From doughnuts to Dressgate: How real-time marketing helps brands stay relevant

It would have been easy enough for Dunkin’ Donuts to dismiss the Internet phenomenon “Dressgate” as irrelevant to its brand. What, after all, could an online debate over optical illusions and the color of a dress possibly have to do with pastry and coffee?Turns out, plenty. In a shining example of real-time marketing done right, Dunkin’ Donuts quickly identified the viral trend and rapidly conceived and executed a relevant promotion to insert its brand into the conversation. On the morning of Feb. 27—just hours after the phenomenon erupted—the company tweeted an image of a black-and-blue frosted doughnut alongside a white-and-gold one. “Doesn’t matter if it’s blue/black or white/gold, they still taste delicious,” read the accompanying text.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware’s Identity Manager offers authentication for Web, native apps

VMware is hoping to convince CIOs to centralize single sign-on access to all kinds of apps with Identity Manager, which can run in the cloud or on-site and also offers application provisioning and a self-service catalog.For better or worse, the switch to cloud-based services on a larger scale and the introduction of bring-your-own devices is forcing enterprises to rethink most aspects of how IT is run. Part of that change is how users are authenticated and given access to applications.The transformation from a client-server, perimeter-based infrastructure to a cloud-based model requires taking on systems outside of the firewall, according to VMware. To help tackle this, the company has launched Identity Manager. Enterprises can choose between an on-site version of the software or a cloud-based service hosted on vCloud Air. The initial launch uses U.S. data centers, but hosting in European and Asia Pacific regions will be offered from the third quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets

If software developers and network driver writers can make their own packets, can’t you? Ah, right...you’re not a developer. Your coding-fu is weak, as is mine. Still, there’s hope for us in an open source tool called Ostinato. Ostinato calls itself “Wireshark in reverse.” With Ostinato, you can make your own packets, custom crafting them any way you like. Today on the Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we’re talking with one of the Ostinato creators, Srivats P.

The post PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Russ White – Orhan Ergun CCDE Practical Exam Scenario

I am glad to announce that Russ White and I have been preparing a CCDE Practical Exam ( Lab Exam ) Scenario. This is the most realistic scenario available anywhere.Because it is not just prepared by a CCDE but one of the founder of the exam involved. Disclosure : This is not asked in the CCDE… Read More »

The post Russ White – Orhan Ergun CCDE Practical Exam Scenario appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Tech Media Watch: HBO’s “Silicon Valley” set to wrap 2nd season – it won’t be “Game Of Thrones”-esque but it’ll do

The far-and-away best satire of the technology industry on TV airs the last episode of its second season Sunday night, and you really should be watching. Silicon Valley has continued to bring the funny throughout the second set of episodes, and the finale looks like it’s leading up to a fairly insane climax.The first season ended on what was easily the strongest episode of the series so far, as the team won TechCrunch Disrupt thanks to a flash of genius inspired by what can only be described as a very clever, in-depth and witty joke having to do with an important part of the male anatomy. As good as the second season has been, its finale has a lot to live up to, if it’s going to be considered as good as the first.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets

If software developers and network driver writers can make their own packets, can’t you? Ah, right...you’re not a developer. Your coding-fu is weak, as is mine. Still, there’s hope for us in an open source tool called Ostinato. Ostinato calls itself “Wireshark in reverse.” With Ostinato, you can make your own packets, custom crafting them any way you like. Today on the Packet Pushers Priority Queue, we’re talking with one of the Ostinato creators, Srivats P.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
TwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

The post PQ Show 52 – Using Ostinato To Craft Your Own Packets appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Worth Reading: SD-WAN and Per Application Routing

SD-WAN Gives Us The Best Path We Always Wanted

Of course, routing on a per application (or a per packet) basis provides more optimization, but it also adds more state in the control plane, and it increases the speed at which that state changes. In my forthcoming book on network complexity, I’m going to work around a model of state/speed/surface, with a side of optimization, to gain an understanding of network complexity and how to manage it.

The post Worth Reading: SD-WAN and Per Application Routing appeared first on 'net work.

How to receive a million packets per second

Last week during a casual conversation I overheard a colleague saying: "The Linux network stack is slow! You can't expect it to do more than 50 thousand packets per second per core!"

That got me thinking. While I agree that 50kpps per core is probably the limit for any practical application, what is the Linux networking stack capable of? Let's rephrase that to make it more fun:

On Linux, how hard is it to write a program that receives 1 million UDP packets per second?

Hopefully, answering this question will be a good lesson about the design of a modern networking stack.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Bob McCaffrey

First, let us assume:

  • Measuring packets per second (pps) is much more interesting than measuring bytes per second (Bps). You can achieve high Bps by better pipelining and sending longer packets. Improving pps is much harder.

  • Since we're interested in pps, our experiments will use short UDP messages. To be precise: 32 bytes of UDP payload. That means 74 bytes on the Ethernet layer.

  • For the experiments we will use two physical servers: "receiver" and "sender".

  • They both have two six core 2GHz Xeon processors. With hyperthreading (HT) enabled Continue reading

Show 241 – Smart Labs on Public Cloud with Ravello – Sponsored

The Packet Pushers discuss Smart Labs on AWS & Google using Ravello's nested virtualization with Gil Hoffer, VP of R&D, & Navin Thadani, Sr. VP of Products.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
TwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

The post Show 241 – Smart Labs on Public Cloud with Ravello – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Development Environment Setup

Before we proceed with TDD framework build it is important to have the development environment setup. In our case it will consist of two major components:

  • Network Simulation Environment
  • Ansible Development Environment

To simplify things I will run both of these environments on the same Virtual Machine. For network simulation I will use UnetLab, a wonderful product developed by Andrea Dainese. Currently, UnetLab is distributed as an OVA package and is available for free download on the website. To simulate network devices I will run IOU which will be interconnected to form a simple network. Finally, I will show how to setup development environment with Ansible, git and Python.

Continue reading

Differentiation in Software Defined WAN

One of the most interesting things about SD-WAN is the level of real differentiation between the different vendors that has actual business outcomes. Let me explain, most SD-WAN vendors are using overlay networks to bypass the restrictions and limitations of IP routing. A few of the features in common are: multi-path networking dynamic and temporal […]

The post Differentiation in Software Defined WAN appeared first on EtherealMind.

Thoughts on Cisco Live 2015

Cisco Live 2015 Twitter Pic

We’ve secretly replaced Tom with Mike Rowe. Let’s see if anyone notices…

Cisco Live 2015 is in the books. A great return to San Diego. A farewell from John Chambers. A greeting from Chuck Robbins (@ChuckRobbins). And a few other things.

The Community is Strong, But Concerned

The absolute best part of Cisco Live is the community that has grown from the social media attendees. More than once I heard during the week “I can’t believe this used to be 20-30 people!”. The social community continues to grow and change. Some people move on. Others return from absence. Still others are coming for the first time.

The Cisco Live social community is as inclusive as any I have seen. From the Sunday night Tweetup to the various interactions throughout the week, I’m proud to be a part of a community that strives to make everyone feel like they are part of a greater whole. I met so many new people this year and marveled at the way the Social Media Hub and Meetup Area were both packed at all hours of the day.

That being said, the community does have some concerns. Some of them are around Continue reading

Software applications have on average 24 vulnerabilities inherited from buggy components

Many commercial software companies and enterprise in-house developers are churning out applications that are insecure by design due to the rapid and often uncontrolled use of open-source components.Even worse, these software makers wouldn’t be able to tell which of their applications are affected by a known component flaw even if they wanted to because of poor inventory practices.Last year, large software and financial services companies downloaded 240,757 components on average from one of the largest public repositories of open-source Java components. Over 15,000 of those components, or 7.5 percent, had known vulnerabilities, according to Sonatype, the company that manages the repository.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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