Meraki Administration Overview

This is a useful webinar or video of Cisco Meraki administration (link below). Meraki is the ultimate cloud-managed solution, in my opinion. I use it at my job and can verify that it is a solid product, possibly one of the best out there in the networking world. It is ubiquitous and seems to be growing even more steadily, as evidenced below. These are very impressive statistics, especially the 20 PB (petabytes) of daily traffic – we do not see PB referenced a lot even in the modern data-driven world. But 20 PB DAILY is a LOT of data!

Meraki Metrics

The webinar gets very good once you pass the first 5 introductory minutes. It is geared towards Meraki in schools, but the basics of how Meraki simplifies network management complexity are covered. Besides, universities, public or private K-12 schools, along with all businesses and entities all need to have reliable, safe, and secure networking and proper management tools.

Some items covered are Meraki WiFi, and IoT and switch device management. Also covered are rules for a Meraki network – example given was a simple block of bit torrents, which are files that are truly detrimental to any and all networks. Finally, the Cisco webinar covered environmental sensors and video cameras. Meraki is very advanced with these last two areas. Network administrators can monitor video cameras and sensors in real-time because they too are networked via IP and connected within the Meraki environment. The video management is highly detailed and advanced. There is no need for additional storage nor is there a need for video software to watch the videos, given that the videos are viewed within the Meraki interface (they can be shared or exported from there if needed). And sensors such as temperature controls can be remotely configured and monitored as well.

This is the link to the Meraki webinar:

SonicWall 802.11ac WiFi Access Points

SonicWall SonicWave 802.11ac [Wave 2] access points target multiple market types: retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, transportation, government & financial institutions, construction, and transportation. These versatile APs [access points] go above and beyond the usual offerings, with their security radio scanner, Capture Security Center and WCM or WiFi Cloud Manager capabilities.

SonicWall Stacked Wave 2 AP

Some stand out SonicWall Wave 2 AP feature details:

  • Assist with HIPAA & PCI compliance to protect customer or patient data
  • Can power on IP phones in hotel rooms
  • Monitor networks in real-time, complete with audit logs
  • Mesh technology for easy WiFi expansion
  • Capture ATP-driven “Deep Memory Inspection” of traffic
  • Ruggedized outdoor APs with solid “IP67” ratings for harsh weather

Read all about the SonicWall Wave 2 APs

USB4 Clocking in at 40 Gbps

This “PC World” and other USB4 related stories are emphasizing the upcoming USB4 spec compatibility, so to speak, with Thunderbolt. While this is understandable, given that its port can be used by devices of both protocols, I cannot get enough of the bandwidth that USB4 promises! 40 Gbps is outrageously fast!

Although this is actually equivalent to the bandwidth or data transfer rate of Thunderbolt, remember that this is USB we are referring to! USB 2.0 speeds clocked in at around 480 Mbps. So … this is incredible progress. Unfortunately, the USB4 spec will not be officially in effect at stores until about 2020.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3347403/the-new-usb4-spec-promises-a-lot-thunderbolt-3-support-40gbps-bandwidth-and-less-confusion.html

Chrome Not Working With Latest Windows 10 Update?

Chrome and the latest Windows 10 April Update have a very big issue together, considering the millions of PCs running Windows 10 AND Chrome worldwide. Chrome will not open up SSL based sites after the latest April Windows 10 update [1803]. Some are pointing to the CryptSvc [Windows certificates service] as the cause of the issue or creating a conflict with Chrome. Going over the various sites covering this issue, it is clear that a viable solution has not been found. Consumers and businesses end up reformatting drives or reinstalling Windows 10 fresh without the latest version update [1803], or worse, chasing false hopes such as “uninstall your anti virus” [that is not the issue and a poor decision] or “stop the CryptSvc” [very bad, and wrong, idea].

Windows 10 April Update – Chrome now just “Establishing secure connection..”

The secure connection problem points to TLS or HTTPS or even the new ‘QUIC’ technology perhaps? This is just intuition at this point, but I would guess that QUIC is involved – it is a Google creation that ties in with data transport, and the symptoms point to it as a possible culprit that does not play nice with the latest Windows 10 update.

QUIC is a new transport which reduces latency compared to that of TCP. On the surface, QUIC is very similar to TCP+TLS+HTTP/2 implemented on UDP. Because TCP is implemented in operating system kernels, and middlebox firmware, making significant changes to TCP is next to impossible. However, since QUIC is built on top of UDP, it suffers from no such limitations.

https://www.chromium.org/quic