The key concept is that security isn’t something you purchase, it’s something you need to do – preferably on an everyday basis. There is no perfect security product that can stop intruders in their tracks. It needs to be a concerted process of best practices that are put into place and maintained. The first step is to put a visibility architecture in place that supports your security plan. A visibility architecture is essentially a cost-effective design that provides access to network traffic, i...

Canadian cablecos Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications both announced this week the free beta trial launch of their joint subscription video-on-demand (VoD) service ‘Shomi’. The trial service is available for existing Rogers and Shaw customers on selected tablets and other mobile devices, online, and on set-top boxes, with other platforms to follow including Xbox 360 and Chromecast. Shomi will focus on offering ‘the most popular movies and TV shows’. Thanks to TeleGeography for the arti...

A Corporate Conundrum With possession being 9/10th of the law, the bring your own device (BYOD) trend creates a conundrum for enterprises. BYOD is the policy of allowing employees to bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access company resources such as email, file servers, and databases. It is also fairly common to mix personal and professional data on single device or across multiple mobile options. BYOD is becoming increasingly prevalent in enterprises, ...

With data breaches making headlines almost daily, it is important to ensure adequate security for the data traversing your network, but what about data at rest? Packet capture appliances installed as part of an integrated performance management platform can speed troubleshooting and protect the integrity of the network. They can also be a tempting target for hackers. Raw packet content on these devices can be anything from credit card information to financial records and unregulated access to th...

The Canadian government yesterday approved the previously announced sale of Globalive Wireless (Wind Mobile) to an investor group that includes the company’s chairman, after deciding that the transaction will bolster competition in the cellular market, the Wall Street Journal reports. Federal approval came with conditions including a pledge by Wind Mobile’s new ownership to significantly invest in new spectrum and expansion of network infrastructure across Canada. It was announced in September t...

VoIP Management Overview There are any number of VoIP management solutions available in today’s market place. However, when you start to drill-­down into the capabilities of these tools they tend to focus on the performance elements of your network infrastructure and associated VoIP metrics (e.g. RTT, RTD\Latency, Packet Loss, Jitter, Moss, R-­‐Factor etc.) , assumptions are made on infrastructure and fault management being in place, so it is vitally important to assess the complete picture of y...

Canada’s largest telecoms group BCE has announced the successful completion of its privatisation of Atlantic Canadian subsidiary Bell Aliant and its integration into BCE’s nationwide Bell Canada operations. Bell Aliant’s common shares were delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) on 31 October 2014 and Bell Aliant preferred shares were delisted from the TSX on 3 November 2014. In July BCE announced it would delist Bell Aliant by acquiring the interests of public minority shareholders for a...

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) announced the industry’s only carrier-grade, high-density, 40 Gbps network monitoring switch to achieve NEBS Level 3 certification for operation in mission-critical telecommunications environments. This certification complements Ixia’s comprehensive portfolio of network monitoring switches designed to provide increased visibility into telecommunications and service provider networks, such as 4G LTE. The NEBS-certified Ixia Anue Net Tool Optimizer® solutions help network engin...

How often have you been told the network is at fault, when your gut tells you it’s an application issue? The primary challenge is determining where to look. If this sounds all too familiar, you’re in good company. In the recently released Seventh Annual State of the Network Global Study, 74% of network pros indicated their largest challenge was determining whether the problem was caused by the Network, System, or Application. And, according to IT analyst firm TRAC Research, teams spent on averag...

Ixia Network Visibility Solutions welcomes a guest blogger today, Tim O’Neill from LoveMyTool. Network engineers and managers need to think about today’s compliance requirements and the limitations of conventional data access methods. This article is focused on TAPs versus port mirroring/SPAN technology. SPAN is not all bad, but one must be aware of its limitations. As managed switches are an integral part of the infrastructure, one must be careful not to establish a failure point. Understanding...

Dr. David Hock, Senior Consultant R&D, Infosim®, discusses how Infosim® StableNet® is integrating SDN and Network Management to increase the benefits for their customers. Recently, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has become a very popular term in the area of communication networks. The paradigm shift introduced by SDN is a promising enabler for many use cases. However, it also opens up a lot of new challenges for Network Management Software Providers. Infosim® is working together with cust...

Robust Monitoring to Meet Big Data Challenges Unstructured data accounts for as much as 80 percent of most companies' total data volume. This “Big Data” has customarily taken too long and cost too much to process and analyze. Now, however, emerging Big Data initiatives stand to transform these vast, untapped resources from a costly storage challenge into vital business intelligence for marketing, product development, stock trading, genetic research, and more. Big Data promises quantum gains in p...

Canadian quadruple-play operator Rogers Communications’ consolidated revenue increased 1% in the third quarter of 2014 to CAD3.252 billion (USD2.896 billion), reflecting revenue growth of 2% year-on-year in mobile operations and 3% in Business Solutions, while revenue in the group’s Media division was steady, and was partially offset by a decline of 1% in cable operations (TV, broadband and fixed telephony). Mobile revenue was boosted by higher equipment sales and moderate growth in service reve...

Much of the discussion around the Observer Platform 17 release has focused on how the designs of the new user interface (UI) and other enhancements will assist network and operations teams to more easily manage service and application performance. This performance data and analysis isn’t just of value to IT but to the overall business. The challenge for performance management solutions has been providing this intelligence in a way that can be easily accessed and understood by other IT and busine...

"Enter the Visibility Architecture" "Buying more tools to deal with spiraling demands is counter-productive – it’s like trying to simplify a problem by increasing complexity. Visibility merits its own architecture, capable of addressing packet access and packet stream management. A visibility architecture that collects, manages, and distributes packet streams for monitoring and analysis is ideal for cost-savings, reliability, and resilience. The economic advantages of such end to-end visibility ...

High Performance NTP Server, PTP Grandmaster and Network Sync Monitor VelaSync™ high speed time server with TimeKeeper™ inside is a network appliance designed for high frequency trading and other low-latency network applications. The combination of FSMLab’s TimeKeeper’s highly optimized timing protocols and management functions, Spectracom’s precision GPS timing technology, and the flexibility of commodity hardware offers exceptional performance and keeps pace with the needs of evolving network ...

A virtual architecture is one of the fastest growing aspects of the data center these days. There has been considerable adoption over the last several years. According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 server virtualization, virtualized x86 server workloads passed the 70% mark in 2014. This is a big surge from the approximately 50% mark held in 2012. While the market is surging with increased adoption, best practices need to be implemented to prevent rework and aggravation down the road. As ...

In the eyes of many customers, self-service is not a compound word but rather a four-letter one. It’s not that there’s anything inherently bad about IVR or web self-service applications – it’s that there’s something bad about most contact centers’ efforts to make such apps good. Relatively few contact centers extend their quality assurance (QA) practices to self-service applications. Most centers tend to monitor and evaluate only those contacts that involve an interaction with a live agent – i.e...

Network Instruments has announced the newest edition of the Observer Performance Management Platform. With redesigned, easy-to-use interfaces and workflows, expanded web user visibility, increased transactional intelligence, and enhanced integration with third-party tools and applications, Observer Platform 17 offers the network team a comprehensive, intuitive approach. What’s New Several components of the Observer Platform have changed significantly with this release. Observer Reporting Server ...

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Exposing The Ghost In The Virtual Machine), virtualization has been a great success story. At the same time, it holds hidden dangers that need to be managed. I want to take a couple minutes to outline those dangers and how to overcome them. So, here are the dangers that can be hidden in a virtualized data center: Potential security issues due unknown malware Potential outages due to lack of proper performance data Regulatory compliance issues due to lack...