Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘not so neutral‘ files: Switzerland is a country well known for its historical position of political neutrality. That position of neutrality however may not necessarily extend to the debate over proprietary versus open source software. 18 open source vendors including Red Hat and OpenXchange are challenging a contract awarded by the Swiss Federal […]

From the ‘IPv4 sky is falling‘ files: We’ve been warned that the Internet is running out of IPv4 address space and the end is near. Yet for some reason, IPv6, isn’t something that is being broadly adopted — in North America at least.  We need a hero, or maybe a few superheroes to save the […]

Ethernet has emerged over the last decade as the dominant fabric for networking communication, but it’s not the only one. Infiniband, a technology that offers the promise of lower latency for high speed computing applications is making inroads according to analyst reports and the Infiniband Trade Association (IBTA). Infiniband is the interconnect used on the […]

From the ‘dev channel version goes prime time‘ files: Google Chrome stable is now at version 2.0. Forgive me if I don’t sound too excited, I’ve been running Chrome 2.0 dev-channel (Google has three version of Chrome dev, beta and stable) for months without issue on a test box. But for those that aren’t running […]

LAS VEGAS — Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is not all hype, it’s here now, though some issues remain to be solved. That’s the message coming out of a panel here at the Interop conference this week on VDI delivery. Panelists included representatives from vendor firms Citrix, VMware, Red Hat and Teradici. The issues that could […]

LAS VEGAS. Some Interop sessions have more drama than others. A session with open source routing vendor Vyatta squaring off against giants Cisco and Juniper, provided both drama and humor as the trio aggressively debated the merits of their respective technologies. For Dave Roberts, VP strategy and marketing at Vyatta, the session was all about […]

From the ‘finally settled’ files: The FSF has announced that its legal lawsuit against Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) has been dismissed and they have come to an agreement. This is a case that dates back to December of 2008 and involves Cisco’s Linksys networking gear and alleged violation of the GPL open source licensing terms. The settlement […]

From the ‘I did not know that’ files: LAS VEGAS. I met up with Nortel Networks enterprise business chief John McHugh at Interop to talk about their big new routing platform the VSP9000. It’s a platform capable of up to 27 terabits per second (Tbps) of switching capacity and McHugh told me it represents a […]

From the ‘interesting stats‘ files: LAS VEGAS. Though Skype as a business might not have worked out for eBay, Skype for business apparently is doing well. That’s the message delivered in a keynote session at Interop today by Stephan Oberg,  GM and VP of Skype for business. Oberg said that Skype is not just a […]

Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio) A command line view of IT Kaspersky’s Roel SchouwenbergPhoto: Sean Michael Kerner From the “Indirect effects of Twitter” files: LAS VEGAS — Twitter is a great tool for microblogging and conversation. It might also be a platform that is teaching us bad habits that might be making us […]

Nortel VSP 9000Source: Nortel. Click to enlarge. LAS VEGAS – Nortel Networks is a company that has made headlines this year as a networking vendor that is under bankruptcy protection. It is now trying to restructure and re-invigorate its business with a series of new networking initiatives officially being announced here at the Interop trade show. The […]