New products of the week 06.15.2015

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.AOP ConnectKey features: AOP Connect, a unique online portal that allows organizations unprecedented access to their intellectual property research results and offers secure interaction with global researchers. The platform offers the ability to leverage results of all of a client’s previous AOP Studies for new purposes. More informationTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best tools for single sign-on

Single mindednessSince we last looked at single sign-on products in 2012, the field has gotten more crowded and more capable. For this round of evaluations, we looked at seven SSO services: Centrify’s Identity Service, Microsoft’s Azure AD Premium, Okta’s Identity and Mobility Management, OneLogin, Ping Identity’s Ping One, Secure Auth’s IdP, and SmartSignin. Our Clear Choice test winner is Centrify, which slightly outperformed Okta and OneLogin. (Read the full review.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Smartphone beacons power crowdsourced weather forecasts

A Japanese climate information company that wants to track just about every cloud in the sky in its own data cloud is handing out atmospheric sensors for smartphones that could improve forecasting.Weathernews is distributing the sensors to users of its Weathernews Touch, a crowdsourced weather info app that has been downloaded more than 13 million times.The hexagonal, palm-sized WxBeacon sensors can detect changes in temperature, barometric pressure and humidity and automatically upload them to the Weathernews cloud.The aim is to improve weather forecasting with more granular, local information and to encourage more people to contribute to crowdsourced weather data, a Weathernews spokeswoman said. The company, which calls itself the world’s largest private weather data firm, believes the data gathered by the beacons could be particularly useful when typhoons strike Japan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Advanced Carrier Supporting Carrier Design

LDP is the most commonly used label distribution protocol in today MPLS networks. Although it lacks of Traffic Engineering, Admission Control, Fast Reroute capabilities, it scales very well because of its Multi Point to Point Label Switched Path.BGP can also assign a label for the IP and also for the VPN prefixes and in this article I… Read More »

The post Advanced Carrier Supporting Carrier Design appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

HTC will refuse any acquisition offer from Asus

Asustek Computer may be considering a bid for HTC, but HTC said Monday it wants nothing do with it.On Friday, Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of buying HTC.Such a move could help both companies: Asus has been trying to move beyond its traditional PC business into sales of Android smartphones, and acquiring smartphone maker HTC would boost its market presence. It could also provide support for HTC, which has seen its market share dwindle in the face of tough competition from Apple, Samsung Electronics and Chinese smartphone vendors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: My Industry Thoughts in 30 Seconds

Ivan posted his answers to 3 questions posed by a media agency. I got the same email and perhaps my thoughts might add something to the discussion. Q. What can enterprises do to ensure that their infrastructure is ready for next-gen networking technology implementations emerging in the next decade? Hire more people and invest in […]

The post Response: My Industry Thoughts in 30 Seconds appeared first on EtherealMind.

Industry Thoughts in 30 seconds

A while ago someone working for an IT-focused media site approached me with a short list of high-level questions. Not sure when they’ll publish the answers, so here they are in case you might find them interesting:

What can enterprises do to ensure that their infrastructure is ready for next-gen networking technology implementations emerging in the next decade?

Next-generation networks will probably rely on existing architectures and forwarding mechanisms, while being significantly more uniform and heavily automated.

Upcoming Jungle Release: FRIDAY EVENING

On Friday evening we are going be pushing an update to the community with some exciting new features. In addition to that you will notice,

Alibaba prepares to launch Netflix-like service in China

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group is preparing to launch a Netflix-like subscription video service in China, as the company expands into more entertainment ventures.Alibaba isn’t the only player aiming to launch a paid video subscription service in the country. Netflix has recently talked about entering the market, although the company still needs to receive Chinese regulatory permission.The companies would be entering an already competitive market, full of local companies offering video streaming services, many of them for free. Youku Tudou, for instance, is one of the biggest players in the market, and streams both Chinese and foreign TV shows, in addition to producing its own content. Alibaba has acquired a stake in Youku Tudou.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to code: lesson 27

I was reading some code on the Internet today and came across this:

The thing to notice is the hang & symbols in front of the variables, instead of just making things line up. It's a stylistic quirk of the author of this code. It's a good lesson on what not to do.

There is only one important style rule and it is this: make your code look like everyone else's. The question isn't whether it's good or bad, only that it's unusual. Yes, this quick is relatively insignificant, but I point it out is that you should not be tempted, even on the smallest of things.

You see this with the evolution of programmers. In the beginning, their code is quirky as hell. Over time, as they they are exposed to more and more source by others, they start to see how these quirks are irritating, and stop doing them in their own code. The style becomes blander and blander -- but at the same time, the greatness of their construction of the code starts to shine.

When you start writing great code, you'll eventually have to break this rule and do something big and strange. For example, I Continue reading

An Update on IPv6

In the coming weeks another Regional Internet Registry will reach into its inventory of available IPv4 addresses to hand out and it will find that there is nothing left. This is by no means a surprise, and the depletion of IPv4 addresses in the Internet could be seen as one of the longest slow motion train wrecks in history. As of mid June 2015 ARIN has 2.2 million addresses left in its available pool, and at the current allocation rate it will take around 30 days to run though this remaining pool. What does this mean for IPv6?

Open Source Routing: Practical Lab

Earlier, I wrote about some interesting open source routing software that I’ve been exploring lately. In this post, I’ll provide you with some tools to get this lab running on your lab, using Vagrant and Ansible. In this post, I’ll be using VirtualBox, and also Ansible and Vagrant. For this purpose, I’m assuming you’re at least somewhat familiar with these tools. Please checkout my GitHub repository for access to the latest versions of all of the files we’ll discuss below - and an easy way to spin all of this up yourself.

Open Source Routing: Practical Lab

In this post, I’ll be using VirtualBox, and also Ansible and Vagrant. For this purpose, I’m assuming you’re at least somewhat familiar with these tools.

Please checkout my GitHub repository for access to the latest versions of all of the files we’ll discuss below - and an easy way to spin all of this up yourself.

Topology

First, here’s the topology we’ll be working with.

All “circuits” are implemented using VirtualBox host networks, described in the Vagrantfile:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
 
  config.vm.box = "trusty64"
  config.vm.box_url = "http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant/trusty/current/trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-vagrant-disk1.box"
 
  config.vm.define "r1" do |r1|
    r1.vm.host_name = "r1"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "192.168.12.11",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "01-to-02"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "192.168.31.11",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "03-to-01"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "1.1.1.10",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "Network to Advertise"
    r1.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
      ansible.playbook = "r1.yml"
     Continue reading

Open Source Routing: Practical Lab

In this post, I’ll be using VirtualBox, and also Ansible and Vagrant. For this purpose, I’m assuming you’re at least somewhat familiar with these tools.

Please checkout my GitHub repository for access to the latest versions of all of the files we’ll discuss below - and an easy way to spin all of this up yourself.

Topology

First, here’s the topology we’ll be working with.

All “circuits” are implemented using VirtualBox host networks, described in the Vagrantfile:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
 
  config.vm.box = "trusty64"
  config.vm.box_url = "http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/vagrant/trusty/current/trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-vagrant-disk1.box"
 
  config.vm.define "r1" do |r1|
    r1.vm.host_name = "r1"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "192.168.12.11",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "01-to-02"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "192.168.31.11",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "03-to-01"
    r1.vm.network "private_network",
                         ip: "1.1.1.10",
                         virtualbox__intnet: "Network to Advertise"
    r1.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
      ansible.playbook = "r1.yml"
     Continue reading

How we really know the Sunday Times story is bogus

Stories sourced entirely from "anonymous senior government officials" are propaganda, not journalism. The identities of the sources are hidden not to protect them from speaking out against the government, since they are in fact delivering exactly the message the government wants to get out. Instead, their identities are kept secret so that their message cannot be challenged.

It's not just me claiming this. Every journalistic organization criticizes the practice. Every set of journalistic ethics guidelines calls this unethical.

Yet, somehow it keeps happening. The latest example is the The Sunday Times, Britains largest newspaper, reporting government officials critical of Snowden. We know the story is bogus, because it quotes solely government official spouting the party line. Moreover, even if that weren't the case, it's obvious propaganda, arguing one side of the story, and not even attempting to get the other point of view from Russia, China, or Snowden himself. Snowden is often quoted in newspapers, he can't be that hard to get a hold of. Not contacting Snowden for his side is also a violation of journalistic ethics.

I point this out because there are lots of good criticisms of the story, for example, pointing out that the correct term Continue reading

iPhone 7 rumor rollup: Apple gets funny, iOS 9 drops hints

Humor alert! Humor alert! Yes, as it relates to Apple.And I’m not talking about the standard eye-rolling stuff of corporate dog-and-pony shows such as last week’s Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Nope, here we have Apple enlisting the aid of former SNL comic Bill Hader, who shares a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at what could have been at WWDC… Alas, there were no iPhone 6S or iPhone 7 rumors in there, just a goat and some larger-than-life fingers. But the actual WWDC’s introduction of iOS 9 did spark speculation about the next flagship iPhones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My first Cisco Live!

Even though im still in San Diego, Cisco Live! US 2015 is but a memory.

But what a memory it is! It being my first time attending a Cisco Live conference, I didn’t really know what to expect.

What I was met with, was a conference full of really sharp and nice people. The conference staff was very helpful and polite and really made an impression on me, from the time I first stepped onto the pavement outside San Diego convention center.

We (I brought my better half to the US) arrived very late on saturday, so after a good nights sleep I took the bus to the convention center to register and pick up the first piece of swag, the famous Cisco Live bag.

One of the great benefits of attending the conference was meeting with my good friend Daniel Dib (from lostintransit.se). I hadn’t seen him since January, so it was really cool to meet up with him during the week.

On Monday Daniel and I attended a session together, but most other sessions I went to alone. For the record, I paid for this trip out of my own pocket, so I didn’t have any co-workers Continue reading

Cisco Live 2015 – Helping Others

Another year, another Cisco Live. Boy, was it a good one. San Diego is a great city, and convention center there is plenty big to take care of all 25k attendees. On top of that, the city itself is equipped to handle groups of 40 roaming the streets looking for food and entertainment.

This year’s event had the usual stuff that everyone talks about – breakout session, keynotes, exams, etc. – but Cisco stepped outside of technology this year by helping others.

Stop Hunger Now Volunteer Space – Cisco partnered with Stop Hunger Now and set up a space where attendees could assemble meal kits to fight hunger worldwide. I believe the final number was 100,656 kits assembled, which is a fantastic number. I’m ashamed to say, though, that I missed this due to scheduling issues, but I’m proud of Cisco and the attendees for participating.
Mike Rowe Works Foundation – The keynote speaker this year was Mike Rowe, whom most of us know from his TV show Dirty Jobs. His foundation helps to support skilled labor movements in order to keep all jobs meaningful. As part of his appearance, Cisco gave his foundation a nice check for $20,000 and promised another Continue reading

CORE Network Emulator updated to 4.8

The CORE Network Emulator has been updated to version 4.8. This new version fixes the issues I noted in my previous review of CORE release 4.7. It also implements some new features. See the CORE 4.8 release notes for all the details.

The most visible change is the addition of some new services — most notably a new Docker service that will allow Docker containers to be used as nodes in the simulation scenario.

More about CORE

I’ve written a lot about the CORE Network Emulator and all my previous posts are still relevant to CORE 4.8 — except where I discuss the bugs in previous versions that are fixed in the latest release. If you have not used the CORE Network Emulator before, I suggest you read the following posts, in order:

This should get you started using the CORE Network Emulator. If you wish to learn more, please read my other posts about CORE and consult the CORE documentation.

Install CORE 4.8 from packages

One can Continue reading

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