Common Sense (Paul Smith)

 

According to the Internet, the phrase “Common sense is not so common” originated with a Frenchman – Francois-Marie Arouet – who was a leading figure during the Age of Enlightenment. Francois, who had a knack for catchy phrases, began writing them at the age of 12. Eighteenth Century authorities were not always amused, and he often found himself in and out of the Bastille. He eventually moved to London and adopted the pen name Voltaire.

Sylsog – Use it!!

Syslog is one of those behind-the-scenes network tools that quietly saves the day more often than people realize. Routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and wireless access points are constantly generating useful information, and syslog pulls all those messages together into one centralized location. Instead of jumping from device to device trying to figure out what happened, network administrators can quickly search through logs and spot problems before users even notice something is wrong. It is like having a security camera system for your entire network — except instead of video, you get detailed technical events and alerts.

One of the biggest advantages of syslog is troubleshooting speed. When a network outage or performance issue hits, every second matters. Syslog helps pinpoint exactly when an interface went down, when a DHCP server stopped responding, or when a firewall started blocking traffic unexpectedly. You can follow the timeline of events across multiple devices and connect the dots much faster than relying on guesswork alone. In many cases, syslog can turn a two-hour troubleshooting session into a ten-minute fix, which means less downtime and fewer headaches for everyone involved.

Validating Network Performance with a Throughput Test

The core job of a network is to reliably transport data from one point to another, as quickly as possible. If this is accomplished, end users can experience applications and services without skips, lags, and delays induced by the network.

However, when a problem does strike, engineers want to quickly determine if the blame lies on the network or not. Better yet, they should proactively baseline the network before problems start! One way to do that is to test the network path using tools such as iPerf or the Network Performance Test from NetAlly. Let’s look at both tools and see how they can help us spot network problems quickly. 

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence - (Imanuel)

In 1996 Garry Kasparov loses a chess match to a purpose-built computer system designed to be the first computer “intelligent” enough to defeat a human player in a game of Chess. At that time it was thought that we are still years away from having a computer perform so well, but after delivering a top notch game, and making a number of accidental moves (later described as “bugs”) the computer was able to shake the world class player and begin what Kasparov later described as the replacement of “knowledge workers”. While that happened decades ago, even today AI is still considered a fringe technology to some extent with problems like adversarial attacks and constant progress and setbacks at a startup pace rather than an established industry. The lack of mainstream adoption is especially striking considering the technology has evolved generations since Deep-Blue’s use of alpha-beta pruning algorithm, used in search engines. 

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) - The First Step in Intrusion Detection! (Andrey Yesyev)

 

Next-generation intrusion detection systems (IDS) are supplanting their legacy predecessors to provide complete security for complex networks. This new breed of security solutions take advantage of intelligent data and machine learning to provide full network traffic analysis (NTA).

NTA actually is a term coined by research firm, Gartner. 

The company defines NTA as a way to separate legacy (mostly layer 3 technology) from next-gen layer 7-based technology – what that means is that NTA analyzes network activities intelligently to provide comprehensive security.

NTA now is inextricably linked with modern IDS solutions, relying on intelligent data and machine learning to offer full visibility of the network. It works in tandem with, or is complementary to, perimeter protection offerings to provide a holistic view of the entire network, within and beyond the network’s edge.