IoT devices seem to be ubiquitous, but the truth is we’re not nearly there yet. In fact, IoT Analytics continues to predict steady growth as the future for IoT for years to come, with more than 27 billion devices online by 2025. They’re not alone in their bullish IoT predictions either. MarketsAndMarkets projects the global IoT market will more than double from 2021 to 2026, growing from just over $300 billion to over $650 billion.

Asymmetric routing is a situation in which packets take one path to go from source to destination, but replies take a different path to return. Notice I called it a “situation” and not an “issue”? That’s because it’s not always a problem. It only becomes a problem where there’s something stateful in the path, like a NAT device or a firewall.

Digital demands from students and staff to keep pace with modern education methods has put a lot of pressure on IT operations. Consistently delivering quality service for all is a tall order. Technology advancements, IoT proliferation, device demand, lower cost, and ease of wireless access means supporting all the things is the job facing education network administrators.

From smart lighting, to waste management, to air quality, IoT devices and other “smart city technologies” are rapidly changing life in urban areas. And with a recent MarketsandMarkets research report projecting spending in the market for smart city solutions will nearly double to over $873 billion by 2026, the trend is only set to accelerate.

In IT, we tend to think of threats as external. Hackers, scammers, bots, and DDoS attacks are all external in origin. But surprisingly, insider risk is often one of the biggest network security challenges facing IT. As they say, sometimes it’s the ones closest to you that can hurt you the most.

The EdTech space is evolving at a rapid pace. In addition to a drastic increase in remote learning, a wide range of new technologies and platforms are making their way into physical and virtual classrooms across the globe. However, discussions about trends in educational technology tend to overlook how they affect (and are affected by) the network. We’re here to do something about that.

Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is a software overlay that decouples WAN configuration and management from the underlying network transport medium (5G/LTE, MPLS, xDSL, etc) and dynamically routes WAN traffic. To the uninitiated, that’s a mouthful. But it’s one of the most interesting trends of the last few years. Let’s jump on the bandwagon! Time for a primer on SD-WAN, why it matters, and where it’s heading now and into the future.

News over the last few years has been thick with reports of major data breaches on corporate network infrastructure. In the cases of the Panama Papers, the OPM leak, and the Hacking Team leak, the results were catastrophic leaks of extremely confidential information. In truth, a determined and well-resourced attacker can always find a way in.

Having access to all the digital resources you might need, no matter where you are or what sort of network connection you have, has become a way of life for most. Whether you’re a business sharing data with other businesses, or a traveler who needs to stay in touch at all times, access to resources is a given. While applications hosted in the public cloud go a long way towards making location a non-issue, many resources are hosted privately for reasons such as security and privacy.

Unplanned downtime carries a hefty price tag for enterprises. In 2020, critical server outages cost enterprises on average at least $10,000 per hour, with 95% of respondents stating that the cost was $200,000 per hour or more. 40% said that the average cost was closer to $1 million per hour, and 17% lost $5 million or more for every hour offline. Those are some sobering statistics that demonstrate the importance of being prepared for the worst. But you’re thinking, “We back up everything!