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Category Archives for "Networking"

Stop the Network-Based Application Recognition Nonsense

One of my readers sent me an interesting update on the post-QUIC round of NBAR whack-a-mole (TL&DR: everything is better with Bluetooth AI):

Cloudflare (and the other hyperscalers) are full into QUIC, as it gives them lots of E2E control, taking a lot of choice away from the service providers on how they handle traffic and congestion. It is quite well outlined by Geoff Huston in an APNIC podcast.

So far, so good. However, whenever there’s a change, there’s an opportunity for marketing FUD, coming from the usual direction.

Read more …

Lessons from building an automated SDK pipeline

In case you missed the announcement from Developer Week 2024, Cloudflare is now offering software development kits (SDKs) for Typescript, Go and Python. As a reminder, you can get started by installing the packages.

// Typescript
npm install cloudflare

// Go
go get -u github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-go/v2

// Python
pip install --pre cloudflare

Instead of using a tool like curl or Postman to create a new zone in your account, you can use one of the SDKs in a language that you’re already comfortable with or that integrates directly into your existing codebase.

import Cloudflare from 'cloudflare';

const cloudflare = new Cloudflare({
  apiToken: process.env['CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN']
});

const newZone = await cloudflare.zones.create({
  account: { id: '023e105f4ecef8ad9ca31a8372d0c353' },
  name: 'example.com',
  type: 'full',
});

Since their inception, our SDKs have been manually maintained by one or more dedicated individuals. For every product addition or improvement, we needed to orchestrate a series of manually created pull requests to get those changes into customer hands. This, unfortunately, created an imbalance in the frequency and quality of changes that made it into the SDKs. Even though the product teams would drive some of these changes, not all languages were covered and the SDKs Continue reading

CCNA 200-301 Updated To Version 1.1

Cisco is updating the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam to version 1.1. In the past, Cisco only did major updates to their exams. Since then, they have moved to doing more frequent and minor updates, in a more agile fashion. Before going in to the changes, let’s answer some common questions that are covered in Cisco’s FAQ:

    Why is the CCNA being updated?
    Cisco regularly performs reviews of their exams. Exams get updated to clarify exam topics, introduce new ones, and phase out outdated products and solutions.

    What is being added?
    New topics include generative AI, cloud network management, and machine learning.

    When can candidates register for CCNA v1.1?
    Registration begins on August 20, 2024.

    What if I’m already studing for CCNA v1.0?
    Complete your study and take the CCNA v1.0 exam.

    What percentage of the exam is being updated?
    Approximately 10% of the exam is updated.

    When is the last day to test for CCNA v1.0?
    The last day of testing for CCNA v1.0 is August 19, 2024.

    So what is being changed? The different domains and their percentages is not changing. The domains and their percentage remain as:

    BGP EVPN with VXLAN: Fabric Overview

     




    Figure illustrates the simplified operation model of EVPN Fabric. At the bottom of the figure is four devices, Tenant Systems (TS), connected to the network. When speaking about TS, I am referring to physical or virtual hosts. Besides, The Tenant System can be a forwarding component attached to one or more Tenant-specific Virtual Networks. Examples of TS forwarding components include firewalls, load balancers, switches, and routers.

    We have connected TS1 and TS2 to VLAN 10 and TS3-4 to VLAN 20. VLAN 10 is associated with EVPN Instance (EVI) 10010 and VLAN 20 to EVI 10020. Note that VLAN-Id is switch-specific, while EVI is Fabric-wide. Thus, subnet A can have VLAN-Id XX on one Leaf switch and VLAN-Id YY on another. However, we must map both VLAN XX and YY to the same EVPN Instance.

    When a TS connected to the Fabric sends the first Ethernet frame, the Leaf switch stores the source MAC address in the MAC address table, where it is copied to the Layer 2 routing table (L2RIB) of the EVPN Instance. Then, the BGP process of the Leaf switch advertises the MAC address with its reachability information to its BGP EVPN peers, essentially the Spine switches. Continue reading

    Repost: Campus-Wide Wireless Roaming with EVPN

    As a response to my LISP vs EVPN: Mobility in Campus Networks blog post, Route Abel provided interesting real-life details of a large-scale campus wireless testing using EVPN and VXLAN tunnels to a central aggregation point (slightly edited):

    I was arguing for VxLAN EVPN with some of my peers, but I had no direct hands-on knowledge of how it would actually perform and very limited ability to lab it on hardware. My client was considering deploying Campus VxLAN, and they have one of the largest campuses in North America.

    Read more …

    Optimal and Heuristic Approaches to Disjoint Path Routing

    To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. - Henri Poincaré

    Disjoint Path routing problems involve finding multiple paths between a source and a destination pair without any shared components. There are different types of disjoint paths, each with specific requirements. For example, link disjoint paths ensure that the paths do not have any common links, while node disjoint paths guarantee that the paths do not share any common nodes. SRLG disjoint paths are another variation, where the paths do not share any common risk groups.

    These problems are commonly addressed to ensure network reliability, load balancing, and congestion reduction. The first problem we will examine is the MIN-SUM problem, which aims to determine a set of disjoint routes with the lowest overall cost. To solve this issue, we will look at integer linear programming (ILP). Afterwards, we will explore the MIN-SUM problem in the context of networks with shared risk link groups (SRLGs) and present corresponding solutions.

    Basic Disjoint Problem

    Let’s say our problem is to find a simple link disjoint paths between a given source and destination. One of the common ways we hear to do in Continue reading

    Weekend Reads 041924


    Huawei has released details of how it manages its own cloud with a dynamic traffic allocation system optimized by machine learning and developed in response to surging demand for its services during the COVID-19 pandemic.


    A jury has ordered Amazon Web Services to pay $525 million for infringing distributed data storage patents in a case brought by a technology outfit called Kove IO.


    The BBC has just shared another video from its archives, this one showing a report about computer addicts from way back in 1983, when computers were just starting to find their way into the workplace and home.


    Microsoft is currently testing a new way to showcase ads on the Windows 11 Start Menu, and it’s meant to encourage users to download more applications.


    Google announced on Wednesday it will invest $1 billion in two submarine cables to create new routes between the US and Japan.


    While writing about Git, I’ve noticed that a lot of folks struggle with Git’s error messages. I’ve had many years to get used to these error messages so it took me a really long time to understand why folks were confused.


    If the prognosticators at IDC are correct, four years from now     Continue reading

    What is platform engineering and when should you invest in it?

    As application platforms grow larger, the idea of DevOps teams where developers support the software development lifecycle, but also manage infrastructure and the platform, is beginning to reach the limits of what these teams can support. Rather than taking their best application developers and making them work on infrastructure problems, more organizations are coming to the conclusion that a centralized platform team specialized in that area is a better use of their developers’ skill sets. But what exactly is the platform engineering team and how is it different from the DevOps team? Should your organization invest in platform engineering? Let’s take a closer look.

    Platform engineering: What is it and how did it come about?

    Platform engineering is essentially building (selecting/standardizing on), operating, and managing the infrastructure that supports 1st- and 3rd-party applications. In the days before cloud-native application development, what we saw was that there was a central team that provided compute infrastructure for enterprise developers to build and host their applications. At a certain point in time, those developers moved to a microservices-based architecture. They didn’t just need virtual machines or servers where they could run their applications; they were building those applications in a containerized form factor, Continue reading

    HN730: Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing and More Transform Their Branches with Next-Gen SD-WAN and SASE (Sponsored)

    If you haven’t made the leap from traditional wide area networking to SD-WAN, or perhaps you’re thinking about adding security services to your SD-WAN infrastructure, this episode is for you. Rajesh Kari from Palo Alto Networks joins the show to share customer stories from the front lines of multi-branch businesses’ networks. Industry verticals including retail,... Read more »

    Cross compiling Rust — Fixed

    Set up build environment

    rustup toolchain install nightly
rustup component add rust-src --toolchain nightly
apt install {binutils,gcc}-mips-linux-gnu

    Create test project

    cargo new foo
cd foo

    Configure linker

    mkdir .cargo
cat > .cargo/config.toml
[target.mips-unknown-linux-gnu]
linker = "mips-linux-gnu-gcc"
^D

    Build

    cargo +nightly build --release -Zbuild-std --target mips-unknown-linux-gnu

    Change the “interpreter” to what the Ubiquiti system expects

    cd target/mips-unknown-linux-gnu/release
patchelf --remove-needed ld.so.1 foo
patchelf --set-interpreter /lib/ld-musl-mips-sf.so.1 foo

    Does it work?

    $ ./foo
Hello, world!

    Yay!

    • https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/targets/custom.html
    • https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html

    Meta Llama 3 available on Cloudflare Workers AI

    We are thrilled to give developers around the world the ability to build AI applications with Meta Llama 3 using Workers AI. We are proud to be a launch partner with Meta for their newest 8B Llama 3 model, and excited to continue our partnership to bring the best of open-source models to our inference platform.

    Workers AI

    Workers AI’s initial launch in beta included support for Llama 2, as it was one of the most requested open source models from the developer community. Since that initial launch, we’ve seen developers build all kinds of innovative applications including knowledge sharing chatbots, creative content generation, and automation for various workflows.  

    At Cloudflare, we know developers want simplicity and flexibility, with the ability to build with multiple AI models while optimizing for accuracy, performance, and cost, among other factors. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for developers to use their models of choice without having to worry about the complexities of hosting or deploying models.

    As soon as we learned about the development of Llama 3 from our partners at Meta, we knew developers would want to start building with it as quickly as possible. Continue reading

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