Laid-off IT workers fight University of California outsourcing

Audrey Hatten-Milholin has worked at the University of California, San Francisco for 17 years. But come February, her job in the IT department as a system architect will be taken over by a worker from India. Even worse, Hatten-Milholin has been asked to train her replacement. “It’s horrible. Really horrible,” she said on Tuesday. “You want to treat people decently. But on the other hand, I’m pretty ticked off I have to do this.” Hatten-Milholin was among about 80 laid-off IT workers who held a rally on Tuesday, calling for an end to the university's outsourcing program. The IT department workers, including permanent staff and contract employees, will be replaced by workers from an India-based IT services firm called HCL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Leveraging MPLS with Cloud Services

Many enterprises rely on multi-protocol label switching VPNs for high-performance, critical communications. Now those services can be enhanced with new virtualized, cloud services for on demand access.Because it is by definition multiprotocol, MPLS can handle multiple types of data streams, including IP, ATM and frame relay, making it the predominant option for large enterprises.MPLS utilizes a communication service provider’s (CSP) infrastructure to deliver a segregated wide area network (WAN), avoiding the cost and complexity of an enterprise having to maintain private lines for its WAN. As it is under the control of a single operator and supports traffic policy enforcement, MPLS offers greater reliability and performance for enterprise WANs and VPNs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Akamai: Look for IoT devices to attack during Thanksgiving, Christmas

The annual holiday uptick in denial of service attacks will likely continue this year only this time with a new devastating weapon: Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Akamai.In its quarterly State of the Internet/Security Report, the company says certain types of DDoS attacks are on the rise compared to the third quarter last year, both in size and number. That doesn’t bode well for users of the internet starting next week.“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the report says. “Malicious actors have new tools — IoT botnets — that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Akamai: Look for IoT devices to attack during Thanksgiving, Christmas

The annual holiday uptick in denial of service attacks will likely continue this year only this time with a new devastating weapon: Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Akamai.In its quarterly State of the Internet/Security Report, the company says certain types of DDoS attacks are on the rise compared to the third quarter last year, both in size and number. That doesn’t bode well for users of the internet starting next week.“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the report says. “Malicious actors have new tools — IoT botnets — that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EVPN vs PBB-EVPN

The is the next in a series of technical posts relating to EVPN – in particular PBB-EVPN (Provider backbone bridging, Ethernet VPN) and attempts to explain the basic setup, application and problems solved within a very large layer-2 environment. Readers new to EVPN may wish to start with my first post which gives examples of the most basic implementation of regular EVPN;

EVPN – the basics

Regular EVPN without a doubt is the future of MPLS based multi-point layer-2 VPN connectivity, it adds the highly scalable BGP based control-plane, that’s been used to good effect in Layer-3 VPNs for over a decade. It has much better mechanisms for handling BUM (broadcast unknown multicast) traffic and can properly do active-active layer-2 forwarding, and because EVPN PE’s all synchronise their ARP tables with one another – you can design large layer-2/layer-3 networks that stretch across numerous data centres or POPs,  and move machines around at layer-2 or layer-3 without having to re-address or re-provision – you can learn how to do this here;

EVPN Inter-VLAN routing + mobility

But like any technology it can never be perfect from day one, EVPN contains more layer-2 and layer-3 functionality than just about any single protocol developed Continue reading

NFD13 Forecast – Cloudy With a Chance of Software

Well, this week is a week of firsts — or at least, firsts in a while. It’s my first time actually posting something new on the blog in a while, and it will also be my first Tech Field Day event in a while.

I’m honored to have been invited back to NFD13, happening on Thursday, 11/17 and Friday, 11/18. I’m very excited to be joining the TFD team for another event! The delegate panel includes some of the most experienced and well respected names in the networking industry (myself excluded, obviously), and the sponsor list is really quite exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, and making some new ones along the way.

I really like when NFD events have a mix of focuses (foci?). It keeps the conversation varied and interesting for both the delegates and the audience. For NFD 13, I see several big themes for the sponsor list:

Data Center Fabric/Automation/Orchestration

Network Testing/Modeling/Audit/Management

Software Defined WAN

Note: I could be mis-classifying a couple of Continue reading

Planetary scientists push for unique asteroid deflection mission

Planetary scientists got together this week in Berlin express support for the future European/NASA asteroid redirect mission to develop technology that one day might prevent the Earth from being smacked by a destructive asteroid.+More on Network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction+Proponents are trying to garner worldwide support for the mission pointing to the European Space Administration ministerial conference in Luzern next month where the decision will be made whether or not to fund the ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). AIM is part of an over-arching collaborative effort with NASA known as theAsteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Planetary scientists push for unique asteroid deflection mission

Planetary scientists got together this week in Berlin express support for the future European/NASA asteroid redirect mission to develop technology that one day might prevent the Earth from being smacked by a destructive asteroid.+More on Network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction+Proponents are trying to garner worldwide support for the mission pointing to the European Space Administration ministerial conference in Luzern next month where the decision will be made whether or not to fund the ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). AIM is part of an over-arching collaborative effort with NASA known as theAsteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Indian Conglomerate Embarks on IoT Journey with Cisco Jasper

Reliance & Cisco launch Unlimit, targeting enterprise IoT.

47% off CyberPower CSP600WSU Surge Protector 6-AC Outlet Swivel with 2 USB (2.1A) Charging Ports – Deal Alert

The CyberPower Professional Series CSP600WSU Surge Protector is ideal for Home/ Office protection with 1200 joules, 6 swivel outlets, 2 USB charge ports (2.1 Amp shared), and a convenient wall tap design. The surge protector is ideal for protecting personal computers, phones/ fax/ modems, printers, stereos, and other electronics. Its two USB are perfect for keeping tablets, smart phones, and other rechargeable electronics ready to use.  With Amazon's current discount of 47% you can buy it now for $9.86 (See it on Amazon). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

23% off MagicFiber Microfiber Cleaning Cloths For Screens and Other Delicate Surfaces, 30 Pack – Deal Alert

This extremely soft, high-quality 6x7 microfiber cloth from MagicFiber absorbs and safely removes dust, oil smudges, fingerprints, and dirt from eyeglasses, camera lenses, computer screens, televisions, and other delicate surfaces without any harsh chemicals. It's machine or hand washable, and is built to last. The cloths are highly rated on Amazon, where it currently averages 4.8 out of 5 stars from over 8,300 people (90% rate 5 stars: read recent reviews). Its typical list price of $29.99 has been reduced 23% to $22.99 for a pack of 30 individually wrapped, so you may decide to toss one in everybody's stocking this holiday season. See the discounted 30-pack of microfiber cleaning cloths now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Siemplify Raises $10M for Its Security Platform

The company has raised $14M since its launch in February.

Reprisals against Apple in a U.S.-China trade war would be indirect

If the Chinese government retaliated against tariff increases by the United States, it would not take direct aim at Apple, an economist argued today."For China, the best target is Boeing," said Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.Freund was responding to questions after Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-supported newspaper, warned of reprisals if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on a campaign pledge to dramatically increase tariffs on goods imported into the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3D printer owners rate the best 14 machines

Online user community 3D Hubs has published its third annual 3D Printer Guide for 2017, based on reviews from 8,624 verified 3D printer owners of 513 different 3D printer models.Fourteen machines separated into five categories made it into the guide's top 3D printers list for 2017. The categories include Budget, Plug-N-Play, Prosumer, Workhorse and SLS or selective laser sintering machines, which is a new commercial-grade category.3D Hubs used a wide range of parameters to measure the user experience with 3D printers, which included print quality, build quality, reliability, ease of use, print failure rate, customer service, community, running cost, software, and value.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Can Technology be Morally Neutral?

“Technology is neutral. It’s only how it’s used that can be good or bad.” Back in the 1960s and even up to the 1970s, a statement along those lines was often the standard response you got from an engineer or scientist if you raised questions about the dangers or moral implications of a given invention. The neutrality argument was used to defend radio, television, computers, and even nuclear energy. But Sheila Jasanoff, for one, would disagree. —MercatorNet

The post Worth Reading: Can Technology be Morally Neutral? appeared first on 'net work.

Google levels up its cloud machine learning with new services

There's an arms race among public cloud providers to provide businesses with the best machine learning capabilities. Enterprises are increasingly interested in creating intelligent applications, and companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are rushing to help meet their needs.Google fired its latest salvo on Tuesday, announcing a set of enhancements to its existing suite of cloud machine-learning capabilities. The first was a new Jobs API aimed at helping match job applicants with the right openings. In addition, the company is slashing the prices on its Cloud Vision API and launching an enhanced version of its translation API.On top of that, Google is offering GPUs in its cloud both through the company's managed services and its infrastructure-as-a-service product. Companies that want to roll their own machine learning systems and algorithms can now take advantage of the new hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Smartphones cause insomnia, study finds

Put that smartphone away or limit your use of it if you want to get a decent night’s sleep and stay healthy.Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco say they have confirmed that sleep deprivation is magnified by exposure to a kind of blue light emitted by the devices. And missing sleep can instigate deadly diseases, such as obesity and depression.“Longer average screen-time was associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep-efficiency,” the journal PLOS ONE says of the research on its website.Sleep took longer to come on and quality was generally poor, according to the researchers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Troubleshooting High CPU Usage On Cisco Nexus 7000

Intel Sets Up Skylake Xeon For HPC, Knights Mill Xeon Phi For AI

With the “Skylake” Xeon E5 v5 processors not slated until the middle of next year and the “Knights Landing” Xeon Phi processors and Omni-Path interconnect still ramping after entering the HPC space a year ago, there are no blockbuster announcements coming out of Intel this year at the SC16 supercomputing conference in Salt Lake City. But there are some goodies for HPC shops that were unveiled at the event and the chip giant also set the stage for big changes in the coming year in both traditional HPC and its younger and fast-growing sibling, machine learning.

Speaking ahead of the …

Intel Sets Up Skylake Xeon For HPC, Knights Mill Xeon Phi For AI was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Intel packs more horsepower in its monster 22-core processor

CPU performance increases were ignored for years, but AMD put them back on the map with its upcoming Zen chip. This has rubbed off on Intel in a good way.Intel's taken its fastest server chip, the top-line 22-core Xeon E5-2699 v4 chip, and made some tweaks to squeeze out more CPU performance. It has created a new chip called the 22-core Xeon E5-2699A v4, which is about 5 percent faster.While 5 percent may sound like a small number, it's big for those installing thousands of servers running on the chips. Four-socket servers can have up to 88 CPU cores and run up a 20 percent gain in performance improvements.The new chip could also be used in workstations with the latest GPUs to create VR content or run engineering applications like SolidWorks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here