Thinking problem management!

The important consideration when working on improving Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is to understand the time in between. It is not about an outage occurring at a specific time and the link coming back online at another time. The latter is what is meant by MTTR but to have a meaningful conversation about it more information is required. In the context of SDWAN, a comparison needs to be make between how a deployment would have improved MTTRs above that of a legacy wide area network (WAN) installation. Read the article over at LInkedIn here .

The Medical Control Council (MCC) has regulations that stipulates the parameters in which medical service providers operate. These are listed here . Service providers who provide medical services typically monitor the temperature of the environment and to ensure that the sensors used are correctly calibrated they are tested by an accredited laboratory. These are accredited by SANAS . Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

Buildings are a perfect use case for the Internet of Things (IoT). While the people that populate buildings have connected themselves to the Internet and the digital world using a vast number of social and digital services, the buildings themselves stayed largely unchanged. Here are some personal experiences. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

Within data centres and telecommunications points of presence, many legacy monitoring solutions exist. The architecture is typically rack mounted hardware that has wired sensors or probes. The hardware has a built-in web server and in most cases also a text based cli. The connectivity is typically via an internal Ethernet network and optionally out of band connectivity via a GSM modem. The user is required to connect out of band to the web server or cli on the hardware. This connection entails an incoming session over the modem that requires approval from the service provider. The service provider usually discourages these type of connections due to hacking. Additionally, the network address of the hardware needs to be associated with a name resolution system and often this is a dynamic DNS type service. This architecture is the basis for many types of botnet attacks. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

Large scale Internet of Things (IoT) useage in data centres is not prevalent. In most cases, the underlying reasons is a misunderstanding that deployment is not about technical optimisation but financial benefit. In this article we will develop the financial benefit and use case. An example use case would be in the data centre of a bank or financial service providers which has a significant amount of hybrid information technology. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

The tricky part of three phase power is the accompanying balancing act. Read the blog post over at Server Technology here . 

Temperature control and monitoring is the one of the most significant tools in the handling of perishable goods. Maintenance of a high relative humidity, and modification of the atmospheric composition can have a strong add-on effect, but is no substitute for good temperature control. The solution allows the constant and online monitoring of temperature and humidity and provides extensive reporting capabilities for compliance and auditability. Read the article on LinkedIn here .

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an awesome deployment of technology but not a means to an end. It's primary purpose is typically to solve a problem. The most gain you receive from deploying an IoT solution is with the least effort. Put another way, to achieve a perfect solution is not effective as it will take a disproportionate amount of effort. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

Many moons ago as r00igev@@r , I came up with the concept of iBurst Notices . The concept was that a telecommunications company should have a separate social media handle that deals specifically with major incidents . This separates and removes the onus from marketing in dealing with operational issues. It is a great tool for the hard working Meerkats to be able to see a network or other status via a social media channel. Read the article on LinkedIn here .

We evaluated five VPN routers suitable for small businesses from Cisco, D-Link, DrayTek, Mikrotik and ZyXEL based on price, features and user friendliness. Read the article over at Network World here . 

I have previously written about why Novell and Madge went titsup. Well, I might as well complete the trifecta and write about iBurst whose obituary was written by MyBroadband and ITWeb . As a bit of a background on the Technology, you can read a description of the iBurst technology here . iBurst had a rich heritage, being invented by the father of mobile technology, Dr Martin Cooper . The standardisation of iBurst had its first hurdle in the standards committees where it stalled. The technology was then sold by ArrayCom to Kyocera who gave it the treacle treatment. As a technology it was effective as its planning was dramatically simplified due the manner in which towers were colour coded. Cost reduction cycle But the primary problem is that the hardware never went into a cost reduction cycle and all the major network operators threw their weight behind 3G. The death knell was sounded. In an am

L ocal insurtech start-up Pineapple has officially gone live with its insurance offering in the South African market, two years after coming up with the concept. The product offers insurance for individual items such as gadgets, cellphones, jewellery and home appliances. Read the article over at ITWeb here .

If a plane's engines were to fail in flight then because most of them have two, the pilot the lands the airplane. Mostly its only one engine and rarely two as what happened with " The Miracle on the Hudson. " When the plane lands the aviation engineers then replace the failed component, test its operation and integration and the plane takes back to the skies. They do not do an inflight engine swap out at 10000 ft. However, network engineers seem to always try the latter with spectacular adverse major incidents . Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

I have created a network troubleshooting checklist because faults and outages are typically always similar and this is where checklists are a great help. Download my troubleshooting checklist here . Checklists can be used in both a reactive manner as what would be the case in the above checklist but also in a proactive manner as what is described in " The bare necessities of a Network Operations Centre (NOC) Dashboard ". Read the article about proactive monitoring over at LinkedIn here .

  “My god, I hope you find love… And I don't just mean that in regards to someone you wrap your tired bones around at night. I mean that I hope you find love in every aspect of your life. I hope you find it tucked into early morning sunrises, and the smell of your favorite places. I hope you find it strung between the laughter you share with your friends, I hope it bounces off of you when you hug the people you care for, I hope it sweel within your ribcage whenever you hear your favorite song, or discover something that moves you. I hope you fall in love with growth, and change, and the messiness, and becoming exactly who you want to be. I hope you find love in places that were once void of it, in places within yourself that you could have been softer to, kinder to, in the past. Because if there is one thing I have learned, it is that love is so much more than a boy, or a girl, who holds your heart. Love is everything around you. It is everything

Cisco, Juniper, Arista, and HPE are all vying to sell more enterprise data-center high-speed Ethernet, which is needed to handle traffic generated by smarter applications, IoT devices, and video. Read the article over at Network World here .

The Internet of Things has provided a worldwide digital playground for hackers, pranksters and those who would thwart them and here are 9 of the most unnerving.  Read the article on Network World here . 

This easy-to-read book gives you jargon-free best practices for Software-Defined Wide Area Networking. Includes a special foreword by Lee Doyle, Doyle Research. Co-authored by Dan Pitt, Open Networking Foundation. Download the eBook here .

Many moons ago I created a network troubleshooting checklist which you can download here . The purpose of the checklist is to provide a structured method to identify reasons for outages, errors and failures in a similar manner to those used by the aviation industry, namely checklists . However, one the most important steps predates any outage on a last mile link and that step needs to occur when it is provisioned. This is the commissioning test also known as the soak test. It is oft overlooked by fulfillment engineers in the hast to deliver the service to the client. However, the result is invariable a large amount of wasted time and effort during assurance. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

A coach from Mopi Luxury Coaches side-swiped me at the Ultra City in Polekwane and drove off without stopping. There was damage to my headlight and front bumper. We had to chase after the bus to take a picture of the registration number, BSP401L. Besides the driver not stopping, this article is not about that. It is about the app that Discovery Insurance uses for claims. It was a less that satisfying experience. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

Access the web based speedtest tool over at ookla here .

This speed test relies on an exclusive algorithm allowing you to measure accurately download bitrate, upload bitrate and latency of your connection.  nPerf uses a worldwide dedicated servers network, which is optimized to deliver enough bitrate to saturate your connection, so that we can measure its bitrate accurately.  nPerf is compatible with all broadband and mobile connections: ADSL, VDSL, cable, optical fiber FTTH / FTTB, satellite, wifi, wimax, cellular 2G / 3G / 4G (LTE).  Access this speedtest tool over at nperf here .

Rising seas threaten more than 4,000 miles of buried fiber optic cables in densely populated US coastal regions, report researchers. Seattle is one of three cities at most risk of internet disruptions. Read the article over at Futurity here .

Download the Birding Guide over at Canary here .

Data centres are often build and parameters are decided by external engineering and environmental factors and at the last possible moment the white space is shoe horned into the design. This is true of many co-location sites where the designs vary and change continuously during the life time of operations of tenant occupancy. These fundamental design choices are often problematic when populating a data centre or during migration. I have previous written about " 5 practices that need to be taken into account when migrating to a more modern data centre " but this article will expand on provisioning and managing white space within a data centre. The white space is afterall the primary place where the rubber meets the Internet highway. Read the article over at LinkedIn here .

While making a website, it is vital to make a website that is safe for both users and website owner. Everybody is aware of spammers flooding the internet. They misuse the website and keep posting spam comments . As a developer or designer it is vital for you to understand what is a Captcha, why are they used and where. So, In this article, we are shedding some light on What is Captcha, Why they are used, Where are they used and also a list of Top 11 WordPress Captcha Plugins .

KX III is ideal for Server Rooms, Test Labs, and the Largest Enterprise Data Centers . It offers high performance, Java-free, remote management of servers, workstations and serial devices. Deploy individually, or with Raritan’s CommandCenter Secure Gateway. Find out more over at Raritan here .

Internet Solutions has begun a restructuring that is likely to lead to retrenchments. The company may lay off as many as 200 staffers, TechCentral has learnt from two separate sources with knowledge of the developments.  Support and installation teams are said to have been given letters and asked to reapply for their jobs. A well-placed source said the impending layoffs come after the Internet and telecommunications provider, which is owned by Dimension Data, failed to meet earnings forecasts. Read the article over at TechCentral here .

Today’s digital economy is rapidly changing business models and creating new demands for IT organizations. In this paper, learn to: Understand new demands facing IT organizations Recognize the challenges in building a modern data center Modernize your data center through virtualization, automation, and orchestration VMware and Intel enable IT organizations to realize a digital transformation and deliver IT infrastructure and application services with the speed and agility to support business innovation and growth while optimizing TCO and improving resource utilization. Download the Dummies Guide over at vmware here .