network nate

The End of Network Nate

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:01:21 -0800

I am leaving the telecommunications industry today to become a management consultant at Insigniam in California. There, I will work with clients on innovation and producing breakthrough results.

I will keep the Network Nate archives up for as long as I can, but I will not be posting new articles.

Read My New Blog

Many of you have asked how to keep in touch. You can subscribe to my blog at naterosenberg.com.

Visit naterosenberg.com

Thank you to all my readers and subscribers!

Do you use any type of cloud storage? If so, what kind, and why?

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:33:08 -0800

Yes. You can read about XO's Concentric Cloud Storage here.

This Wednesday: Optimize and Accelerate Your Business

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 09:44:30 -0800

HOSTED BY:
Concentric Cloud Solutions

WHEN:
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 | 10:00 AM PST

REGISTER NOW

Join this FREE, one-hour webinar and learn how to optimize and accelerate your business using content acceleration and enterprise cloud solutions. During this webinar you will learn:

The driving forces behind why companies are moving to the cloud for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
The online, mobile, social and cloud market dynamics that are affecting businesses and enterprises.
What to look for as key attributes in a cloud-based solution.
To identify which key security attributes are “must-haves” for your cloud services provider.
Key points about Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery and how they can protect your company safely and securely from the cloud.
How to create immediate scale and agility in your IT operations.
Online video trends and how they are affecting your website and the way you conduct business.
What impacts social media and the cloud have on your customers.
How to dramatically lower costs by moving to the cloud.
Achieve a positive Return on Investment (ROI).

Who should attend:

IT executives and managers
IT operations
Business managers responsible for online video

REGISTER NOW

The Algebra Trick that Could Boost Bandwidth Tenfold

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:59:08 -0700

MIT Technology Review reports a team of academic researchers have found a way to use algebra to improve wireless bandwidth by a factor of ten.

WiFi and LTE networks typically drop a percent of their packets. Having to resend these packets can make wireless inefficient. The new technology, dubbed coded TCP, transforms the packets into algebraic equations describing the packets, so that if any packets are dropped, the device can determine the content of the missing packets without re-transmission.

On a test on the Acela train, the method boosted bandwidth from 0.5 Mbps to 13.5 Mbps.

The technology could be a breakthrough in wireless communications. Cisco is predicting mobile bandwidth use will increase 18-fold by 2016, and Bell Labs predicts 25-fold growth. The FCC has said we may run out of wireless spectrum in a few years. A ten-fold improvement in the use of existing wireless spectrum could delay this spectrum crunch.

Researchers said they expect the technology to be commercially available within a few years.

XO Expands Fiber Beyond U.S. For First Time Ever

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:17:57 -0700

For the first time, XO Communications has expanded its nationwide Tier 1 fiber network beyond U.S. borders and into Canada (see “Hello Canada” on the XO Pulse Blog).

Just days after celebrating being the first to launch nationwide 100G Ethernet coast-to-coast, XO today announced it has expanded its fiber network to Toronto.

This announcement is important for two reasons:

The XO network now reaches outside the U.S. into Canada. While XO has offered international service in more than 50 countries for years, it has historically depended on the international fiber presence of its partner carriers. This marks the first time XO has built out its own fiber network to another country.
Canadian-based businesses can now buy access to the XO network. As part of the expansion, XO established a Canadian subsidiary and can now legally do business with Canada-based businesses. This opens up XO’s nationwide U.S. footprint to Canadian businesses with large U.S. presences.

XO announced they will initially offer up to 10G Ethernet via their new peering point at the Cologix data center (151 Front Street West) in Toronto. Available services include Internet access, wavelengths, MPLS, VPLS, and private line.

The Cologix data center on Front Street is Canada’s largest interconnection hub.

XO now offers hosted security, a network-embedded security...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:07:37 -0700

XO now offers hosted security, a network-embedded security solution with 24/7 full-staffed SOC. XO Radar is the online management portal for Hosted Security (by XOCommunications)

Vegas Company Named Top 100 Place to Work in IT

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:59:29 -0700

ComputerWorld has a list of the Top 100 places to work in IT. For the third year in a row, only one was a company headquartered in Nevada.

CIOs in Las Vegas often complain about the lack of IT talent in Las Vegas.

Rankings like this can help us attract more IT talent. But more local IT departments need to promote themselves as great places to work by participating in these surveys.

If you are an IT executive, it also may also be time to ask what your IT department is donig to attract and retain top talent. You can get some ideas by reading what #1 winner USAA does to attract top IT talent.

(Also: How ComputerWorld Chose the Top 100)

Telecom Mergers and Acquisitions, a Guide

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:55:37 -0700

The market for U.S. telecommunications services (telephone, Internet, and private networks) has gotten smaller over the past couple years. Here’s a quick guide to all the M&A and who’s who now:

CenturyLink bought Qwest and Savvis. Now called CenturyLink.
Level3 merged with Global Crossing. Now called Level3.
Zayo bought 360Networks, AboveNet, FiberGate, USCarrier, and Arialink. Phew! Now called Zayo.
Sprint was going to buy MetroPCS but changed its mind. Sprint also sold enough shares in Clearwire to no longer be a majority shareholder and announced they would build their own LTE network.
Windstream bought Paetec. Now called Windstream.
AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile, but the government said no.

The real challenge is in the integration. Integrating telecom networks and systems has historically been very difficult. And often, the debt used to finance the merger leaves the new company vulnerable to being acquired itself.

Why a Cisco Lover Bought Juniper

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:30:04 -0700

This week, I met with the CTO of a well-known, global beverage company. This guy loves Cisco; he has Cisco all over his global IT infrastructure. And he isn’t really sold on Juniper Junos.

So, why did he buy Juniper switches?

To keep Cisco on their toes. As Gartner’s research shows, businesses should deploy networking equipment from multiple vendors. The research clearly shows that businesses can significantly reduce costs and simplify operations by using networking equipment from at least two vendors.

XO Communications uses Cisco extensively in our network. We have had a strong partnership with Cisco for more than a decade. But we also buy equipment from Juniper, Nokia Siemens, Infinera, and others.

XO chose Nokia Siemens gear for the first nationwide 100G network ever. A few weeks later, XO followed it up with an announcement that they would use Ciena gear for 100G Ethernet in their metro networks.

If you have an all-Cisco network, that’s a smart move. But you’ll save and simplify if you also have some equipment from other networking suppliers.

This Tuesday: Why Switch to Hosted PBX

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:23:07 -0700

RadNet, a leading medical imaging company with 233 imaging centers nationwide, switched to an XO Hosted PBX this year. XO is hosting a webinar with the IT Director at RadNet on why he chose hosted instead of premise-based and what he is seeing today.

This Tuesday: The Inside Scoop on Hosted PBX

Join Tim Swingler, Director of IT at RadNet, and Steve Carter, XO Communications Sr. Product Manager for SIP and Hosted PBX, for a webinar on hosted communications.

Why did RadNet switch to a hosted system? What benefits are they seeing today?

RadNet’s decision process for choosing a hosted telephone solution
Cost considerations
Criteria for choosing the right vendor
What Tim has learned from the switch
Industry trends in hosted communications

If your organization has multiple PBXs, and you want to simplify and reduce costs, this is the webinar for you.

Click here to signup for the free webinar

XO Brings Fiber to New Data Center in Las Vegas

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:58:29 -0700

XO recently announced its partnership with Cobalt Data Centers, one of my newest customers.

Cobalt is currently finishing construction on a new Tier III colocation facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. The data center will be able to accommodate high-density computing, up to 600 watts per square foot. The company has already acquired land for a second facility in Las Vegas.

Apple, Switch, ViaWest, and now Cobalt…Nevada is booming with new data centers!

The Secret Story of Telephone Area Codes

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:49:25 -0700

Ever wonder how your community got its area codes? It’s not random, and the answer may surprise you.

Area codes were originally assigned in the 1940s based on population density. Why?

Back then, phones and telephone systems used mechanical rotary switches. Low numbers (like 1 and 2) required less movement on a rotary switch. Higher numbers (like 8 and 9) required more movement. Ma Bell figured they could save millions in maintenance, repairs, and replacements if the areas that were called the most had lower numbers.

So they assigned lower numbers to areas with the highest population densities. Since 1 was already used for placing long distance calls, they started with 2. Cities like New York and Los Angeles, which had the highest population densities in the 1940s, got the lowest area codes (212 and 213) while less-populated states like Hawaii and Nevada got higher area codes (702 and 808).

(Hat tip to John Bamforth for teaching me this. Read more here)

SuperNAP 8 under construction in Las Vegas (via @MissyByte)

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:53:00 -0700

SuperNAP 8 under construction in Las Vegas (via @MissyByte)

How I Made a Sale with a Blog Comment

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:44:17 -0700

Many people wonder if being active on blogs and social media can grow their business. I have been active online for years, but I never had a concrete example of how it helped bring in new business…until now.

A few months ago, we signed up a new customer that I met by commenting on a blog post. Here’s the story.

To respect our NDA, I will call the company WidgetCo (not their real name).

It All Started with Leaving a Comment on One of My Favorite Blogs

WidgetCo’s company blog is one of my favorites, and I have read it for nearly a decade. I was also a customer of theirs when I had my own website design business. I rarely comment on blogs, but this post was about Internet redundancy, something I actually know something about, so I left my two cents.

Starting a Business Relationship on Email

Coincidentally, WidgetCo was having a problem with an XO partner at the time.

The network guy from WidgetCo saw the XO email address on my comment and emailed to see if I could help. I looked it up and told him everything I could, but unfortunately I could not help much. I guess he appreciated me trying because when I asked if I could help with anything else, he said their data center Internet contract was up and asked for a quote.

A few months later, WidgetCo bought the Internet connection. A little after that, they purchased a Gigabit point-to-point to their second data center and more Internet.

The Key to Making a Sale…Don’t Try to Make a Sale

Reflecting on the experience, I think the key was that when we started, I legitimately was not trying to sell anything. I genuinely just wanted to help if I could because I was a huge fan of the work they do.

By helping instead of being salesy, I earned the right to discuss business. Being human and helpful went a long way.

Just goes to show…businesses can find new customers anywhere, even in a blog comment.

Downtown Vegas: ViaWest Acquires CoreLink Data Center

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:29:29 -0700

ViaWest just announced they are acquiring Corelink’s downtown Las Vegas colocation facility.

Corelink’s 1.2 MW facility is located next to ViaWest’s 2 MW data center on Carson Ave in downtown Las Vegas. ViaWest recently announced plans to build a new 10 MW data center in North Las Vegas.

Lots going on in the data center market in Las Vegas. Zayo acquired the Marquisnet data center in January. And Switch, Cobalt, and pair networks have all announced construction of new data centers in Las Vegas.

CDN 3.0 Speeds up Web and Mobile Apps

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:22:00 -0700

CDN 1.0 sped up the delivery of content online, but we’re now speeding up web and mobile apps with CDN 2.0 and 3.0.

CDN 1.0 (Content Delivery Networks) sped up the static web.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Akamai and Limelight made the web faster by putting copies of photos, videos, and other large website files on servers around the world. By putting this content closer to users, the CDN sped up the download of content for people around the world.

CDN 2.0 is for Web 2.0 - the dynamic web.

We now run apps over the web, and accelerating static web pages is no longer enough. CDN 2.0 puts copies of the application on servers around the world connected via private and public networks so web apps run faster around the world. For example, Concentric CDN powered by Limelight uses both the Internet and a global private network, so data running between servers can hop-on our optimized private network in real-time if the Internet gets too congested.

CDN 3.0 is for mobile apps and the mobile web.

With compression, sprites, and javascript in-lining, website and app developers have done a lot to optimize their content. But there has always been a bottleneck.

Especially on mobile, the bottleneck of content delivery has always been the “last mile”, the last bit of network (wired or wireless) connectivity between the CDN data center and the browsers on people’s devices.

CDN 3.0 optimizes the way a web page is painted. Concentric’s brand of CDN 3.0 is called Front End Accleration (FEA). FEA optimizes how data is sent from the edge server to the browser, so that the most important elements render faster.

100G XO Nationwide Network Launched Today

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:52:00 -0700

XO Communications today announced they have deployed 100G Ethernet across their nationwide network. While other carriers like Verizon have deployed 100G on a few routes, XO is the first to deploy 100G nationwide.

For the deployment, XO chose Nokia Siemens Networks’s DWDM equipment based on the hiT7300 platform. “We recognized that we would need significant installments of bandwidth in multiple locations this year,” said XO CTO Randy Nicklas. “We had to make a decision, and we were in more of a hurry, so we decided not to RFP and look at a lot of different vendors.” Implementation took about six months and was completed with relatively few glitches, according to Nicklas.

The platform currently supports 96 wavelengths of 100G, boosting XO’s nationwide network capacity to 9.6 Tbps. That’s 9,600,000 Mbps! And XO CTO Randy Nicklas says 400G and even 1T are on the horizon.

Why the Internet Never Goes Down

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:43:00 -0700

How often does the Internet go down? Never.

My wife used to complain, “The Internet is down.” In fact, CIOs of major corporations have told me the same thing. But the Internet never goes down.

Let me explain.

You can lose your connection to the Internet, but the Internet is still there. Heck, an entire country may lose Internet access. But the Internet in all the other countries survives and stays up, by design.

The Design of the Internet

Internet stands for interconnected network. It’s a network of many networks (more than 400,000 networks today).

Some of the Internet provider’s networks are very small (your local neighborhood cable company). Some networks are very big (Global Crossing’s global fiber network). While most homes use the local cable or phone network, some companies and governments pay for their own networks. For example, Google and Bank of America have their own networks on the Internet.

So who owns the Internet that connects all these networks together?

That’s the magic. Nobody. It was invented so no one controlled it. Cool, huh?

What made the Internet unique went it was invented was there was no one computer governing it all. The U.S. Defense Department wanted to build a network that would survive even if someone nuked America’s largest cities (that way, we can all watch cats doing funny things on YouTube during Armageddon).

There is no place you can bomb to take out the entire Internet. Each router on the Internet has enough information to keep the Internet running.

The Internet is Everywhere and Nowhere

Power on the Internet rests with no one organization. All the networks use a common addressing system (IP addresses, which are the Internet’s version of phone numbers) and a common language for connecting networks together (BGP).

Most networks pay to connect to another network, but if your network is big enough, you can just trade access to your network for access to someone else’s network. The argument between Level3 and Comcast was about who should pay whom.

BGP: The Language of the Internet

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) basically tells data what to do when it needs to leave one network and get on a new network. Most of the time to get from where you are to the website you’re accessing, you have to travel over multiple networks.

It’s like crossing a state line on a highway. You stay on the same road in the same car, but the organization that funds and maintains the road changes. If everyone uses the same road specs, you can pass right through. That’s what BGP does, it lets you pass through.

The Internet is Never Down

So the next time someone tells you the Internet is down, you can tell him it’s fine…unless it’s the Zombie apocalypse, in which case we all have more important things to worry about.

Your company has been hacked. Now what?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:55:00 -0700

Your company has probably already been hacked, and you don’t know it. At least, that’s what the White House’s former cybersecurity advisor said.

At the same time that many companies are keeping increasing amounts of data on their customers, many are not properly securing their networks. And staff cuts have meant they do not have the manpower to continuously update and maintain their security infrastructure.

In fact, most companies I visit do not have a single employee dedicated to network security. It’s usually one of many bullets on the network engineer’s job description.

A security breach can harm your business, your operations, your customers, and your brand. Just ask TJ Maxx, Zappos, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Apple.

With too many projects already and reduced staff, it’s likely your IT department is focused on strategic initiatives and does not have the time to properly secure and maintain your network, but what is the alternative? Let hackers steal your customer data?

Network security is a huge liability, but no one realizes it until a breach is on the home page of the Wall St. Journal.

Businesses today need to

Here’s my advice: stop ignoring the security problem and make it someone else’s problem. Outsource the liability to an expert network security firm with a proven track record. They can probably secure your network better and more affordably than you can.

Be strategic about which security challenges are unique to their business and which are not. It’s likely at least 80% of your network security needs are the same as any other company your size (firewall, VPNs, content filtering, etc).

Then, focus on the 20% of security unique to your business.

[Network Nate Newsletter] Some Love From XO: New, Lower Prices on All XO Services (Network Nate Newsletter)

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0800

[Network Nate Newsletter] Some Love From XO: New, Lower Prices on All XO Services (Network Nate Newsletter):

Big news! For the first time in four years, XO has reduced its pricing. Read more