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IDG Contributor Network: Ready or not, ultra HD is here

As women's soccer teams took the field for the final match of FIFA Women's World Cup Canada 2015 this summer, some fans enjoyed the games via 8K video - the most technologically advanced high-definition video technology on the market. Fox Sports and NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting organization, offered invitation-only 8K demos of the Japan vs. Cameroon game, and the U.S. vs. Nigeria match at the Fox Studio lot in Los Angeles. To top it off, FIFA and NHK produced the championship game in ultra-HD 8K and presented in live viewings in Japan, as well. Viewer response was positive, to say the least.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Worth Reading: Open Source

It can be argued that the biggest change — the change that has led to an explosion of open source software — isn’t the availability of open source software, nor the process of developing open source software, but the commercialization of open source software. We’ve always had an open source software community. What’s new is we have people who are commercializing the open source model. via network computing

The post Worth Reading: Open Source appeared first on 'net work.

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PlantUML – Making Complicated Diagrams Simpler

A colleague at work recently told me that I should check out PlantUML. His advice is usually good, and this is no exception.

PlantUML uses a relatively simple text language to describe the desired diagram, then makes generation of the image as simple as processing the UML file. It’s easy to try online at http://plantuml.com/ where there is a text editor with real time image updates as you add more content.

Sequence Diagrams

Sequence diagrams are probably the simplest to build, and are absurdly fast to create. Here’s a simple example of a TCP exchange:

To create this, I used the following PlantUML:

@startuml
title : TCP Exchange
HostA -> HostB : SYN
HostB -> HostA : SYN+ACK
HostA -> HostB : ACK
HostA -> HostB : Data
HostB -> HostA : ACK
HostB -> HostA : FIN
HostA -> HostB : ACK
HostA -> HostB : FIN
HostB -> HostA : ACK
@enduml

You’re not limited to two endpoints, of course:

Use Case Diagrams

Here’s a simple use case with Fred and Joe again:

The PlantUML to generate this was:

@startuml
title : Result of Gossip
Fred --> (HR) : complaint
(Legal) -> (HR) : advice
(HR) ->  Continue reading

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Linux Foundation’s security checklist can help sysadmins harden workstations

If you're a Linux user, especially a systems administrator, the Linux Foundation has some security tips to share with you, and they're quite good. Konstantin Ryabitsev, the Foundation's director of collaborative IT services, published the security checklist that the organization uses to harden the laptops of its remote sysadmins against attacks. The recommendations aim to balance security decisions with usability and are accompanied by explanations of why they were considered. They also have different severity levels: critical, moderate, low and paranoid.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Simplicity – the art of automation

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The Silo of Focus

How often, in our careers, are we told to focus on one thing at a time? I would guess I see some message about this, such as the image to the left in this post, at least once a week, if not once a day.

In general, I agree with the sentiment. If you really want to get something done, do it, rather than doing a lot of things at once. The reason for this, I think, is because multitasked work tends to result in half-work, which is something to be avoided at all costs.

Avoid half-work more than anything. Do not imitate those people who sit long at their desks but let their minds wander. It is better to shorten the time and use it intensely, to increase its value, which is all that counts. Do something, or do nothing at all. Do ardently whatever you decide to do; do it with your might; and let the whole of your activity be a series of vigorous fresh starts. Half-work, which is half-rest, is good neither for rest nor for work. via Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

But there is another side to focus we need to be wary of as Continue reading

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Boeing’s laser hunts for drones

Boeing's portable drone-destroying laser system is one step closer to the battlefield after a recent test. Earlier this month in California, Boeing's second-generation, compact-laser weapons system disabled a moving, untethered drone. That's important as enemies can easily acquire commercially available drones -- also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- and use them to deliver explosives or perform reconnaissance. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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The disaster-recovery lessons we learned after Katrina

A decade ago New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States were devastated by the sixth strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive storm to ever strike the United States.The destruction from the hurricane itself, and the subsequent flooding that put most of New Orleans underwater knocked many businesses out of commission—and more than a few completely out of existence. Thankfully, we have learned a lot of hard lessons in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that businesses can use to be better-prepared for the next major disaster.An article from USA Today in 2007—two years after Hurricane Katrina—estimates that 7,900 businesses in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana went out of existence as a result of Katrina. Some of those businesses failed as a result of lost revenue resulting from nearly half a million people displaced from the region, but many of those businesses failed as a direct result of the destruction and impact the storm had on their ability to continue operating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Amazon dumps Flash, and the Web is better off

Amazon will stop accepting Flash ads on its advertising network on Tuesday, and it will help make the entire Web more secure, security experts say. According to Amazon, the move was prompted by a recent update from Google Chrome that limited how Flash was displayed on Web pages. Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari already had similar limitations in place. "his change ensures customers continue to have a positive, consistent experience on Amazon, and that ads displayed across the site function properly for optimal performance," the company said in its announcement. Bad, bad FlashTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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As energy push accelerates, battery costs set to plunge 60%

An energy storage study claims that prices for certain battery technologies will plunge by as much as 60% over the next five years. The report was prepared by Australian consultancy AECOM and published by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). The 130-page study, originally published last month, expects all battery technologies  to drop in price. However, the largest reductions are forecast for Li-ion and flow-battery technologies, which are expected to plummet by 60% and 40%, respectively by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor gets technology to secure Android phones

Qualcomm is promising to improve security and privacy on high-end smartphones with Snapdragon Smart Protect, which uses on-device machine learning to help detect zero-day malware.The popularity of smartphones has started to catch the imagination of hackers, resulting in the need for better protection. Qualcomm’s latest contribution is Snapdragon Smart Protect, which the company announced on Monday.Smart Protect looks at what’s going on in the smartphone and warns about what it thinks are abnormal behaviors to protect users. At its most basic, that could be an application that takes a photo even though the display is off or an application sending an SMS without any user interaction. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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VMware NSX 6.2: Enterprise Automation, Security and Application Continuity

VMworld 2015 in San Francisco marks the two-year anniversary of the launch of VMware NSX. Since we originally launched, we have taken the promise of NSX and turned it into a platform that customers around the world are using to transform the operations of their data center networks and security infrastructure – in fact, more than 700 customers have chosen NSX. We also have more than 100 production deployments, and more than 65 customers have invested more than $1M of their IT budgets in NSX. We’ve trained more than 3,500 people on NSX, and we have more than 20 interoperable partner solutions generally available and shipping today.

Perhaps what’s most exciting is that at this year’s show, we will have more than two dozen NSX customers represented in various forums throughout the event. Organizations such as Baystate Health, City of Avondale, ClearDATA, Columbia Sportswear, DirecTV, FireHost, George Washington University, Heartland Payment Systems, IBM, IlliniCloud, NovaMedia, Rent-A-Center, Telstra, Tribune Media, United Health Group, University of New Mexico…the list goes on.

And as the capstone, we get to debut VMware NSX 6.2 at the show. So let’s take a deeper look at what we’ve learned from our customers and what’s new Continue reading

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VMware Claims 100 Production Deployments for NSX

The 'Fight of the Century' ran on NSX, it turns out.

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HP Chalks Up the First OEM Deal for VMware NSX

Beyond reselling VMware NSX, HP has plans for some SDN federation.

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Defending the White Elephant

Click here to download the full report that includes attack details, TTPs and indicators of compromise.   Myanmar is a country currently engaged in an important political process. A pro-democracy reform took place in 2011 which has helped the government create an atmopshere conducive to investor interest. The country is resource rich, with a variety of […]

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Defending the White Elephant

Click here to download the full report that includes attack details, TTPs and indicators of compromise.  

Myanmar is a country currently engaged in an important political process. A pro-democracy reform took place in 2011 which has helped the government create an atmopshere conducive to investor interest. The country is resource rich, with a variety of natural resources and a steady labor supply. Despite recent progress, the country is subject to ongoing conflict with ethnic rebels and an ongoing civil war. Analysts suggest that both China and the United States are vying for greater influence in Myanmar, with China in particular having geopolitical interest due to sea passages, port deals, and fuel pipelines that are important to its goals. Geopolitical analysts have suggested that the United States may have its own interests that involve thwarting Chinese ambitions in the region.

APT groups from multiple countries – including China – have been known to target organizations of strategic interest with aggressive malware-based espionage campaigns. One of the malware families used in such a scenario is the well-known Remote Access Trojan PlugX, also known as Korplug, that enables full access to the victim’s machine and network.

Multiple instances of PlugX and related downloader Continue reading

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Get Smarter About WiFi

WiFi has grown in leaps and bounds, and demand is increasing. Make sure your environment is ready.

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New products of the week 08.31.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.AppFolio Property Manager, Common Area Maintenance (CAM) featureKey features: Cloud-based business software provider AppFolio expanded the feature set within AppFolio Property Manager. CAM allows property managers to easily track and allocate common area expenses within commercial leases. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Review: How to protect top-secret data

The small, camera-equipped drone hovers unobtrusively outside your office window, quietly photographing the confidential documents on your desk and on your computer screen. A dumpster diver retrieves your shredded printouts, scans them into a computer and uses jigsaw-puzzle-solving software to reform the shreds into legible documents. An innocent-looking but virus-infected computer uses nothing more than heat signatures to glean data from your air-gapped (non-networked), “off-the-grid” machines that you thought were perfectly safe from prying eyes. And an industrial spy has tapped into your network links to make copies of private documents as they flow around your company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

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How to Bring SDN/NFV into Reality

Unless you've been living inside a cave, or on top of a mountain without any Internet connection, you must have heard or read the news about Software-Defined Networking (SDN). In fact, SDN news pops up too often these days it makes some skeptics start thinking whether it is really real or just another hype in networking industry.

The challenge is it seems like everybody comes with their own definition of SDN. Each networking vendor displays its solution based on each own interpretation of SDN implementation. IETF group called the Interface to the Routing System (I2RS) is still trying to standardize southbound programming protocols and network-wide, multilayer topologies that include both virtual and real elements, network overlays and underlays. Open Networking Foundation (ONF), as a user-driven organization dedicated to the promotion and adoption of SDN, until today is mainly focusing on standardization of OpenFlow protocol. And the rise of new SDN startups, no doubt have created lots of excitement with many innovations within SDN spaces, contributes to the confusion at the same time.


The questions from today's business leaders in companies that consume networking technologies: if we want to embrace SDN, are we on the right track? Which way to go? Continue reading