Internet Connected Water Heater

So I have to admit that I’m the crusty old curmudgeon who is way behind on things like home automation. After a recent issue with my water heater I opted to replace it with one that utilizes heat pump technology. I know a lot of people are installing tankless models and I strongly considered that path. My challenges were as follows–

• Relatively High Demand (replacing an 80 Gallon Conventional Electric)
• Conventional 80 Gallon Electric Models are difficult to purchase (at least in consumer models)
• Tankless Owners seem to prefer gas over electric models
• Venting a tankless gas heater would require relocation of plumbing

Given these constraints, I stumbled into the hybrid water heater models. These are big tank models that utilize heat pump technology as a preferred method of moving heat into the water. As demand increases, traditional resistance coils can be invoked to generate heat.

The goal is to be more efficient than tankless models and have the option for rapid recovery. My biggest concern was the added complexity and additional components that could fail. Nonetheless, the energy ratings were very good and there are some rebate programs and tax incentives to offset the cost. I ultimately chose a GE Geospring 80 Continue reading

Why The Industry Needs An Open Source Framework For Switching Silicon

Howdy. Occasionally the topic of open sourcing a driver, library, or SDK to a commodity product comes up as more developers start working on/deploying said product. Typically, the vendor makes a concession and opens up the documentation to increase adoption and supportability. Sometimes this works. Sometimes, it just pisses off the developers to such an […]

The post Why The Industry Needs An Open Source Framework For Switching Silicon appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Why The Industry Needs An Open Source Framework For Switching Silicon

Howdy. Occasionally the topic of open sourcing a driver, library, or SDK to a commodity product comes up as more developers start working on/deploying said product. Typically, the vendor makes a concession and opens up the documentation to increase adoption and supportability. Sometimes this works. Sometimes, it just pisses off the developers to such an […]

The post Why The Industry Needs An Open Source Framework For Switching Silicon appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Service Providers Are Sick of Legacy OSS

LSO may be their Holy Grail.

Check Out Our New Network Virtualization Topic Page!

Check out our new, comprehensive topic page on network virtualization to understand how the technology can help you quickly adjust workloads and resources to meet evolving computing needs.

IDG Contributor Network: Broad use of cloud services leaves enterprise data vulnerable to theft, report says

Data theft is a very real and growing threat for companies that increasingly use cloud services, says a security firm.Workers who widely share documents stored in the cloud with clients, independent contractors, or even others within the company are creating a Swiss-cheese of security holes, a study by Blue Coat Systems has found.In some cases, cloud documents were publicly discoverable through Google searches, the researchers say of their analysis.'Broadly shared' The study found that 26% of documents stored in cloud apps are shared so widely that they pose a security risk. Compounding the issue is that many organizations aren't even aware of it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Advanced Technical “Hacks” for your site’s SEO

Improving your site’s SEO is probably top of mind for you, but doing so takes a lot of hard work and the rules of the game are constantly changing. On Tuesday, January 26th at 10am PT/1pm ET, CloudFlare is hosting a live discussion with some of the leading experts in technical SEO. They will share advanced technical hacks to help you reap the benefits of higher search rankings. In the live discussion, Martin Woods, Reza Moaiandin, and Patrick Stox will cover:

• Tangible tips about on-page code excellency
• Semantic markup
• Web server optimization with GZIP and HTTP/2
• Web content optimization
• Site security with malware and DDoS prevention

In addition to the webinar, Reza and Martin from SALT.agency have offered a free 30 minute technical SEO consult on your website. Consults are limited to the first 50 people who signup here and also attend the live webinar event on January 26th at 10am PT. Be sure to register for the webinar, too.

IoT and data privacy

This week on January 28 we will celebrate Data Privacy Day, which has a theme of "Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data and Enabling Trust." We'll get back to that... First Response Qualcomm reportedly partnered with First Response to develop "the world's first smart pregnancy test, which connects through a mobile device to alert clinicians a patient is pregnant." It's just the first such home test to "capture electronically" and "then transmit that data to the clinicians," Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Mault told CRNtv. He added that for IoT to do well in medical verticals, it will "require connectivity infrastructure that can enable the data capture from a variety of devices and diagnostics and therapeutic instruments and allow that data to flow into the hands of clinicians of any type."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista Countersues Cisco, Claiming Antitrust Violations

Two days before a ruling in a patent infringement case between the companies, Arista Networks is suing Cisco Systems for what it alleges are antitrust violations. Arista today filed a counterclaim to Cisco’s 13-month-old copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, for antitrust and unfair competition. Arista alleges Cisco conducts a “bait and switch” with its command line interface in which it claims it is an industry standard and then attempts to penalize competitors for emulating it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista Countersues Cisco, Claiming Antitrust Violations

Two days before a ruling in a patent infringement case between the companies, Arista Networks is suing Cisco Systems for what it alleges are antitrust violations. Arista today filed a counterclaim to Cisco’s 13-month-old copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, for antitrust and unfair competition. Arista alleges Cisco conducts a “bait and switch” with its command line interface in which it claims it is an industry standard and then attempts to penalize competitors for emulating it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista countersues Cisco for Antitrust

Two days before a ruling in a patent infringement case between the companies, Arista Networks is suing Cisco Systems for what it alleges are antitrust violations.Arista today filed a counterclaim to Cisco’s 13-month-old copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, for antitrust and unfair competition. Arista alleges Cisco conducts a “bait and switch” with its command line interface in which it claims it is an industry standard and then attempts to penalize competitors for emulating it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista countersues Cisco for Antitrust

Two days before a ruling in a patent infringement case between the companies, Arista Networks is suing Cisco Systems for what it alleges are antitrust violations.Arista today filed a counterclaim to Cisco’s 13-month-old copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, for antitrust and unfair competition. Arista alleges Cisco conducts a “bait and switch” with its command line interface in which it claims it is an industry standard and then attempts to penalize competitors for emulating it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ta-ta to passwords and PINs; faces and fingerprints to rule the future

Facial and fingerprint recognition technologies are expected to see accelerated growth over the next five years as security applications emerge in the government, enterprise, finance, consumer and other markets.The market value of facial recognition technologies is expected to nearly double from $230 million in 2015 to $450 million in 2019; that represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 18%, according to market research firm TrendForce.Led by Apple's iPhone juggernaut, unit shipments of fingerprint sensors have grown from 316 million in 2014 to 499 million last year and will continue to increase each year to peak at 1.6 billion in 2020. Revenue growth for fingerprint sensors will increase from about $1.86 billion in 2015 to $2.6 billion in in 2020, according to the latest research from IHS Technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to determine if big data security analytics will produce useful outcomes

Samsung sued for not updating Android on older phones

The Dutch Consumers' Association (DCA), or Consumentenbond as it is known in its native land, is suing Samsung for not providing timely software updates to older models of its Android smartphones. The move was driven in part because Samsung has such a strong presence in Holland, and because Samsung is pretty bad about supporting old phones, as I've learned through personal experience.According to DCA's own research (PDF file), at least 82% of Samsung smartphones available in the Dutch market examined had not received any software updates to the latest version of Android in two years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Break 71: Network Startups Get Millions; Medical Device Insecurity

Network Break 71 covers new funding rounds for Big Switch Networks, Cumulus, and Plexxi, as well as Cisco's investment in SD-WAN startup VeloCloud. We also check in on product announcements from Dell and Arista Networks, and discuss potential security issues with medical devices.

The post Network Break 71: Network Startups Get Millions; Medical Device Insecurity appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Network Break 71: Network Startups Get Millions; Medical Device Insecurity

Network Break 71 covers new funding rounds for Big Switch Networks, Cumulus, and Plexxi, as well as Cisco's investment in SD-WAN startup VeloCloud. We also check in on product announcements from Dell and Arista Networks, and discuss potential security issues with medical devices.

The post Network Break 71: Network Startups Get Millions; Medical Device Insecurity appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Despite rhetoric, DoJ, NSA still seek backdoors

The U.S. took its encryption argument international last week, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch telling the World Economic forum that it doesn’t want to put security backdoors into encrypted communications, it just wants to vendors and service providers to decrypt when ordered to by a court.That ignores that facts that vendors and providers can’t decrypt unless there is a backdoor of some sort, and that any backdoor undermines the security and therefore the value of encryption.It’s a case of the Department of Justice – via Lynch and FBI Director James Comey – trying to steer clear, at least technically, of demanding backdoors, but it’s all a semantic game. Earlier, Comey stopped using the term backdoor and asked for front-door access to decryption instead. Backdoor had become too much of a flashpoint, even though a front-door is exactly the same as a backdoor from a technology standpoint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Talking NVMe, 3DXpoint and Networking

The IT Storage market is going through a lot of change. New silicon designs from Intel & Micron branded 3D Xpoint are impacting the short term future of the “all flash array” market. Intel has developed NVMe so that that speed of accessing this fancy new storage can be realised because the 30-year old SCSI/NFS/Fibrechannel protocols […]

The post Talking NVMe, 3DXpoint and Networking appeared first on EtherealMind.

Response: Doing No Harm

Ivan posted here: I’ll take ownership of the statement because at least it sounds like something I have discussed on the podcast and, sadly, because there aren’t that many networking podcasts. The comment is in relation to the purpose of a stateful firewall when compared to a stateless firewall aka access lists. I do think that […]

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