Archives for October 2022

Happy Thursday! The talk of the town lately seems to be the growing sport of pickleball. As we shared in the news section yesterday, it’s the fastest-growing sport in the world. Are you a pickleball fan? Do you enjoy watching or playing…or both?!

In This Issue: 1,000 Little Things | CAT6A Ethernet Patch Cable | All Wireless Standards are NOT Created Equal | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – 1,000 Little Things

Happy Thursday!

Whew, it has been a crazy week working on the new CK website. Craig (our CEO) has a saying…” 1,000 little things”. I feel like we are at the point where there are a thousand little things left to do, but all those little things add up to some awesome big things for the site. It really is exciting to see the site come together. There will be tons of new features for all our customers, a whole new design, and all the “bells and whistles” to help me and the team manage the site more easily to bring y’all some pretty cool stuff. It is going to be awesome! Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the site launch. If you would like to be involved in the beta launch reply and let me know.

Last weekend was a weekend of “1,000 little things” for me personally too. That to-do list seems to get longer and longer every week. I cross off one thing and two more things pop up. LOL! BUT…one awesome thing from last weekend was the 5k race that I mentioned last week in my email. It was pretty cold that morning, but I think that might have helped me. I came in 1st in my age group and 3rd overall out of a little over 100 racers. I also had my best 5k time in a long time at 23:55. That was pretty cool! Now, on to training for the half-marathon on Thanksgiving Day.

I hope each of you has a great rest of the week and weekend!

Jason

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Product Spotlights & Updates

We just saved you a ton of time and made managing your network cabling much easier! Introducing our EASYboot ethernet patch cables. These Snagless Cat6a patch cords have skinnier cable boots to make it easier to connect and disconnect the cable and prevent the cable from catching when pulled through tight spaces. Built to last, our high-quality Ethernet cables are pure copper for maximum throughput and reliability. Individually bagged and labeled in retail packaging, these Cat6 cables are easy to store and the length and type are easily identifiable.

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Learning Center Article – All Wireless Standards are NOT Created Equal

Everything is wireless these days so upgrading your Wi-Fi hardware is critical to future-proofing your network. When the time for new components is at hand, it is important to select the products that fully support your communication and data transfer needs. From fiber cabling to Wi-Fi routers, the choices abound and each one can have a direct impact on your overall network performance. Despite very similar nomenclature, the varying forms of 802.11 are all quite different.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• NATO is rushing equipment to Ukraine as troops are preparing to hunker down for the winter.
• NASA released an image of newly formed stars from the James Webb Space Telescope. The image captures nascent, bright-red stars within a billowing cloud of gas and dust at an iconic stellar birthplace known as “The Pillars of Creation.”
• James A. McDivitt, who served as commander in two pivotal NASA missions in the early, awe-inspiring days of spaceflight — including the Gemini launch that featured the first American spacewalk — died Oct. 14 at a hospital in Tucson. He was 93.
• Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant is the latest celebrity athlete taking his love of pickleball big league. The NBA All-Star and his business partner Rich Kleiman announced that their firm, Thirty-Five Ventures (35V), has purchased Major League Pickleball’s newest expansion team.

Happy Wednesday! I’m not sure about you but this week has been busy. With gearing up for wrapping up the year and kicking off the new year, there’s a lot to do! Cheers to a full pot of coffee in the office this morning!

In This Issue: Senior Festivities | Cisco Aironet 1040/1140/1250 Series Power Injector | Single Mode vs Multimode Fiber Cables | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Senior Festivities

Happy Wednesday!

This week is bittersweet. It’s senior week for my little brother! His school has done all kinds of things this week to celebrate his accomplishments throughout his 4 years of high school. My parents even got the opportunity to decorate his football locker with photos of when he was little to remind him how far he’s come. It’s been fun checking in with him every day to see what the surprise of the day has been and how he’s feeling about the reality of actually (and finally) being a senior!

We will wrap up the week this week at his football game on Friday by walking him across the field to recognize his effort and the hard work he’s put in for his team. I’m sure there will be several tears but also big smiles for what’s to come for him.

It is such an honor to be his big sister and one of his biggest cheerleaders in life. Here’s to a win on Friday night!

Ashley

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Product Spotlights & Updates

Power Injectors are a great budget-friendly solution to power up and connect access points that are run off of non-PoE switches with an ethernet cable. Power Injectors also remove the cumbersome and sometimes cost-prohibitive task of installing electrical outlets to power up access points. The AIR-PWRINJ4 converts 100 to 240 volts AC into 56 volts DC that can then be injected into a Cat 5 ethernet cable to power an access point.

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Learning Center Article – Single Mode vs Multimode Fiber Cables

Fiber optics are essential for building the most capable networks, but when making design choices, there are plenty of options that serve fiber optics in general. One of the primary choices available to any network engineer exists between single-mode fiber and multimode fiber.

These are physically different approaches to fiber optics communication, and as such, they offer different strengths and weaknesses. To effectively choose the right design for your network, it helps to have a better understanding of what separates these types of cables.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Tens of thousands of civilians and Russian-appointed officials are being moved out of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region ahead of a Ukrainian offensive. Vladimir Saldo said all Russian-appointed departments and ministries would cross the Dnieper river. Ukraine has called on residents to ignore the Russian move.
• The Internal Revenue Service has released dozens of inflation adjustments affecting individual income tax brackets, deductions and credits for 2023.
• Netflix beat third-quarter expectations on the top and bottom lines. The company said it added 2.41 million net subscribers during the quarter, higher than the 1 million it had forecast. Netflix will begin to crack down on password sharing next year.
• Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, with over 4.8 million people playing the game. However, its rapid growth has caused some growing pains, stemming from competing professional leagues, managing hundreds of tournaments, a lack of courts to meet demand and channeling the flood of investments. By 2030, pickleball is projected to attract an estimated 40 million players across the globe, with even more investors jumping in looking to cash in on the craze.

Cupcake fans, today is your day! It’s National Chocolate Cupcake Day! Stop by your local bakery and grab your favorite chocolate cupcake. 🧁

In This Issue: A Good Weekend for the Soul | HPE Aruba 2530 Series Switch | How to Choose Ethernet Cables for Gaming | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – A Good Weekend for the Soul

Good Morning & Happy Tuesday! It was a great weekend around here as I got to watch one of my childhood friends get married on Friday evening! The wedding was in Atlanta which, if I’m being honest, is one of my least favorite places to drive to. The traffic is horrendous and just thinking about having to drive around there gives me anxiety, but it was totally worth the drive as the wedding was incredibly beautiful! She was a glowing bride and the night was picture-perfect. We spent a lot of time reminiscing and I got to catch up with many of her family members who I hadn’t seen in a while. It was a great time and was so good for the soul!

Now I’m looking forward to putting in a solid week of getting stuff done before I head out on vacation next week! We’re heading to Hilton Head Island for a little family vacation which should be a lot of fun! My nephew came with us last year and he was truly living his best life. He’s joining again this year and I’m hopeful that he has just as much fun!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Rebecca

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The Aruba 2530 Series of switches was designed to offer cost-effective, reliable, and secure access layer connectivity for a wide range of uses from enterprise, to branch offices and small to mid-sized businesses. These easy-to-deploy switches feature an energy-efficient design that lowers power consumption for greater energy savings. These rackmount switches come in a wide variety of options including 8, 24, and 48 port models, PoE+ options, Gigabit and Fast Ethernet models as well as compact and fanless models. They are easy to deploy and manage using Aruba AirWave or Aruba Central with Zero Touch Provisioning.

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Learning Center Article – How to Choose Ethernet Cables for Gaming

It’s good that you are looking at Ethernet internet options. As a gamer, you likely understand the horror of laggy games. When it comes to home networks and gaming, latency is a huge deal and can make or break your whole experience – and in the game, whether you live, die, or succeed. Latency is always with us; it’s just a matter of how significant it is. Wi-Fi simply isn’t as stable as Ethernet, and it leads to slower effective experiences due to higher chances of interference. Slow internet speeds can ruin the entire game, so you want something that can keep up. At the same time, you don’t want to spend a life’s fortune just on cables.

The good news is that Ethernet has a lot of options for you these days. From Cat5 to Cat8 cables, there is an option out there that matches the performance you want without committing you to too much money out of your pocket.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Kodiak Robotics and IKEA announced a pilot program in Texas. Trucks equipped with Kodiak’s self-driving system will make daily deliveries from a warehouse near Houston to an IKEA store near Dallas. Kodiak has been operating self-driving trucks in Texas since 2019.
• Microsoft has laid off employees across multiple divisions making it the latest big player in the tech space to cut jobs in the face of an economic downturn.
• After 170 days in orbit, NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti safely splashed down Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, completing the agency’s fourth commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and astronauts.
• Apple is expected to unveil new iPad Pro tablets with its M2 chip in the next few days.

Do you remember the day you got your new computer and the desktop was clean and organized? The trash file was completely empty and the files on your computer were the ones from the manufacturer. Today is Clean your Virtual Desktop Day – the perfect day to clear out any old files, sort your files into folders and keep your computer running smoothly!

In This Issue: Fall Craft Projects | Cisco 10GBase-SR SFP+ Modules | 8 Steps to Set up a Network Disaster Recovery Plan | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Fall Craft Projects

Happy Monday!

I enjoyed another Fall weekend and was able to get some outdoor chores done. I encouraged my daughters to collect some sticks and acorns for a little crafting project we’ll be starting next week.

We discovered this very intriguing artist while watching random youtube videos. His name is David M Bird, and he’s created Becorns, woodland creatures crafted from acorns and other natural materials. He’s pretty creative and I encourage you to check out his work! We’re going to “attempt” and that’s a very charitable word to create Becorns of our own, I think it will be a fun crafting project. Wish us luck!

I’m trying to draw my daughters away from too much time with electronics. Do you have any fun and successful crafting projects you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about them! Have a great week!

Cris

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The Cisco SFP-10G-SR module gives you a wide variety of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options for your data center, enterprise wiring closet, and service provider transport applications. The SFP-10G module boasts a variety of features and benefits, including being the industry’s smallest form factor, which results in the greatest density per chassis. The SFP-10G-SR is hot-swappable and can be switched out with ease. Cisco 10GBase-SR SFP+ modules also feature Digital Optical Monitoring (DOM) functionality, which allows you to monitor the signal strength, the temperature of the SFP, and the transceiver voltage.

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Learning Center Article – 8 Steps to Set up a Network Disaster Recovery Plan

Surely, your business has IT resources. Whether you run everything internally, hire external firms to manage IT for you, or use some combination of the two, you have access to IT experts when you need them.

That’s good because you do in fact need them.

Many businesses overlook network disaster recovery planning to their own detriment. Network downtime can be devastatingly expensive to any business. When you have a recovery plan, you can minimize that downtime and any associated fallout.

Building a recovery plan for your business will take careful planning and effort, but it’s more approachable than you might think. You can distill the entire process down to just eight essential steps.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Mastercard is launching a program to let financial institutions offer cryptocurrency trading to their clients.
• Shares of South Korea’s top messaging app fell Monday after a major data center outage over the weekend disrupted service for more than 53 million users worldwide. KakaoTalk is not only South Korea’s top messaging app, but it is also heavily relied on for everything ranging from online payments, gaming, and ride-hailing as well as log-in verification for other major websites.
• Medieval Times filed a suit claiming that its employees’ union is infringing on its trademark. The company says Medieval Times Performers United and its branding are confusingly similar to the dinner-and-show venue.
• The NFL still hasn’t picked a winner in its Sunday Ticket negotiations. Apple’s discussions for the package are complicated by existing restrictions for the package. The tech giant wants to partner with sports leagues rather than act as a standard rental conduit for broadcast rights

Today might just be the best Friday in a while – it’s National Dessert Day! Head on over to your favorite bakery, grandma’s house, or turn on the oven at your house and whip up your favorite dessert. Enjoy!

In This Issue: We need your feedback! | Cisco XENPAK 10 Gigabit Transceiver Module | Basics of Port Mirroring Configuration | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – We need your feedback!

Happy Friday, folks! My family drove through the Great Smoky Mountains this week, and it was a fun drive! We were pleasantly surprised to see how much the leaves had changed colors, and the scenery was beautiful! I hope that you’ll get out and enjoy nature this weekend!

Jason and I have written over the past few months that we are transitioning our website to a new platform (the technical term is eCommerce platform or ECP for short). We are close to being done and would like to have a few of our customers experience the site and provide us with feedback before we go live. If you’d like to be one of the first to experience our new site, reply to this email, or you can reach me directly at [email protected]. I’d love to hear your feedback!

Have a great weekend!

Chris

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The Cisco 10GBASE-SR Module supports a link length of 300 meters on 50 or 62.5-micron OM3 multi-mode fiber or 400 meters on OM4. Hot-swappable input/output device plugs into an Ethernet XENPAK port of a Cisco switch or router to link the port with the network.

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Learning Center Article – Basics of Port Mirroring Configuration

When you have an important network, it’s a common practice to use some form of network monitoring. This can help you keep an eye on things for better security and network performance.

How do you implement monitoring techniques into a network?

One of the most straightforward methods is to use port mirroring.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Netflix announced that its new ad-supported offering will cost $6.99 in the U.S. when it launches on November 3rd.
• Fats Domino, one of the founders of rock n’ roll will officially have a street in New Orleans renamed in his honor.
• SpaceX and NASA are aiming to undock the Crew Dragon Freedom from the International Space Station today, Oct. 14, at 11:35 a.m. EDT (1535 GMT) to return its four Crew-4 astronauts to Earth. The mission’s departure has been delayed two days due to bad weather at the Dragon’s splashdown site off the coast of Florida. NASA’s live webcast of undocking will begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
• Climate activists have thrown tins of what appears to be tomato soup over a Van Gogh painting of sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. Footage showed two people in Just Stop Oil T-shirts opening tins and throwing the contents on the masterpiece before gluing their hands to the wall. The gallery said the painting was covered by glass and therefore not damaged.

Happy Thursday & Happy Train your Brain Day! Today calls from some puzzles, brain games, and riddles to keep our minds in tip-top shape! Wordle anyone?

In This Issue: Community Creates Change | Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch | What is switch stacking & Why is it important? | News to Start Your Day

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The CK Daily – Community Creates Change

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Almost a year ago, a neighbor and I had a discussion and came up with a vision for starting a running club in our neighborhood. We had just met, while we were running separately one day, but we both really wanted to create a group for people who had the same passion and love of running that we did. A place where we could share tips, encourage and challenge each other, hold each other accountable, and help each other with our running and health, no matter the running level. A place where everyone felt comfortable to share whatever was on their mind running and health-wise; and ask for help or share help with others.

It is a bit wild to think about and write about the vision for the group above and see where the running club is now in just eight short months. What started with just two of us has grown to about 30 people from all walks of life, ages, backgrounds, running levels, and health levels. The encouragement that everyone gives to each other in the group cheering them on to overcome fears, issues, and mental roadblocks has been amazing. The group really has become a community within a community. It has been a blast and joy watching people smash their goals for running and health. One lady had “never run in her life”, and now she is able to run a 10k in an hour and just signed up for her very first half marathon. A guy in the group has dropped 25 pounds since he joined the group and started running. The community has created an environment where change can happen through support, encouragement, and accountability.

All of this has been on my mind over the last week as we head into another group race this weekend, a Zombie 5k. Several in the group have never run a race before. It’s going to be fun, but even more than that, it has been awesome watching the people in the community grow.

Hope you have an awesome weekend!

Jason

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Product Spotlights & Updates

The WS-C3560CX-8PC-S is part of the Cisco Catalyst Compact Switch family built to expand Ethernet infrastructure outside of your network closet. Virtually silent (Fanless) switches can be mounted on the wall, under desks, in tight spaces, or anywhere they are needed. Unlike hubs or unmanaged switches, the 3560CX series switches provide advanced security and networking features for flexibility and scalability.

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Learning Center Article – What is Switch Stacking & Why is it Important?

There are countless ways to design a network and meet the criteria it needs to follow. Not all of these methods will be as efficient or affordable as others. That’s why network administrators are constantly learning new concepts.

Switch stacking is commonly used in high-end networking, but many small and medium businesses are missing out on the technique. Taking a minute to learn more about it could reveal a better way to run your network that saves time and money while improving network functionality.

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Today’s News to Start Your Day:

• Microsoft is launching a simple graphic design app called Designer that will be available for free and as part of Office productivity software subscriptions
• The price of Bitcoin has edged higher by about 0.4% and was trading at $19,072.00, while Ether rose 0.6% to $1,290.73.
• Nikola agreed in August to acquire battery-pack maker Romeo Power for $144 million in stock. At least half of Romeo Power shares had to be “tendered” to complete the deal. Nikola said that just enough Romeo Power shares were tendered and the deal will now close.
• The Waterbury jury unanimously determined Wednesday that Alex Jones will have to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to Sandy Hook families.