Aruba recently announced a new offering called Air Pass, which Drew Conry-Murray looks at in this post. Air Pass bridges 5G cellular networks with in-building WLANs to enable seamless hand-off between 5G and Wi-Fi 6 networks. This effectively allows carriers and enterprises to build seamless handoffs from cellular to WLAN for voice and data on devices. A key technical compontent of this handoff is Passpoint, a Wi-Fi Alliance developed standard to provide automatic authentication between the carrier and WLAN. Be sure to check out Aruba’s presentation from Mobility Field Day last year, where they dug into the specifics of Passpoint and how it operates in their devices and software.
Day Two Cloud 038: Making the Case for Third-Party Cloud Storage
Tech Field Day founder Stephen Foskett was recently a guest on the Day Two Cloud podcast. On the episode, he and Ned Bellavance discuss third-party cloud storage, and how it fits into a market with so many native options readily available. In the episode they discuss common enterprise use cases, and examines key issues including performance, data management, and operations.
What I Want in a Root Cause Analysis Tool
In this post from Ethan Banks, he outlines what he’s looking for in a root cause analysis tool. It’s something that despite hearing a lot about at events like Tech Field Day, he feels there isn’t a unified solution. Current tools are too specialized to serve broader infrastructure, which is after all designed to serve applications. Hopefully a solution will come to market soon to meet Ethan’s criteria.
Understanding Scale Computing HC3 Edge Fabric
Edge computing is an exciting area in IT, and at Tech Field Day Scale Computing did a deep dive on their HC3 Edge Fabric. This is designed for smaller edge environments where the need for resiliency also needs to fit into a budget. Ethan Banks digs into how Scale is able to offer a cluster of compute on a single switch.
BIB 084 Keysight Ixia Visibility and Testing
Ixia took a different approach to their recent Tech Field Day presentation. They talked about the current state of networking threats and the events that you are protecting against. In this episode of Briefings in Brief, Greg Ferro gives a little more background to get you up to speed on their offerings.
BiB083 – Forescout – Visibility for Segmentation
On this episode of Briefings in Brief, Greg Ferro takes a look at Forescout, a company that has been around for a decade but never before coming to Greg’s attention. If you want to get up to speed, Greg does a great job of breaking down the key features of this Network Access Control company. After you listen, be sure to watch their recent Tech Field Day presentation.
Network Neighborhood: Corporate Communications and the IT Community With Dana Iskoldski
In this episode of Network Neighborhood, Ethan Banks talks with Dana Iskoldski, Corporate Communications Manager at BlueCat Networks. Ethan heard extensively from BlueCat at Networking Field Day last year. This time they dive deep into the role of corporate communications in tech.
Packet Pushers
Packet Pushers is a network of deeply technical podcasts, blogs, and newsletters for IT practitioners. Our podcasts cover enterprise networking, public and private cloud, infrastructure, and professional development.
128 Technology Takes a Unique Approach to Routing. Should You Care?
128 Technology has a a clever software router that takes a unique approach to getting your traffic from source to destination. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray points out that what they offer sounds a lot like a SD-WAN solution. But 128T wants that to be part of their overall router, not a product in and of itself. He thinks the company has good ideas of approaching routing differently. The challenge is how to communicate the benefit of that to customers that are more familiar with traditional solutions.
Packet Walking Through a 128 Technology Network
Ethan Banks got to see what happens when you combine making security and traffic engineering features first class citizens along with routing protocols and packet forwarding with 128 Technology. In this post, Ethan digs into 128T’s worldview and how it enables unique features without relying on traditional SD-WAN architectures.
BiB 081: 128 Technology Rethinks the WAN Router
There’s no shortage of x86 software-based routers on the market. What makes 128 Technology stand out is their implementation. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray looks at the specifics of how they offer a stateful, session-based router with a zero trust security posture, but don’t rely on traditional tunneling or encapsulation.
What Are Your IoT Devices Up To? Nyansa’s Voyance IoT Has Answers
Nyansa has offered a pure play high velocity streaming analytics platform with impressive comparative capabilities for a while. At Networking Field Day, the company showed a new solution, Voyance IoT, which brings that analytic capability to fingerprint these connected devices, monitor performance, and alert admins of anomalous behavior. In this piece, Drew Conry-Murray gives the platform a complete overview.
Fortinet Launches New SD-WAN and Firewall Appliance, Rebrands an ASIC
Drew Conry-Murray recently got a deep dive into Fortinet’s SD-WAN technology at Networking Field Day. One aspect that fascinated Drew in that presentation was how the company combined security and SD-WAN capabilities into a single device. The company recently debutted a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), the FortiGate 100F, which provides the hardware foundation for that technology.
Netrounds Marries Active Testing and Monitoring to Validate Network Performance and Availability
Drew Conry-Murray is no stranger to networking, but he hadn’t heard about Netrounds until they presented at Networking Field Day last month. They offer a pretty straightforward solution for service providers and large enterprises: Active verification that services are up and performing acceptably. They do this by running a wide array of test agents to get a client-side perspective on these services. Drew also liked the automation features available, with APIs available for third-party integrations.
A Glimpse at Two Approaches to Segment Routing
Networking Field Day Exclusive with Cisco Service Provider provided a unique opportunity speak to an even more specialized audience than a typical Field Day event. Ethan Banks certainly found it interesting. Cisco went into detail about hardware support for Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6), as well as support in IOS-XR 6.1. Cisco seems to be driving this standard, with a message around network simplification. Be sure to get Ethan’s full take in the piece.
Kemp Technologies Adds Visibility, Predictive Analytics for Third-Party Load Balancers
Kemp Technologies has a long legacy in the load balancing market, but at Networking Field Day, they were showing off new features for Vison 360, their monitoring and analytics service. Drew Conry-Murray runs down what was presented in this piece. He particularly highlights the ability of this cloud service to ingest data from 3rd party load balancers. For Drew, this is key for Kemp to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market.
Network Break 222: SnapRoute Launches Network OS; Carbonite Buys Webroot
In this episode of Network Break, the podcast crew looks at SnapRoute’s CN-NOS Demonstration from Networking Field Day, which was previously profiled in their Briefings in Brief show as well. Be sure to give it a listen to get their take on the event.
BiB 068: Aporeto’s Identity Based Workload Segmentation
In this episode of the Briefings in Brief podcast, host Ethan Banks looks at what he heard from Aporeto at Security Field Day late last year. What he saw was far from another also-ran security startup. Aporeto distinguishes itself by looking at application security as separate from network security. They provide a cryptographic identifier to all hosts, containers, processes, functions, and users, which is used as the basis for a robust policy engine. This decoupling of network and workload security is key for a true defense-in-depth approach.
BiB 067: Custom APIs For Business Logic With BlueCat Gateway
Ethan Banks posted a new episodes of the Briefings in Brief podcast highlighting BlueCat Networks, which he saw at Networking Field Day last month. This episode highlight BlueCat Gateway, a way for businesses to make custom APIs specific to their business for BlueCat’s DDI platform. This lives as an easy to deploy Docker image, with a community-driven GitHub repository to share successful workflows. For Ethan, this kind of community engagement is critical for success of an API-driven solution.
BiB 064: Is Riverbed’s SD-WAN Product Too Late To Matter?
Ethan Banks hosted another episode of Briefings in Brief, looking at the Networking Field Day presentation from Riverbed. The presentation focused on Riverbed’s was on their SD-WAN solution. With a rich legacy in the WAN optimization market, Ethan thinks the company is well poised to transition customers to these SD-WAN solutions. He also looks at how their SteelHead SD and SteelConnect SDI appliances fit within their portfolio.
