Russ

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Worth Reading: Net Neutrality

‘Neutrality’ has an evil twin, namely ‘discrimination’. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the intentional and operational semantics of broadband. Neither concept is a term of the art of performance engineering or computer science. No packet networks have ever been ‘neutral’, and none ever will be. No scheduling algorithm is ‘(non-)discriminatory’. The assumed intentionality of random processes is false. The idea of ‘defending’ neutrality is thus a pure intellectual nonsense. via circleid

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Worth Reading: Connecting the next billion users

Internet access is still a mirage to most in the developing world, let alone broadband. A lot of statistics are thrown around on the number of users with access to Internet. For Example Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) pegs the numbers at 14 million Internet subscribers and 22 million internet users against a population of 41 million. This translates to 34% internet subscribers and 54% internet users over an African average of 19% Internet users according to ITU. via circleid

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Initial Thoughts: BroadView

On a technical level, BroadView is a collection of open-source software, plugins to multiple ecosystem projects (such as OpenDaylight and OpenStack), and documentation. It offers programmable access to the internal workings of switching architecture for enhanced network control tasks such as monitoring, congestion control and advanced troubleshooting. via broadcom

What’s interesting about this “product,” produced by Broadcom, is they are open source. We tend to think software will eat the world, but when something like this comes out in the open source space, it makes me think that if software eats the world, profit is going to take a long nosedive into nothingness. From Broadcom’s perspective this makes sense, of course; any box you buy that has a Broadcom chipset, no matter who wrapped the sheet metal around the chipset, will have some new added capability in terms of understanding the traffic flow through the network. Does this sort of thing take something essential away from the vendors who are building their products based on Broadcom, however? It seems the possibility is definitely there, but it’s going to take a lot deeper dive than what’s provided in the post above to really understand. If these interfaces are exposed simply through Continue reading

Worth Reading: Smarter than our tech

It’s fine to be a gamer or a social media enthusiast, but if you need a smart watch to tell you when it’s time to get up and walk around so you don’t end up with a pulmonary embolism, something’s very wrong. … The smarter technology becomes, the smarter we need to become – not so much to know how and when to use it, but to know how and when not to use it. via Fox

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Reaction: Anonymity isn’t a bug

Despite the bad rap it sometimes gets, anonymity – and anonymity technology – is used all the time by everyday people. Think about it: just walking in a park without being recorded or observed or “going off the grid” are common examples of people seeking to disconnect their identity from their activities. via the center for democracy and technology

The problem with anonymity and the modern Internet is we tend to think of being anonymous as either “on” or “off” all the time. The only real reason we can think of to want to be anonymous is to do something evil, to hurt someone, to steal something, or to do something else considered anti-social or wrong.

But there’s a problem with this thinking — it’s much like pitting “the rich” against “the poor,” or any other time bound classification. There are times when I want to be anonymous, and there are times when I don’t care. It’s not a matter of doing that which is nefarious. It’s more about expressing opinions you know people won’t agree with, but which the expression of could cause you material harm, or about being able to investigate something without telling anyone about the situation. Continue reading

Castle versus Cannon: It’s time to rethink security

P1120249In case you’re confused about the modern state of security, let me give you a short lesson.

Your network is pictured to the left. When I first started working on networks in the USAF we were just starting to build well designed DMZs, sort of a gate system for the modern network. “Firewalls” (a term I’m coming to dislike immensely), guard routers, VPN concentrators, and other systems were designed to keep your network from being “penetrated.” Standing at the front gate you’ll find a few folks wearing armor and carrying swords, responsible for letting only the right people inside the walls — policies, and perhaps even an IDS or two.

The world lived with castles for a long time — thousands of years, to be precise. In fact, the pride of the Roman Legion really wasn’t the short sword and battle formation, it was their ability to work in concrete. Certainly they had swords, but they could also build roads and walls, as evidenced by the Roman style fortifications dotting the entire world.

But we don’t live inside concrete walls any longer. Instead, our armies today move on small and large vehicles, defending territory through measure and countermeasure. They gather Continue reading

QOTW: Ignorance

Contrary to folk wisdom, ignorance is usually not blissful. Generally, it produces the very opposite of bliss. Just ask the frightened hiker lost in some remote mountain blizzard who never paid attention to his Boy Scout instruction; or ask the new employee who never did her math homework, frantically trying to figure out the correct change for customers; or, worse yet, ask the frustrated and annoyed patrons waiting in the ever-increasing line as this new employee bumbles one purchase after another.
Phillip Dow, Virtuous Minds

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Worth Reading: The Cryptech Project

The Snowden and subsequent revelations have called into question the integrity of some of the implementations of basic cryptographic functions and of the cryptographic devices used to secure applications and communications on the Internet. There are serious questions about algorithms and about implementations of those algorithms in software and particularly in hardware. … To fill this need the CrypTech project is developing an open-source hardware cryptographic engine design that meets the needs of high assurance Internet infrastructure systems that use cryptography. via the cryptech project

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Worth Reading: The ‘net is the real world

How much time have I wasted decrying the many hours a day a billion people waste on Facebook? How could I have been so wrong? How could I have not seen it? Facebook (FB) is the real world now. Our wives are all beautiful, our husbands brilliant, our children talented, our pets hilarious, and our home lives one impeccably framed picture after another. via fox business

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Reaction: Thoughts on Certifications

Should you stack up certifications, or should you learn something new? To put the question a different way: should Ethan get his CCDE? This week a couple of posts filtered through to my RSS feed that seem worth responding to on the certification front. Let’s begin with the second question first. This week, Ethan posted:

I’ve already achieved what I personally wanted to with the CCIE program. There is no doubt the certification changed my life, but I’m heading places now that the CCIE can’t take me. The CCDE program is still interesting to me, but I find the focus on service provider and very large enterprise technologies a disadvantage for me. Lots of work to get through the study, and I lack sufficient motivation to make a go of it right now. I still believe it’s a great program. Maybe I’ll get back to it someday.

I think the first part of Ethan’s argument is valid and correct: there comes a point you’ve wrung the value out of a certification (or certification path), and it’s time to move on. But how can you judge when that time has come? My thinking is based around this chart, taken from one Continue reading

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