IWL's Expert Insights on Network Emulation and Protocol Testing
Does Apple's Mac Mini Have a 2.5G Ethernet Bug?
The newest Mac Minis with 10 G network interface cards have a problem when operating at 2.5 G. After several tests it became clear that the bursts of loss occurred only when the Mac Mini was running its copper network interface at 2.5Gbits/second. And only with Zoom …
Network Slowdown, by Design
How are you measuring your network’s performance? One can have a very fast network, but get very little throughput, with very high perceived delays…If you are using a tool, such as iperf, to measure throughput, the results can be quite deceptive. That's because iperf displays effective throughput of data at the transport layer, and thus masks what is actually going on underneath …
Log4j Vulnerability
IWL Products are NOT Affected by Log4j Vulnerability, disclosed by Apache. Log4j allows attackers to execute code remotely on a target computer, meaning that they can steal data, install malware or take control …
New IoT Cyber Law
On December 4th, the President of the U.S. signed the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020, which directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines on the use and management of internet of things devices by federal agencies and to develop guidance on vulnerability disclosure and the resolution of disclosed vulnerabilities…
Use IWL TCP Test Suite to Avoid CERT Security Advisories
ICS-CERT (Industrial Control System – Computer Emergency Response Team) is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Recently CERT issued two Advisories concerning TCP/IP implementation flaws that have existed for years, perhaps decades and are now being found in embedded systems …
T-Mobile Advised to Stop Claims About 5G Reliability
"T-Mobile can keep telling consumers that its 5G service is faster than 4G and offers more coverage than rivals' 5G, but the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs recommends that it stop claims that its 5G network is more reliable than competitors’ 4G or 5G networks." …
Are You Being Misled by Network Speed Tests? The Reality Might Surprise You!
Many "Speed Test" tools available on the Internet are easily run in a web browser. Should you trust those tools?
Not really. The popular speed testing tools provide a very narrow and limited measure of network "speed". It is quite possible that a network that is rated as "fast" could actually deliver poor results to many applications …
Diagnosing SIP Issues - Hints & Tips
A SonicWall user recently came to us for help; the user felt the problem was within SIP and UDP. Here are some thoughts and ideas we provided to help him with his SIP diagnosis.
SIP is a somewhat troublesome protocol. The basic SIP transactions flow with a well known UDP port number. That makes it relatively easy for a firewall to allow (or disallow) the SIP protocol itself …
A Holistic View of Network Emulation
We read Damien Garros' blog post -- Introduction to Network Emulation and Requirements for Virtual Network Devices with great interest as Mr. Garros takes an unusual view of networking. Our thoughts and comments follow …
Keynote at NANOG 77 by CTO Karl Auerbach
IWL Chief Technical Officer Karl Auerbach delivered the Keynote speech at NANOG 77 in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, October 29, 2019
“Network Operations On A Public Utility Internet” ...
Deeper Implications of the Great PG&E Outage
It was 11:10pm on the night of October 9, 2019. Here along the Monterey Bay the weather was calm, cool, and a bit damp. The lights were on, the internet was working, the car was charging; everything was normal.
At 11:11pm things suddenly changed…
New Tesla Supercharger at IWL Scotts Valley
IWL has its offices at the Kings Village Center in Scotts Valley, California. This morning we noticed construction in the parking lot. A bit of inquiring revealed that Tesla is installing a new Supercharging station here in the Kings Village Center of Scotts Valley. Rumor is that it is one of the new Level 3 designs…