IDG Contributor Network: Clouds may not reign supreme

The funny thing about pendulums is that they love to swing. There are plenty of examples, from politics to nutrition, but computing cycles just might illustrate it best.The mainframe computer was a centralized model, with access through dumb terminals. PCs enabled distributed client/server computing. Now we are swinging back to centralized computing, with dumb smartphones connecting back to robust cloud-services. Enterprises are shuttering their data centers and moving to cloud services.Most of yesterday’s applications, such as CRM, ERP and UC, are moving toward the cloud. But the swing back to a distributed model is inevitable. If not for those applications, then something else. The Internet of Things (IoT) just may be the killer app that does it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech world not immune to fake news

Yes, the term “fake news” has already been politicized to the point of near-meaninglessness, but before it is relegated to the dustbin of our lexicon, allow me to note that the practice itself has been around for eons and is no stranger to the world of technology.Just ask the peddlers of eBay’s famously fake tale of being born out of a girlfriend’s love for Pez dispensers, a fib I fumed about in the former print edition of Network World way back in 2002.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn pumps water down to its server racks, uses an interesting spine and leaf network fabric

It takes a lot of horsepower to support LinkedIn’s 467 million members worldwide, especially when you consider that each member is getting a personalized experience, a web page that includes only their contacts. Supporting the load are some 100,000 servers spread across multiple data centers.  To learn more about how LinkedIn makes it all happen, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Sonu Nayyar, VP of Production Operations & IT, and Zaid Ali Kahn, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering. LinkedIn Sonu Nayyar, LinkedIn VP of Production Operations & ITTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LinkedIn pumps water down to its server racks, uses an interesting spine and leaf network fabric

It takes a lot of horsepower to support LinkedIn’s 467 million members worldwide, especially when you consider that each member is getting a personalized experience, a web page that includes only their contacts. Supporting the load are some 100,000 servers spread across multiple data centers.  To learn more about how LinkedIn makes it all happen, Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently talked to Sonu Nayyar, VP of Production Operations & IT, and Zaid Ali Kahn, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering. LinkedIn Sonu Nayyar, LinkedIn VP of Production Operations & ITTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Internet routing detours

In November 2013, the Internet intelligence company Renesys (now owned by Dyn, Oracle) published an online article detailing an attack they called Targeted Internet Traffic Misdirection. Using Traceroute data, they discovered three paths that suffered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. One path originated from, and was destined to, organizations in Denver, CO, after passing through Iceland, prompting concern and uncomfortable discussions with ISP customers. Are such detours only a result of an attack? —APNIC

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Lenovo tunes N23 Yoga Chromebook for Android apps with ARM processor

Some Chromebooks released this year will be able to run Android apps from the Google Play Store. Lenovo has tuned its new N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1 to effectively run Android mobile apps.PC makers are taking a page from smartphones and tablets and adding touchscreens to Chromebooks. Many new models can be interchangeably used as laptops or tablets.More Chromebooks are also getting ARM processors -- which dominate in smartphones and tablets -- to effectively run Android apps. Most Chromebooks today have Intel x86 chips, which dominate in PCs, but Android apps best run on ARM processors.Lenovo, for the first time, is using an ARM chip in the N23 Yoga Chromebook 2-in-1, breaking its long-time reliance on x86 chips. The device has an 11.6-inch touchscreen, and it can be used as a tablet or laptop thanks to a hybrid design.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Resin.IO puts Linux and containers to work for IoT

Resin.IO is working to make the use of containers and microservices useful tools to developers of Linux-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.CEO Alexandros Marinos said the company has been working for three years to make mainstream containers attractive to developers of embedded workloads, such as those found in IoT applications. The company calls this the "Industrial Internet."What Resin.IO offers Resin.IO offers a development and deployment framework based upon Linux and containers (Docker) that is designed to facilitate control of the on-device environment, provision devices on the network, and manage of what the company calls a "fleet" of systems. These tools also make it possible to automate operations of "the fleet" and keep it secure through the use of encrypted communications to/from devices in "the fleet" that deploys two-factor authentication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Internet of Things Messaging, Part 2: The Mosquitto MQTT broker

MQTT is a messaging technology for machine-to-machine communication that’s lightweight and relatively simple to implement on pretty much any device. In my first post on MQTT I covered the basics and background of the protocol and threatened to follow up with a discussion of Mosquitto, a free, open source MQTT server (the MQTT developers no longer call them “brokers”) that’s one of the most widely used messaging platforms in the Internet of Things world. Being a man of my word, here goes …The Mosquitto broker (apparently the Mosquito developers and MQTT developers do not see eye-to-eye on terminology) is part of the Eclipse IoT Working Group, “an industry collaboration of companies who invest and promote an open source community for IoT.” Mosquito currently supports MQTT versions 3.1 and 3.1.1 and support for the proposed MQTT v5, which introduces scalability and protocol improvements is under way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: Full facial recognition, wireless charging letdown & slick concept video

iPhone 8 (or iPhone X?) security is indeed a touchy subject, though it could become less so if the latest rumors about the next great Apple smartphone prove true.Say Cheese! Apple Insider's Mikey Campbell has an excellent piece dissecting the latest research from Apple insider (small "i") and KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says to expect Apple to deliver full-face bio-recognition technology before long on the iPhone.First up, though, might be a Touch ID replacement based on optical fingerprint reading, technology that won't require an indented button as is the case on current models. Optical fingerprint readers would work with the sort of full-screen OLED display most expect Apple to bring forth with its next slew of iPhones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

vSphere 6.5 Security Encrypted vMotion

Interesting

Encrypted vMotion has been asked about for YEARS. It’s here now in vSphere 6.5! And, like VM Encryption, we’ve taken a different approach than you might think. We don’t actually encrypt the vMotion network. What we DO encrypt is the data going over the vMotion network. At the time of migration, a 256-bit key and 64-bit Nonce are created by vCenter. This is a one-time-use key and is not persisted!

Some thoughts:

  1. what is the impact of the encryption on vMotion performance, especially at load ? Since its symmetric encryption (OTP Key would suggest that) it should light on CPU but still.
  2. Joined up thinking between network and vm admins is key here. If the network already encrypts this would be silly to implement so “The best part is you don’t have to ask your network team to do anything!” would be doubling down on stupid.
  3. Network encryption should lower latency (hardware acceleration) and perform better (remember, don’t ask your network team anything)
  4. Security is a top down thing. If you are bothering to encrypt at all, everything should be encrypted not just the vMotion. Thats kind of pointless if all other data is in the clear.

No Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How to choose an IoT radio network

Cellular, short range Wi-Fi (good for WAN gateways) and Bluetooth (good for wearables) aren’t the only wireless technologies IoT development has available. Some newer networks are being developed specifically for the Internet of Things.Here’s what you need to know.Ultra-narrowband Sigfox, beginning its roll-out in the U.S., says its low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) has the lowest subscription costs (digging at expensive LTE) and that its communications proffer “radically lower energy consumption.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why IT Automation is Becoming a Business Necessity

ansible-automation-whiteboard-1.png

Automation transformed factories. It gave manufacturing the ability to perform work faster, more efficiently, at higher quality. Processes became predictable. Productivity thrived. Factories that failed to automate fell behind. Automation became a business imperative.

IT departments are the modern factories powering today’s digital businesses. And just as today’s factories can’t compete without automation, automation will soon become imperative for IT organizations. Here’s why:

  1. Application delivery is fuel for growth. Today every business is a software business, regardless of whether you actually sell software. Every business depends on critical systems to engage with customers and gather data. For companies competing in the knowledge economy, IT operations is oxygen. The demands businesses place on DevOps teams will only continue to increase. We’re not going back—only forward, faster.

  2. Automation simplifies processes. Automation never sleeps. Throwing people at the problem helps companies grow, but the law of diminishing returns limits your ability to scale. Adding people adds complexity and costs.

  3. IT professionals don’t want to repeat the same tasks over and over. Just as manual work in factories is tiring, endless, and thankless—repetitive work squanders the creative energy of your best and often most highly paid people.

  4. Automation speeds the work so your people Continue reading

Updated Generic Icon Set

I’ve updated the generic icons linked from this page to include a virtual router/switch. I’ve also added two different spine and leaf topologies to the presentation. I may add other “generic” topologies over time, as I run across ones that seem worth including. These are completely public domain; I would encourage you to use them instead of the normal sets of vendor icons in drawing, books, blogs, etc.

Updated: Thanks to Greg Ferro, there is now a version of these in Omnigraffle! They’re linked on the same page.

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Severe vulnerability in Cisco’s WebEx extension for Chrome leaves PCs open to easy attack

Anyone who uses the popular Cisco WebEx extension for Chrome should update to the latest version pronto. Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy recently discovered a serious vulnerability in the Chrome extension that leaves PCs wide open to attack.In older versions of the extension (before version 1.0.3) malicious actors could add a “magic string” to a web address or file hosted on a website. The magic string was designed to remotely activate the WebEx browser extension. Once the extension was activated the bad guys could execute malicious code on the target machine. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Severe vulnerability in Cisco’s WebEx extension for Chrome leaves PCs open to easy attack

Anyone who uses the popular Cisco WebEx extension for Chrome should update to the latest version pronto. Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy recently discovered a serious vulnerability in the Chrome extension that leaves PCs wide open to attack.In older versions of the extension (before version 1.0.3) malicious actors could add a “magic string” to a web address or file hosted on a website. The magic string was designed to remotely activate the WebEx browser extension. Once the extension was activated the bad guys could execute malicious code on the target machine. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘net: The background of I2RS

Through this (probably far too long) series on SDNs, we have looked at BGP, Fibbing, and Openflow. BGP and Fibbing would be described as augmented control planes; the distributed control plane is not replaced, but rather augmented with a controller that modifies the best path decisions of the control plane by interacting with the control itself in a somewhat “native” way. Openflow, on the other hand, replaces the distributed control plane; it would actually be difficult to build a system that talks directly to the FIB that does not entirely replace the control plane. But in the original classification, there was a third type of SDN highlighted, a hybrid model. Are there any instances of this sort of model being developed? —ECI Blog

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