How to run GUI applications on an Amazon AWS cloud server

In a previous post, I showed how easy it is to set up a remote server on Amazon’s AWS service. Now I would like see if I can run one or more of the open-source network simulators I’ve been using on this remote server. I want be able to access a network simulator from any device such as a personal computer, a tablet, or even a smart phone.

To accomplish this, I first need to install a Linux desktop environment on the remote Ubuntu server. Then, I need to set up the server and my client devices to allow the graphical user interface displayed on a remote server to be viewed on a local client.

In this post I will show how to install a Linux desktop (in this case, XFCE) and how to set up either VNC or X11 on a server and client.

Required software

Linux desktop

In this example, I chose to run the XFCE desktop environment on the Amzaon AWS remote server because XFCE uses less resources than other desktop environments such as Gnome or KDE.

Remote-access methods

There are two common methods for accessing a remote server’s graphical user interface:

1. VNC, Virtual Network Computing, Continue reading

How will the Apple Watch succeed where Android Wear has struggled?

The Apple Watch is set to hit the market in April, at a time when the smartwatch market appears to be largely up for grabs.Canalys released a report today that claimed manufacturers shipped just 720,000 devices featuring Google's smartwatch OS Android Wear in 2014. For context, 4.6 million total smartwatches and bands shipped last year, and mobile market newcomer Pebble shipped more than 1 million units from its 2013 launch through 2014, according to Canalys.Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan Chase wireless analyst Rod Hall recently upped his target for Apple stock price to $145 from $140 based on optimism for the Apple Watch, according to this Barron's blog post. That excitement is based on the expectation that 5% of 525 million projected iPhone users will buy the Apple Watch this year, resulting in more than 26 million shipments. Hall was even bold enough to extend this prediction into 2016, when he sees 13% of iPhone customers buying the Apple Watch, good for more than 55 million units.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Everyone has something to say about revived Wi-Fi Innovation Act

A revived and bi-partisan supported Wi-Fi Innovation Act has been introduced this week by U.S. Senators and is backed by U.S. House members with a companion bill of their own.The legislation, originally pitched last summer, urges the FCC to test the feasibility of opening up spectrum at the higher end of the 5GHz band (5850-5925) for unlicensed Wi-Fi use. Cable and other tech companies are all for this, while automakers and their partners are opposed, citing possible interference with car safety systems they are becoming more mainstream.MORE: How Not to Get Slammed by the FCC for Wi-Fi BlockingTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook super-sizes its open networking switch

Facebook is taking its crusade for open networking to a broader battlefield, using its 16-port “Wedge” switch design as the basis of a new modular platform that can link together racks of servers across a data center.The social networking juggernaut doesn’t intend to become a data networking vendor. It designs switches for its own needs and then open-sources its hardware designs so others can use them. In time, other companies could turn Facebook switch designs into products for sale, but Facebook won’t be directly involved, said Matt Corddry, director of hardware engineering at Facebook.GOOD LUCK: Geeky Ways to Celebrate Friday the 13thTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook super-sizes its open networking switch

Facebook is taking its crusade for open networking to a broader battlefield, using its 16-port “Wedge” switch design as the basis of a new modular platform that can link together racks of servers across a data center.The social networking juggernaut doesn’t intend to become a data networking vendor. It designs switches for its own needs and then open-sources its hardware designs so others can use them. In time, other companies could turn Facebook switch designs into products for sale, but Facebook won’t be directly involved, said Matt Corddry, director of hardware engineering at Facebook.GOOD LUCK: Geeky Ways to Celebrate Friday the 13thTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT revolution hinges on licensing, entitlement management

We may be in the midst of a third industrial revolution — one driven by intelligent devices connected to the Internet, enabling services, solutions and big data offerings around every day industrial and consumer goods. Software licensing and entitlement management will be the heart of this new industrial revolution, according to a report by Flexera Software and IDC."The industrial revolution came about as we moved from human labor to machine automation," says Steve Schmidt, vice president of Corporate Development at Flexera Software. "Then a second industrial revolution came about as systems were put in place and new energy sources became available: railroads, iron and steel production, manufacturing automation, the use of steam power, oil, electricity and electrical communications."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hitachi buying Pentaho to boost its IoT business

Hitachi Data Systems is purchasing business intelligence software maker Pentaho to incorporate analysis into Internet of Things systems it’ll build for the healthcare, public safety and other industries.“Hitachi owns the infrastructure and Pentaho owns the data integration and analytics platform and know-how to harness the value in big data,” wrote Pentaho CEO Quentin Gallivan in a blog post detailing the rationale behind the acquisition.Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of global conglomerate Hitachi, and focuses on IT and data center support and integration. It has been working to expand into the IoT market, which will generate over $2 trillion in business for all industries by 2020, according to Goldman Sachs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ONS Accelerate Workshop: Amazingly Refreshing

Sometimes the stars do align: Open Networking Summit organized their Service Provider Accelerate Workshop just a day prior to Network Field Day, so I had the fantastic opportunity to attend both.

I didn’t know what to expect from an event full of SDN/NFV thought leaders, and was extremely pleasantly surprised by the amount of realistic down-to-earth information I got.

Community Show – Our Briefing Review for February 2015

In this show, we discuss recent briefings we received from CloudGenix, Light Cyber, VMware, and Meru. We also go on a little rabbit trail about Brocade, because they came to mind. You know how we are.

The post Community Show – Our Briefing Review for February 2015 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Community Show – Greg’s & Ethan’s Briefing Review for February 2015

In this show, we discuss recent briefings we received from CloudGenix, Light Cyber, VMware, and Meru. We also go on a little rabbit trail about Brocade, because they came to mind. You know how we are.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks

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The post Community Show – Greg’s & Ethan’s Briefing Review for February 2015 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Corporate IT: Beware the dating apps on your users’ phones

Security-conscious IT leaders already have a rocky romance with the BYOD trend, and as Valentine’s day approaches it’s emerged that lonely-heart employees could be putting company data up for grabs by using dating apps.More than 60 percent of the leading mobile apps available in this category are potentially vulnerable to a variety of cyberattacks, an IBM Security study found. Besides putting the user’s personal information at risk, if these apps are on devices also used for work, corporate data could be vulnerable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Federal IT projects need critical care

Federal IT projects have hit the critical care list all too often and now watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office have moved those undertakings to its High Risk List which means Congress and the executive branch should take an extra special look at the situation.The GAO puts out the High Risk List every two years at the start of a new Congress, with the notion that resolution to those problems in particular could save billions in taxpayer money. The list currently includes 32 items ranging from climate change and cyber security threat response to Medicaid fraud.+ More on Network World: FBI: The top 3 ways Congress could help fight tenacious cyber threats +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Multi-Container Docker with YAML and Vagrant

In this post, I’ll provide an example of using YAML to create a multi-container Docker environment in Vagrant. I made a brief mention of this technique in my earlier post talking about how to use Docker with Vagrant, but wanted to provide an example. For me, I know that examples are often quite helpful when I’m learning something new. Since one of my primary goals here is to help enable others to learn these technologies, I figured an example would be helpful. So, to that end, here’s an example that I hope will help others.

As is becoming my custom, you can find resources to help you replicate this environment on your own laptop/desktop/whatever via my “learning-tools” GitHub repository.

Before I get into the details, I want to just very quickly recap some information from my earlier post on using Docker with Vagrant:

• Vagrant has a built-in Docker provider (present since versioni 1.6).
• Unless running on Linux, Vagrant will (by default) spin up an instance of a boot2docker VM on which to host the Docker containers. If you decide to modify this behavior (see the earlier post for full details), you’ll end up with a second Vagrantfile that Continue reading

GNS3 + Google Summer of Code

Which wireless carrier is best for you? Verizon, probably, but check for yourself

Verizon unquestionably is the best wireless carrier, according to a comprehensive nationwide study of the service provided by the top four U.S. wireless providers during the second half of 2014. That doesn’t mean that it’s the right choice for you. But it's a good starting point to help you choose the right wireless carrier, with a little hand-holding. That’s because the national study, released Tuesday by RootMetrics, doesn’t dive into the specifics for where you live. What it does tell us, however, was which carrier was best in terms of call quality, data download speed, and other metrics. The data is broken down nationally, on a statewide basis, and in tested metro areas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Which wireless carrier is best for you? Verizon, probably, but check for yourself

Verizon unquestionably is the best wireless carrier, according to a comprehensive nationwide study of the service provided by the top four U.S. wireless providers during the second half of 2014. That doesn’t mean that it’s the right choice for you. But it's a good starting point to help you choose the right wireless carrier, with a little hand-holding. That’s because the national study, released Tuesday by RootMetrics, doesn’t dive into the specifics for where you live. What it does tell us, however, was which carrier was best in terms of call quality, data download speed, and other metrics. The data is broken down nationally, on a statewide basis, and in tested metro areas.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tim Cook explains what he really thinks of Android

When Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks, the world listens—even if he’s speaking to a room full of bankers and other finance bigwigs at the annual Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.And he didn’t disappoint. Cook announced that Apple is partnering with First Solar to build an $850 million solar farm in Monterey County, Calif. The 1,300-acre farm will produce enough power for Apple’s new campus, currently under construction, along with the company’s data center, offices, and 52 retail stores in California.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Tim Cook's 2014 pay package dwarfed by new hire Ahrendts' +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

6 things Apple should fix in iOS 9

It’s not a shock to learn that Apple is always hard at work on the next big thing. There will always be another iPhone, a lighter MacBook Air, a faster iMac, and new operating systems to run on them. 9to5Mac reported last week that, according to its unnamed sources, iOS 9 would focus not on new features, but rather on cleaning up iOS and making sure all the bells and whistles added in iOS 7 and iOS 8 work like they’re supposed to, every time.Think of it as the Snow Leopard of iOS. When Apple decided to slow the roll of feature creep in OS X 10.6, the result was an OS that didn’t boast hundreds of new features, but turned out to be stable and reliable—and we loved it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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100G interconnect hooks UConn into massive research databases

The University of Connecticut announced yesterday that it has connected a new 100G fiber link, giving its faculty an improved ability to collaborate with others around the world on data-intensive research projects.The connection links to a global backbone network called Internet2, which is a specialized research and education infrastructure linking government, corporate and academic organizations together.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft to release next generation of Windows Server in 2016 | iPhone still king of enterprise mobile as usage skyrockets, study finds +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here