IDG Contributor Network: How SDN will help earn money, not just save

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is transforming the network and giving network operators unprecedented network programmability, automation, and control. Network administrators are exploring it as it can help them not just optimize total cost of ownership, but do more with fewer people. However, SDN is not just about simplifying the network or cost savings; SDN enables new revenue production opportunities. Here are three ways you can look at how SDN helps monetizing.Customized deliveryWe live in the "Experience Era." The rapid consumer adoption of mobile devices, cloud services, new interfaces, and changing behaviors have transformed how customers engage and what they expect. Customers are looking for services aligned with their needs and abilities, at that moment, on that device. Companies need to deliver experiences that are customer-centric, natural, anticipatory and adaptive. And SDN enables you to do that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoin

Two former U.S. government agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin while assisting with an investigation of the Silk Road underground online marketplace, with one accused of using a fake online persona to extort money from operators of the site.Facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering are Carl Force, 46, of Baltimore, a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and Shaun Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Maryland, a former special agent with the U.S. Secret Service. Both served on the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, which investigated illegal activity on the Silk Road website, the Department of Justice said Monday in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bit by bit, Intel looks to quadruple SSD storage

With all the photos, videos, apps and tunes you have, the storage on your smartphone may not be enough. With that in mind, Intel is researching new ways to up the storage capacity in mobile devices and PCs without hurting the size or price of devices.One effort underway at is to stuff more bits in a single cell, which could increase data storage capacity in mobile devices and PCs by as much as fourfold. Intel is trying to cram four bits in a storage cell, an improvement over the three bits that can be put in a single storage cell currently."This could enable denser devices in a broad range of mobile and compute applications," said Bill Leszinske, vice president of strategic planning and marketing for non-volatile memory solutions at Intel, in an email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft adds MDM capabilities to Office 365

Microsoft today announced the general availability of mobile device management (MDM) capabilities for Office 365, which is designed to give administrators the built-in capability to manage access to data in the cloud-based productivity suite across iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices. The MDM features are available at no additional cost in all Office 365 commercial plans, according to Microsoft. "With today's GA, the first app every organization will look to secure and protect now comes with MDM capabilities natively built into it," Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Enterprise Client & Mobility at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. "This means IT admins can set up security policies on devices to ensure that O365 corporate email and data can be accessed only on phones and tablets that are managed and compliant."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Monitoring more than just wearables

Internet of Everything elseWhen most people talk about the Internet of Things, they’re talking about Nest, wearables, and other devices. But there are all sorts of “things” that can be monitored and tracked with network monitoring software. Paessler created the list.Jackpot ValuesKrijco Casinos & Leisure monitors the jackpot values in our casinos. "This gives us insight on how the value is built up and its hit frequency. We also use the live values to show them on our internal narrowcasting system,” says Gerard Feijth, Manager ICT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN management battle: TAPs vs. network packet brokers

Network management is a sticky issue when it comes to implementing software-defined networks and network virtualization.Lack of visibility into the underlying infrastructure has been cited by vendors and consultants as an inhibitor of SDN adoption. Traditional tools were designed for legacy networks, not the software overlay abstraction that SDN critics say shields operators from network behavior and anomalies.But with the release of more SDN controllers and applications comes the emergence of tools to manage the virtualized network. Two of the more popular SDN management tools are TAP monitoring applications and network packet brokers (NPB), which negotiate network traffic from multiple SPAN ports and manipulate it to allow more efficient use of monitoring devices like TAPs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN management battle: TAPs vs. network packet brokers

Network management is a sticky issue when it comes to implementing software-defined networks and network virtualization.Lack of visibility into the underlying infrastructure has been cited by vendors and consultants as an inhibitor of SDN adoption. Traditional tools were designed for legacy networks, not the software overlay abstraction that SDN critics say shields operators from network behavior and anomalies.But with the release of more SDN controllers and applications comes the emergence of tools to manage the virtualized network. Two of the more popular SDN management tools are TAP monitoring applications and network packet brokers (NPB), which negotiate network traffic from multiple SPAN ports and manipulate it to allow more efficient use of monitoring devices like TAPs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Set Up PKI Service on a Cisco Router

This is how I tend to create a PKI service on a Cisco router. Some of the details here were non-obvious to me after reading the documentation several times. Maybe I can save somebody else a headache or two.

First, create a directory for the PKI server to work in. This step may be optional if the router is going to be using some network-based storage for all of its elements, but I find it handy to have, and it's easy to move things around afterward. I like using removable media when keeping things on routers, so that it's easy to snag the critical data if there's a hardware failure.
 mkdir usbflash:/MY_ROOT_CA

Next, generate an RSA keypair. It needs to be exportable, which is the reason I'm doing it manually, rather than let the router generate it automatically at CA startup. Name it the same as the CA will be named in the crypto pki server <whatever> configuration section.
 crypto key generate rsa label MY_ROOT_CA modulus 2048 exportable storage nvram:

Now export the keys. Having a copy of them squirreled away somewhere will be absolutely critical if you ever need to replace the CA. Replacing the CA will be Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Cellular development kit for IoT now at Kickstarter

Looking for an Internet of Things (IoT) project to play around with? Chicago-originating Konekt's Dash is a mobile network development kit for building IoT devices for cellular networks, rather than what is says is restrictive Wi-Fi.The company is looking for funding right now at Kickstarter.The platformA global SIM card with a data plan plus a hardware kit is included in the package. The PCB-mounted hardware consists of a micro-controller, cellular modem, and battery management tools. It functions somewhat like an Arduino.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cellular development kit for IoT now at Kickstarter

Looking for an Internet of Things (IoT) project to play around with? Chicago-originating Konekt's Dash is a mobile network development kit for building IoT devices for cellular networks, rather than what is says is restrictive Wi-Fi.The company is looking for funding right now at Kickstarter.The platformA global SIM card with a data plan plus a hardware kit is included in the package. The PCB-mounted hardware consists of a micro-controller, cellular modem, and battery management tools. It functions somewhat like an Arduino.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Modernizing enterprise apps for the mobile world

At SaskPower, an electric utility serving the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the IT philosophy is leverage, buy or build -- in that order. So when SaskPower wanted to make its SAP applications available on mobile platforms, officials first looked inward to see if those systems could be extended out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

What happens with data from mobile health apps?

There is no shortage of interest in mobile health applications, which span everything from pedometers to Wi-Fi-enabled pacemakers, but what happens with all that data?The New American Foundation, a Washington think tank, waded into that debate with a pair of recent panel discussions where experts acknowledged that the security risks around health IT systems are high, and the medical profession, as a whole, has a ways to go to get its cyber house in order.[ Related: Will Healthcare Ever Take IT Security Seriously? ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

[SDN Protocols] Part 5 – NETCONF

For those that followed my SDN Protocols series last summer, you might have noticed a missing entry: NETCONF. This protocol has actually existed for some time (the original now-outdated specification was published in 2006), but is appearing more often, especially in discussions pertaining to network automation. The current, updated specification - RFC6241 - covers a fairly large amount of material, so I will attempt to condense here.

NETCONF operates at the management layer of the network, and therefore plays a role similar to that of OVSDB. This is in contrast to protocols like OpenFlow  which operate at the control plane.

A key difference between NETCONF and other management protocols (including SNMP) is that NETCONF is built around the idea of a transaction-based configuration model. The NETCONF specification provides for some optional device capabilities aimed at assisting operators with the lifecycle of configuring a network device, such as rolling back a configuration upon an error. Unfortunately, not all network devices support such capabilities, but the protocol was built to make it easier to discover what kind of capabilities a network device can support.

Configuration Datastores

Before getting into the semantics of the NETCONF protocol itself, it’s worth briefly jumping ahead to address the Continue reading

[SDN Protocols] Part 5 – NETCONF

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series SDN Protocols

For those that followed my SDN Protocols series last summer, you might have noticed a missing entry: NETCONF. This protocol has actually existed for some time (the original now-outdated specification was published in 2006), but is appearing more often, especially in discussions pertaining to network automation. The current, updated specification – RFC6241 - covers a fairly large amount of material, so I will attempt to condense here.

NETCONF operates at the management layer of the network, and therefore plays a role similar to that of OVSDB. This is in contrast to protocols like OpenFlow  which operate at the control plane.

A key difference between NETCONF and other management protocols (including SNMP) is that NETCONF is built around the idea of a transaction-based configuration model. The NETCONF specification provides for some optional device capabilities aimed at assisting operators with the lifecycle of configuring a network device, such as rolling back a configuration upon an error. Unfortunately, not all network devices support such capabilities, but the protocol was built to make it easier to discover what kind of capabilities a network device can support.

 

Configuration Datastores

Before getting into the semantics Continue reading

Talk to the Dummy

dummyYou’ve hit brain freeze. It seemed like such a great idea at the time, but now that it’s 2am, the application is down, and you can’t find the problem, maybe it wasn’t after all. Or maybe it’s 4pm, and you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to resolve a problem, or build a system. You’re completely stuck, and you’ve no idea what to do next.

In either case, it feels like you’ve researched every avenue, you’ve thought of every angle, you’ve gone over the problem time and time again, and your brain just can’t wrap around the problem any longer. You go back over the same material again and again, just trying to make sense of it.

You’ve hit brain freeze. What’s the solution?

Talk to the dummy.

No, I don’t mean your boss. And I don’t mean that person down the hall you think just doesn’t “get it.” We’ll cover that topic later. I mean, literally, the dummy. In the “old days,” there were software shops that would literally set aside an office for a dummy. There was a white board, a desk, and a dummy sitting behind the desk. Your job, as an engineer, Continue reading

Network Complexity

Network complexity plays a very important role during network design. Every network designer tries to find the simplest design. Although there is no standard definition for the network complexity yet, there are many subjective definitions. In today network designs decisions are taken based on an estimation of network complexity rather than absolute, solid answer. If… Read More »

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