Cloudflare: The DDoS That Almost Broke the Internet

San Francisco-based Cloudflare reported that a Distributed Denial of Service attack against Spamhaus has surpassed all other known DDoS attack in volume --  exceeding peak loads of 300 Gbps.

The DDoS attack, which was profiled in The New York Times, the BBC and other media outlets on Wednesday, involves a dispute between Spamhaus and Cyberbunker, a Dutch web host.

Cloudflare began providing web optimization and DDoS protection for Spamhaus earlier this month after an initial wave of DDoS traffic hit Spamhaus, which maintins a blacklist of I.P. addresses of known spammers.

Cloudflare said the DDoS attack has grown in recent days as traffic crossed several major Tier 1s, primarily in Europe.

Beyond attacking CloudFlare and its direct peers, the attackers also attacked the core IX infrastructure on the London Internet Exchange (LINX), the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), the Frankfurt Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), and the Hong Kong Internet Exchange (HKIX).  Cloudflare estimates the attackers were able to generate more than 300 Gbps of traffic.

A blog posting describes the attack:

http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-ddos-that-almost-broke-the-internet

Read More

Egyptian Navy Captures Saboteurs Cutting SEA-ME-WE 4 Cable

The Egyptian navy reported the capture of three scuba divers who were cutting an undersea cable off the coast of Alexandria.

The BBC said that the affected cable is the SEA-ME-WE 4 and noted a drop in Internet speeds in Egypt on Wednesday.

https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Navy

• On March 22, Seacom suffered multiple subsea cable cuts off the northern coast of Egypt.  These cuts disrupted a number of cable systems in Africa, Middle East and Asia connecting to Europe. SEACOM has been providing daily updates since then as it scramble to re-route customer traffic, establish other restoration options on other cables across the Mediterranean, and add further IP capacity in Asia.  http://www.seacom.mu/news/article-126/seacom-outage-08-00-gmt/

Read More

Amazon Web Services Offers Dedicated Hardware Security Appliances

Amazon Web Services introduced "CloudHSM," a new service offering dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances within the AWS Cloud. 

The CloudHSM service, which is aimed at companies data security compliance requirements,  allows customers to securely generate, store and manage cryptographic keys used for data encryption in a way that keys are accessible only by the customer.

Previously, contractual or regulatory mandates for managing cryptographic keys prevented some organizations from migrating their most sensitive data to the cloud.

AWS said its CloudHSM service enables customers maintain full ownership, control and access to keys and sensitive data while Amazon manages the HSM appliances in close proximity to their applications and data for maximum performance. 

http://aws.amazon.com/cloudhsm/

Read More

Equinix Offers NetApp Private Storage for AWS

Equinix has begun offering NetApp Private Storage for AWS.

The service is now available in Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers where AWS Direct Connect is deployed including the United States and Asia.

NetApp Private Storage for AWS allows organizations to balance private and public cloud resources to best meet their business needs. This enables companies to maintain control of their data, comply with the most stringent privacy and security standards, and deliver sub-5ms performance.

The service enables sub-5ms response times on data traveling between the hosted NetApp array and AWS.

"Equinix’s robust cloud ecosystem makes Platform Equinix an ideal place to combine NetApp Private Storage with AWS Direct Connect. By taking down the barriers of cloud service adoption, we believe the solution will help both cloud consumers and cloud service providers accelerate business and maximize revenue streams,” Greg Adgate, general manager global alliances and partnerships, Equinix.

http://www.netapp.com
http://www.equinix.com

Read More

KT Expands its CDN Partnership with Akamai

KT has agreed to leverage technology from Akamai to provide CDN services to its customers in Korea.

Specifically, KT will use Akamai's Aura Managed CDN for its own content applications and for third party CDN services.  KT has been an Akamai NetAlliance Partner since 2011.

"The era has come where culture and digital content are leading the market.  Our main priority is to ensure access to content from any device, at anytime, anywhere," said Heekyung Song, Senior Vice President, Enterprise IT BU, KT.  "Through this partnership with Akamai, KT will provide a CDN platform specializing in media delivery, web performance and security so companies can focus on developing quality content and web applications without concerns about delivery."

http://www.akamai.com

Read More

SiTime Offers 32kHz MEMS Oscillator for Smartphone Market

SiTime introduced a family of 32 kHz MEMS oscillators designed to replace legacy quartz crystal resonators in mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, fitness monitoring and watch products, medical monitoring and wellness devices, etc.

As with the company's other MEMS timing solutions, the new SiT15xx family of oscillators compare favorably to existing quartz-based devices in several ways; SiTime’s MEMS are 85% smaller, use 50% less power, and significantly exceed the reliability metrics of quartz by 15 times.

The SiT153x family operates from a 1.2V to 3.63V regulated power supply, making them ideal for smartphones that use a coin-cell or super-cap battery backup. The SiT154x family also replaces quartz crystal resonators and operates from a 2.7 to 4.5V unregulated Li-Ion battery.

“SiTime’s groundbreaking silicon MEMS and analog technology deliver innovative timing solutions that leapfrog decades of quartz industry development. Large infrastructure and consumer electronics companies have already adopted SiTime’s solutions and are profiting from our remarkable combination of highest performance, lowest cost and best reliability,” said Rajesh Vashist, CEO of SiTime. “Now, we are bringing these exceptional benefits to the booming mobile market. Our focus, passion and execution has allowed us to get 80% share of the MEMS timing market and with the new SiT15xx family, we continue to extend our lead.”

http://www.sitime.com/

Read More

Network Instruments Intros 2U Analysis Appliance for 1G, 10G

Network Instruments introduced a smaller version of its GigaStor appliance supporting gigabit and 10G retrospective analysis for enterprise network teams.

The new appliance, which is offered in a 2U form factor, is a scalable, monitoring tool that can be expanded from 2 TB – 16 TB in the field.

Features ensuring its availability for monitoring heavy traffic loads include the Gen2 card, exclusively engineered by Network Instruments to maximize performance on critical links; plus hot-swappable drives, Lights Out Management (LOM), and redundant fans and power supplies.

“We have continually been a performance monitoring innovator, providing the fastest, most flexible solutions for service delivery management within the world’s largest datacenters,” said Charles Thompson, director of product strategy for Network Instruments. “We've developed the first platform capable of monitoring saturated full-duplex 10 Gb links at line rate, without dropping a packet. And we're the only company to offer field-scalable retrospective analysis appliances with a product robust enough to handle large datacenter demand – but small enough for deployment at the edge or within a medium-sized enterprise.”

http://www.networkinstruments.com

Read More

nTelos Picks Alcatel-Lucent for LTE

nTelos Wireless, which operates in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina, has selected Alcatel-Lucent's LTE solution for portions of its network.

Specifically, Alcatel-Lucent is supplying its multi-technology base stations equipped with Remote Radio Head (RRH) technology.  The rollout also includes much of Alcatel-Lucent's Evolved Packet Core infrastructure. Close to 200 existing CDMA 3G-1X base stations will be replaced with Alcatel-Lucent's CDMA 3G and EVDO Rev A base stations.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Read More

Broadcom Names VP of Worldwide Sales

Broadcom has promoted Michael Hurlston to Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales.

He replaces Thomas Lagatta, who will continue with Broadcom until he retires at the end of 2013, serving as Executive Vice President of Business Development. Hurlston most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manger of the Wireless Connectivity Combo business. He joined Broadcom in 2001.

http://www.broadcom.com

Read More

Ericsson Completes Job Cuts in Sweden

Ericsson reduced its operations in Sweden by cutting 1,399 positions.  This resulted in 919 employees being given notice.  The majority of cuts are in Ericsson's Networks unit.

Ericsson said its expects to incur approximately SEK -1.5 billion in restructuring costs.

http://www.ericsson.com

• As of 31-Dec-2012, Ericsson had 17,712 employees in Sweden.

Read More