IPv4 addresses have run out. Many service providers today are implementing or beginning to plan for the transition to IPv6. One service provider at forefront of this activity is Comcast, one of the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential and business customers. Starting in 2005, Comcast began putting together deployment plans for IPv6 in order to address the IPv4 address run-out and to be ready to offer their customers new services that take advantage of IPv6. The Comcast IPv6 program is run by John Brzozowski, Distinguished Engineer & Chief Architect for IPv6. Read More »
Now that you’ve unleashed your inner producer and have become a pro at setting up and editing videos, the next step is to share them with your audience.
But with so many video hosting services out there, it can be overwhelming deciding which one to use. Fret not, we did the research for you so you can simply pick the site that best fits your needs.
Here’s a list of the top video hosting services available along with their capabilities, restrictions, and other useful information. Read More »
Early in my days as a Data Center manager I attended a series of talks focused on Data Center energy efficiency. The sessions covered everything from hardware chip design to application performance to physical infrastructure.
Even for a beginner, two things were immediately obvious. First, Data Centers consume more energy than other buildings – much more. Second, with so many different components drawing power there are a lot of opportunities to make a server environment more energy efficient.
One presenter, from a manufacturer of Data Center standby electrical systems, mentioned during his talk that electrical components operate more efficiently at higher loads. The closer they are to maximum capacity, the better they perform.
I thought about this for a while and at the conclusion of the session, asked: “If electrical systems operate more efficiently at higher loads, why do operators of Data Centers with redundant electrical infrastructure split the load evenly between the A and B sides? Why not put the entire load on side A and nothing on side B? Wouldn’t that be more energy efficient?”
To my surprise, the question stumped the presenter. Eventually, one of his co-workers in the audience stood up and said they had conducted experiments with that configuration and found that although it was more energy efficient, when a failure occurred on the A side and the full power load (in his words) “came crashing onto the B side,” the components sometimes failed. The redundant electrical infrastructure could reliably handle a sudden jump from 40 percent loaded to 80 percent, but not from zero to 80 percent.
Oh. Enter my third Data Center lesson for the day: energy efficiency is important, but ensuring availability is much more important.
Speaking of availability and Data Center power, this week’s question explores the use of rotary UPS systems that employ flywheel technology versus traditional battery UPS systems. See below for discussion of the pros and cons of each.
This post was written by Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s Senior Vice President, The Americas.
Today Cisco will be replacing its current HP print services with Xerox Managed Print Services (MPS), a more cost-effective way to produce and manage documents across all 460 of our offices.
Cisco is embracing the future of MPS, using managed print and cloud ITO services, to work within our company’s existing infrastructure, supporting multiple locations and mobile technologies.
By working and partnering with Xerox, we can further enable an anytime, anywhere, any device mobility strategy for our employees, as they won’t have any barriers to printing when they’re on the road. We’re making sure they don’t have to spend unnecessary time on print-related tasks when they’re in the office, too.
What does this mean for Cisco partners?Read More »
Yesterday we announced that Charter Communications, a leading broadband communications and entertainment provider and the 4th largest cable company in the United States selected the Cisco CRS-3 and ASR 9000 as part of a major network upgrade. This of course brings up the question our readers often ask – why? What is driving these investments? While we have our perspective (which we share regularly on the SP360 blog and other forums), it’s even better when we get the view directly from the customer. To that end, we had the opportunity to interview Bob Hunt, Charter’s VP of Network Engineering on Charter’s perspective on the network upgrade, the drivers, and the growth in DOCSIS 3.0 usage and the network efficiencies he’s forecasting. Read More »
