NETWORKING

Identifying Connectivity Challenges TIM Brazil had a problem to solve. Their country of more than 200 million people has massive geographical regions lacking reliable internet service, and the company sought a cost-effective way to expand connectivity and offer high-quality streaming content to its growing population. They needed to find the best way to address this challenge without incurring the significant costs typical of such large-scale projects. While mainly a mobile operator with 50 million customers…

I have worked with many cool technologies throughout the years, helping our partners find new opportunities, create their differentiation, and establish long and profitable customer relationships. I have also been at the center of the Internet of Everything wave and digital transformation – and the buzz words that accompany these new technologies, such as IoT, Software Defined-everything, CyberSecurity, Analytics, Edge Computing, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. With that in mind, I want to dissect the…

High-tech vendors continue to battle supply-chain problems and higher costs brought on by the current semiconductor shortage, according to statements made in the most recent round of earnings calls. As Network World reported in May, COVID-19 triggered an explosion of the global remote workforce, which created extraordinary demand for new tech gear. It also forced the shutdown of processor plants. Restarting those plants and renewing supply chains to their pre-pandemic state will be a lengthy process, industry…

You may have seen us touting our new generation of 100G SMF pluggable optics, called “Single-Lambda 100G“. The last product we introduced was the 100G LR, which provides a 10km reach. We’ve now finalized the portfolio with the 100G ER-Lite. The reach of ER-Lite is 25km. So it can support links between a company’s campuses, between campuses of a data center cluster, and fronthaul or backhaul links in a wireless network. It’s great for when…

If you’ve been attacked by ransomware, a fully automated, high-speed disaster recovery is the way to successfully avoid paying the ransom. Recovery is the second step in the two-step process after getting rid of the malware as described here. There are three ways to affect a disaster recovery after a ransomware attack: a traditional recovery, an image-based recovery, or a cloud-based recovery. But the only way for most environments to afford automating a large-scale recovery…

If you’ve been attacked by ransomware, a fully automated, high-speed disaster recovery is the way to successfully avoid paying the ransom. Recovery is the second step in the two-step process after getting rid of the malware as described here. There are three ways to affect a disaster recovery after a ransomware attack: a traditional recovery, an image-based recovery, or a cloud-based recovery. But the only way for most environments to afford automating a large-scale recovery…

When it comes to internet speed tests, Ookla‘s Speedtest is the gold standard. So when Ookla examined its data for Starlink and its satellite internet rivals, HughesNet and Viasat, the numbers it comes up with are meaningful.  ZDNet Recommends The best internet service providers When you’re comparing internet providers for your business, don’t just look at speed and price. More than anything else, you want the most reliable connection to keep your business running. Read…

My 6-year-old daughter Kaleigh and I have daddy daughter dates every Saturday where we go to karate together. It’s kind of a long drive, 1.5 hours each way, but we enjoy the time together. During a recent drive, my daughter was quietly looking out the window and said, “Daddy, I want to be an engineer and work at Cisco like you do!” Cue the teary eyes! I, of course, told her, “Kaleigh, you can do…

In order to achieve a resilient network, it is important to maintain high availability not only in control plane, but also at the data plane for traffic to flow smoothly, without any disruptions. In the event of unavailability of control plane, which governs and manages the data plane traffic, the whole WAN infrastructure and subsequent site traffic can go down, causing huge outages. The SD-WAN solution should be intelligent enough to not only ensure continuous data plane operation, but also to provide an optimized path for the application traffic for enhanced…

Not to state the overly obvious, but companies have substantially accelerated their migration to the cloud over the last eighteen months. The pandemic forced them to get more done, faster, and often with less. And they found the cloud was the ultimate enabler. The move to the cloud, even with all of its promise, isn’t without challenges. The cloud makes it easier for users to access their applications and information from anywhere—just click and go….