RSS
Cisco And Deloitte Wrong: Good Practices More Impactful Than Vendor Choice
February 21, 2012 02:57 PM
Cisco is fighting back against the notion that a multi-vendor network can simplify operations and reduce TCO. The networking giant commissioned a report by Deloitte that finds operation costs will increase over the life of the equipment in a network that uses equipment from disparate vendors. The fact is, one vendor vs. multiple vendors is the wrong fight. Sound management practices and smart production selection will have a bigger impact on your IT costs than the number of vendors you use.
Why I Like Juniper's QFabric (And A Mea Culpa)
February 02, 2012 09:00 AM
While I was visiting Juniper in early December, I got a chance to sit down with the QFabric folks to discuss some of issues with QFabric and what I saw as a proprietary—with all the badness that word implies—product set in search of a reason. While QFabric is proprietary because of how the components are interconnected, I came away with the impression that the overall design and capacity looks extremely powerful. I think the upsides of the QFabric product set far outweigh the downsides. Give a month's time between visiting Juniper and now, I'd say that all my ballyhoo about being proprietary was a non-issue. My bad.
Transferring DNS Registrars Not A Problem
December 29, 2011 01:28 PM
It's Dec. 29, and I have started to transfer personal DNS domains from GoDaddy. The company's position on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)—its reversal notwithstanding—was the nudge that pushed me over the edge. Frankly, GoDaddy has been acting poorly during the last few years, and I decided to move my domains elsewhere. So far, the transfers have gone well, with nary a hiccup.
Networking APIs Should Be A Critical Feature
December 19, 2011 07:00 AM
When you are looking at your next network equipment refresh, be sure to take a long, deep, look at the APIs the vendors are exporting and importing. Integration features should be near the top of your must-have feature list.
Fat Apps Are Where It's At
November 23, 2011 11:52 AM
Virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI, is seeing something of a revival lately due to the increased penetration of mobile tablets. Why lug a laptop around that has a short battery life and takes forever to load when you can use a lighter, more responsive tablet? If you can get your desktop on your tablet, all the better, right? No. Not at all. More over, server-based desktop applications, such as those served from the likes of Citrix XenApp and VMware ThinApp, or just the UI components. We need need fat apps.
Can Dell Do For Networking What It Did For Storage?
November 18, 2011 11:23 AM
Dell is focused and while it isn't considered by many to be a solutions provider--many consider Dell to be a box pusher--it plans on changing perception. As Fritz Nelson points out in discussing Dell's earnings, the company did a remarkable job of acquiring storage companies that fit with its overall vision, investing in the product lines, doubling or tripling the head count in some cases, and setting off on an integration path that continues today. However, Dell has a difficult road ahead if it wants to get beyond supplying servers to the data center.
New And Notable On Network Computing
November 16, 2011 02:01 PM
It's been a busy year for our IT staff. We've moved to a new platform that is more stable and faster. We have a new commenting system in place, and we are adding more kinds of content. Network Computing Pro, once a subscription service, is now free (registration required). And we'll have more changes in the coming months. All of these changes have been part of a long process, but one that lets us bring you more and better news, views and actionable information. Now I'd like to hear from you. What do you want to see? What can we do better? We'll try to incorporate your changes.
Dell Is Focused
November 15, 2011 04:15 PM
Last week, some colleagues and I had a chance to spend the day at Dell's headquarters in Austin, Texas. It was seven hours of meetings, getting a dump on Dell's various lines of business, and was capped off with a meeting with the man himself, Michael Dell. It was an informative day, meeting with folks who run the storage, server, networking, and channel divisions of the company. I came away with one overriding thought: Here's a company that is focused.
Interop Video Previews
September 30, 2011 04:50 PM
Interop New York 2011 is upon us. Starting Oct. 3 and running through Oct. 7, UBM's Interop show sill be taking place at the Javits Center. It going to be a full week, starting with pre-conference days on virtualization, cloud computing and CIO boot camp. Wednesday through Friday, the conference kicks off with three full days of in-depth sessions and panels covering virtually every aspect of IT. The expo hall will be open Wednesday and Thursday so you can meet with vendors and see the latest gear. We have compiled previews for most of the conference tracks to highlight some must-see sessions if you are strapped for time.
Proprietary Networking Kills Opportunity
September 23, 2011 07:00 AM
When we ask IT about proprietary vs. standards-based purchases, the majority of responses indicate that standards are nearly always preferred. So why are the network fabrics proprietary? There is a disconnect between what we are hearing from IT and what vendors are offering, and it seems to me that vendors are collectively shooting themselves in the foot.
Certificate Authority Compromises Are Global In Reach
September 09, 2011 01:48 PM
There has already been a lot written about the compromise at DigiNotar, GlobalSign and Comodo. One day we will look at the summer of 2011 as the time when the PKI collapsed. That's not hyperbole. The problems with certificate authorities and the inherent weakness they present have been known for years--a fact we alluded to as far back as 1997. Browsers accept certificates as trusted in that they have the signing CA certificate in their local browser store. Browsers do not check that a particular CA is authorized to actually issue a particular server certificate. The trust is universal. That is why the attacks on DigiNotar, GlobalSign and Comodo are so serious and have global impact.
IPv6 Is Coming. Time To Get Prepared
August 24, 2011 04:01 PM
IPv6 is coming. Sooner or later, you will be deploying IPv6 on your network, data center, or co-lo servers. It may be a few years off--longer if your ISP has a well thought out transition strategy in place--but IPv6 is different enough that you can learn the ins and outs on a smaller network before you have to deploy it widely. If you are looking for resources, start there. If you have a good resource you want to share, send me an email and I will check it out.
Raining On Cloud Bursting's Parade
August 09, 2011 01:05 PM
Cloud bursting--the ability to dynamically move processing temporarily to a cloud provider in response to some excess demand--sounds like such a great idea. If successful, you can continue to handle the excess burst without having to acquire new hardware, software and licenses, and, equally important, you can do it right now. But before you start popping champagne corks and taking a celebratory lap, you will likely have some significant hurdles to get over.
FCoE: Standards Don't Matter; Vendor Choice Does
July 27, 2011 08:30 AM
During the last year or so, some Fibre Channel over Ethernet experts have been arguing nuances of FCoE and which protocols you need or don’t need. FCoE interswitch interoperability? I will be old(er) and gray(er) before that happens in any meaningful way. While these are interesting discussions—if you go for that sort of thing—ultimately, they won’t impact your purchasing decisions. You are going to use whatever your SAN vendor tells you to use.
Proprietary Is Not A Four Letter Word
June 22, 2011 07:00 AM
Proprietary technologies are not inherently bad, but you do have to watch for vendors that interchange standards-based features with proprietary features in a fanciful shell game.
Follow Amazon Example In User Account Management
June 17, 2011 09:58 AM
Organizations that manage sensitive customer information have largely done their users a disservice by using links in emails. While they are trying to be helpful by providing links, the critical side effect is that users get used to clicking on them, and that is one way of facilitating phishing.
Vint Cerf's Internet Safety
June 15, 2011 08:10 AM
At the Internet Society INET conference, there was wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics, from Net neutrality to privacy. A highlight was Vint Cerf's keynote in the afternoon. He focused on the importance of safety mechanisms for those using the Internet--safety in terms of being protected from abusive behavior and safety in terms of the ability to speak freely and, where and when needed, remain anonymous. These are big issues in the international theater.
Six Reasons It's Blame IPv6 Day
June 08, 2011 12:41 PM
As far as I am concerned, it's not World IPv6 Day. It's Blame IPv6 Day. This is a good opportunity to take any new technology (OK, IPv6 is not new, but it might as well be) and use it as the whipping boy it deserves to be. It's IPv6's turn. So, lets get started!
Single Point Of Failure: The Internet
June 01, 2011 07:00 AM
No matter how well you architect for redundancy and availability, there will certainly be single points of failure (SPOF) that you can't account for. The SPOF, in all of its forms, can make application mobility via VDI, cloud services, and netbooks like Google's Chromebook less attractive computing options when compared to fat clients, fat servers, and boring but reliable storage. While services can fail, let's not forget that the most frequent SPOF we deal with is the access networks at the Internet edge.
Interop Premieres New Technology; Everyone Wins
May 17, 2011 08:21 AM
One of the coolest displays I saw at Interop was not in Start-up City nor in the Czech Republic zone. It wasn't the Lamborghini that Securent rolled onto the floor, nor was it the Barracuda Bus. It was the fiber backplane that HP brought out from its R&D facility and had running as a proof of concept, as well as the number of vendors that had products--nearly all proof of concepts--in the InteropNet Openflow lab. Staying awake is hard after sitting through the sixth top-of-rack switch of the day. Showcases like HP's and Openflow's should be an important part of any trade show because they remind us why what we do is cool and fun.
Best of the Web
VXLAN termination on physical devices
VXLAN is an Experimental IETF draft of protocols to enable the creation of a large overlay, multi-tenant network.
ONF Deadly Serious About OpenFlow-Based SDNs
: OpenFlow is poised to reach over-hyped status, yet there are practical, useful reasons for keeping an eye on Openflow. The biggest cloud players are involved and driving the feature creation.
Practical Introduction to Applied OpenFlow
Get a primer on the Openflow protocol and what it can do for networking.
On Resilience of Spit-Architecture Networks
This research papers investigates the practical issues in split-architecture networks and the placement of the controllers, such as Openflow controllers, in the network.
