HP buys Aruba and next thing you know Dell is reselling Aerohive WiFi gear

Aerohive Networks announced Monday that Dell will begin reselling its wireless LAN and related management products -- not a shocker in light of longtime Dell OEM partner Aruba Networks being snapped up by HP in a multi-billion deal last month.Aerohive says Dell is a good fit in that the 802.11ac access points and HiveManager NG cloud-based management platform help to fill out Dell's line-up of products spanning from the data center to endpoints. "We believe there is a large demand from customers that like doing business with 'pure play' access layer solution providers vs. large networking companies like Cisco and HP," says Bill Hoppin, Aerohive VP of Business Development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Going with the flow: The psychology of mobile app design

In psychology, flow, also known as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus: a writer writing an article, a professional athlete competing at peak performance, or even a shopper suddenly convinced to buy that random thing, and have the ability to buy it when the urge strikes. Understanding the flow of a person and how personalized applications and information seamlessly fits into the daily routines of people is quickly becoming a major part of information experience and design.The idea of flow was originally devised in the 1970's when Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi and his fellow researchers began researching the concept after Csíkszentmihályi became fascinated by artists who would essentially get lost in their work. During the interviews ,several people described their "flow" experiences using the metaphor of a water current carrying them along.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3 new types of 3D printers

Although the cost of 3D printers continues to drop so that more people have them in their homes, it’s not like most homes have one. But innovative minds keep turning out new and improved 3D printers, such as the following three new types: one can print soft and cuddly objects from fabric; another includes actuators that allow an object to morph after being exposed to external stimuli; the last has a retrofit kit to change 3D printers into 3D food printers.Disney 3D-prints soft objects from fabric You know how little kids can be super attached to one particular item like a toy or a blanket? And if that item gets lost or destroyed, it’s a red alert unless you can find another exactly like the first. If that beloved object is a soft cuddly toy, wouldn’t be great if you could 3-D print another? Disney Research has come up with a 3D printer that can create soft interactive objects like a printed fabric bunny.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How JetBlue uses tech to help customers take flight

When you think of good customer service, Amazon and Zappos may come to mind, but a major commercial airline may not. JetBlue is working to change that perception by incorporating new technologies that focus on improving customer service, streamlining transactions and making flights more enjoyable.The customer-facing technology transformation at JetBlue ramped up three years ago with the appointment of its new CIO, Eash Sundaram. He says JetBlue needed to be about customer service and technology as much as it was about getting passengers to their destinations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP switches fortify campus SDNs

HP this week strengthened its campus networking portfolio with modules for a switch chassis it announced almost a year ago, and an SDN-based management application.The additions are intended to improve an enterprise’s ability to support mobility, security, application performance and network monitoring in the campus. They are consistent with the industry trend in campus networking to better integrate wired and wireless infrastructure and applications.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Aruba Networks is different from HP’s failed wireless acquisitions +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP switches fortify campus SDNs

HP this week strengthened its campus networking portfolio with modules for a switch chassis it announced almost a year ago, and an SDN-based management application.The additions are intended to improve an enterprise’s ability to support mobility, security, application performance and network monitoring in the campus. They are consistent with the industry trend in campus networking to better integrate wired and wireless infrastructure and applications.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Aruba Networks is different from HP’s failed wireless acquisitions +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can gamification solve enterprises’ engagement problem?

If 90 percent of the world’s workforce were suddenly struck with a debilitating illness that rendered them unable to perform to their fullest potential, it would be declared a global crisis.In enterprises, that statistic is more or less the norm.Just 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs, a recent Gallup report found—meaning that they’re “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”The remaining 87 percent? Not so much. They’re either “not engaged or indifferent—or even worse, actively disengaged and potentially hostile—to their organizations.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Lightbulbs get smarter with included Wi-Fi and speakers

If your place is larger than an apartment, there's a good chance that you spend a bit of time, periodically, going around changing lightbulbs.It's one of those things. Like cutting the grass and placing the garbage cans at the curb, it's the price you pay.Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs can go some of the way towards solving this onerous time-absorber. GE claims its screw-in LED light bulb replacements last 25 years, for example.They cost a bit more, but they do save on work. You shouldn't have to change them as often—if at all.Multifunction light bulbs Well, one Chinese LED light bulb manufacturer reckons it has solved this, and a couple of other home issues too. It has a solution to the problem of expiring bulbs, Wi-Fi dead spots in the home, and also the issue of trailing wires for audio speakers—all within the light bulb.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Lightbulbs get smarter with included Wi-Fi and speakers

If your place is larger than an apartment, there's a good chance that you spend a bit of time, periodically, going around changing lightbulbs.It's one of those things. Like cutting the grass and placing the garbage cans at the curb, it's the price you pay.Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs can go some of the way towards solving this onerous time-absorber. GE claims its screw-in LED light bulb replacements last 25 years, for example.They cost a bit more, but they do save on work. You shouldn't have to change them as often—if at all.Multifunction light bulbs Well, one Chinese LED light bulb manufacturer reckons it has solved this, and a couple of other home issues too. It has a solution to the problem of expiring bulbs, Wi-Fi dead spots in the home, and also the issue of trailing wires for audio speakers—all within the light bulb.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Magnificent 7

Blog-post-Supermicr-01

Our Cumulus Networks team is very excited that Supermicro has joined our Open Hardware partner program, the latest major IT systems provider to join the industry-wide open networking movement.

Now there are Seven. 

Supermicro is a leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server, blade, storage, and networking technology for Green Computing – worldwide. Cumulus Linux on Supermicro bare-metal switches further extends the reach of the Supermicro solutions, enabling rapid deployment of a highly scalable, cost effective software-defined network infrastructure for data center, cloud, enterprise IT, big data and HPC.

As our seventh Open Hardware partner, Supermicro is now part of a very impressive list of providers on the Cumulus Linux HCL: Agema, Dell, Edge-Core, HP, Penguin, Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT), and Supermicro.

What does it mean for the industry? Open Networking is inevitable and Cumulus Networks is leading the way.

Major changes are underway in the IT industry that improve data center networking, allowing organizations of all sizes to leverage efficient technology that was developed by the world’s largest cloud operators. The resulting data center networks scale more easily, enable much faster innovation, and cost significantly less to build and operate. With data center infrastructure leaders like Supermicro embracing Continue reading

Managing your Out-of-Band Network with Linux

Initially when I was asked to blog about out-of-band management I thought to myself, as most people would, “this is too basic!”  What new thing could I cover?  Generally speaking, out-of-band management, like management in general, is an afterthought.  With that typical attitude, we make the mistake of placing low value on access to our network devices, seeing it as a simple back door when in reality it could provide so much more.

The idea of creating the Cumulus® RMP (Rack Management Platform) came about after talking to several customers whose approach was to purchase low-end switching platforms to meet their out-of-band management needs.  These closed network platforms provide such limited feature sets that it’s easy to dismiss their usefulness.  The team sat down and came up with the idea to “complete the rack.” Why not provide the same open networking capabilities that Linux servers and Cumulus® Linux® switches offer for out-of-band management? Thus Cumulus RMP was created.

Typical Deployment Scenarios

In general there are two basic scenarios when it comes to out-of-band management.  The first provides a simple but versatile L2 flat design leveraging VLANs to manage the switches and servers in the rack.  The Cumulus RMPs Continue reading

LG out to prove the G3 wasn’t a fluke with new flagship smartphone

The success of LG Electronics’ G3 has put the company under pressure to dazzle the market with the G4, set to debut Tuesday. The company is hoping that an improved display, upgraded camera and a new design will do the trick.LG has in the last couple of weeks done its best to steal some of the spotlight from already available Android-based smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC’s One M9, with a string of teasers and a program to let 4,000 people test the device before launch.The G4 is an important product for LG because the G3 pretty much put the company on the map, according to Ken Hong , global communications director at LG.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Second HTTPS snooping flaw breaks security for thousands of iOS apps

Attackers can potentially snoop on the encrypted traffic of over 25,000 iOS applications due to a vulnerability in a popular open-source networking library.The vulnerability stems from a failure to validate the domain names of digital certificates in AFNetworking, a library used by a large number of iOS and Mac OS X app developers to implement Web communications—including those over HTTPS (HTTP with SSL/TLS encryption).The flaw allows attackers in a position to intercept HTTPS traffic between a vulnerable application and a Web service to decrypt it by presenting the application with a digital certificate for a different domain name. Such man-in-the-middle attacks can be launched over insecure wireless networks, by hacking into routers or through other methods.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Interop attendees: Please share your coolest & funniest show photos with us on Instagram

The annual Interop networking show in Vegas this week is sure to be busy between all the SDN, cloud, mobility, security and other talks, a show floor packed with exhibitors from ABC Trading Solutions to Zippy Technology (truly), parties and other Vegas activities. We'll have a handful of editors at the show, but could use your help in capturing the coolest and funniest scenes from the show.We invite you to tag any photos you post to Instagram with #nww15 and we'll round up the best as part of our show coverage. We challenge you to find a funny SDN scene!(If you don't already follow us on Instagram, here you go.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Traceroute and Not-so-Equal ECMP

I came across an odd little issue recently involving equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing and traceroute. Traceroutes from within our network to destinations out on the Internet were following two different paths, with one path being one hop longer than the other. This resulted in mangled traceroute output, impeding our ability to troubleshoot.

The relevant network topology comprises a mesh of two edge routers and two core switches. Each edge router has a number of transit circuits to different providers, and advertises a default route via OSPF to the two core switches below. The core switches each load-balance traffic across both default routes to either edge routers.

topology.png

Because each edge router has different providers, some destinations are routed out via edge1 and others via edge2, which means sometimes a packet will be routed to edge2 via edge1, or vice versa.

two_paths.png

Routers typically employ a hash function using layer three and four information from each packet to pseudo-randomly distribute traffic across equal links. Typically, all packets belonging to a flow (e.g. all packets with the same source and destination IP and port numbers) follow the same path.

However, in this case traceroute packets were being split across two path of unequal Continue reading

Traceroute and Not-so-Equal ECMP

I came across an odd little issue recently involving equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing and traceroute. Traceroutes from within our network to destinations out on the Internet were following two different paths, with one path being one hop longer than the other. This resulted in mangled traceroute output, impeding our ability to troubleshoot.

The relevant network topology comprises a mesh of two edge routers and two core switches. Each edge router has a number of transit circuits to different providers, and advertises a default route via OSPF to the two core switches below. The core switches each load-balance traffic across both default routes to either edge routers.

topology.png

Because each edge router has different providers, some destinations are routed out via edge1 and others via edge2, which means sometimes a packet will be routed to edge2 via edge1, or vice versa.

two_paths.png

Routers typically employ a hash function using layer three and four information from each packet to pseudo-randomly distribute traffic across equal links. Typically, all packets belonging to a flow (e.g. all packets with the same source and destination IP and port numbers) follow the same path.

However, in this case traceroute packets were being split across two path of unequal Continue reading

Traceroute and Not-so-Equal ECMP

I came across an odd little issue recently involving equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing and traceroute. Traceroutes from within our network to destinations out on the Internet were following two different paths, with one path being one hop longer than the other. This resulted in mangled traceroute output, impeding our ability to troubleshoot.

The relevant network topology comprises a mesh of two edge routers and two core switches. Each edge router has a number of transit circuits to different providers, and advertises a default route via OSPF to the two core switches below. The core switches each load-balance traffic across both default routes to either edge routers.

topology.png

Because each edge router has different providers, some destinations are routed out via edge1 and others via edge2, which means sometimes a packet will be routed to edge2 via edge1, or vice versa.

two_paths.png

Routers typically employ a hash function using layer three and four information from each packet to pseudo-randomly distribute traffic across equal links. Typically, all packets belonging to a flow (e.g. all packets with the same source and destination IP and port numbers) follow the same path.

However, in this case traceroute packets were being split across two path of unequal Continue reading

In theory…

I don’t normally peruse the reviews of my books — while I appreciate well thought out criticism, I normally find personal notes from folks who’ve read my books more profitable for mining out where I’m falling down on the job as a writer than reviews posted on book seller or book review sites. But one specific book review caught my eye the other day that I think points to a larger issue in the world of engineering, especially network engineering. The reviewer stated, in essence, that there was not enough practical application in my more recent tomes, and that I’m covering the same information over and over again.

Let me begin here — I’m not writing this as a defense of my own writing so much as to think through a habit of mind I think doesn’t really help us as an engineering community.

As far as the facts on the ground go, the reviewer is right on both counts, and wrong on both counts. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you want to understand how a car works. You approach three different people — one a race car driver, another a top flight mechanic, and another an engineer who Continue reading

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