2016: The year of tech products nobody wanted

7 tech products we didn't need—and 1 we need but never arrivedImage by Thinkstock2016 has been a rather odd year in many ways. Not least of which has been the onslaught of technology gizmos and doodads produced by some of the biggest companies in the world—that just outright stink. What follows are some of the most interesting stinkers I could think of—stuff that nobody in their right mind would want. That statement, along with the rest of this list, is sure to annoy many. And I stand by it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What to expect from Cisco in 2017

Calendar year 2016 was a big year of change at Cisco.Coming into the year, I wasn’t sure how aggressive new CEO Chuck Robbins would be at making changes. It turns out, he was far more active than I would have ever imagined, and 2016 will be remembered as the year Robbins stamped the company with his own thumbprint.During the year Cisco made several, the biggest of which was Jasper Technologies. That transformed Cisco from being an IoT evangelist into a major player. We also saw the company enter the analytics market with its Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What to expect from Cisco in 2017

Calendar year 2016 was a big year of change at Cisco.Coming into the year, I wasn’t sure how aggressive new CEO Chuck Robbins would be at making changes. It turns out, he was far more active than I would have ever imagined, and 2016 will be remembered as the year Robbins stamped the company with his own thumbprint.During the year Cisco made several, the biggest of which was Jasper Technologies. That transformed Cisco from being an IoT evangelist into a major player. We also saw the company enter the analytics market with its Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Azure’s cloud chief believes Microsoft is in prime position

In Satya Nadella’s first press conference as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he laid out a vision for the company to be a mobile-first, cloud-first company.On the cloud side, Microsoft has a broad portfolio of products that includes market-leading SaaS productivity applications, highlighted by Office 365. On the IaaS and PaaS side, Microsoft has Azure, a public cloud that has turned into one of the most prominent cloud platforms in the market and is considered the chief rival to market-leading Amazon Web Services’ public IaaS cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 12.12.16

New products of the weekImage by BrocadeOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BlueData EPIC on AWSImage by Blue DataTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 12.12.16

New products of the weekImage by BrocadeOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BlueData EPIC on AWSImage by Blue DataTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 enterprise-related things you can do with blockchain technology today

Diamonds. Bitcoin. Pork. If you think you've spotted the odd one out, think again: All three are things you can track using blockchain technologies today. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof, public ledgers of transactions, brought to public attention by the cryptocurrency bitcoin, which is based on what is still the most widespread blockchain. But blockchains are being used for a whole lot more than making pseudonymous payments outside the traditional banking system. Because blockchains are distributed, an industry or a marketplace can use them without the risk of a single point of failure. And because they can't be modified, there is no question of whether the record keeper can be trusted. Those factors have prompted a number of enterprises to build blockchains into essential business functions, or at least to test them there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump, tech executives may try to untangle relationship

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is meeting this week in New York with top tech executives, including Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, according to news reports.Invitations to the meeting were signed by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley figure who came out openly early on in favor of Trump.The relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley companies has been difficult with some senior tech executives openly backing his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the presidential elections. The president-elect and tech companies also appear to have differing views on issues such as immigration, outsourcing abroad, clean energy, net neutrality, encryption, surveillance and on restoring lost manufacturing jobs in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump, tech executives may try to untangle relationship

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is meeting this week in New York with top tech executives, including Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, according to news reports.Invitations to the meeting were signed by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley figure who came out openly early on in favor of Trump.The relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley companies has been difficult with some senior tech executives openly backing his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the presidential elections. The president-elect and tech companies also appear to have differing views on issues such as immigration, outsourcing abroad, clean energy, net neutrality, encryption, surveillance and on restoring lost manufacturing jobs in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Automation Tools: Featured Webinar in December 2016

The featured webinar in December 2016 is the Network Automation Tools webinar, and in the featured videos you'll find in-depth description of automation frameworks (focusing on Ansible) and open-source IPAM tools (including NSoT recently released by Dropbox).

To view the videos, log into my.ipspace.net, select the webinar from the first page, and watch the videos marked with star.

Read more ...

US-CERT: Stop using your remotely exploitable Netgear routers

Netgear router owners, I hope you have a spare router – at least those of you with remotely exploitable models, since US-CERT recommended discontinuing use of router models which are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection.Which models? Right now it looks like Netgear R7000, R6400 and R8000 routers, but there may be more models that are vulnerable. Should you really take this seriously and unplug your router? You betcha, since US-CERT said it is “trivial” to exploit this vulnerability. Visit a booby-trapped page and whammo! An attacker would be saying hello to root privileges on your router.An exploit, which was released on Exploit Database, was published on Dec. 7. Netgear has yet to issue new firmware to patch the flaw in its vulnerable routers. There is a way to test if your router is vulnerable and even a non-official temporary fix you can try if tossing out your router is not an option.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US-CERT: Stop using your remotely exploitable Netgear routers

Netgear router owners, I hope you have a spare router – at least those of you with remotely exploitable models, since US-CERT recommended discontinuing use of router models which are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection.Which models? Right now it looks like Netgear R7000, R6400 and R8000 routers, but there may be more models that are vulnerable. Should you really take this seriously and unplug your router? You betcha, since US-CERT said it is “trivial” to exploit this vulnerability. Visit a booby-trapped page and whammo! An attacker would be saying hello to root privileges on your router.An exploit, which was released on Exploit Database, was published on Dec. 7. Netgear has yet to issue new firmware to patch the flaw in its vulnerable routers. There is a way to test if your router is vulnerable and even a non-official temporary fix you can try if tossing out your router is not an option.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Python Functions – Basic

Python Function is a block of statements that can be used multiple times in a program. Its tedious task to use same block of statements multiple times, instead we can have function which contains same block of statement and can be called wherever there is need for the same. A function in Python is defined […]

Some notes on a Hamilton election

At least one elector for Trump has promised to switch his vote, becoming a "Hamilton Elector". Assuming 36 more electors (about 10% of Trump's total) do likewise, and Trump fails to get the 270 absolute majority, then what happens? Since all of the constitutional law scholars I follow haven't taken a stab at this, I thought I would write up some notes.


Foreign powers and populists

In Federalist #68, Alexander Hamilton laid out the reasons why electors should switch their vote. The founders feared bad candidates unduly influenced by foreign powers, and demagogues. Trump is unabashedly both. He criticizes our own CIA claiming what every American knows, that Russia interfered in our election. Trump is the worst sort of populist demagogue, offering no solution to problems other than he'll be a strong leader.

Therefore, electors have good reasons to change their votes. I'm not suggesting they should, only that doing so is consistent with our Constitutional principles and history.

So if 10% of Trump's electors defect, how would this actually work?

Failure to get 270 vote absolute majority (math)

Well, to start with, let's count up the number of electors. Each state gets one elector for every House Representative Continue reading

[minipost] Capturing bidirectional traffic of virtual machine (VMs) on vmWare ESX 6.x

Here I was getting a trouble with communication between an ESX virtual machine and the nearby switch (Nuage/DCN controller VM talking with a VTEP switch if someone is interested) and because that switch was direct destination of the control plane packets (OVSDB over TCP) I was not having much success creating a mirroring interface on the switch. So I learned how to capture a specific virtual machine traffic directly on the ESXi host’s SSH console and to not forget that, I will document this here.

Step 1 – enable SSH to the ESX host

In most cases this is not running by default, so go to the ESXi server direct terminal or iLo and via “F2″enter system customization and enter troubleshooting section:

ESX host troubleshooting options location

ESX host troubleshooting options location

Right behind this menu should be “SSH Enable” option, and you simply hit that with enter ?

ALTERNATIVE: If you have vCenter deployed, you can use its GUI to enable SSH on a specific host like this:

Locate ESX Host in vCenter and open its security profile

Locate ESX Host in vCenter and open its security profile

Inside security profiles enable SSH server

Inside security profiles enable SSH server

Step 2 – locating switchport ID

My virtual machine was called “DCN4.0R5_VSC1” and was simply connected to logical vswitch0 in Continue reading

Nerd Alert! You need a Christmas tree for your car!

What makes this product truly nerdy is that you have to be kind of a nerd to drive around with a lit up Christmas tree on your car roof. A PR company recently sent me a sample of the aptly named Christmas Car Tree and, natch, I had to, er, test drive it. The Christmas Car Tree It’s easy to assemble, solidly made (it’s got a metal, bolt-together frame), and unless you're driving a Ferrari, this 30-inch tree isn’t going to come loose. The Christmas Car Tree has 70 LEDs in multiple colors and can be folded flat so you can get into low garages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco dents Arista again with patent infringement ruling

A US trade judge ruled today that Arista Networks infringed on two Cisco switch patents – the second important victory the networking giant has won against Arista in their ongoing legal confrontation since it began in 2014.U.S. International Trade Commission Judge MaryJoan McNamara issued the so-called “initial determination” on the case which now must be reviewed by the ITC. In the end should the ITC find against Arista its switches could once again be banned from import into the US. The ITC you may recall ruled against Arista in another part of this case and between June and August the company could not import those products. In November Arista announced that US Customs has given it permission to resume importing its networking gear in the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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