Earlier Data Networking
IEEE task force massages 100GE for backplanes
The IEEE standards body has set up a task force of industry vendors to start work on the four-lane, 25Gb/sec signaling that will be required for future 100 Gigabit Ethernet.
The group will also thrash out the specs that will allow 100GE to be used in server and network equipment backplanes and over short-haul copper wires. …
Does white space need to be Weightless?
Next week will see the formal launch of the Weightless radio protocol, designed for use in the soon-to-be-available white space frequencies. But can a protocol without weight really do it all?
Next Friday (30 September), all the major companies in the UK white space business will be gathered in Cambridge to talk about which …
Mellanox goes to Wall Street for cash
Updated InfiniBand and Ethernet networking chip and equipment maker Mellanox Technologies announced after the market closed in New York on Monday that it would be issuing up to 3 million shiny new shares to raise some cash for working capital and strategic investments.
The offering, which has J.P. Morgan Securities, Credit Suisse …
Flattening Ethernet
Expert Clinic Ethernet needs to become a lean, mean networking machine, and the way to do that, we're told, is to flatten the fabric, avoid layer the processing and keep as much as possible down in Layer 2. Is this real? What does it mean for performance, network management and open Ethernet standards?
Three experts tell you how they see it. …
Network interface cards are coming up trumps
Network interface cards (NICs) are often overlooked in server design. Their sheer ubiquity, combined with the ability to deal with most networking problems in software, can make them a component whose exact specifications are ignored.
Some motherboard integrated NICs offer features such as jumbo frames and TCP offloading.
These …
Is Cisco's 16-year CEO Chambers ready to go?
Rumours that Cisco CEO and chairman John Chambers may be considering his resignation have gathered pace. Chambers has spent 16 years at the head of the firm.
While he is not about to be ousted in a blaze of ignominy like some other tech CEO departures we could mention, the question of who Chambers' likely heir may be has started …
Broadcom breaks piggy bank for $3.7bn NetLogic buy
It's crunch time in the networking and communications chip biz, with Broadcom whipping out $3.7bn to acquire chip maker NetLogic Microsystems to fill a hole in its line.
The deal comes on the heels of Intel's acquisition of Ethernet ASIC maker Fulcrum Microsystems back in July, and presages what will likely be more acquisitions …
Unisys gets 'stealthy' with secure virtual terminal
Rich people and public sector workers can now get the kind of network security that used to be reserved for military organizations.
Unisys is known mostly for its ClearPath mainframes and various outsourcing and other services that it sells to financial, transportation, and retail companies and various governments that buy its …
Cisco accused of tailoring tech to aid Chinese abuses
A group accusing Cisco Systems of helping the Chinese government commit human rights abuses against Falun Gong members said it has presented new evidence that the networking giant customized its technology to spy on people tied to the outlawed religious organization.
The evidence, contained in an amended complaint filed Friday …
VCE goes for Zaphod Beeblebrox management style
Two heads are better than one: Cisco and EMC's VCE joint-venture is moving forward with a chairman and a president, but no CEO.
Zaphod Beeblebrox Mark Wing-Davey plus realistic-looking second head play
Zaphod Beeblebrox in the TV adaptation of Hitchiker's
Guide to the Galaxy.
VCE makes the converged IT stack Vblocks based …
Deciphering the secrets of network encryption
Modern data centres are pools of shared resources and segmenting the data in them has become a requirement as much for regulatory as for security reasons. It is no longer enough simply to provide access and expect individual users to take care of security themselves.
Relying on file system permissions or even virtual …
Network switching is having a light bulb moment
As server farms grow and their workload changes, the design and structure of the networks that serve them must also change. End-of-row switching is increasingly giving way to top-of-rack switching, and tiered networks may need to be replaced – or perhaps augmented – by more mesh-like Ethernet fabrics.
The increasing density of …
Hedge fund agitator grapples for helm at Brocade
Brocade has reported its quarterly results with a disappointing outlook and found itself the target of an activist hedge fund investor, Elliot Management, scenting under-valued assets it can profit from.
For its third fiscal 2011 quarter, ending 30 July, Brocade's revenues were $503m, down from the preceding quarter's $548m, and …
Cisco lifts axe again, chops nearly one in five execs
Cisco has given marching orders to nearly one in five of its senior execs included in its massive cost-cutting drive and now plans to hand 1,200 contract workers their pink slips too.
The networking Goliath last night revealed a 3 per cent rise in Q4 sales to $11.2bn but a 37.5 per cent collapse in operating profits to $1.45bn …
Network switches look different in the cloud
Cloud computing takes more than just a philosophical shift. It requires new skills, processes and architectures.
In particular, traffic patterns in cloud networks can be quite different from those of the familiar enterprise network and the scale of operation can be significantly higher.
That, according to experts in the field, …
The Ethernet traffic mix-up
Expert Clinic The possibility of converging storage traffic, with its restrictive profile, on to general messy Ethernet LAN traffic is now a distinct possibility. What are the underlying problems and how are they being dealt with and countered?
Given that they have been dealt with how should you think about convergence and what general …
Directing Fibre Channel storage traffic over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has a hard act to follow. Fibre Channel storage fabrics accomplish an amazing feat, making shared storage arrays equivalent to direct-attached disk drives to the many servers accessing them.
When servers access data from directly attached disks, the data arrives fast and none is lost en route. …
Belt and braces stop the network falling down
Lately, everyone seems to have lined up to join the network failure party. In some cases, lax network security has been to blame.
In others, upgrade issues coupled with fundamental design flaws have done the damage.
An inability to cope with denial-of-service attacks by angry internet mobs has even resulted in disruptions to …
Network quality of service: making the switch
By cloud computing standards, the networks I oversee are small. The largest network under my care has 250 physical servers; my 9-5 has less than 50. Most networks I oversee have fewer than five servers and all of these networks have far fewer switches than systems.
Until very recently, local area network bandwidth has simply …
Let's talk about OpenFlow
Where they can, data networking equipment vendors like to arrange their proprietary products into vertically integrated stacks, with complex functions often "baked" into the hardware.
Furthermore, a sometimes tortuous standardisation process makes it hard to implement changes and raises the barriers of entry to new equipment …
Intel snaps up network chipper Fulcrum
As good as Xeon chips might be for lots of things, Intel obviously believes that it needs some other silicon: the chip giant bought privately held networking ASIC maker Fulcrum Microsystems on Tuesday.
Intel has made no secret of the fact that it wants to expand its Xeon line of server processors out into storage arrays and …
Cisco doubles Catalyst Ethernet ports to 60 watts of juicy juice
Networking giant Cisco Systems has cranked up the amount of juice its Catalyst 4500E switches can pump out over Ethernet to 60 watts – another step toward its goal of making its switches the throbbing heart of the modern office.
The Catalyst 4500E switch was announced last October with 848Gb/sec of aggregate switching bandwidth …
Cisco may slash 10,000 jobs
Cisco may be bigger and bolder in its cost-cutting plans than first anticipated: it has been revealed the firm is getting rid of close to 10,000 staff worldwide.
The initial figure touted by Gleacher & Co analyst Brian Marshal yesterday was half that, which he estimated would cut the networking behemoth's annual expense base by …
Cisco needs to slash 5,000 jobs, says analyst
Cisco may fire up to 5,000 staff this August under a restructuring plan, according to analyst Brian Marshall at Gleacher and Co.
This equates to 7 per cent of the networking Goliath's global base of employees, which stood at more than 73,000 in April.
"While this is a difficult decision to make, in our view it is required in …
Cisco drives epic Chinese surveillance network, says report
Cisco and other western companies are reportedly working with the Chinese government to install a network of one half-million surveillance cameras in the rapidly growing commercial and industrial metropolis, Chongqing.
Citing people familiar with the deal, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that Cisco will …
Boffin hacks Wi-Fi to double mobile gadget battery life
Want to significantly boost your smartphone's battery life? US Duke University researcher Justin Manweiler reckons he's worked out how.
Manweiler's work centres on Wi-Fi, specifically when the phone - or tablet or laptop, for that matter - is operating within range of more than one wireless access point.
If access points are …
EC chips in a third for €22.3m splurge on photonic networking
The European Commission is spending €7.43m on developing technologies for better fibre networking, with five member countries stumping up twice that for local funding.
The projects were selected by the EC and the interested countries – Austria, Germany, Poland, the UK and Israel – with the split funding intended to get …
Indians appoint Huawei as technical spycatcher
Huawei will help set up a research centre in Bangalore dedicated to checking out foreign kit for covert listening technologies, something Huawei obviously knows nothing about.
The centre has already started operating on a pilot basis, but is funded for expansion, according to The Times of India. Who is paying – and how much – …
Mellanox uncloaks future InfiniBand switches
ISC'11 Mellanox is previewing its next-generation InfiniBand switches with FDR afterburners that boost bandwidth up to 56Gb/sec.
Two new InfiniBand switches made their debut on Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg, Germany. The switchmaker is the result of the merger of the old Mellanox – which makes …
Mellanox forges switch-hitting ConnectX-3 adapters
Networking chip, adapter card and switch maker Mellanox is rounding out its converged InfiniBand-Ethernet product line with the debut of the ConnectX-3 integrated circuits and network adapter cards built using the chips.
Mellanox has been selling multi-protocol chips and adapter cards for servers for a number of years, and back …
Judge blasts Cisco's 'unmitigated gall' in ex-exec's arrest
A Canadian judge has lambasted Cisco for its "unmitigated gall" and "duplicity" in goading US prosecutors to push for the public arrest of a former executive who was suing the US networking giant.
Justice Ronald McKinnon's comments were made on Tuesday when he ordered a stay in the extradition of the ex-exec, Peter Alfred- …
Super Micro whiteboxes Ethernet switches
If you're willing to go to whitebox server maker Super Micro for your motherboards and complete systems, then you're probably willing to consider going all the way and get your network adapters and switches from the company as well. That seems to be the thinking at Super Micro, as the company punts three Ethernet switches.
More …
BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs
BT reserves, and makes use of, the right to remotely detect all devices connected to LANs owned by its broadband customers – for their own good, of course.
BT Broadband customers can expect to have their network checked any time the operator feels it needs to take a peek to help it provide the service, or when the safety of the …
Falun Gong lawsuit skewers Cisco's 'little red' sales book
Cisco used Maoist rhetoric to pitch its networking kit to the Chinese government and customised it to help Beijing crack down on the Falun Gong movement, a lawsuit claims.
Falun Gong supporters in the US filed the suit in California last week, the New York Times reports.
The suit claims that Cisco helped design China's Great …
Huge fat pipe squirts mighty streams
An allied team of boffins based in Blighty, Germany, Switzerland and Israel say they have broken the record for data transmission rate from a single light source, using just one laser to send info at a blistering 26 terabits per second.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest line rate ever encoded onto a single light …
Huawei snaps up former Mandarin for UK advisory board
The makeover of Chinese telecom-kit manufacturer Huawei continues apace, with the company appointing ex-UK Trade and Investment mandarin Sir Andrew Cahn to its latest wheeze: a UK Advisory Board.
Sir Andrew will head up the new board, which will recruit additional figures over the next few months. The plan is part of the company …
Why Cisco should merge with Dell
Comment Cisco Systems has unleashed a world of hurt on its shareholders, masquerading as a consumer company that sells Flip phones, Umi telepresence, and Linksys routers. There's nothing wrong with selling gadgets to consumers. Apple does it brilliantly, and profitably. But Cisco isn't Apple.
In a sense, Apple might be a place where …
Cisco refuses to deny it will sell off Linksys
Cisco is understood to be planning to sell off its consumer router Linksys business. The company has declined to squash the rumour.
According to people familiar with the situation, the network giant is mulling over letting go of its WebEx brand, too. The moves could come as soon as next week.
A Cisco spokesman told The Register …
What happened when Huawei called in the makeover consultants
Chinese kit supplier Huawei is working hard to gain acceptance in the west, employing the best in the business to give it a western look that's more than skin-deep.
Taking a walk around its Shenzen HQ this week, I could, almost, convince myself I was on just another tech campus in California.
However, despite its best efforts, …
Akamai, Riverbed join forces to juice clouds
There's gold in them thar clouds – which is why Akamai Technologies and its global content-delivery network, and Riverbed Technology, the top dog in the WAN-optimization appliance racket, are teaming up to converge their respective products into a cloud optimizer, hoping to snag some of that cloudy gelt by accelerating …
Mellanox cranks 1U switches to 40GE
Two weeks after unveiling its switch-hitting, two-timing SwitchX ASIC for InfiniBand and Ethernet switches and routers, Mellanox has rolled out the first switches that make use of the chip. In this case, the SwitchX chip is being used to make a line of 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches aimed at bandwidth and low-latency freaks like …
HP flexes fabrics to flatten campus networks
HP is taking its networking fight with Cisco Systems out of the data center and into corporate campuses and branch offices.
Cisco has made a fortune – maybe several fortunes – selling multiple-tiered Layer 2/3 networks that span data centers, campuses, and branch offices, and the company's rivals are trying to flatten and …
