Latency: 4 Ways You Can Fight Back and Accelerate Your Applications

Many people have a rough idea that latency has something to do with the delay in moving content from the host server to the user, but when pressed, they struggle with explaining the real-world implications of latency on application performance. In this post, I’m going to explain what latency is, its impact on page load, and how we can fight back.

SDN Focus Shifts to Network Services

Brad Casemore is Research Director for IDC’s Datacenter Networks practice and is a featured guest blogger.

Cloud computing requires a datacenter network and corresponding network services that are more flexible and responsive than traditional datacenter network architectures. Responding to that need, software-defined networking (SDN) has emerged as a means of realizing network virtualization and network programmability, while also ensuring that the network can deliver the virtualized network and security services that are essential to the provision of scalable multi-tenant services.

OpenFlow and SDN in 2012 – A Look Back

Before starting to discuss where 2013 will take us with SDN, I’d like to recap some of the significant SDN events for 2012. Below is a breakdown of the major events in chronological order.

The Three Myths of the Availability Threat

Availability – aka the big “A” – is often the overlooked leg of the CIA triad (the others being Confidentiality and Integrity). Perhaps one contributing factor is the common belief among security professionals that if data is not available it is secure. Corporate executives, on the other hand, have a different opinion as downtime carries with it a hefty price tag.

Using Spreadsheets as a DDoS weapon

I saw an article the other day where somebody had used Google Docs incorrectly and he’d racked up a tremendous bill for himself because of the way he set up the hyperlinks. It got me thinking about the potential for hackers to really abuse this flaw in spreadsheets and hyperlinks to take web properties offline and cause financial pain.

So, the idea Anonymous or, say, an aggressive competitor could use against a target could be this: