IDG Contributor Network: 5 ways to fight mainframe malaise

As a mainframer, I belong to a number of organizations and groups that focus on this technology. And when I read message boards, Web sites, magazines, and blogs about big iron one theme always comes through loud and clear: my peers are overwhelmingly negative about their jobs.

In fact, some recent polls highlighting employee job dissatisfaction paint a fairly grim picture. A recent Gallup Poll is here. The Washington Post poll is here. And a Forbes poll is here.

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A good start, but developers want more access to the Apple Watch

A software update to the Apple Watch’s OS gave third-party developers access to the device’s sensors this week, fulfilling a request they’ve had since Apple unveiled the wearable.With watchOS 2, which Apple showed on Monday at its annual developer’s conference, developers can create more-capable apps that directly tap into the watch’s components, like its microphone and heart rate sensor, instead of relying on an accompanying iPhone to handle app processing.While developers welcomed this news, some think Apple could go even further in making the watch a better platform for their apps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Report: Blackberry’s next devices could run Android

Beleaguered smartphone manufacturer Blackberry could go Android with its next device, abandoning development of its own platform in the interest of getting a more robust ecosystem of apps into the hands of its few remaining users, according to a report from Reuters.Citing anonymous sources, the news agency said that the idea is to transform Blackberry into a software and services company, centered on BES 12, a mobility management system designed to work across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices, in addition to Blackberry’s own. (Read the full Reuters report here.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading 06:12

According to the Data Center Journal:

What’s the problem with IT resumes? They’re useless.

The real problem with IT resumes, though, is we want to see a long list of technologies, because we want to find the specific technology we want to implement (or are implementing) — rather than a good engineer. The hiring process is a fishing expedition rather than a search for solid talent and personality fit. If we want to fix this problem we can. The question is — do we want to?

Bruce Schneier has some wise thoughts on airport security this week —

We don’t need perfect airport security. We just need security that’s good enough to dissuade someone from building a plot around evading it. If you’re caught with a gun or a bomb, the TSA will detain you and call the FBI. Under those circumstances, even a medium chance of getting caught is enough to dissuade a sane terrorist

Replace “airport” with “network,” and you get the drift of where network security is going, I think. Of course, there’s the reality that you can’t stop insane attackers… Worth remembering. The same point can be made for network uptime, by the way. Perfection is Continue reading

Massive route leak causes Internet slowdown

Earlier today a massive route leak initiated by Telekom Malaysia (AS4788) caused significant network problems for the global routing system. Primarily affected was Level3 (AS3549 – formerly known as Global Crossing) and their customers. Below are some of the details as we know them now.

Starting at 08:43 UTC today June 12th,  AS4788 Telekom Malaysia started to announce about 179,000 of prefixes to Level3 (AS3549, the Global crossing AS), whom in turn accepted these and propagated them to their peers and customers. Since Telekom Malaysia had inserted itself between these thousands of prefixes and Level3 it was now responsible for delivering these packets to the intended destinations.

This event resulted in significant packet loss and Internet slow down in all parts of the world. The Level3 network in particular suffered from severe service degradation between the Asia pacific region and the rest of their network. The graph below for example shows the packet loss as measured by OpenDNS between London over Level3 and Hong Kong. The same loss patterns were visible from other Level3 locations globally to for example Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Packet loss London to Hong Kong over Level3

Packet loss London to Hong Kong over Level3

At the same time the round trip time between these Continue reading

SDN SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKS: AN OVERVIEW

How does Internet work - We know what is networking

Flowing text is a project done as a part of academic work that I am involved with for last few years at the University of Rijeka – Department of Informatics. It’s a short overview at latest achievements in the field of network automation with some lab experiments done to test different paths across the network. The work was presented at 6th International Conference on Information Technologies and Information Society (ITIS2014). The scope of ITIS events are the applications of IT, particularly in social sciences. The conference also covers a wider range of topics related to IT and computational modeling and

SDN SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKS: AN OVERVIEW

LTE subscriptions to surpass 1 billion this year

The number of LTE subscriptions will pass 1 billion before the end of the year, prompting operators to invest in technologies such as small cells to keep up.There will be nearly 1.37 billion 4G LTE subscribers around the world by year-end, up from nearly 650 million in 2014, according to market research company ABI Research. LTE’s growing popularity is helped by a number of things: mobile operators including the technology in more of their plans, cheaper LTE smartphones and aggressive network expansions in countries like China.LTE is being rapidly embraced in North America, Japan and South Korea where it’ll be included in a majority of subscriptions this year, according to telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson, which last week published a report on its expectations for future mobile growth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asus’s Shih leaves the door open to looking at HTC acquisition

A deal for Taiwanese PC maker Asustek Computer to buy struggling phone-maker HTC makes sense to some, and on Friday Asus’s chairman said he wouldn’t rule it out.An acquisition of HTC would certainly help the PC maker boost its presence in the smartphone market. Asus has only recently begun selling handsets, but it’s aiming at shipping 17 million units this year.At the Asus shareholders’ meeting on Friday, Chairman Jonney Shih said in response to a question that Asus wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of buying HTC, but that no formal evaluation had been made, according to company spokesman Nick Wu.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asus’s Shih leaves the door open to looking at HTC acquisition

A deal for Taiwanese PC maker Asustek Computer to buy struggling phone-maker HTC makes sense to some, and on Friday Asus’s chairman said he wouldn’t rule it out.An acquisition of HTC would certainly help the PC maker boost its presence in the smartphone market. Asus has only recently begun selling handsets, but it’s aiming at shipping 17 million units this year.At the Asus shareholders’ meeting on Friday, Chairman Jonney Shih said in response to a question that Asus wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of buying HTC, but that no formal evaluation had been made, according to company spokesman Nick Wu.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, June 12

Twitter CEO Costolo steps downEmbattled Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will leave his post atop the micro-blogging company on July 1, bowing to intense pressure from investors disappointed with slow revenue growth and the failure to turn a profit. Co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey will serve as interim CEO while the company looks for a new boss; Costolo will remain on Twitter’s board of directors.Oculus launches a consumer Rift headset, Xbox controllerIn advance of the E3 gaming expo next week, virtual reality headset maker Oculus on Thursday took the wraps off a consumer version of its Rift headset, which will ship next March with a wireless Xbox controller. The company also showed prototypes of two ring-shaped controllers that will let players interact with objects in games like they might in real life.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, June 12

Twitter CEO Costolo steps downEmbattled Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will leave his post atop the micro-blogging company on July 1, bowing to intense pressure from investors disappointed with slow revenue growth and the failure to turn a profit. Co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey will serve as interim CEO while the company looks for a new boss; Costolo will remain on Twitter’s board of directors.Oculus launches a consumer Rift headset, Xbox controllerIn advance of the E3 gaming expo next week, virtual reality headset maker Oculus on Thursday took the wraps off a consumer version of its Rift headset, which will ship next March with a wireless Xbox controller. The company also showed prototypes of two ring-shaped controllers that will let players interact with objects in games like they might in real life.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Right to be forgotten applies to all Google domains, rules French privacy authority

Google must respect the European Union’s ‘right to be forgotten’ court ruling on all its sites, not just those it says target EU countries, the French data protection authority has ruled, giving the company 15 days to comply.The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) ordered Google to remove the affected search results on all its domains, including google.com, or face a fine of up to €300,000 (about $337,000). So far, Google has only removed such results from those of its sites it says target EU users, including google.fr or google.de. French residents need only click the “Use Google.com” link on the google.fr homepage to have access to unfiltered search results.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

29 – Interconnecting dual-Fabric: Full-Mesh or Partial-Mesh

This post discusses about design considerations when interconnecting two tightly coupled fabrics using dark fibers or DWDM, but not limited to Metro distances. If we think very long distances, the point-to-point links can be also established using a virtual overlay such as EoMPLS port x-connect; nonetheless the debate will be the same.

Notice that this discussion is not limited to one type of network fabric transport, but any solutions that use multi-pathing is concerned, such as FabricPath, VxLAN or ACI.

Assuming the distance between DC-1 and DC-2 is about 100 km; if the following two design options sound quite simple to guess which one might be the most efficient, actually it’s not as obvious as we could think of, and a bad choice may have a huge impact for some applications. I met several networkers discussing about the best choice between full-mesh and partial-mesh for interconnecting 2 fabrics. Some folks think that full-mesh is the best solution. Actually, albeit it depends on the distances between network fabrics, this is certainly not the most efficient design option for interconnecting them together.

Full-Mesh and Partial-Mesh

Partial-Mesh with transit leafs design (left)                                                 Continue reading

NAPALM: Integrating Ansible with Network Devices on Software Gone Wild

What happens when network engineers with strong programming background and focus on open source tools have to implement network automation in a multi-vendor network? Instead of complaining or ranting about the stupidities of traditional networking vendors and CLI they write an abstraction layer that allows them to treat all their devices in the same way and immediately open-source it.

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Apple and IPv6

It’s Apple’s Developers Conference time again, and in amongst the various announcements was week, in the “Platforms Status of the Union” presentation, was the mention of some recent IPv6 developments by Apple. As far as supporting IPv6 is concerned Apple still appear to get it. But do they really get all of it?

Musing: Does Oracle Prove that OpEx Beats CapEx in the Enterprise ?

Oracle has a tough quarter with its top line business shrinking quickly as developers choose open source databases instead. – Source: Bloomberg At a business level, there is definitely a trend by corporates to “avoid” Oracle as licensing fees have increased dramatically to reach a pain threshold that CIOs cannot ignore. While the choice for […]

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