Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Multicast networking is based on the simple concept that a single packet can be sent by a server and it will be received by many receivers. Multicast is different from broadcast because it’s more selective. Where broadcast packets are received by all receivers in a particular network segment (or broadcast domain), multicast packets are received only by receivers that want them. Also, multicast receivers can be distributed throughout a larger network behind routers.

When something goes wrong in your network, you often don’t find out about it until your users are affected. By then, you’re on the receiving end of an angry phone call and you’re left scrambling to identify the issue and understand its root cause. As soon as you hang up (if the affected user even lets you hang up), you’re in a race against the clock.

As COVID-19 cases began to rise around the world in March 2020, governments and businesses had no choice but to take extraordinary measures to flatten the curve. As an IT leader, you were likely tasked with helping entire companies transition to remote work all at once. Cubicles were replaced by home offices. Face-to-face meetings were replaced by video calls. Work performance was measured by tasks completed instead of hours worked. Digital connectivity became more important than ever before.

Network hardware failures. Internet outages. DDoS attacks. These are the types of disruptions you probably spend your time preparing to handle. But there’s another potential source of trouble that most IT pros think about much less frequently, and which happens far more often: employee offboarding. Whether an employee is leaving to pursue another opportunity or an employee is being terminated, you need to make sure your company’s network and data are secure.

By even casual observation, you’ll likely have noticed that there are several IP address ranges that are special, including: Anybody can use these “private” ranges for anything they like. But there are actually several other special ranges that have other special purposes. In this article, I’ll explain what they are and the purpose they serve. This is the “loopback” range. These are addresses that are assumed to be on the same device that’s sending the packet.

Whether you’re trying to troubleshoot a problem, defend against attacks, or simply optimize your environment, event logs are your best source of information. More than that, not logging or ignoring your logs is like not checking your blindspot when you’re changing lanes—sooner or later you’re going to seriously regret it because the effects will be disastrous.

Subnetting isn’t hard but I often see even experienced network engineers looking for subnet calculators or trying to count in binary on their fingers. So how about a quick primer? To understand subnets, remember what a subnet is and think about the IP address in binary. A subnet is a range of IP addresses. All the devices in the same subnet can communicate directly with one another without going through any routers.

Marketing teams have the 4 Ps (product, price, place, and promotion). Sales teams have ABC (Always Be Closing). As far as frameworks go, there are a lot of great examples out there for how we can effectively do our jobs, create processes, and make decisions. But what about IT teams looking to optimize their services? Do any frameworks exist? One does, it’s called the triple-A framework—and it’s got nothing to do with batteries.

An on-site switch plays a critical role in a network: that of connecting your users to the rest of the IT infrastructure. Don’t think of that jack in the wall or under the cubicle as a simple Ethernet port. As part of effective switch management, you need to think of it as the mission-critical gateway to IT services that it is.

In any given network, switches, routers, and firewalls may support different flow protocols. After all, there’s NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, and J-Flow, to name a few. With so many options, you may be wondering “Which flow protocol should I use?” It’s a common question, and it has a relatively simple answer: While some devices support multiple protocols, a device typically only supports one type of flow protocol, so you should use the protocol your device and collector supports.