EVPN – the basics

So I decided to take a deep dive into eVPN, I’ll mostly be looking into VLAN-aware bundling, as per RFC 7432 – and mostly because I think this will fit more closely, with the types of deployments most of the customers are used to – good old IRB interfaces and bridge-tables!

As everyone knows, VPLS has been available for many years now and it’s pretty widely deployed, most of the customers I see have some flavour of VPLS configured on their networks and use it to good effect – so why eVPN? what’s the point in introducing a new technology if the current one appears to work fine.

The reality is that multipoint layer-2 VPNs (VPLS) were never quite as polished as layer-3 VPNs, when layer-3 VPNs were first invented they became, and still are the in many cases the “go to” technology for layer-3 connectivity across MPLS networks, and the technology itself hasn’t really changed that much for well over a decade. The same cannot be said for VPLS, over the years we’ve had many different iterations of the technology:

  • Vanilla VPLS
    • LDP signalled
    • BGP signalled
  • H-VPLS (hierarchical VPLS)
    • BGP based
    • LDP based
  • VPLS auto-discovery

Along with the different Continue reading

Ping on you! – Beta 2.0 is online

Nicer, more stable, AJAX/JSON enabled pingonyou.com and also preparations in background to introduce the 24/7 Monitoring feature.

So here we are. First a bit of short history, if you have seen the first version of the pingonyou.com, you probably had a sense of 90’s view of the page just by looking at it. Everything was static HTML and all updates were actually refreshing the whole page (including every new line in the ping functionality needed a whole site refresh!). This was also including the fact that the design and color selection was really very basic. If you want to have a look on the old version, simply go to previous articles on this blog (where pictures are) for a comparison or here is a picture of beta 1.0. But lets now focus on the new version which is available from today!

Ping on You – Beta 2.0

The first thing is the color-scheme, after trying out several dozens of combinations, the blue variant was the best overall that provide both good console readability and combined with the fact that the functions that it provides needed to be categorized much better. First everyone that comes Continue reading

Google’s Nest may become a different kind of IoT company after CEO Fadell leaves

Nest co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell is leaving the company, a move that may mark a shift in strategy for one of the early stars of the Internet of Things.Fadell founded the startup, which makes connected thermostats and other smart-home gear, in 2011 with co-founder Matt Rogers. Google bought Nest in 2014. In a blog post on Friday, Fadell didn’t say much about why he was leaving but said he would become an advisor to Alphabet, the parent company of Nest and Google, and its CEO, Larry Page.The resignation came after news reports that said Nest was suffering from internal turmoil. In his parting note, Fadell said the company was growing fast and had a bright future.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Doing eDiscovery, Litigation Hold, and Addressing Journaling in Office 365

Retaining and “journaling” content has been a key requirement of organizations for years, however as organizations have migrated to Office 365, plus with Microsoft’s shift to new and improved eDiscovery tools, the process of “holding” and “searching” for content has changed.This article covers a whole new series of best practices that EVERY legal department, compliance officer, and content / Office 365 administrator needs to read, understand, and ensure they have Office 365 setup properly so that when the time comes and they need to do eDiscovery of content, that the information they are looking for has actually been held and managed for future look-up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The quantum era has begun, this CEO says

Quantum computing's full potential may still be years away, but there are plenty of benefits to be realized right now.So argues Vern Brownell, president and CEO of D-Wave Systems, whose namesake quantum system is already in its second generation.Launched 17 years ago by a team with roots at Canada's University of British Columbia, D-Wave introduced what it called "the world's first commercially available quantum computer" back in 2010. Since then the company has doubled the number of qubits, or quantum bits, in its machines roughly every year. Today, its D-Wave 2X system boasts more than 1,000.The company doesn't disclose its full customer list, but Google, NASA and Lockheed-Martin are all on it, D-Wave says. In a recent experiment, Google reported that D-Wave's technology outperformed a conventional machine by 100 million times.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Maersk hopes drones can deliver sweet savings

Shipping giant Maersk Group made headlines earlier this year when it used a drone to deliver a bucket of cookies to a tanker at sea. That was just the beginning of an effort the company thinks could dramatically change its business.The company is evaluating ways to expand its use of drones and plans a bigger test later this year, said Markus Kuhn, a supply chain manager at Maersk, at the Drones Data X conference in San Francisco.In January, the company made a drone fly 250 meters from one of its barges to a tanker and drop off a batch of cookies. It's now looking for a drone-making partner for a test flight that would haul a 10-kilogram package for 10 kilometers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Next-Generation ThunderX2 ARM Targets Skylake Xeons

Networking chip maker Cavium is one of the ARM server chip upstarts that is taking on Intel’s hegemony in the datacenter, and is probably getting the most traction among its ARM peers in the past year with its ThunderX multicore processors.

The first-generation ThunderX chips are seeing the most interest from hyperscalers and HPC centers, plus a few cloud builders, telcos, and large enterprises, that want to explore the possibilities of a different server architecture, and they will be even more intrigued by the second-generation ThunderX2 processors, which Cavium unveiled earlier this week at the Computex trade show in Taipei, …

Next-Generation ThunderX2 ARM Targets Skylake Xeons was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Microsoft continues campaign to shut down stupid software pirates

Microsoft this week filed another lawsuit in federal court accusing unidentified individuals with stealing its software by illegally activating more than 1,000 copies of Windows 7, Vista and 8, and Office 2010 and 2013.The suit, filed with a Seattle court on Wednesday, was the latest in a string of cases opened by the Redmond, Wash. company in an effort to quash piracy."Microsoft's cyberforensics have identified over one thousand product activations originating from IP address 66.51.73.111 ('the IP Address'), which is presently assigned to Earthlink Inc., and which, on information and belief, is being used by the Defendants in furtherance of the unlawful conduct alleged herein," Microsoft's lawyers wrote in the complaint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10% off Bose SoundLink Color Bluetooth Speaker- Deal Alert

The SoundLink Color from Bose is designed to be portable and durable, while still delivering the full, rich sound you would expect from Bose. Pairing is easy with simple voice prompts, and the unit can be paired with two devices, so when the first stops the second one can play. It comes in several stylish colors, has an auxiliary input jack for non-Bluetooth devices, and delivers up to 8 hours of music on a single charge. The speaker averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from nearly 5,000 customers (read reviews) and can be purchased at 10% off its regular listing price ($116 - See on Amazon).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprises Are Investing in Network Security Analytics

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it one thousand times.  Traditional security controls are no longer effective at blocking cyber-threats so enterprise organizations are deploying new types of security defenses and investing in new tools to improve incident detection and response.Unfortunately, this can be more difficult than it seems.  Why?  Effective Incident detection and response depends upon security analytics technology and this is where the confusion lies.  It turns out that there are lots of security analytics tools out there that approach this problem from different angles.  Given this reality, where the heck do you start?Based upon lots of qualitative and quantitative research, I’m finding that many large organizations with experienced security teams tend to jump into security analytics by focusing their effort on the network for several reasons:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprises Are Investing in Network Security Analytics

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it one thousand times.  Traditional security controls are no longer effective at blocking cyber-threats so enterprise organizations are deploying new types of security defenses and investing in new tools to improve incident detection and response.Unfortunately, this can be more difficult than it seems.  Why?  Effective Incident detection and response depends upon security analytics technology and this is where the confusion lies.  It turns out that there are lots of security analytics tools out there that approach this problem from different angles.  Given this reality, where the heck do you start?Based upon lots of qualitative and quantitative research, I’m finding that many large organizations with experienced security teams tend to jump into security analytics by focusing their effort on the network for several reasons:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Twitter briefly considered bidding for Yahoo

Twitter briefly entertained the idea of a merger with Yahoo, and senior Twitter staff met Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to discuss a possible deal.The companies met "several weeks ago," sources told the New York Post, but Twitter broke off the talks soon after, the newspaper reported Thursday night.Yahoo put its core Internet business up for sale in December, after giving up hope of finding a tax-efficient way of selling its 15.4 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.com.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows PC makers hang customers out to dry with flawed crapware updaters

Prominent Windows PC makers, including Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, have made "egregious" omissions in the software updaters they bundle with notebooks that leave customers at risk from attack by cyber-criminals, a security firm contended."It's 2016," said Steve Manzuik, director of security research at Duo Security, in an interview. "[These updaters show] a lack of basic security measures that you should use."Earlier this week, Duo published a report detailing an examination of 10 Windows laptops from five OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) -- Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo -- that focused on the software updating tools the vendors pre-loaded on their machines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Decline in slate tablets bigger than expected, IDC says

Demand for slate-shaped tablets is declining even faster than expected. For all of 2016, global tablet shipments will drop by 9.6% over 2015, market research firm IDC forecast this week, marking the second straight year of decline. In March, IDC had forecast a decline of 6% for this year. The decline will occur even when newer detachable tablets, often called 2-in-1s, are included with slate tablets, IDC said. "The impact of the decline of slates is having a bigger impact, faster than we thought. They are not coming back," said IDC analyst Jean Phillippe Bouchard in an interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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