PlexxiPulse—Leading the pack

This week, Facebook announced a new modular switch called the “6-pack,” which builds off of The Wedge (Facebook’s innovative piece of networking equipment announced last June.) The development of the “6-pack” comes on the heels of a relatively new white box movement within the networking industry where generic, off-the-shelf switching and routing hardware is used rather than custom-made infrastructure, making networks more manageable and easy to scale. Julie Bort covered this very topic earlier this week in her Cisco earnings roundup for Business Insider, and cited Plexxi as one of the startups leading the charge against complicated, legacy-type infrastructures like Cisco. Here at Plexxi, one of our top priorities is to provide our customers with the most efficient network possible and we’re proud to be recognized as an industry trailblazer.

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

Streetwise Journal: Cisco CEO: We Will Crush Facebook and Have Fun Beating VMware
By Larry Banks
On fire since a decent quarterly earnings report in which Cisco revenues rose by 7% and forecast 3 to 5% growth next quarter, the company CEO John Chambers was hugely confident Continue reading

Fair-trade smartphone meant to last longer

Fairphone’s second smartphone will not only be built using conflict-free or fair trade minerals, but also offer better performance and be really easy to repair.After selling 60,000 units of its first phone, the Dutch company is now turning its attention to a new model that will go on sale in the latter half of the year. With the second phone, the goal is still to manufacture a smartphone that doesn’t use minerals from conflict zones, is recyclable and is made by workers who are treated well.Fairphone is also aiming to make product longevity a development goal. The longer a device lasts, the less waste it creates and the fewer resources it requires, founder and CEO Bas Van Abel said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Personal weather stations can expose your Wi-Fi network

In the latest Internet of Things security blunder, personal weather station devices made by Netatmo were found sending users’ Wi-Fi passwords back to the company over unencrypted connections.Netatmo weather stations can be used to monitor indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide levels and overall air quality. Users can see the data collected by their stations in real-time through an app installed on their phones, tablets or computers.The public weather map on Netatmo’s website shows that thousands of such devices are installed around the world.When the weather stations are first configured, users need to give them access to their Wi-Fi networks, so they can transmit sensor readings to the Netatmo cloud over the Internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 2/13/2015

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

This Week’s CCIE Success Stories

  • Steven Allspach, CCIE #46810 (Routing & Switching)
  • Ahmed Hussain, CCIE #46833 (Routing & Switching)
  • Oluwaseyi Bello, CCIE #46897 (Routing & Switching)
  • Michael O’Nan, CCIE #46879 (Collaboration)
  • Justin Lenhart, CCIE #46911 (Collaboration)
  • Esteban Araya Paniagua, CCIE #46910 (Collaboration)
  • Ade Adeoshun, CCIE #46959 (Collaboration)

This Week’s CCIE Testimonials

Steven Allspach, CCIE #46810
“To prepare for my lab, I used all of iPexpert’s videos and workbooks. I also took their 10-day onsite bootcamp (one of week technology focused labbing and the one-week lab experience). The bootcamp was by far the best decision I had made during my studies. The bootcamp allowed me to completely submerge myself in the CCIE technologies uninterrupted for 12 straight days 12-16 hours per day. I feel like I gained over 3-months of preparation in 12-days. I gained so much confidence after the bootcamp in November that I immediately scheduled my exam for February.

The OWLE bootamp prepared me in ways I never imagined. It gave me the practice of doing full 8-hour mock labs (TSHOOT/Diag/Config). Each day we would complete a Continue reading

Basics: The Difference Between Bandwidth and Speed

A link in a network is determined by two factors, bandwidth and speed. These are usually the same but not always. Speed is bit rate of the circuit while bandwidth is the amount of “speed” available for use. As an example, a 500 Megabit Ethernet MPLS service which uses a 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection to site […]


The post Basics: The Difference Between Bandwidth and Speed appeared first on EtherealMind.

EU air passenger surveillance system could be ready for take-off by year end

Despite privacy concerns and doubts over its usefulness, a plan to track passengers entering or leaving the European Union in a series of national databases is likely to become reality by the end of the year.The call to build national databases of so-called passenger name records (PNRs) has become louder since the recent terror attacks in Paris in which 17 people were killed. EU countries have argued that storing data about who has flown where, and when, would help law enforcement with the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offenses and serious transnational crime.The plan is for airlines to send data collected during reservation and check-in procedures, including travel itineraries, ticket information and contact details, to an authority of the relevant country. That authority would be responsible for analyzing the data and sharing its analysis with other competent authorities, including those in other countries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hands-On Tail-F Experience on Software Gone Wild

Tail-F NCS implements one of the most realistic approaches to service abstraction (the cornerstone of SDN – at least in my humble opinion) – an orchestration system that automates service provisioning on existing infrastructure.

Is the product really as good as everyone claims? How hard is it to use? How steep is the learning curve? Boštjan Šuštar and Marko Tišler from NIL Data Communications have months of hands-on experience and were willing to share it in Episode 22 of Software Gone Wild.

Enjoy the show

HSRP AWARE PIM

In environments that require redundancy towards clients, HSRP will normally be running. HSRP is a proven protocol and it works but how do we handle when we have clients that need multicast? What triggers multicast to converge when the Active Router (AR) goes down? The following topology is used:

PIM1

One thing to notice here is that R3 is the PIM DR even though R2 is the HSRP AR. The network has been setup with OSPF, PIM and R1 is the RP. Both R2 and R3 will receive IGMP reports but only R3 will send PIM Join, due to it being the PIM DR. R3 builds the (*,G) towards the RP:

R3#sh ip mroute 239.0.0.1
IP Multicast Routing Table
Flags: D - Dense, S - Sparse, B - Bidir Group, s - SSM Group, C - Connected,
       L - Local, P - Pruned, R - RP-bit set, F - Register flag,
       T - SPT-bit set, J - Join SPT, M - MSDP created entry, E - Extranet,
       X - Proxy Join Timer Running, A - Candidate for MSDP Advertisement,
       U - URD, I - Received Source Specific Host Report, 
       Z - Multicast Tunnel, z - MDT-data group sender, 
        Continue reading

U.S. carriers meet voluntary deadline for unlocking mobile phones

Unlocking a mobile phone from a single U.S. carrier has caused consumers headaches in recent years, but seven major carriers on Wednesday met a voluntary, industry-created deadline to set conditions for unlocking to occur.Software locks on smartphones and other mobile phones prohibit users from using a device on another operator’s network, which makes it hard for someone to take a device loaded with apps to another carrier or to use the device when traveling abroad.Even though carriers have adhered to ways for consumers to get phones unlocked, the CTIA wireless industry group said that an unlocked phone isn’t necessarily an interoperable phone, since different carriers use different technologies and wireless spectrum bands.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Microsoft’s HoloLens is the next big enterprise thing

If you had followed along on Twitter or gone straight to the source and listened to the live streaming version of the big Microsoft Windows 10 event on Jan. 21, you probably felt the excitement. That energy was not just about Windows 10: Yeah, that operating system seems nice, and the fit and finish will probably make it the next Windows 7 — you know, the version of the product that corporations land on and run for a decade or more because it is just solid, reliable, and compatible. Everyone who skipped Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 will certainly gravitate toward a major migration toward Windows 10, and Microsoft understands this. It looks like a solid release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Panasonic’s Toughbook 54 gets lighter, but stays strong

Panasonic’s Toughbooks are known for their strength and durability, but the company is trying to resolve some of the heft and size issues with its latest model.The Toughbook 54 14-inch laptop is just 1.9 kilograms (4.19 pounds), much lighter than its predecessor, the Toughbook 53, which was over 2.5 kilograms. Panasonic has also doubled memory capacity of the laptop to 16GB, and included a spare bay to improve storage capacity.The Toughbook isn’t going to compete on weight with laptops marketed as being super light, such as Dell’s XPS 13, which weights a bit more than 1 kilogram. But it is much tougher, thanks to a magnesium alloy chassis that can withstand drops of just under 1 meter. The Toughbook 54 has a handle, making it look much like a mini-suitcase.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, February 13

Obama visits Silicon Valley to headline cybersecurity summitThe White House is heading west to Silicon Valley on Friday looking for ideas on how to improve the nation’s cybersecurity. At the first-of-its-kind summit at Stanford University, U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order that urges companies to share threat information with one another and with the government. There are some areas of discord between the government and the tech industry: surveillance and encryption. Apple CEO Tim Cook is the most high-profile executive in attendance, while top execs from Google, Facebook and Yahoo declined invitations to attend (but will be represented in discussions at the event).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, February 13

Obama visits Silicon Valley to headline cybersecurity summitThe White House is heading west to Silicon Valley on Friday looking for ideas on how to improve the nation’s cybersecurity. At the first-of-its-kind summit at Stanford University, U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order that urges companies to share threat information with one another and with the government. There are some areas of discord between the government and the tech industry: surveillance and encryption. Apple CEO Tim Cook is the most high-profile executive in attendance, while top execs from Google, Facebook and Yahoo declined invitations to attend (but will be represented in discussions at the event).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DMVPN Dynamic Multipoint VPN

DMVPN is dynamic, scalable and easy to configure Cisco specific VPN solution. DMVPN uses two major technologies for its operation : NHRP Next Hop Resolution Protocol mGRE Multipoint GRE In this post I will explain all the basics of DMVPN. For detailed routing protocol design over DMVPN will be covered in different post which will… Read More »

The post DMVPN Dynamic Multipoint VPN appeared first on Network Design and Architecture.

Asus seeks to expand smartphone presence in Europe, China and US

Asustek Computer isn’t exactly known for smartphones, but the Taiwanese PC maker is aiming to bring more Android phones to U.S. and European markets this year.A year ago, Asus introduced its ZenFone line, a range of Android handsets, and demand for the phones is growing.In the fourth quarter, Asus shipped 4.5 million smartphones, up from a mere 200,000 units in the first quarter of 2014.The shipments are still small compared to those of leading vendors such as Apple and Samsung Electronics, but Asus is among the PC makers hoping to break out from the notebook market by releasing more mobile devices. In 2017, Asus expects revenue from its mobile business to surpass that of its PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Jeb Bush’s email cache held another surprise: Viruses

In addition to personal phone numbers and email addresses for hundreds of people who corresponded with him, there’s something else inside the cache of emails that Jeb Bush released this week: computer viruses.Earlier this week, Bush, who some tip as a presidential hopeful, released thousands of emails from his time as governor of Florida, when he promoted his “[email protected]” email address as a way for voters to interact with him. The emails were released unredacted—a deliberate move intended to demonstrate transparency but one that backfired because the messages included the names, email addresses and phone numbers of thousands of people.Alongside a Web interface to read the emails, Bush also offered raw Microsoft Outlook files, and it’s in those files where the viruses lurked in file attachments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US lawmakers introduce two bills to protect email privacy

A long-standing effort to extend privacy protections to email and other data in the cloud got new life Thursday when U.S. lawmakers introduced not one, but two bills to reform the country’s electronic privacy laws.Both the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act, called the LEADS Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search data that’s been stored on Web-based or cloud-based services for more than 180 days.Under the 29-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act [ECPA], law enforcement agencies do not need a court-ordered warrant to search unopened email stored with a vendor for longer than 180 days, although they do need court approval to access unopened email less than 180 days old.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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