Companies must teach employees how to swim in new oceans of data

Take a quick tour through the C-suite of any major corporation today, and there’s a good chance you’ll see some titles that weren’t there a few years ago: chief data officer, chief data scientist, chief analytics officer, to name just a few.Data is the element they all share in common, and it’s affecting more than just the executive ranks.In the business world’s headlong rush to collect as much data about as many things as possible as quickly as it can, a question has been left for later: How do you turn those massive volumes into practical value? Turns out, “later” is now, and there’s a crushing shortage of specialized data scientists. Few companies, meanwhile, even have a plan for bolstering their data talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA shows off 10 engine helicopter/aircraft hybrid drone (video too!)

Pretty cool stuff here. NASA this week said it successfully flew its battery-powered 10 engine drone that can take off like a helicopter and fly like an aircraft.The concept aircraft, known as Greased Lightning or GL-10 could be used for small package delivery, long endurance reconnaissance for agriculture, mapping and other survey applications. A scaled up version could even be used as a four person size personal air vehicle, NASA researchers said.+More on Network World: The most magnificent high-tech flying machines+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Potential rival to Google’s Project Ara booted from IndieGoGo

A crowdfunding campaign for a sleek modular smartphone concept has been unceremoniously dumped by IndieGoGo, which shuttered the project’s page on Friday morning.As first reported by ModularAndroid.com, the project page was taken down and all pledges were refunded. A message sent to backers, obtained by that news site, said that Fonkraft “has been suspended due to not meeting our trust and safety standards.”+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Comcast launching 2-gig broadband to trump Chattanooga's municipal gigabit offering + Apple Watch, Samsung Edge glitches anger users, but no outright revolt +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 2.4 GHz Spectrum Congestion Problem and AP Form-Factors

2.4 GHz is a junk band...
2.4 GHz is interference ridden...
2.4 GHz is dead...

You've heard all of these dire warnings about microwaves, bluetooth accessories, cordless phones, baby monitors, lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), which will wreak havoc on your WLAN.

Well, I'm here to tell you that 2.4 GHz issues are self-inflicted. Any by self-inflicted I mean that Wi-Fi is the root cause of your Wi-Fi not working well. And specifically your own Wi-Fi. Poorly designed networks with too many APs blasting out too many signals all stomping on one another.

I'm a stickler for proper design, and is a mantra that I've probably beaten to death by this point. One aspect of proper design is deploying the proper number of radios to meet capacity needs. It's something that I talk about in my presentations on this subject and tweet about as well. Too many radios actually degrades performance due to the negative effects of co-channel interference and airtime utilization on a shared channel. More is decidedly NOT better!

“Most WLAN designs today require a significant amount of
2.4 GHz radios to be disabled.”

Most WLAN designs today require Continue reading

PlexxiPulse—The Impact of the Third Era

Trends in big data and IoT are driving a massive shift towards what we call the Third Era of information technology. Efficient and agile networks are needed to support the scaled-out applications of tomorrow. Ed Henry, an engineer here at Plexxi (also known as @NetworkN3rd) discussed the impact that the Third Era has on the network in a blog post this week. He explores how unprecedented amounts of data will affect network infrastructure, applications, and operations.

Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Enjoy!

Network World: IDC’s state of the network at Interop: Change, or be left behind
By Brandon Butler
The confluence of mobile, social and big data trends are driving a tectonic transformation and businesses that do not change with these trends will be left behind, analysts from research firm IDC said at Interop. IDC says the so-called third platform, which includes those mega-trends of cloud and mobile workloads, will disrupt one-third of leading businesses across all sectors. “The third platform is already fueling a digital transformation across enterprise IT, and the only way IT will succeed is by transforming itself,” said Rohit Mehra, research vice president Continue reading

Not all certificate formats are created equal.

One of my favorite questions: ‘What format do you want that certificate in? Which then forces me to think and try and remember what was so special and different about all the certificate formats again? We’ll start with: PEM – Privacy Enhanced Mail Certificate represented in text format. In a Hex/ASCII format BASE64 encoded DER […]

ALF: Application Layer Fixup

I was talking about “application-layer gateways” on firewalls and NAT boxes with a fellow engineer, and we came to an interesting conclusion: in most cases they are not gateways; they don’t add any significant functionality apart for payload fixups for those broken applications that think carrying network endpoint information in application packets is a good idea (I’m looking at you, SIP and FTP). These things should thus be called Application Layer Fixups or ALFs ;)

iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 5/1/2015

Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

  • Jeff Kuehn, CCIE #48275 (Wireless)
  • Diego Monasterios, CCIE #48240 (Routing & Switching)

We Want to Hear From You!

Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!

Microsoft buying company that made stylus for Surface Pro 3

Microsoft will soon own the company that provided the stylus and touch display interface technology for its Surface Pro 3, according to a media report.The company has agreed to acquire Israel-based N-Trig for $30 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.Microsoft already had a minority stake of 6 percent in N-trig, but apparently had been in negotiations to acquire the company for months. In February, Israel's Haaretz newspaper said N-Trig was valued at less than $10 million, while Calcalist -- which originally broke the story of Microsoft looking to acquire the company -- reported that Microsoft would pay at least $200 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch, Samsung Edge glitches anger users, but no outright revolt

Problems with the new Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone have infuriated some early adopters, but they still stay loyal to their favorite brand.Some have taken to user forums and tweets with expletive-deleted missives. This post Wednesday on an Android Central forum by Edge smartphone user Ajay Rivera seemed to summarize recent sentiment: "This was my second device to crap out and [a support rep] still treated me like an *****"Despite such anger, many in the industry dismiss glitches -- and subsequent user furor -- as par for the course with most new products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What can your Apple Watch do without your iPhone?

Strapped to your wrist, the Apple Watch goes everywhere that you go. Between it and the iPhone, it’s almost possible to leave your wallet at home. But what happens to the Watch when you leave your iPhone at home?Smart as the Apple Watch is, it’s still dependent on your smartphone for a number of its most common features, most notably anything that requires access to the Internet or pulls data from apps on your phone. But even should your iPhone be elsewhere—or off—your Apple Watch is still a pretty competent device. Time is of the essence Obviously the watch can tell time whether your iPhone is around or not. If it couldn't, that would be downright nutty.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Microsoft’s new Surface 3 replace your notebook?

Microsoft wants you to abandon your preconceived notions of a laptop and embrace the Surface as more than just a tablet. In fact, Microsoft wants you to ditch your cumbersome notebook and one-dimensional tablet -- presumably your iPad -- and replace them with one device: the Surface 3. But even with an adjustable kickstand and full Windows 8.1, can the Surface 3 compete with a traditional notebook, or tablet for that matter?In 2012, the answer would have been -- and often was -- a resounding "No." However, the Surface line has come a long way in delivering the performance and usability you would need in order to dump your notebook. And Microsoft is not alone in its hybrid efforts. The trend is for notebook and tablet manufacturers to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. As a result, the hybrid market is booming, and we've seen a slew of tablets that do a great impression of a notebook, and vice versa.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Redesigning CloudFlare

Redesigning CloudFlare

Redesigning CloudFlare

CloudFlare’s original interface grew at an amazing speed. Visually, it hadn't changed much since CloudFlare’s launch in 2010. After several years of new features, settings, and ancillary UIs buried beneath clicks, it became clear that the user experience was lacking and would only get worse as we continued to add features. The question became: How could we make a UI that was versatile, scalable, and consistent?

If you haven’t yet, make sure you read Matthew’s post about the philosophy behind our new interface. This post will go into the details and the thought process behind designing our new dashboard.

Why a redesign?

We needed versatility for a growing variety of users and devices

As CloudFlare has grown, we now have a large variety of customers spanning four very different plan levels. We needed an interface that would work well for both the casual owner of a single blog, an agency managing many client sites, and enterprise customers that demand ultimate control. Also, the rise of responsive design was something we wanted to take seriously — the dashboard should be versatile enough to work just as well on every device.

We needed a platform that we could build upon

Redesigning CloudFlare

We couldn’t Continue reading

Mozilla may offer new browser features only on secure websites

Mozilla is planning to gradually favor HTTPS (HTTP Secure) connections over non-secure HTTP connections by making some new features on its browser available only to secured sites.The browser developer decided after a discussion on its community mailing list that it will set a date after which all new features will be available only to secure websites, wrote Firefox security lead Richard Barnes in a blog post. Mozilla also plans to gradually phase out access to browser features for non-secure websites, particularly features that could present risks to users’ security and privacy, he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Skill Development Planning by the Dozen


I’ve been going to Cisco Live as one of the speakers for several years now. As Cisco employee, you can go to Cisco Live (for free) only if you are a speaker, or part of the World of Solutions exhibition, or if you come for the customers, or to support the network infrastructure for the event.

For the past three years at Cisco Live I’ve been sharing strategy and tips and tricks of how to become CCIE based on my own experience. My part of the session is focusing on skill development planning to achieve the objective, which is to pass CCIE lab exam. There are many technical sessions available during the event, but only very few talk about how to build learning plan and walk you through step by step of sample plan created by someone who has done it. I believe the session material can be applied outside CCIE context, and it’s relevant with my previous post, so I’m going to share it here with some updates.



Robert Grant mentioned that strategy is the means by which individuals achieve their objectives. In short, successful strategy can be achieved by having clear and consistent goal, understanding the environment Continue reading

Ultron didn’t save the world

The movie Avengers: Age of Ultron has a message for us in cybersec: In our desire to save the world, we are likely to destroy it.

Tony Stark builds "Ultron" to save the world, to bring peace in our time. As a cybernetic creation, Ultron takes this literally, and decides the best way to bring peace is to kill all humans.

The problem, as demonstrated by the movie, isn't that there was a bug in Stark's code. The problem was the hubris thinking that Stark could protect everyone. Inevitably, protecting everyone meant ruling everyone, bringing peace by force. It's the same hubris behind the USA's effort to bring peace to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I mention this because in the cybersecurity industry, there are many who propose to bring security through authority. They want government mandated rules on how to write code, imposed liability requirements, and so on.

This sounds reasonable. After all, nobody wants medical equipment like pacemakers to be hacked. But here's the thing. Computer-controlled devices have the potential to vastly improve health, whether it's Watches monitoring your heart, pacemakers, insulin pumps, and so on. While these devices can be hacked, the practical reality is that if you want Continue reading
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