Startup Flex Logix aims to score big in a niche chip market

In Silicon Valley, where software startups are the rage, it’s unusual to see a new hardware company set up shop. But venture capital-backed chip design company Flex Logix has some big ideas about how to speed up a whole range of software applications and hardware.Flex Logix is establishing a business around FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), which are reconfigurable chips that can help hardware run specific applications faster. A notable FPGA user is Microsoft, which has implemented the chips in data centers to quickly deliver more relevant Bing search results.PCs and servers today run on general-purpose processors like CPUs, but FPGAs are different, with functionality defined mainly through software on the chip. Flex Logix claims it has designed a new type of FPGA, which it hopes will be used in networking, telecommunications, servers, military equipment and other hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LG takes aim at Motorola’s Moto G with new Magna smartphone

LG Electronics has announced four new smartphones, including the Magna. The device has a spec that gives Motorola Mobility’s Moto G a run for its money, assuming LG doesn’t screw up the pricing too much.Motorola has had the market for unlocked smartphones costing US$200 or less largely to itself in the U.S. and Europe, helping it regain its footing with the Moto G and the Moto E. But it seems the now Lenovo-owned company will face some tougher competition this year from products like the LG Magna.The Lollipop-based smartphone has a 5-inch, 720 x 1280-pixel screen and an unspecified 1.2GHz or 1.3GHz quad-core processor. The Magna also has an 8-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. There’s 1GB of RAM and 8GB of integrated storage backed up by a microSD card slot.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Carrier Supporting Carrier – CSC

CSC Carrier Supporting Carrier is a hierarchical MPLS VPN architecture between the Service Providers. Service is an MPLS VPN service mostly but doesn’t have to be as you will see throughout the post. Customer carrier ( Provider ) receives an MPLS VPN service from the Core/Backbone carrier. Although CSC architecture is not common in real… Read More »

The post Carrier Supporting Carrier – CSC appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

When backup Is a disaster

Shortly after Branndon Kelley joined American Municipal Power (AMP) as CIO, the company's financial system went down.It took four days to restore the system and Kelley, who had previously consulted with state governments on business continuity issues, immediately started exploring AMP's backup and recovery strategy.He quickly discovered that there was none. No coherent plan. "We had a whole bag of tricks," Kelley says, including more than 10 different backup systems and processes. There were outdated off-the-shelf packages and hand-coded scripts--none of them documented or interconnected. There were backups of backups, and fewer than half of the backups succeeded on the first try.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting Inside the Loop

Metadata doesn’t just apply to data science or protocols — it applies to engineering life. Think about the concept of epistomology — the study of how we know what we know — or the concept of hermeneutics — the study of how we understand communication — and you can quickly see that stepping outside what we are doing to examine how we are doing it is a common human experience (see Lewis’ Meditation in a Tool Shed as another instance).

But how does this apply to the engineering life? It’s called process — now, before you click off the page, scurrying away in shock, process isn’t a bad thing. In fact, process can be a good set of “guard rails” in the way we live our lives, something to remind us not to run off the road (like positive thinking signs), or even physically/mentally “bump” us in the right direction.

This week I’d like to kick off a short series on one process I learned in the US Air Force, and have used in many ways over the years — the OODA Loop. Originally developed by USAF Colonel John Boyd, and designed to help pilots deal with Continue reading

10 products you could only find at RadioShack

Remembering the ShackRadioShack announced recently that after 94 years the company would be going into bankruptcy, selling off a number of stores and shutting some others down. As a techy who was born in the 60s, RadioShack was a huge part of my life. I remember hitting the RadioShack every time I visited the Duncan Mall just to see what was new. For you younger people out there, understand that at one point, there were no other options for many of the products you could find at RadioShack. No Best Buy, no Amazon.com or Tiger Direct. Here are 10 of the products that I could only get from RadioShack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SSL Week Means Less Weak SSL

CloudFlare SSL Week

I'm excited to announce that today kicks off SSL Week at CloudFlare. Over the course of this week, we'll make a series of announcements on what we're doing to improve encryption on the Internet.

Inherently, for encryption to be the most effective, it has to meet three criteria: 1) it needs to be easy and inexpensive to use; 2) it needs to be fast so it doesn't tax performance; and 3) it needs to be up to date and ahead of the latest vulnerabilities.

Easy, Fast & Secure

Throughout CloudFlare's history, these priorities have guided our approach to encryption. Last September, we announced Universal SSL and brought world class encryption to every CloudFlare customer, even those on our Free service plan. While that effort doubled the size of the encrypted web, our work is far from done. This week we're announcing a series of initiatives that further our efforts to ensure we provide the easiest, fastest, and most secure encryption.

While Universal SSL made it easy to ensure that the connection from a device to CloudFlare was secure, this week we're going to begin the process of making it easy (and free) to ensure the connection from CloudFlare back to Continue reading

New products of the week 02.23.15

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Absolute Computrace with Device Freeze Offline PolicyKey features: Absolute Computrace with Device Freeze Offline Policy allows IT to set an automated freeze command for any device that remains offline for a specific period of time. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New tools can detect hidden malware

New tools can detect hidden malwareImage by ShutterstockWe tested new security appliances from Damballa, Lancope and LightCyber that are designed to detect the latest cyber-attacks by monitoring network traffic and identifying when a piece of malware is communicating back to its command and control center. (Read the full review here.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New weapons offer hope against advanced cyber-attacks

One of the most frightening things about modern cyber-attacks is that a breach can remain undetected within networks for weeks, months or even years. This time gives hackers the luxury of lateral movement within a network, meaning they can acquire better credentials, compromise more systems and search for the most profitable and most damaging information. And perimeter defense tools are almost worthless once hackers are quietly rampaging behind the lines. But malware has to communicate back to the hackers somehow, and new monitoring tools have emerged that can identify that traffic. As such, traffic monitoring tools could very well be the next big thing in network security, protecting networks against cyber-attacks and helping even if a breach has already happened.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

8 most intriguing gadgets of 2015

A new generationA new generation of gadgets is poised to hit the market in 2015. In fact, some launched with limited shipping just before Christmas. Others are highly anticipated, but won’t be out until later in the year. Some will change the world. Others will end up in the tech scrap heap. Here’s a preview of what’s coming.Amazon Echo (Siri in a can)Ship date: Began shipping right before ChristmasTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook, other tech firms face pressure from drivers over work conditions

Facebook and other tech companies in Silicon Valley are facing increasing pressure from its shuttle drivers to improve working conditions, amid concern about growing inequality in the area.Loop Transportation drivers, who transfer Facebook employees to and from the company’s Menlo Park, California campus, have reached an agreement with the contractor that, among other benefits, will increase their average pay to US$24.50 an hour from the current $18 an hour, International Brotherhood of Teamsters said Sunday.The agreement will have to first be submitted to Facebook for approval as the paying client. The company could not be immediately reached for comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour wins Oscar

A documentary on whistleblower Edward Snowden won the Oscar for the best documentary feature, in a shot in the arm for people worldwide protesting against alleged U.S. intrusions into the privacy of people in the country and abroad.The 87th Academy Awards were held Sunday in Los Angeles and presents film awards in 24 categories.Snowden, a former contractor of the U.S. National Security Agency, shook up the security establishment starting in June 2013, when he disclosed through newspapers that the agency was collecting in bulk phone data of Verizon’s U.S. customers, the first of many revelations by him.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo hit with lawsuit over Superfish snafu

Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter.A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with “fraudulent” business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware.Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called “spyware” in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits.The lawsuit was filed after Lenovo admitted to pre-loading Superfish on some consumer PCs. The laptops affected by Superfish include non-ThinkPad models such as G Series, U Series, Y Series, Z Series, S Series, Flex, Miix, Yoga and E Series.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo hit with lawsuit over Superfish snafu

Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter.A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with “fraudulent” business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware.Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called “spyware” in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits.The lawsuit was filed after Lenovo admitted to pre-loading Superfish on some consumer PCs. The laptops affected by Superfish include non-ThinkPad models such as G Series, U Series, Y Series, Z Series, S Series, Flex, Miix, Yoga and E Series.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Automation with Cisco Nexus Switches & Ansible

Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about SDN and more recently more about what can be done today with existing products, APIs, and tools in terms of improving operational efficiencies. Most of the examples have leveraged modern network devices that have some type of API because it streamlines how to integrate with 3rd party systems be it a custom application or a platform like Ansible (a platform that I’ve written about frequently). I’ve posted examples here and there on GitHub on these topics, but nothing that starts from the ground up.

With that in mind, I’ve recently created a new GitHub project that walks through step by step on how to get Ansible installed and specifically up and running ready to automate Cisco Nexus switches. Note: In full transparency, I was compensated by Cisco for this particular project. It was a no-brainer since I was already doing similar work over the past several months. That said, going forward it would be great to get others involved in any capacity from writing docs to writing code.

Network Automation with Cisco Nexus & Ansible

The README in the GitHub project repository outlines exactly how to get started. There Continue reading

Getting started with Ansible

Getting started with AnsibleThe easiest way to describe Ansible is that it’s a simple but powerful it-automation tool. In the words of its creator Michael DeHaan “I wanted a tool that I could not use for 6 months, come back later, and still remember how it worked.” and it really feels like riding a bike. Even years from now when I take a look at an Ansible Playbook I’m sure I will immediately see what it does. Playbooks, which allows you to run several tasks together, are writting in YAML making them easy to read.

This guide is too short to teach you everything about Ansible. Instead the aim is to give you an idea of how you can use Ansible, and how it can help you manage your IT environment. Even if you don’t end up using Ansible, learning tools like it as Chef or Puppet can help you to think differently about how you operate your network.

Continue reading

Life is busy

I’ve had zero time to update the blog recently. As some of you may know, I recently started a new job with Google. I’ve moved my family and I over from the UK to Dublin, Ireland. To say I’m busy right now is an understatement. Not only is there a ton of reading for me […]
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