With so much going on in the IT world every day, sometimes it seems almost impossible to keep up on all the latest news and updates. We decided we wanted to start compiling all the most important news stories of the month to use as a resource for both our team – and yours. This post will be specifically on Cisco news.
Be sure to check back often to take advantage of this resource and stay up-to-date!
Cisco sells Linksys brand to Belkin
While this news initially broke in January, the acquisition was finalized mid-March. According to Computerworld, this move is significant because it shows a “continued a shift by Cisco away from consumer products and toward large architectures for enterprises and service providers.” It will be interesting to watch the shift as Cisco abandons the consumer market and dedicates its attention to the larger IT solutions industry.
Cisco Announces Platform that Provides Unified Access for Wired and Wireless Infrastructures
The Unified Access Data Plane, or UADP, is a way for enterprises to combine traditional data networks and mobile platforms. Enterprise Networking Planet states, “This proposal represents an entirely new class of networking hardware that allows people to build unified networks from the ground up, essentially uniting two distinct logical networks into one.” This development is important as demand for seamless solutions continues to grow and organizations look toward next-generation infrastructures.
Cisco Password Implementation Error Puts Hardware at Risk
This news hit the IT world last week after research uncovered the security risk. Cisco then issued a warning about password weaknesses in some of its routers, switches and appliances that are using the Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE. According to InformationWeek, “The problem stems from Cisco’s use of the Type 4 password algorithm in the operating system, and its failure to salt – add random bits to – passwords or use PBKDF2, which randomizes passphrases and adds a salt, thus deriving a cryptographic key that’s more difficult to crack.” The company recommends that organizations search for any Type 4 passwords they’ve generated and replace with Type 5 passwords.
Cisco Owes $70 Million for Patent Fraud
A federal jury decided on Friday that Cisco owes XpertUniverse Inc. $70 million for patent fraud, alleged to have occurred during a partnership between the two companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cisco was found guilty of “fraud by concealment” in addition to violating two patents. Cisco continues to reject the allegations and states that it may pursue an appeal.
People have the tendency to take for granted a lot of the modern technology and conveniences we have at our disposal every day. Technology has made our world much more abundant and made our lives easier. We have a level of comfort in modern times that kings couldn’t have imagined just a couple hundred years ago (a relative blink of an eye in historical terms).
Technology Has Helped Us Achieve Abundant Lives
With unfortunate events like Hurricane Sandy, it makes people take a step back and see just how much technology has done for us. If you are having trouble with this, do a personal TV marathon of Survivor Man all day. Then, get in your car that has temperature control, automatic windows, reclining seats, GPS, surround sound digital radio and DVD screens… and take a quick drive down to the grocery store chock full of every possible food you can imagine including prepared gourmet foods. Let’s not forget modern medicines. That’s just the grocery store. Next time you are there pause for a moment and think about how technology and voluntary collaboration for mutual benefit have affected our world. When you really think about it, well, it is amazing. If you are still not impressed, see this:
Cisco’s Vision For Streaming Video
Every year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), companies unveil a ton of new technologies in the aim of improving our lives that much more. That may mean solving a problem. Sometimes it simply means producing something really cool that people will enjoy.
Cisco may have an eye toward both with their new vision of streaming video walls. This is a fascinating idea that has a lot of possibilities.
Just take a look at the photo below.
To give you an idea of what Cisco is trying to accomplish, check out this excerpt from a recent article.
“Called Videoscape Unity, it’s basically a template for a cable, satellite, or other TV services that integrates traditional broadcast television with DVR, on-demand, Web, and social network content. And in its ultimate form, you’d watch it on a video wall large enough to display the equivalent of several current HDTV screens.”
How Would This Change Things?
You can imagine how this type of technology might change the landscape of business and the everyday lives of people. It wouldn’t just affect how you get your entertainment; it would change and expand communication on several levels. It would cause a paradigm shift in accessibility and personalization. It would create a ton of opportunities for businesses to engage people in a real and personal way.
When you think about this vision of technology and what we might see in the not-so-distant future, it is amazing.
But don’t look for this technology to be popping into your big box stores in the fall. This still seems to be in its infancy, so to speak. It may be a while before this technology reaches the household user.
Until video walls move from the silver screen (or the CES show floor) to middle-class homes, Cisco sees Videoscape Unity as a service for connecting multiple displays we already have, most notably tablets and TVs. “We need to be able to leverage the second screen in context to what’s going on in the primary screen,” said Jasper Anderson, senior Vice President and general manager of Cisco’s service provider video technology group.
Where Will Technology Take Us?
Due to the tremendous increases in technology, our economy and lives have reaped many rewards. I have had the pleasure of living in a time when I watched The Jetsons as a kid and have now seen plenty of that Jetsons technology come to fruition. Sometimes it seems like the only limitations we have with technology are the limitations of our imagination.
To many, Black Friday is the official start of the holiday shopping season and is a day to snag great deals on hundreds of products. Waiting in endless lines for the newest tech gadget, discounted TV or the latest toy of the season is a welcomed inconvenience for the money that could be saved. In a way, Black Friday is the survival of the fittest personified in holiday shopping chaos.
However, this is just Black Friday on the surface. To the IT professional, Black Friday is a perfect reminder of how important it is to keep our networks up and running effectively. According to the National Retail Federation, it is estimated 147 million people will be shopping this Black Friday weekend. MarketWatch predicts that Black Friday sales will increase by 3.1% from last year (In 2011, Black Friday sales totaled $11.4 billion). Holiday sales overall are predicted to increase 4.1% to to $586 billion.
This heavy shopping volume, both in stores and online, means an increase in information flow – from credit card transactions to website and mobile traffic. On a typical day, the cost of a network disruption for a company dealing with credit card authorization is $2.6 million per hour. If that is on a normal day, can you imagine if the loss happened on Black Friday? Of course, avoiding downtime is important every day, but when billions of Black Friday dollars are depending on your network…there is no room for error.
Whether you are in the retail business or not, let Black Friday serve to remind you of the significance of building and maintaining network infrastructure that offers both high-performance and reliability. Don’t let downtime happen to you. As the end of the year approaches, there is no better time to evaluate your current methods and determine what’s working and where there’s room for improvement.
Be sure to reach out to us here at CXtec or our friends at CABLExpress if you have any questions or want to chat about your network needs – we’d love to help!
We want to wish all the system admins out there a great System Administrators Day. Like all IT professionals, people should be grateful for what you do. Frankly, we think system admins are under appreciated. There’s a good chance that people don’t recognize the long hours and hard work that you put in to get things done. That’s why we want to recognize you and say thanks for all that you do.
We also saw something cool. So, we thought we’d pass it along. Our friends at Spiceworks are doing a couple of fun things for System Administrators Day. You should check it out. By the way, if you are not already a member of Spiceworks, you should join immediately (and follow CXtec, of course). It’s a great resource, a great tool, and a great community of IT professionals. It’s insightful, useful, and fun.
Anyway, the cool people over at Spiceworks have posted a couple of fun pages all about System Administrators Day. They did a nice blog post in their online community and they also have a website. Yes, that’s right…a website all about System Administrators Day.
Here’s an excerpt from an article on the website:
A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.
A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.
A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.
