NETWORKING

Many parts of the globe have come back to pre-pandemic life in a big way after two years of isolation. I had the opportunity to attend Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain (over 61,000 attendees), and the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) in San Diego, California. Those events were super inspiring, not only because now is a terrific time for mobile, wireless and optical technologies but because people were thrilled to finally…

Few vulnerabilities in recent years have attracted as much attention or ignited as much concern across the industry as CVE-2021-44228 – or Log4Shell, as it became known – a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability. The vulnerability, disclosed in December, affected almost every environment with a Java application, was trivially easy to exploit and gave attackers a way to gain complete control of vulnerable systems. Too often, it was also incredibly hard to find because…

I engaged in many conversations at the annual HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition last week, and came away with a resounding call to action. It’s time to make healthcare available and accessible for everyone, everywhere.   The vehicle to achieve global health equity is technology. Currently, nearly half of the world remains unconnected to the Internet, and in many countries, it is not affordable, creating a clear division between those who have access, and those…

The Transformational Tech series highlights Cisco’s nonprofit grant recipients that use technology to help transform the lives of individuals and communities.  Founded in 2006, nonprofit charity: water has shown an incredible commitment to ensure that more people have access to enough clean water. With the assistance of grant funding from Cisco, charity: water has finalized designs, tested, and implemented a first-of-its-kind Internet of Things (IoT) sensor to remotely monitor rural community hand pumps. Lack of…

Shared object files streamline programs by providing information applications need to do their jobs, but that don’t have to be part of the application itself. To find out which of these files a Linux command calls on, use the ldd command. What is a shared object file? Shared object files (designated as .so) are libraries that are automatically linked into a program when the program starts, yet exist as a standalone files. They contain information that can…

Software skills are becoming increasingly desirable for network engineers and architects, and the uptick in Cisco’s DevNet certification program reflects the trend. According to Cisco, there’s been more than 50% growth in the number of DevNet certifications awarded in the past year. Cisco says it no longer gives out specific numbers, but in 2020, nearly 8,000 participants earned some 10,500 DevNet certifications, including DevNet Associate, DevNet Professional and DevNet Specialist. These DevNet certifications focus on coding,…

When you think about the metaverse and the enterprise, do you think about millions of workers buzzing about in a virtual world to do their work?  Maybe employees picking Star Wars characters as avatars and fighting with light sabers?  CEOs likely blanch at that image; to most, virtual workers implies virtual work, and it’s hard to say how that generates real sales and products.  Fortunately, there’s an alternative that depends not on enterprises using the…

AMD is adding four new processor SKUs to its EPYC (formerly codenamed Milan-X) lineup of high-end chips, building additional L3 cache capability onto the existing EPYC series. The key new feature of the new 7773X, 7573X, 7473X, and 7373X chips, which were initially announced in a roadmap made public late last year, is in their physical construction — AMD refers to the new technique as 3D V-Cache. Where most processors are constructed with a single…

Policy as code is the natural evolution of infrastructure as code. Once you start to manage your infrastructure as code, you soon realize that the process needs solid governance and enforcement of policies at scale. The traditional approach of defining and enforcing policies with manual processes or cumbersome GUIs won’t cut it. Policy as code means that you define policies declaratively using text files that are checked into source control and can be reviewed and…

An overwhelming 91% of organizations recognize the importance of delivering exceptional employee experiences to achieving business outcomes. And as more organizations embrace a distributed, hybrid workforce model, the campus network is a critical part of any digital backbone infrastructure providing connectivity for employees, customers, and increasingly, things – all vital to delivering exceptional experiences. However, designing, deploying, and maintaining a secure, agile network that keeps pace with the shifting needs of the business can have…