Analytics of Everything

The ashes of network monitoring products from the last 30 years is a Sauron-sized mountain of tears on which we must build the a new generation of tools. Analytics, machine learning, big data and user interfaces are the new hope. Network as a Service A key feature in “as a Service” products is transparency & […]

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Microsoft outlines new features coming in Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Microsoft has posted what it calls “a major build” of Windows 10, with significant new features scheduled for the Anniversary Update due this summer. The news has been detailed by Gabe Aul, vice president of the engineering systems team in the Windows group.Microsoft posted Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 for both PC and Mobile to the Windows Insiders Fast ring, which gets more rapid updates than Insider, and thus isn’t for everyone. You’re getting builds hot off the compiler, so to speak, which means they are liable to be buggier. This is for true testers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Multi-tenant sFlow

This article discusses how real-time sFlow telemetry can be shared with network tenants to provide each tenant with a real-time view of their slice of the shared resources. The diagram shows a simple network with two tenants, Tenant A and Tenant B, each assigned their own subnet, 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24 respectively.

One option would be to simply replicate the sFlow datagrams and send copies to both tenants. Forwarding using sflowtool describes how sflowtool can be used to replicate and forward sFlow and sFlow-RT can be configured to forward sFlow using its REST API:
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" \
-X PUT --data '{"address":"10.0.0.1","port":6343}' \
http://127.0.0.1:8008/forwarding/TenantA/json
However, there are serious problems with this approach:
  1. Private information about Tenant B's traffic is leaked to Tenant A.
  2. Information from internal links within the network (i.e. links between s1, s2, s3 and s4) is leaked to Tenant A.
  3. Duplicate data from each network hop is likely to cause Tenant A to over-estimate their traffic.
The sFlow-RT multi-tenant forwarding function addresses these challenges. The first task is to provide sFlow-RT with an accurate network topology specifying the internal links connecting the Continue reading

Skype for Business finally makes its way to the Mac

Microsoft's new business communication product is finally coming to the Mac after the company launched it for PC users last year.The company announced the first technical preview of Skype for Business for Mac on Tuesday morning, giving users of Apple computers an easy way to connect to meetings they have scheduled through Microsoft's professional audio and videoconferencing software. When users sign into the app, they'll see their Skype for Business meetings for the current day and the following one, and be able to easily join them to discuss whatever business things they want to with the other people invited.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Financial analysts forecast first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales

Later today, Apple will announce downbeat results from the first quarter of 2016, nearly three dozen financial analysts bet today.According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who formerly blogged about Apple for Fortune but left the magazine earlier this month to kick off his own Apple 3.0 subscription-based site, all 11 independent and 19 institutional analysts pegged rare year-over-year declines in Apple's revenue and a fall in unit sales of its iPhone and iPad lines. Most of the 30 analysts also bet that Mac sales would also slip from the same quarter of 2015.Elmer-DeWitt has been collecting and averaging financial analysts' forecasts for years, and continued the chore on his new site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Android Wear smartwatches get fashion boost

Emphasizing fashion over functionality, Google today announced the MODE interchangeable and colorful, silicon and leather smartwatch straps—a sign that Android Wear smartwatch growth will come from making Android Wear more fashionable.Early Android Wear smartwatches, circa 2014, such as the Samsung Gear Live and the LG G Watch stressed functionality over style and form. These were prototypes to seed developers with a software platform they could use to begin to build apps and were for enthusiasts to begin to use and understand the smartwatch category.Many consumers, however, complained Android Wear watches didn’t match their expectations of what watches should look like. After all, a watch is a fashion statement first, a time piece second and app platform third. And so Android Wear watches began to subtly change, with Motorola’s Moto 360 winning praise for its round design over the Apple Watch and the round Huawei watch acting as Google’s de facto Nexus smartwatch.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More protection needed to guard grid from electromagnetic storm threat

The United States isn’t as deeply unprepared for electromagnetic threats – either from space or man-made -- as it was a few years ago but a lot of work remains and awareness of the danger needs to be amped-up if the country wants to truly protect the electric grid.That was the general conclusion from a report by the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this that looked at federal efforts to address electromagnetic risks to the electric grid.+More on Network World: Threat or menace?: Gaging electromagnetic risks to the electric grid+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More protection needed to guard grid from electromagnetic storm threat

The United States isn’t as deeply unprepared for electromagnetic threats – either from space or man-made -- as it was a few years ago but a lot of work remains and awareness of the danger needs to be amped-up if the country wants to truly protect the electric grid.That was the general conclusion from a report by the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this that looked at federal efforts to address electromagnetic risks to the electric grid.+More on Network World: Threat or menace?: Gaging electromagnetic risks to the electric grid+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More protection needed to guard grid from electromagnetic storm threat

The United States isn’t as deeply unprepared for electromagnetic threats – either from space or man-made -- as it was a few years ago but a lot of work remains and awareness of the danger needs to be amped-up if the country wants to truly protect the electric grid.That was the general conclusion from a report by the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this that looked at federal efforts to address electromagnetic risks to the electric grid.+More on Network World: Threat or menace?: Gaging electromagnetic risks to the electric grid+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flooding Domains versus Areas

At a fundamental level, OSPF and IS-IS are similar in operation. They both build neighbor adjacencies. They both use Dijkstra’s shortest path first (SPF) to find the shortest path to every destination in the network. They both advertise the state of each link connected to a network device. There are some differences, of course, such as the naming (OSI addresses versus IP addresses, intermediate systems versus routers). Many of the similarities and differences don’t play too much in the design of a network, though.

One difference that does play into network design, however, is the way in which the two protocols break up a single failure domain into multiple failure domains. In OSPF we have areas, while in IS-IS we have flooding domains. What’s the difference between these two, and how does it effect network design? Let’s use the illustration below as a helpful reference point for the two different solutions.

flooding-domains-02

In the upper network, we have an illustration of how OSPF areas work. Each router at the border of a flooding domain (an Area Border Router, or ABR), has a certain number of interfaces in each area. Another way of saying this is that an OSPF ABR is Continue reading

Flooding Domains versus Areas

At a fundamental level, SPF and IS-IS are similar in operation. They both build neighbor adjacencies. They both use Dijkstra’s shortest path first (SPF) to find the shortest path to every destination in the network. They both advertise the state of each link connected to a network device. There are some differences, of course, such as the naming (OSI addresses versus IP addresses, intermediate systems versus routers). Many of the similarities and differences don’t play too much in the design of a network, though.

One difference that does play into network design, however, is the way in which the two protocols break up a single failure domain into multiple failure domains. In OSPF we have areas, while in IS-IS we have flooding domains. What’s the difference between these two, and how does it effect network design? Let’s use the illustration below as a helpful reference point for the two different solutions.

flooding-domains-02

In the upper network, we have an illustration of how OSPF areas work. Each router at the border of a flooding domain (an Area Border Router, or ABR), has a certain number of interfaces in each area. Another way of saying this is that an OSPF ABR is Continue reading

Kiev, Ukraine: CloudFlare’s 78th Data Center

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Здоровенькі були! CloudFlare just turned up our newest datacenter in Kiev, the capital and largest city of Ukraine.

Kiev is an old city with more than 1,000 years of history. It was the capital of Kievan Rus’, an ancient country which is considered to be the ancestor of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. If you visit the city by plane, you may be almost blinded by the shining golden domes of numerous old churches and cathedrals - and once there, be sure to try the famous Ukrainian beet soup, “Borscht”. CloudFlare decided to contribute to the long history of Kiev with our 22nd data center in Europe, and our 78th data center globally.

Localizing content

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Frankfurt is arguably the biggest point of interconnection in the world, and is home to Deutscher Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX) which plays an absolutely critical role and sees close to 5Tbps in traffic. While this is great if you live near Frankfurt, it is also where most traffic is exchanged for other parts of Germany, large parts of Europe (think Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, etc.), and even countries such Continue reading

The Once And Future IBM Platform

More than anything else, over its long history in the computing business, IBM has been a platform company and say what you will about the woes it has had through several phases of its history, what seems obvious is that when Big Blue forgets this it runs into trouble.

If you stare at its quarterly financial results long enough, you can still see that platform company looking back at you, even through the artificially dissected product groups the company has used for the past decade and the new ones that IBM is using starting in 2016.

It is important to

The Once And Future IBM Platform was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Sponsored Post: Aerospike, TrueSight Pulse, Redis Labs, InMemory.Net, VividCortex, MemSQL, Scalyr, AiScaler, AppDynamics, ManageEngine, Site24x7

Who's Hiring?

  • Software Engineer (DevOps). You are one of those rare engineers who loves to tinker with distributed systems at high scale. You know how to build these from scratch, and how to take a system that has reached a scalability limit and break through that barrier to new heights. You are a hands on doer, a code doctor, who loves to get something done the right way. You love designing clean APIs, data models, code structures and system architectures, but retain the humility to learn from others who see things differently. Apply to AppDynamics

  • Software Engineer (C++). You will be responsible for building everything from proof-of-concepts and usability prototypes to deployment- quality code. You should have at least 1+ years of experience developing C++ libraries and APIs, and be comfortable with daily code submissions, delivering projects in short time frames, multi-tasking, handling interrupts, and collaborating with team members. Apply to AppDynamics

Fun and Informative Events

  • Discover the secrets of scalability in IT. The cream of the Amsterdam and Berlin tech scene are coming together during TechSummit, hosted by LeaseWeb for a great day of tech talk. Find out how to build systems that will cope with constant change and Continue reading

Juniper, Google, Microsoft & other IT vendors urge Congress to up CompSci education spending

Nearly 50 business leaders, including many enterprise IT company executives, have joined dozens of governors and educational system representatives in urging Congress to support the teaching of computer science in every K-12 school across the United States. An open letter/petition, titled "Offer Computer Science in our public schools," had accumulated more than 1,000 signatures on Change.org as of Tuesday morning. The petition was launched by the CS Education Coalition in partnership with Code.org. MORE: Top 25 computer science colleges, ranked by alumni earningsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The bot backlash begins

Bots are hot, hot, hot.Until they’re not, not, not.Unless you’ve been cut off from all media in a vain attempt to avoid the 2016 presidential campaign, you’re probably aware that bots are bright, new shiny things in the tech world.The idea behind “bot-mania” is that a conversation is often the best, most natural way for a program or service to communicate with a human. Instead of websites or apps, you can type or talk to the bot and get the answers or services you’re looking for.Sounds great right? And it is. Or at least it’s a great idea. Most of the time, anyway.Great bot expectations? It turns out, as so often happens in the world of technology, the hype may be getting ahead of the reality, creating expectations that cannot currently, or perhaps ever, be fully met.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 million accounts compromised via Lifeboat hack, a Minecraft Pocket Edition community

You’d think you’d hear about a hack that affects over seven million people … unless the company chooses to “cover it up.” Thankfully that is changing thanks to security researcher Troy Hunt, via Have I Been Pwned. Have I Been Pwned? Scale-wise, it's a big breach. Lifeboat is listed in Have I Been Pwned’s top 10 breaches; it currently is ranked eighth with 7,089,395 compromised accounts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here