minutes, giving it the highest rating possible for smartphone water resistance. (Not to be overlooked: the iPhone will likely also be more dust resistant.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Oracle ready to play with the cloud big kids?

This week, at its Cloud World conference in New York, Oracle revealed new details of its cloud offering, making its case once again to be among the big kids of the cloud market. Here's Cloud Chronicle's take: It’s a valiant effort; but Oracle still has a ways to go.Oracle executive Thomas Kurian made a solid argument for the company’s cloud. Oralce is not just focusing on one area of this market: It has offerings across the SaaS, IaaS and PaaS markets. Perhaps its SaaS offerings are the most mature. IaaS and PaaS still have some development to work on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Large Scale Network Design LiveLesson

Alvaro and I finished recording a new LiveLesson back in December; it should be available for pre-purchase at the end of January. For those folks interested in network design, this is going to be a great video series. We originally started out with the idea of updating Optimal Routing Design, but the project quickly morphed into its “own thing,” which means this video series is actually more of a compliment to ORD, rather than a replacement. Some pieces will be more up-to-date than the book, but there are a number of things covered in the book that are not covered in the video.

Large Scale Network Design LiveLessons takes you through the concepts behind stable, scalable, elegant network design, including modularity, resilience, layering, and security principles. This livelesson will focus on traditional distributed link state, distance vector, and path vector routing protocols, as well as the basic principles of centralized control planes (such as OpenFlow). A special point will be made of sorting out the relationship between policy and reachability, and where they can best be managed in a large scale network.

The post Large Scale Network Design LiveLesson appeared first on 'net work.

When Installs Go Bad…

It’s Thursday, so I think I’ll just leave this here:

...
Info: 0/1/CPU0 (LC) (SDR: Owner)
Proceed with this install operation (y/n)? [y]
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:Dec 16 08:29:48.835 : instdir[255]:
%INSTALL-INSTMGR-4-INSTALL_OPERATION_WARNING :
A warning occurred during install operation 19. See
'show install log 19 detail' for more information.

Info: Install Method: Parallel Reload
The install operation will continue asynchronously.
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:us-atl01-z1rt01(admin)#
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:us-atl01-z1rt01(admin)#
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:us-atl01-z1rt01(admin)#show install log 19 detail
Fri Dec 16 08:30:10.472 UTC
No log information available

Log Message Not So Helpful

Well, it made me smile, anyway.

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IDG Contributor Network: SADA Systems grows its cloud consulting business

Cloud. Despite all the hype about it being super easy, being self service and having a low on-ramp, the reality is service providers often still need to help organizations with the move to the cloud.You can tell an area is getting widespread attention when the large consulting firms start pricking up there ears. And so it is with cloud computing, where we have seen over the past few years the large consulting firms (both the “big four” accounting firms and the more traditional IT consulting firms) building out cloud computing service offerings—either from within or via strategic acquisitions of service providers.+ Also on Network World: Cloud adoption soars, but integration challenges remain + A good example of this came in 2015 when Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas, a Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) consulting partner that had grown rapidly over the preceding years via a number of acquisitions and mergers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Secdo automates alert investigation with preemptive incident response  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.   “We don’t receive enough alerts in our security operations center,” said no security analyst ever. The fact is, most SOC teams are overwhelmed with security alerts and they must prioritize which ones to investigate. Many alerts are simply ignored for lack of resources, yet quite often after a data breach it turns out there was an alert pointing at the breach early on. In the case of one prominent breach at a major retailer a few years ago, many sources report that a FireEye tool generated an alert confirming that malicious software showed up on a company system. Because so many of those particular alerts were false positives, it was ignored, which subsequently led to one of the largest and most costly retail data breaches in history.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Secdo automates alert investigation with preemptive incident response  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.   “We don’t receive enough alerts in our security operations center,” said no security analyst ever. The fact is, most SOC teams are overwhelmed with security alerts and they must prioritize which ones to investigate. Many alerts are simply ignored for lack of resources, yet quite often after a data breach it turns out there was an alert pointing at the breach early on. In the case of one prominent breach at a major retailer a few years ago, many sources report that a FireEye tool generated an alert confirming that malicious software showed up on a company system. Because so many of those particular alerts were false positives, it was ignored, which subsequently led to one of the largest and most costly retail data breaches in history.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Best-kept secret in SD-WAN’ publicly rolls out managed service

A Maryland-based EchoStar subsidiary best known as a provider of network management services announced today that it will offer a managed SD-WAN product as part of its HughesON lineup. Hughes Network Systems’ new Hughes Managed SD-WAN is aimed at distributed businesses that mostly use broadband communications, simplifying the management of those connections and ensuring that demanding applications like video run smoothly. MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Switches coming out this year will drive open networking forward + Trump turns to H-1B advocates for adviceTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Best-kept secret in SD-WAN’ publicly rolls out managed service

A Maryland-based EchoStar subsidiary best known as a provider of network management services announced today that it will offer a managed SD-WAN product as part of its HughesON lineup. Hughes Network Systems’ new Hughes Managed SD-WAN is aimed at distributed businesses that mostly use broadband communications, simplifying the management of those connections and ensuring that demanding applications like video run smoothly. MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Switches coming out this year will drive open networking forward + Trump turns to H-1B advocates for adviceTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here