NETWORKING

There’s a lot of hype around the next Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ax, more commonly known as Wi-Fi 6. Often new technologies are built up by vendors as the “next big thing” and then flop because they don’t live up to expectations. In the case of Wi-Fi 6, however, the fervor is warranted because it’s the first Wi-Fi standard designed with the premise that Wi-Fi is the primary connection for devices rather than a network of convenience….

The Wi-FI 6 standard (802.11ax) is bringing many exciting improvements to Wi-Fi that make it an enticing option. These include speed, in the form of real-world multi-gigabit wireless connections, but also support for high-density networks like those in stadiums. However, it will take some careful thought and planning to know when to take the leap to Wi-Fi 6. Do you need the speed? To make multi-gigabit wireless speeds possible, most Wi-Fi 6 access points (AP)…

One of the most anticipated features of Wi-Fi 6 wireless routers is improved throughput over their Wi-Fi 5 predecessors, and we wanted to check whether they deliver. Four vendors – Extreme, Cisco, EnGenius and Meraki (owned by Cisco) – provided access points (AP) for our test. Since the routers support both Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), we tested them against two Wi-Fi 5 and two Wi-Fi 6 clients and recorded the average throughput…

This spring the FCC opened up a new swath of unlicensed wireless spectrum in the 6GHz band that’s intended for use with Wi-Fi and can provide lower latency and faster data rates. The new spectrum also has a shorter range and supports more channels than bands that were already dedicated to Wi-Fi, making it suitable for deployment in high-density areas like stadiums. To further understand what Wi-Fi 6E is and how it differs from Wi-Fi…

There are many ways to evaluate the speed of your wireless LAN (WLAN), whether you’re trying to troubleshoot issues, ensure bandwidth-intensive clients will work well, fine-tune the performance, or just curious about your Wi-Fi speeds. The simple Internet-speed apps or websites can be useful, but sometimes you need to measure the actual Wi-Fi throughput. For this you usually need a testing platform with a server and clients. Preparations for testing Before running any tests, think…

The news that Pat Gelsinger is departing as CEO of VMware to take over at Intel generated a positive response for Intel and an equally negative response for VMware. Intel’s stock jumped 7% on the day of the news, while VMware’s stock fell 7%, and investment bank Piper Sandler slashed its VMware price target from $178 down to $157. Most of the discussion has been around Gelsinger and his return to Intel. VMware, meanwhile, has been…

Cisco has noted and fixed two critical and a number of high-degree vulnerabilities in its SD-WAN software portfolio. Most of the vulnerabilities could let an authenticated attacker execute command injection attacks against an affected device, which could let the attacker utilize root privileges on the device. The first critical problem–with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System rating of 9.9 out of 10–is  vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco SD-WAN vManage Software.  “This vulnerability is due…

DevNet is Cisco’s developer community, and the DevNet Dev Centers are home to Cisco’s API guides. A DevNet Dev Center is where you’ll find technical documentation and learning resources that refer to different products or platforms, not the technology itself. A Dev Center has both developer focused and product-related data and information; it has the details about a technical product and how these should be consumed. The purpose of each Dev Center is to help…

Intro Who remembers heading out the night before ticket sales opened for your favorite band and camping out with all the other crazy fans who were in queue to buy the best seats when it opened the following morning? Or doing the same at a game store because a new game was coming out the next day and you needed to be the first to finish the campaign?! I do. These scenarios are quickly becoming…

In an application-centric data center, the network needs to have maximum agility to manage workloads and incorporate services such as firewalls, load balancers, proxies and optimizers. These network services enhance compliance, security, and optimization in virtualized data centers and cloud networks. Data center ops teams need an elegant method to insert service nodes and have the ability to automatically redirect traffic using predefined rules as operations change. Enterprises running their data centers on the Nexus…