Imagine that you are a data packet. You have information to deliver, and you’re anxious to get started. Here you are at your source network device, and you look out on the vast network of switches, routers, and other machines. But where do you go? You look down and see that you’ve been given a […]
Internet technology continues to change at a rapid pace, but the fundamentals are the same. Most networks are still using TCP/IP. Networks are designed and analyzed using protocol stacks. And data packet switching is still the lifeblood of the network. In this post, we take a look at some fundamental concepts in networking that the […]
What is external monitoring? In a general sense, it means regularly checking on something to find out what is happening. It’s a way to gather information. In a large network, it means observing and recording data from a wide variety of devices and applications. We should clarify that monitoring and management are not the same […]
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, they say. You should always have a plan B. Companies spend millions on their data connections, but even the best of them can fail. And what happens when you don’t have adequate backup systems in place? Well, take a look at our survey of outages in 2018 […]
Everybody has troubles — especially IT professionals. But for obvious reasons, they don’t have the luxury to ignore them, run from them, put them off, or pass them on to somebody else. Doing so would undermine availability. Perhaps the availability of a server or a desktop, or even a workforce. No, in the world of […]
If you’ve ever made an in-person visit to your well-protected server or other device in a colocation facility or data center, then you know firsthand about security. The hand scanners, the thumbprint readers, the man-traps, the security guards, the metal cages — all the security features that make data centers feel like a secure prison. […]
Faster is not necessarily better. The push to launch new applications and services as quickly as possibly can cost you in the long run. A 2013 Gartner study predicted that ineffective software release management would cause 80% of production environment incidents in large organizations in the next few years. If keeping your network or applications […]
Just when you think things are getting safer on the web, somebody comes up with a startling claim and spoils your party: “Our analysis paints a somewhat bleak situation on the state of modern web ecosystem.” That’s the conclusion of a 2016 study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University. The full title is worth noting: Oh, […]
We have remarked several times in this space about the tremendous changes in the data center in such a short period of time. Not only are device footprints shrinking and functionalities converging, but the way that hardware and software are managed has become more comprehensive and streamlined. Now the same thing that has happening to […]
“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.” Winston Churchill said a lot of things, but despite the rumors, fact checkers don’t believe he really originated this saying. It is actually a common joke in the German language that the Nazi propagandist Goebbels misattributed to the British leader. Another false quote did not really […]