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If you recall, back in the early days of 802.11n, the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) rolled out the 802.11n certification program in phases.  Here we are several years later and in that same fashion, the WFA has split the IEEE 802.11ac specification into two certification phases: Wave 1 and Wave 2.

Last week we announced the availability of our 802.11ac Wave 1 Module for the 3600 Access Point and along with that, our intention to develop an 802.11ac adaptive radio module that will support the second phase of 802.11ac, or Wave 2. Most of the 802.11ac discussion in the last year has been focused on Wave 1, so we want to kick off the conversation about the second phase, Wave 2.

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If Wave 1 promises increased wireless performance to address the increasing demand for higher performance including growing number of clients demanding higher performance for applications such as HD video streaming, then Wave 2 will stun you with its ability to provide even more throughput beyond the 1.3Gbps that Wave 1 provides as well as a number of other features that will further improve wireless connectivity. It is like taking a really good rock song and adding more cowbell to it.

SNL jokes aside, with the additional features packaged in Wave 2 comes the opportunity for further innovation in Cisco’s Wireless portfolio. We feel that it is important to stay ahead of the technology curve so that customers can plan and benefit from these advances sooner rather than later. So let’s discuss what features are coming with 802.11ac Wave 2. Continue reading “Cisco will ride the 802.11ac Wave2”



Authors

Bill Rubino

Product Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networking and Cloud Marketing

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My friends at Cisco’s TechWiseTV have taken MDM to heart and have offered some keen insight from a geek’s POV (point of view) into MDM. Starting with a primer on MDM, Networking 101: MDM, Jimmy Ray answers the questions on what is MDM and what can it do for my organization in his entertaining and educational white board approach.

Continue reading “Shedding More Light on MDM”



Authors

Kathy Trahan

Senior Security Solutions Marketing Manager

Global Marketing Corporate Communications

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“Watering Hole” attacks, as evidenced by the recent attack involving the U.S. Department of Labor, are becoming increasingly popular as alternatives to attacks such as Spear Phishing. In a “Watering Hole” attack, the attacker compromises a site likely to be visited by a particular target group, rather than attacking the target group directly. Eventually, someone from the targeted group visits the “trusted” site (A.K.A. the “Watering Hole”) and becomes compromised.

Cisco identified suspicious GET requests made to the www.sellagreement.com, a malicious site which was recently linked with the Department of Labor attack. According to the evidence we have, the sites www.kforce.com and www.sbc.net were among those compromised during this attack. The webpages that were serving malicious content from these sites were mostly job-search related, but several requests to www.sellagreement.com lacked a “Referrer:” HTTP header entirely. Continue reading “Watering Hole Attacks an Attractive Alternative to Spear Phishing”



Authors

Jaeson Schultz

Technical Leader

Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research

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A new white paper from IDC discusses how converged infrastructure solutions from Cisco and EMC, through VCE, can enable IT organizations to deploy a highly virtualized, highly efficient computing infrastructure. For those new to the converged systems topic, VCE was formed by Cisco and EMC to build converged infrastructure systems that dramatically reduce the complexity that would otherwise be required to bring together technology components.

IDC highlights that the data center is changing and IT companies are adopting standards in hardware and software that will allow the entire infrastructure to be operated and managed more easily. IDC states that if standardization, flexibility, and simplification are not already top priorities for an organization, then complexity and inefficiencies can emerge as chief drivers of operational costs. To prove this point, IDC conducted platform migration studies in 2010 and 2012 and found that more than 50% of all sites were actively working on platform migration and that each migration targeted 40% or more of legacy systems (i.e. RISC/UNIX). The drive to consolidate workloads and to reduce costs continues to accelerate.

The white paper includes profiles from companies that have recently migrated from legacy RISC/UNIX platforms to VCE Vblock™ Systems and realized significant improvements in performance and reduction in server deployment times.

The paper conclusion summarizes that converged infrastructure solutions deployed as part of a data center transformation strategy can reduce IT staff costs, maintenance and management costs, and power/cooling costs.

The full length IDC white paper can be found here. Please also go to the following hyperlinks for more information on RISC/UNIX Migration, Cisco and EMC, and VCE Vblock Systems.

If you are attending EMC World this week, please come by the Cisco booth in the Solutions Pavilion to learn more about Cisco and EMC solutions.



Authors

Tim Stack

Product Marketing Manager

Data Center and Virtualization

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andrewyourtchenkoBy Andrew Yourtchenko, Technical Leader, Network Operations Systems Technology Group

As any geek, I find it a lot of fun to get some hands with the new technology – be it a new gadget, new product or a solution.

It’s not very often that I have a chance to play with a whole new protocol. EANTC (European Advanced Network Testing Center) interoperability testing gave me such a chance. The bulk of the work happened on EANTC premises in Germany this past February. The overall activity involved many representatives from various vendors making their devices talk to each other. The goal is to test the protocols in several areas, including MPLS, SDN, and IPv6, but the highlight for me was the testing of MAP (Mapping Address and Port) – a new protocol to enable the sharing of IPv4 addresses by several customer premise devices without keeping the state at the service provider end.

This protocol is being developed by IETF, and has two flavours, the standards-track “MAP” which uses encapsulation to transmit the packets, otherwise known also as MAP, and the experimental track “MAP-T” – which uses the address family translation in order to send packets, instead of the encapsulation. Continue reading “Real World Demonstration of MAP for IPv6”



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Nothing makes a product marketeer’s job easier than when customers send in their own video testimonials about how successful they have been using our products. Today’s video comes all the way from one of my favorite cities in the world, Buenos Aires.

Martin Cabrera and Fernando Vicens, Data Center Managers from Argentina-based service provider IPLAN share their experience with the Nexus 1000V virtual switch. Their key points are two of the things we always say about Nexus 1000V and we continually hear from our customers:

1) Nexus 1000V allows virtual network policy controls to remain with the networking team, and

2) virtual networks are easier to manage when they are a seamless part of the physical infrastructure (consistent management, visibility, etc.)

Take it away Martin and Fernando:

Continue reading “Argentina’s IPLAN loves the Nexus 1000V virtual switch”



Authors

Gary Kinghorn

Sr Solution Marketing Manager

Network Virtualization and SDN

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Traveling has been a large part of my career at Cisco. Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to travel to customer meetings around the world, discussing their innovation and use cases for Cisco Small Cell Solutions.  What’s interesting is when I spoke with operators in Europe, the prime drivers for WIFI has been connecting cities and stadiums for special events….the summer Olympics was a great example.,   While in the US, I have met with operators about connected stadiums, retail malls, museums and more.   The most interesting story was a visit to the Middle East. We were in Dubai, and seeing some of the examples of where they wanted to take Cisco SP Wi-Fi Solution was fascinating. There was one location in particular that I dubbed “Candy Land”, because it had a retail venue, it had an amusement park, it had a stadium, it had a race track — all in one location on an island. This operator was going to talk to the owner of the island about how they could provide SP Wi-Fi for all of those venues. I was talking to another operator in the Middle East, and one of the things they were looking to provide SP Wi-Fi for was The Hajj. There are millions of people that go to Mecca yearly, and they just need connectivity, for a lot of different reasons; I found that absolutely fascinating. Each part of the globe has unique use cases to each of their country’s cultures and people, but they all want to be part of the wireless world. Continue reading “My Global Small Cell Experiences”



Authors

Teresa McEneny

Director, Mobile Internet

Global Service Provider Segment

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This blog was originally posted on the Huffington Post.

This week I had the privilege of attending an event at the White House where the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, and John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, unveiled a new program to give returning military service members a fast track to the training and certifications needed for high-demand IT jobs.

Through the IT Training and Certification Program, transitioning military personnel with prior IT experience are being given access to IT training, certification, and career-matching opportunities to help fast-track their job search. Once selected through the Joining Forces Initiative, service members are invited to register on the U.S. IT Pipeline, a cloud-based talent exchange platform designed by Futures, Inc., with support from Cisco. Service members can explore careers, take a quick assessment, and choose from a selection of IT certifications, such as Cisco CCNA, most aligned to their interests. After completing the coursework and passing the certification exam provided by select IT training and exam partners, the Pipeline will then match their military experience and qualifications to qualifying high-demand, civilian IT job postings.

Continue reading “Calling All Companies: Military Veterans Bring Dedication, Motivation, and Leadership”



Authors

Kathy Mulvany

VP Corporate Affairs

Corporate Affairs

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Over 200 attendees were present for the opening of two different Co-Innovate Labs (COIL) recently. The COIL is charged with accelerating co-innovation within the SAP partner ecosystem.

This lab is part of the company’s global R&D network and it offers a hands-on environment for SAP, partners and customers to work together on current and future technologies.

The Co-Innovation Lab Singapore is located at SAP’s Asia headquarters in Singapore. It joins a global network of existing co-innovation facilities in Palo Alto (California, USA), São Paulo (Brazil), Walldorf (Germany), Moscow (Russia), Bangalore (India), Shanghai (China) and Tokyo (Japan).

SAP Co-Innovation Lab Singapore is supported by key technology partners Cisco, Intel, NetApp and VMware. Each company provided its latest generation of hardware and software products to the facility’s computing centre, which operates its own private cloud as well as the SAP HANA in-memory platform.

Co-Innovation Lab Singapore has already helped Singapore-based startup ZelRealm Interactive improve their solution, said the company. They developed Sogamo to help game developers optimise and better monetise their online games. Similarly, YFind Technologies, a Singapore-based company, is collaborating with SAP R&D and SAP Co-Innovation Labs to build a product that enables mobile shopping and checkout in retail stores and creates a social network in the supply chain in order to personalise offers and sense demands from customers in real-time for upstream suppliers.

The Coil Lab in Shanghai officially opened March 5th and will server the same purpose as the others around the globe

Cisco, with its Unified Computing System Server Platform and Enterprise Networking Products, and SAP, with SAP HANA, Business Suite, Precision Retail, and Jabber integration, continue to partner in order to bring the best solutions and collaborative products to the world.



Authors

Rick Speyer

No Longer with Cisco