Reaction: Forced Updates

The controversy over Microsoft forcing upgrades on users is in the news again, as the EFF has posted an article once again about the forced upgrades to Windows 10, and the various data collection schemes Microsoft has put in place. I understand the concern, but… A couple of points to consider, starting with forced upgrades—

When I worked in customer support I sometimes wished we had forced upgrades (rather than paid ones, in fact). There are so many times someone doesn’t upgrade past an obvious bug. We would spend hours working around the bug because they didn’t want to upgrade. It probably cost the company I worked for millions of dollars in support a year so we could refrain from saying, “take two upgrades and call me in the morning.”

As an operator, I see the other side of this story—if I don’t need the upgrade, or I’m not hitting the bug, I shouldn’t need to upgrade.

The world of IoT—in fact, the world in which we live, where millions of machines are used as botnets without the knowledge of their owners—is pretty frightening without forced upgrades. I wonder how many millions of dollars a year machines with Continue reading

Unraveling the Complicated IoT Connectivity Puzzle

In the short-term, many IoT connectivity options will exist.

OSS Remains a Sticking Point for NFV

Physical and virtual networks will have to mix, somehow.

Intel spreads 3D NAND to inexpensive consumer and enterprise SSDs

Intel is expanding its lineup of SSDs with its 3D NAND chips with more affordable consumer and enterprise drives.The 3D NAND chips have a structure that makes SSDs durable and fast but was only available in a handful of drives. The new SSDs support the NVMe protocol, which offers faster throughput than the SATA controller originally designed for hard drives.The new SSDs include entry-level consumer drives starting under US$100. Gamers may want to wait, however, until Intel releases its crazy-fast Optane SSDs, which the chip maker claims will be up to 10 times faster than regular SSDs.The consumer SSD 600p series for PCs starts at $69 for a 128GB drive and ranges to $359 for a 1TB drive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel spreads 3D NAND to inexpensive consumer and enterprise SSDs

Intel is expanding its lineup of SSDs with its 3D NAND chips with more affordable consumer and enterprise drives.The 3D NAND chips have a structure that makes SSDs durable and fast but was only available in a handful of drives. The new SSDs support the NVMe protocol, which offers faster throughput than the SATA controller originally designed for hard drives.The new SSDs include entry-level consumer drives starting under US$100. Gamers may want to wait, however, until Intel releases its crazy-fast Optane SSDs, which the chip maker claims will be up to 10 times faster than regular SSDs.The consumer SSD 600p series for PCs starts at $69 for a 128GB drive and ranges to $359 for a 1TB drive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Fraud follows mobile banking adoption

Since 2011, the Federal Reserve Board has conducted an annual survey that asks consumers how they use their mobile phones to interact with financial institutions, make payments, and manage their personal finances.Here are some of the key takeaways from the 2016 survey: In 2015, 67% of Millennials used mobile banking. This compares to 18% for those consumers aged 60 or over. And the usage gap is widening. 40% of the unbanked had access to a smartphone. 70% of the underbanked were smartphone owners. Driven by lower requirements for account creation, lower cost of banking, and ease of use of mobile banking solutions, consumers who have traditionally been excluded from the banking system and consumers who are coming of age for banking solutions are adopting mobile banking rather than opting for traditional banking solutions like ATMs or branch tellers. The accelerated adoption of mobile banking by Millennials, the underbanked and the unbanked is even more obvious in developing markets which (a) have a lot more underbanked and unbanked consumers and which (b) are leapfrogging desktop Internet to move directly to mobile Internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

You Can Finally Get More Page Rules For 5 For $5

Since CloudFlare launched Page Rules in 2012, our Free, Pro and Business users have been asking for a way to get more Page Rules without committing to the next plan up. Starting today, anyone on CloudFlare can add 5 additional Page Rules for just $5/month.

Page Rules allows you to fine tune your site speed and to apply CloudFlare’s wide range of features to specific parts of your site. Page Rules are also accessible over our API, so you can integrate them into your build process or sync them across your domains.

To help you get the most out of Page Rules, we’re also launching a tutorial site that features videos to help you setup Page Rules for specific content management systems like WordPress, Magento and Drupal, and for specific goals like optimizing your website's speed, increasing security, and saving on your bandwidth costs.

Big Cloud Fabric: Ideal Physical Network for VMware SDDC

Key Success factors for adopting Node.js

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.Node.js is an open source, cross-platform runtime environment for server-side and network applications. Since its inception, it’s also become widely used for front-end tooling, APIs, desktop applications, and even controlling IoT hardware like drones. Node.js applications are written in JavaScript. The growing popularity and adoption of Node.js is the result of a confluence of several factors.First, there is an increasing need by companies of all sizes to quickly build scalable, fast, distributed web applications. Second, large enterprises are finding there is inherent risk associated with running large, complex monolithic applications due to the difficulty and cost of tuning, maintaining, patching, and debugging them — and the challenges this poses to business responsiveness. Third, software developers are looking to develop a skillset that prepares them for the new market reality of agile practices, continuous integration and delivery, cloud-scale application design and a highly mobile and demanding user base.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Key Success factors for adopting Node.js

Cisco: US Trade Rep. backing Arista product import ban

The knives are out again between Cisco and Arista over their patent clash. Cisco this week said the US Trade Representative has begun the import ban as well as the cease and desist order covering Arista products imposed by the International Trade Commission in June.+More on Network World: Arista infringes on Cisco networking patents, trade agency says+According to a blog post from Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Cisco, the current action which took effect Aug. 23 has serious consequences for its rival. He wrote:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco: US Trade Rep. backing Arista product import ban

The knives are out again between Cisco and Arista over their patent clash. Cisco this week said the US Trade Representative has begun the import ban as well as the cease and desist order covering Arista products imposed by the International Trade Commission in June.+More on Network World: Arista infringes on Cisco networking patents, trade agency says+According to a blog post from Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Cisco, the current action which took effect Aug. 23 has serious consequences for its rival. He wrote:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

31% off Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Smartphone App and Simple All In One Remote – Deal Alert

The Logitech Harmony Smart Control systems turns you smartphone or tablet into a one-touch universal remote. Now you can control your entire entertainment system with the smartphone or tablet you already own. The Harmony Hub combined with a powerful app give you personalized control of up to 8 devices and works with over 270,000 devices including cable TV boxes, Apple TV, Roku, Sonos, Amazon Fire TV, Phillips Hue, Xbox One, PS3, and TV-connected PC or Mac—even through closed cabinets and walls. Plus, you get a simple Harmony remote for everyone in the house to use when your smartphone isn’t handy.  This system currently averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from 1,900+ people (read reviews) and its list price of $129.99 has been reduced to $89.99.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Apcera NATS messaging service

With the ever-increasing amounts of data sent and received by today’s applications, developers are turning to tried-and-true technologies to help them address message brokering across different applications, or between different microservices within an application. Stripping the complexity from message brokering at scale is something which Apcera aims to accomplish with its Go-based message broker service NATS. —The New Stack

The post Worth Reading: Apcera NATS messaging service appeared first on 'net work.

So your company’s been hacked: How to handle the aftermath

After a company has been hacked and the hack has been discovered to be a harmful one, top executives and IT leaders normally huddle in a room to assess the loss.It's usually not a pretty scene.It's not as if heads are exploding. It is more like what some might call a tense "come to Jesus" moment."It's not good," said cyber security expert Tyler Cohen Wood. She's participated in post-hack forensics sessions at companies and has witnessed the faces of panicked executives firsthand. Inspired eLearning Tyler Cohen Wood is cyber security advisor to elearning company Inspired eLearning, and was previously a Defense Intelligence Agency cyber deputy division chief.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

So your company’s been hacked: How to handle the aftermath

After a company has been hacked and the hack has been discovered to be a harmful one, top executives and IT leaders normally huddle in a room to assess the loss.It's usually not a pretty scene.It's not as if heads are exploding. It is more like what some might call a tense "come to Jesus" moment."It's not good," said cyber security expert Tyler Cohen Wood. She's participated in post-hack forensics sessions at companies and has witnessed the faces of panicked executives firsthand. Inspired eLearning Tyler Cohen Wood is cyber security advisor to elearning company Inspired eLearning, and was previously a Defense Intelligence Agency cyber deputy division chief.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VR, machine learning drive tech job market

Free catered lunch and a dog-friendly office are two of the perks offered by an educational technology company in Palo Alto, Calif., that’s looking to hire a machine learning engineer. The position, posted on Dice, will pay between $140,000 and $160,000 to the right candidate who’s skilled in machine learning platforms as well as data mining, statistical modeling, and natural language processing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cisco boots Nutanix from partner program

Cisco Cuts Nutanix from the Partner Portal Less than a week after Nutanix issued a press release announcing their independently validated ability to run on Cisco UCS, Nutanix has been booted from the Cisco Solution Partner Program. Cisco has its own hyperconverged solution utilizing UCS hardware, bundled together through an agreement with software company Springpath, which they call Hyperflex.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cisco boots Nutanix from partner program

Cisco Cuts Nutanix from the Partner Portal Less than a week after Nutanix issued a press release announcing their independently validated ability to run on Cisco UCS, Nutanix has been booted from the Cisco Solution Partner Program. Cisco has its own hyperconverged solution utilizing UCS hardware, bundled together through an agreement with software company Springpath, which they call Hyperflex.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Consumer Product Safety Commission is (Inadvertently) Behind the Internet’s Largest DDoS Attacks

The mission of the United State's Government's Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is to protect consumers from injury by products. It's ironic then that the CPSC is playing an unwitting role in most of the largest DDoS attacks seen on the Internet. To understand how, you need to understand a bit about how you launch a high volume DDoS.

Logo of the Consumer Product Safety Commission

Amplification

DDoS attacks are inherently about an attacker sending more traffic to a victim than the victim can handle. The challenge for an attacker is to find a way to generate a large amount of traffic. Launching a DDoS attack is a criminal act, so an attacker can't simply go sign up for large transit contracts. Instead, attackers find ways to leverage other people's resources.

One of the most effective strategies is known as an amplification attack. In these attacks, an attacker can amplify their resources by reflecting them off other resources online that magnify the level of traffic. The most popular amplification vector is known as DNS reflection.

DNS Reflection

We've written about DNS reflection attacks in detail before. The basics are that an attacker generates DNS requests from a network that allows Continue reading