Video compression formats typically use a technique known as ‘difference coding’ by comparing the difference between the current video frame with the preceding frame. This ensures that information which does not change (e.g. static background) is not repeatedly transmitted. To reduce network bandwidth, video is highly compressed, but losses affect quality. Watch this short video and see the impact of packet loss, jitter and delay on video.

In my last blog, I wrote about HP’s disturbing pattern of suing non-California employees under ‘non compete’ clauses, often imposed  years after employment began.  Apparently it’s relatively recently that HP decided to abandon its Silicon Valley roots and tie up its  non-California employees in legal knots.  HP is in fact the only large Silicon Valley-based company to have two classes of employees and try to impose mobility restrictions on those who live outside California.  HP’s efforts have gone so far as to sue an employee who took a buyout after having his salary cut, and one who didn’t even work in an area related to HP’s products that compete with Cisco’s.

Two recent actions since that blog posting are stunning.   First, HP renewed legal action in Texas, where one of the employees used to live, trying to get a judge there to schedule a court date on a day’s notice and to apply Texas law even though the California judge in the case is going to hold a hearing, as is certainly appropriate, to verify that the employee has in fact moved to California. (Yes, he came to work for Cisco after he arrived in California, rented an apartment, got a drivers license, etc.) Once again the Texas court refused to intervene, and in fact effectively “stayed” HP’s legal actions indefinitely. HP also tried in Texas to raise another bar to employee freedom, claiming that the employee would ‘inevitably’ use HP’s trade secrets to do his job at Cisco, and therefore should be barred from continuing his new job. Just as California law bars enforcement of non-compete clauses, California courts won’t recognize this doctrine either, seeing it for what it is — an effort to impose de facto non competition clauses.

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Tags: employee mobility, employment law, general counsel, HP, innovation, legal

We had so much fun last year…and so far, they are letting us come back.  We had fun doing a little promo for the trip…an excuse really…to let Jimmy Ray play dress up, let me work on my Alfred Molina impression and most of all…let Producer Steve Ewertz loose so he can shoot/edit/compose the way he likes!

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Tags: ciscolive, data center, mobility, Techwise, TechWiseTV

Forbes Magazine is famous for its lists — think “The World’s Most Powerful Celebrities” or “America’s Best Small Companies.”

Recently, the magazine issued a new list that is particularly relevant to Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts: “The Impact 30,” a list of the world’s top social entrepreneurs.

Forbes defines a social entrepreneur as “a person who uses business to solve social issues.” Here in Cisco CSR, we encounter social entrepreneurs every day. In fact, a few people on the Impact 30 list work for educational organizations we’ve partnered with over the years. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, ciscocsr, corporatesocialresponsibility, CSR, economic development, economicempowerment, Forbes, impact30, impactmultiplied, New Leaders, NGO, nonprofits, Samasource, society, teach for america

As we start off this New Year, how about including a resolution to improve application delivery? In Best Practices for Application Delivery in Virtualized Networks – Part I , we covered key application delivery challenges that have come up due to the complexities of managing the many types of applications that enterprises use today, and further complicated by data center consolidation and virtualization. We then covered some best practices, courtesy of Dr. Jim Metzler’s 2011 Application Service Delivery Handbook, which recommended taking a lifecycle approach to planning and managing application performance.

A key step to the lifecycle approach is to implement network and application optimization tools, such as WAN Optimization solutions and Application Delivery Controllers, including server load balancers. Of course, these solutions are not new to the market and already address many of the needs that exist with delivering enterprise applications in virtualized data centers -- namely, the need to ensure network reliability, availability and security for users accessing these applications. In this post, we will discuss a recent study by IDC, where IT decision makers across Europe and the US spoke out about their strategies for using server load balancers to deal with emerging challenges.

.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              What important attributes do you look for in your server load balancers?

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Tags: ACE, application control engine, application delivery, application delivery controller, application performance, availbility, Cisco OTV, cloud bursting, data center security, DWS, Dynamic Workload Scaling, enterprise application, IDC, jim metzler, load balancer, Load Balancing, network optimization, Network Services, Nexus 7000, OTV, Overlay Transport Virtualization, resiliency, security, server load balancer, server load balancing, Tina Feng, Unified Network Services, virtual machine intelligence, virtual network services, virtualization