In a previous blog series about interfacing with your ISP, I mentioned tools that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have, such as looking glasses and route servers, that can be used to verify their policies.  In this blog post, I want to examine some of those tools, but primarily I want to show how prefixes are propagating across the Internet. 

The question of prefix propagation comes up often when discussing how to develop an IPv6 address plan.  What happens if an organization gets Provider Independent (PI) space from a registry and then tries to advertise that prefix, or a smaller portion of that prefix, in a different region?  Will ISPs in that region filter the non-regional prefix?  Will they let the aggregate pass, but not the more specific prefixes? Read More »

Tags: address assignments, de-aggregation of IPv6 prefixes, IPv6, IPv6 Internet routing table length, IPv6_transition, Provider Independent (PI) prefixes, RIPE 399, RIPE-532

By Howard Baldwin, Contributing Columnist

How symbiotic is the relationship between wired and wireless technologies? Simple answer: very. Increasingly, the perceived gap between traditional cellular (3G, 4G), Wi-Fi, and wired technologies is narrowing.

There’s no question that the gap between wireless technologies is narrowing. Tiago Rodrigues, project director for the Wireless Business Alliance (WBA), sees venues such as sports stadiums, shopping malls, and even universities combining cellular and Wi-Fi coverage.

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Tags: 3G, 4G, broadband, mobility, New Normal, service provider wi-fi, wireless, wireline

According to a Nielsen study, social media is no longer in its infancy.  No kidding.

During the November military confrontation between Israel and Hamas, social media played a very grown-up role.  What distinguished it from past politically-charged social media exchanges was the participation of state and pseudo-state spokespersons.  Official announcements were issued by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigade via Twitter and Facebook in near real-time.

• The IDF announced the initiation of the military campaign via Twitter, and tweeted in caps that it had “ELIMINATED” Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari in an airstrike.
• The Brigade responded with threats of retaliation; both sides posted minute-by-minute updates as the fighting unfolded.

The evolution of social media into an official communications venue should come as no surprise.  It follows a time-honored pattern of disruptive ideas and technologies gaining acceptability as they move into the mainstream.  The Nielsen Social Media 2012 study tells us that 30 percent of individuals’ mobile device time is spent accessing social media.  That qualifies as mainstream.

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Tags: Cisco Security, facebook, geopolitics and social media, Google, iran, Israel, nielsen study, social media, syria, twitter

Hunger is the world’s number 1 health risk, killing more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined each year.Close to 900 million people do not have enough to eat and 98 percent of them live in developing countries. Even in developed countries like the United States, 15 percent of households were food insecure at some point during 2011, meaning its members had uncertain access to adequate and safe food.

Cisco’s annual employee giving campaign, Global Hunger Relief, is focused on providing immediate support to those in desperate need.

At locations around the globe, Cisco employees contribute time, dollars, and expertise in support of more than 140 organizations working to help those who don’t have reliable access to food and clean water. Collectively, we donate over $1 million to hunger relief annually through the Global Hunger Relief Campaign.

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Tags: Cisco, CSR, employee, giving, Global Hunger Relief, hunger, impact multiplied, volunteer

Last week I introduced our new Cisco Services framework to help guide your data center and cloud transformation -- Cisco Domain Ten ^(SM). I also described the types of challenges you should be thinking about in the Facilities and Infrastructure layer, Domain 1.  Now let’s discuss the type of challenges that Domain 2, Virtualization and Abstraction, could present to you.  While Cisco Domain Ten can be applied to help you in any data center transformation, I’ll keep focused on showing you how Cisco Domain Ten helps illuminate your path to cloud transformation.

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Tags: architecture, Cisco Domain Ten, Cisco Services, cloud_computing, data center, unified computing, virtualization