Cisco today announced a new finance program that encourages customers to buy products and services now without having to start paying for them till 2024.

Specifically the Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program will let customers purchasing Cisco products before July 29, 2023, and defer all payments until 2024. Payments deferred until 2024 would be based on the total amount financed and contract terms, the vendor stated.

Cisco said another flexible payment option is available for its partners to let their customers buy Cisco technology today, and pay later, the vendor said in a statement.

The entirety of Cisco’s portfolio is eligible for the program, including hardware, software, and services, as well as select partner services and third-party hardware. In addition the Cisco Refresh portfolio of Cisco certified remanufactured products is also eligible for organizations that want to acquire used gear, the vendor stated.

To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco continues to signal its desire to become a major software player, most recently with its emphasis on API advancements and its commitment to building a bigger development community around that effort.

The average enterprise uses 1,935 applications—a 15% increase from five years ago, according to Cisco. And each of these apps is accessible via dozens of APIs from vendors, developers and homegrown sources.

“We are conducting 8 billion API calls on a monthly basis. And just to give you an idea of the proliferation of that adoption, at the end of 2018 it was 20 million,” said Anne Gentle, developer experience manager with Cisco.

Last year, Cisco announced its API First strategy, which prioritizes API development in all Cisco products to ensure efficient communication among applications, services and systems.

To read this article in full, please click here

The proportion of companies implementing a data center infrastructure sustainability program will rise from about 5% in 2022 all the way to 75% by 2027, as sustainability becomes an increasingly central consideration for cost optimization and risk management, according to new data from Gartner Research.

Respondents to a recent global survey of 221 IT leaders conducted by Gartner said that sustainability is already on the march within their organizations, with 42% saying that environmentally friendly choices are helping to drive business growth and provide a differentiator to their competition, and 29% reporting that it’s helping to create strategic value through industry partnerships.

To read this article in full, please click here

The reliability of services delivered by ISPs, cloud providers and conferencing services (a.k.a. unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS)) is an indication of how well served businesses are via the internet.

ThousandEyes is monitoring how these providers are handling the performance challenges they face. It will provide Network World a roundup of interesting events of the week in the delivery of these services, and Network World will provide a summary here. Stop back next week for another update, and see more details here.

Amazon Web Services has launched a service that secures user access to its cloud applications without requiring a VPN.

AWS Verified Access, which the company previewed last November, validates every application request using Zero Trust principles before granting access to applications. Since AWS previewed the networking service, it has added two new features: AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) and the ability to pass signed identity context to customers’ application endpoints.

To read this article in full, please click here

Most enterprises have what they describe as a cordial relationship with their network vendors, but roughly a third say their relationship is guarded, and more than a few say it’s suspicious. That’s a pretty broad range of views, but every enterprise I’ve chatted with says there are things they don’t want their vendors to do, and don’t like it if the vendors do them. Most also say they take steps to prevent these things, and the steps they recommend are really interesting.

Vendors shouldn’t finger-point

The top don’t-do for vendors by far is finger-pointing, meaning trying to deflect responsibility for an issue by blaming someone else. I remember well a meeting where the CIO of a healthcare company sprained his shoulder when he threw a ten-pound, bound listing of problem proofs at a network vendor VP who didn’t want to admit responsibility. (He him square in the chest, by the way.)  This is surely an extreme reaction, but every single enterprise in the over-200 I’ve talked to about this in the last year said that their network vendors had evaded a problem or obstructed problem determination at least once.

To read this article in full, please click here

Modern networks require more dynamic changes than traditional networks, and the solution to building these dynamic capabilities is network automation, which means the job of network engineers is changing.

Historically, network reconfigurations required manual work that might require network downtime while changes were made. Network automation has the potential to mitigate this downtime by re-routing network traffic or scheduling the downtime for off-peak hours.

To meet the challenges of this change, traditionally trained network engineers may benefit from certifications in automation. Engineers need ways to minimize the time-consuming, error-prone manual changes that ever-changing workloads demand.

To read this article in full, please click here

The US and the EU have put heavy diplomatic pressure on the government of Malaysia, urging it to bar Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei from its state-owned 5G network, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Letters from the US ambassador to the country, Brian McFeeters, and from the head of the EU delegation to Malaysia, Michalis Rokas, warned of potential legal problems and national security issues, if the country succumbs to what the Financial Times described as heavy lobbying by Huawei.

“Senior officials in Washington agree with my view that upending the existing model would undermine the competitiveness of new industries, stall 5G growth in Malaysia, and harm Malaysia’s business-friendly image internationally,” wrote McFeeters, according to the Financial Times. “Allowing untrusted suppliers in any part of the network also subjects Malaysia’s infrastructure to national security risks.”

To read this article in full, please click here

The hype surrounding 5G ranges from Jetsons-like futurism to deep-in-the-rabbit-hole conspiracy theories. On the consumer side, 5G is still serving up more sizzle than steak, mainly because the technology is so new, handsets so few, and infrastructure still mostly 4G LTE or earlier, so developers are still figuring out how to take advantage of its capabilities.

To read this article in full, please click here

Today’s enterprise networks span on-premises and cloud environments, and it has become a lot harder for IT teams to maintain performance, reliability and security when some parts of the network are unknown or off-limits to traditional performance monitoring tools.

“If you cannot get visibility into all the components comprising the digital experience, everything that is between the end user clicking the mouse to the deepest part of a cloud or data center network, then you are flying blind, you are incurring a lot of risk, and you could be overspending, too,” says Mark Leary, research director for network analytics and automation at research firm IDC.

To read this article in full, please click here

You probably use some bash builtins fairly often whether or not you think of them as builtins or simply as commands. After all, bash builtins are commands, but not implemented as separate executables. Instead, they are part of the bash executable. In other words, they are "built into" bash, thus the term "bash builtins".

If you're looking for a particular builtin, the which command isn't going to find it for you because it only looks through a collection of executables. This includes system commands like /bin/echo as well as scripts for which you have execute permission. Here's an example of which not finding anything:

To read this article in full, please click here

Security, AI, and network-as-a-service (NaaS) were top of mind for Aruba Networks execs at their Atmosphere customer conference this week.

“Ten years ago for most network operators their main job was making sure connectivity was reliable and security was someone else’s problem. It was outside their perimeter," said David Hughes, senior vice president, chief product and technology officer with Aruba. "But today all perimeters have dissolved and the network has expanded,” .

“The networking team is now responsible for making sure connectivity is secure from the start. Bolting it on somewhere won’t cut it anymore, it needs to be built into the network,” Hughes said.

To read this article in full, please click here

IBM is now offering bare metal instances in the cloud powered by its LinuxONE hardware with a pitch that enterprises can consolidate workloads and reduce energy consumption compared to x86 servers under similar conditions.

The LinuxONE servers feature the Telum processor that IBM uses in its z16 mainframe, but they're designed to run multiple flavors of enterprise Linux rather than the mainframe z/OS.

IBM shipped the fourth generation of its LinuxONE product line last September, dubbed LinuxONE Emperor, promising both scale-out and scale-up performance and requiring a lot less hardware than standard x86 servers. More recently, it introduced LinuxONE Rockhopper, a smaller-scale system for more modest deployments.

To read this article in full, please click here

German engineering and technology firm Bosch has announced its intent to acquire US-based chipmaker TSI Semiconductors and invest $1.5 billion over the next few years to tap the rising demand for chips globally, especially in the automotive and electronics sector.

“With the acquisition of TSI Semiconductors, we are establishing manufacturing capacity for silicon carbide (SiC) chips in an important sales market while also increasing our semiconductor manufacturing, globally,” Stefan Hartung, chairman of the Bosch board of management, said in a statement.

Neither of the companies disclosed the cost of acquisition or the terms.

Silicon carbide semiconductors can operate at higher temperatures, voltages, and frequencies compared to other semiconductors, making them more efficient for use across solar-powered devices, electric vehicles, aerospace applications, and other applications such as 5G.

To read this article in full, please click here

Here's bad news: It's easy to buy used enterprise routers that haven’t been decommissioned properly and that still contain data about the organizations they were once connected to, including IPsec credentials, application lists, and cryptographic keys.

“This leaves critical and sensitive configuration data from the original owner or operator
accessible to the purchaser and open to abuse,” according to a white paper by Cameron Camp, security researcher, and Tony Anscombe, chief security evangelist, for security firm Eset (See: Discarded, not destroyed: Old routers reveal corporate secrets).

To read this article in full, please click here

US Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel believes that the time to start planning for 6G is now, and has outlined several steps that the government agency plans to take in preparation for the new wireless standard.

While there’s no general agreement on what technical innovations will be incorporated into 6G, it’s become clear that the goals of the technology are ambitious. Broadcast virtual or augmented reality, high-quality telehealth and more are expected by wireless experts.

That, however, will require a great deal of spectrum, and Rosenworcel — speaking at the National Science Foundation last week — said that the FCC is working to identify suitable frequencies for the new standard.

To read this article in full, please click here

Broadcom’s new networking chip, called the Jericho3-AI, is designed to connect supercomputers and features a high-performance fabric for artificial intelligence (AI) environments.

Broadcom has three switch families: the high-bandwidth Tomahawk switch platform, which is used primarily within data centers; the lower bandwidth Trident platform, which offers greater programmability and deeper buffers, making it more suited for the edge; and the Jericho line, which sits somewhere between the other two and is best suited for low latency interconnects.

Jericho3-AI is targeted at AI and machine-learning backend networks where the switch fabric handles spraying of traffic on all network links and reordering of that traffic before delivering to the endpoints. It also has built-in congestion management capabilities for load balancing and minimizing network congestion. 

To read this article in full, please click here

Aruba Networks has upgraded its cloud-based Aruba Central network-management package to support better control of and visibility into enterprise assets.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s network subsidiary also rolled out a new network-as-a-service, Agile NaaS, aimed at streamling the process of choosing network infrastructure components available through the serivcethat that fit customers’ business needs.

First introduced on 2014, Aruba Central is the vendor’s flagship network management package that supports device onboarding, network configuration, health monitoring, and troubleshooting as well as intrusion detection and prevention services for campus, branch, remote, data center, and IoT wired and wireless networks.

To read this article in full, please click here

Arista Networks has rolled out a SaaS-based service aimed at helping enterprises more network access control (NAC) more easily.

The service, called CloudVision Guardian for Network Identity (CV-AGNI) uses real-time telemetry from Arista’s network products, combines it with data from its CloudVision management platform, and uses artificial intelligence to evaluate the information and implement security policies. 

The service can also onboard new devices, authenticate existing users, segment devices on the network, or help troubleshoot problems from a cloud-based system, according to Pramod Badjate, group vice president and general manager, of Arista’s Cognitive Campus group. 

To read this article in full, please click here

Vendors of all stripes—network hardware vendors, telcos, hyperscalers, and a new generation of cloud-based upstarts—are jumping on the network-as-a-service (NaaS) bandwagon, so it can be confusing to sort out who is offering what.

Even the definition of NaaS is somewhat fluid. Is NaaS simply procuring networking gear on a pay-as-you go, subscription basis rather than buying it? Is NaaS just a different way of describing a managed service?

Or is NaaS something fundamentally different that addresses a growing challenge for network execs: how to provide network connectivity, resiliency, security, and scalability in a multicloud world?

To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco is taking its first major step into Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with a SaaS-delivered integrated system of endpoint, network, firewall, email and identity software aimed at protecting enterprise resources.

Cisco’s XDR service, which will be available July, brings together myriad Cisco and third-party security products to control network access, analyze incidents, remediate threats, and automate response all from a single cloud-based interface. The offering gathers six telemetry sources that Security Operations Center (SOC) operators say are critical for an XDR solution: endpoint, network, firewall, email, identity, and DNS, Cisco stated.

To read this article in full, please click here

You may not spend much time contemplating the characteristics of the file systems on your Linux system, but the differences between the various file system types can be both interesting and highly relevant. This article explains commands that you can use to verify your file system types and describes their differences.

Commands that report file system types

There are a number of Linux commands that will display file system types along with the file system names, mount points and such. Some will also display sizes and available disk space.

Using df -Th

The df command with the "T" (show file system type) and "h" (use human-friendly sizes) options provides a very useful look at the file systems on a Linux system. Here's an example:

To read this article in full, please click here

When Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel as its CEO in February 2021, he took over a company that had been battered by mismanagement and weakened by competition.

Intel had lost significant ground in process-node development to Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC. While TSMC was making transistors at 7nm, Intel was struggling to get 10nm. AMD was besting Intel in both client and server performance and taking more market share with each passing quarter. Nvidia was on its steady march of domination in the GPU market and gaining mindshare as the ultimate AI processing vendor.

To read this article in full, please click here

Enterprises that want to kick the tires on the open-source network operating system SONiC got a new option this week as Aviz Networks and a group of well-established industry vendors and organizations said they would collaborate on a new testing facility.

The lab, the Open Networking Experience (ONE) Center for SONiC is being offered by SONiC startup Aviz and will be supported by collaboration with the Linux Foundation, The Open Compute Project, Celestica, Cisco, Edgecore, Nvidia, Ragile, Supermicro, Wistron, and Keysight.

The center will feature online and in-person access at no cost for network operators to try out the capabilities of SONiC across a wide range of hardware, according to Aviz. 

To read this article in full, please click here