Is It Really Always The Network?

Keep Calm and Blame the Network

Image from Thomas LaRock

I had a great time over the last month writing a series of posts with my friend John Herbert (@MrTugs) over on the SolarWinds Geek Speak Blog. You can find the first post here. John and I explored the idea that people are always blaming the network for a variety of issues that are often completely unrelated to the actual operation of the network. It was fun writing some narrative prose for once, and the feedback we got was actually pretty awesome. But I wanted to take some time to explain the rationale behind my madness. Why is it that we are always blaming the network?!?

Visibility Is Vital

Think about all the times you’ve been working on an application and things start slowing down. What’s the first thing you think of? If it’s a standalone app, it’s probably some kind of processing lag or memory issues. But if that app connects to any other thing, whether it be a local network or a remote network via the Internet, the first culprit is the connection between systems.

It’s not a large logical leap to make. We have to start by assuming the the people Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For December 23rd, 2016

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

A wondrous ethereal mix of technology and art. Experience of "VOID"

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  • 2+ billion: Google lines of code distributed over 9+ million source files; $3.6 bn: lower Google taxes using Dutch Sandwich; $14.6 billion: aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies; 2x: graphene-fed silkworms produce silk that conducts electricity; < 100: scientists looking for extraterrestrial life; 48: core Qualcomm server SoC; 455: original TV series in 2016;

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • Ben Thompson~ It's so easy to think of tech with an 80s mindset with all the upstarts. We still glorify people in garages. The garage is gone...Our position in the world is not the scrappy upstart. It is the establishment.
    • The Attention Merchants: True brand advertising is therefore an effort not so much to persuade as to convert. At its most successful, it creates a product cult, whose loyalists cannot be influenced by mere information
    • @seldo: Speed of development always wins. Performance problems will (eventually) get engineered away. This is nearly always how technology changes.
    • @evgenymorozov: How Silicon Valley can support basic income: give everyone a bot farm Continue reading

Worth Reading: Leaving it to the last second

Thanks to the moon, the earth’s rate of rotation is slowing down. It’s a subtle interaction and the modeling of planetary dynamics predicts that the earth’s rotation should be slowing down by an average of 2.3 milliseconds per century. But this is not quite so uniform, as the Economist reported in December on work of analyzing ancient records of solar eclipses… —CircleID

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ezTalks Onion: all-in-one videoconferencing is under-baked

I had a chance to get an early version (really early, as there is still some rough edges to be worked out) of the ezTalks Onion. The device (I don’t know why they call it the Onion – it doesn’t look like one particularly) is an all-in-one videoconferencing device (camera, microphones, speakers) that sits on top of an HDMI-enabled TV or monitor to provide conference room video and audio. Network connectivity is handled through an Ethernet port or, if you’re brave, Wi-Fi. The Hong Kong-based company had a successful Indiegogo funding campaign for the device, and is now ready to expand its offerings to the general public.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Happy Holidays from Cumulus Networks

2016 has been a big year for Cumulus Networks. We welcomed in a new CEO, helped our customers reduce TCO with a new perpetual pricing model, released NCLU, launched the industry’s first routing on the host solution, delivered the first multi-platform, multi-silicon 100G open networking solution, and we had a lot of fun hosting webinars, events and meetups — just to name a few.

To top off an already wonderful year, we were recently awarded one of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work for small and medium size businesses. We are both humbled and flattered to be awarded by our own employees, and we are dedicated to ensuring that Cumulus Networks stays a creative, innovative and fun place to work.

Just as importantly, we are dedicated to ensuring that our customers have the tools they need to build web-scale networks like the world’s largest data center operators. We believe in providing our customers the right technology, the right information and the right support to help them get there.

In 2017, we have a lot of exciting plans to enhance our customers’ web-scale experience. For starters, we’ll soon be launching EVPN for general availability. And we think Continue reading

30% off Veepeak USB Rechargeable LED Motion Sensor Light for Closet with Magnetic Mounting – Deal Alert

The Veepeak Rechargeable Motion Sensor Light offers a simple solution to lighting any area inside your home. The portable and detachable design makes it versatile enough to be used as a night light in hallways and bedrooms or as a cabinet or closet light for dim areas. Installation is a breeze, the magnetic strip with 3M adhesive allows you to quickly mount wherever you need extra light.  This light is motion activated and will automatically turn on once it detects motion; when no movement is detected for about 20 seconds, the light will automatically turn off. This LED light is powered by built-in Lithium battery which can be charged with included USB cable by a phone charger or PC USB port. No electric wire, no need to replace batteries and one full charge provides up to 500 times of sensing at full brightness.  This light currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews) and is discounted 30% down to just $13.99. For more information and buying options, see the discounted LED Motion light on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple is dedicated to the Mac desktop. And it’s not.

Several weeks ago, we ran a feature story by yours truly questioning Apple's dedication to its Mac hardware line. At the time, Mac desktops and MacBook notebooks were falling years out of date. Since then, Apple has introduced some new MacBooks, but desktops such as iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini remain woefully out of date. This led to more questions and doubt, and it forced the normally recalcitrant Tim Cook to post on an employee message board a letter assuring the staff that the company remains committed to the desktop line. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple gives iOS app developers more time to encrypt communications

Apple has backtracked on a plan to force iOS developers to encrypt their app communications by the end of the year.The company had previously announced at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference in June that all apps submitted to the App Store will need support the App Transport Security (ATS) feature starting January 1st, 2017. It has not yet set a new deadline.ATS is a feature first introduced in iOS 9 that forces apps to communicate with internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections. It's an improvement over the third-party frameworks that developers previously used to implement HTTPS because it ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers are used.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple gives iOS app developers more time to encrypt communications

Apple has backtracked on a plan to force iOS developers to encrypt their app communications by the end of the year.The company had previously announced at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference in June that all apps submitted to the App Store will need support the App Transport Security (ATS) feature starting January 1st, 2017. It has not yet set a new deadline.ATS is a feature first introduced in iOS 9 that forces apps to communicate with internet servers using encrypted HTTPS (HTTP over SSL/TLS) connections. It's an improvement over the third-party frameworks that developers previously used to implement HTTPS because it ensures that only industry-standard encryption protocols and ciphers are used.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New accounting standards change the rules of IT leasing

The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s new lease accounting standards announced earlier this year will require public companies to recognize assets and liabilities from operating leases on their balance sheets for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018.The changes — a response to a growing need to provide more transparency to off-balance sheet leasing obligations, estimated at some $1.2 trillion dollars — will impact not just accounting policies but lease vs. buy decisions within IT organizations whose companies will have to comply with the new standard.[ Back in 2002: Budget Strategies: A Lesson on Leasing ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AI tools came out of the lab in 2016

You shouldn't anthropomorphize computers: They don't like it. That joke is at least as old as Deep Blue's 1997 victory over then world chess champion Garry Kasparov, but even with the great strides made in the field of artificial intelligence over that time, we're still not much closer to having to worry about computers' feelings. Computers can analyze the sentiments we express in social media, and project expressions on the face of robots to make us believe they are happy or angry, but no one seriously believes, yet, that they "have" feelings, that they can experience them. Other areas of AI, on the other hand, have seen some impressive advances in both hardware and software in just the last 12 months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Push Configuration Snippet to a Bunch of Cisco IOS Devices

As I was trying to automate configuration deployment in a multi-router Cisco IOS lab, I got to a point where the only way of figuring out what was going on was to log commands on Cisco IOS devices. Not a big deal, but I hate logging into a dozen boxes and configuring the same few lines on all of them (or removing them afterwards).

Time for another playbook: this one can push one of many (configurable) configuration snippets to a group of Cisco IOS devices defined in an Ansible inventory file.

Interesting? Want to do something more complex? Join the Network Automation online course.

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