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Category Archives for "Networking"

Heavy Networking 423: Introducing Heavy Networking

Today's episode introduces Heavy Networking, a rebrand of the Packet Pushers' Weekly Show. We've renamed this podcast to better reflect its deep dive into networking technology and skills, and better differentiate it from other infrastructure shows in our podcast network. We also dive into key trends that will impact your career.

The post Heavy Networking 423: Introducing Heavy Networking appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Oculeus anti-fraud offering protects against telecom system abuse

When most enterprise companies worry about having their systems hacked by attackers, the main concern is for the enterprise networks. Few companies consider that their phone systems may be vulnerable to hacking resulting in costly toll fraud. Nevertheless, the practice of hacking into corporate PBX systems and injecting fraudulent calls over the network is causing billions of dollars in damage worldwide every year.Enterprise companies use modern PBX (private branch exchange) systems to run their communications. A PBX switches calls between enterprise users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. Modern PBX systems work on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video, and messaging applications.To read this article in full, please click here

Oculeus anti-fraud offering protects against telecom system abuse

When most enterprise companies worry about having their systems hacked by attackers, the main concern is for the enterprise networks. Few companies consider that their phone systems may be vulnerable to hacking resulting in costly toll fraud. Nevertheless, the practice of hacking into corporate PBX systems and injecting fraudulent calls over the network is causing billions of dollars in damage worldwide every year.Enterprise companies use modern PBX (private branch exchange) systems to run their communications. A PBX switches calls between enterprise users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. Modern PBX systems work on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video, and messaging applications.To read this article in full, please click here

Why Would Cisco Buy Luxtera ?

Cisco announced it is buying Luxtera for $660M.  Luxtera make SFP modules for Ethernet switches including the critical laser components.  Interesting Things Just before the Christmas break when fewer people are watching. Background of US/China trade problems Cisco get control of part of the supply chain Silicon photonics is about using existing silicon manufacturing processes […]

The post Why Would Cisco Buy Luxtera ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

Orange Matter: Automation Paralysis

Orange Matter Logo

I’ve been blogging for Solarwinds recently, posting on Orange Matter, with a cross-post to the Thwack Geek Speak forum. This post examines how it’s easy to get so focused on automating the small stuff we have difficulty turning that into the more cohesive automation solution that we’d like to have.

This post appeared on Orange Matter as “Automation Paralysis: Why We Get Stuck Automating The Small Stuff“, but I’m also linking to the version posted on Thwack, mainly because that format allowed me to use more images and be slightly more irreverent. Irreverent? Moi? Of course.

Automation Paralysis

I’d love it if you were to take a moment to visit and read, and maybe even comment!

If you liked this post, please do click through to the source at Orange Matter: Automation Paralysis and give me a share/like. Thank you!

Get IoT Smart: Homework for Many Indonesians

Today’s guest post is from Bhredipta Socarana, an Intellectual Property lawyer based in Indonesia and a Youth@IGF Fellow.

As one of the most populated countries, Indonesia has grown as one of the biggest markets for technology development. From the import of various over-the-top platforms to the implementation of Artificial Intelligence, technology has changed the Indonesian livelihood, including my own. This is also the case for Internet of Things (IoT).

As an emerging country, Indonesia admittedly has not been an advance player in responding to technology improvement. Despite the heavy invasion of technology-related products, many Indonesians have homework to do, especially for IoT. The business player needs to be aware of the responsibility of manufacturing and distributing IoT, while the public must also be aware of the various risks that they may be exposed to using IoT products.

Through the rapid development of technology and the intention of the Indonesian government to push the public to enter the “Industrial Revolution 4.0,” it will be mostly impossible to prevent penetration of IoT to our life. This leaves the public with the need to get smart with IoT.

Privacy and cybersecurity are among the issues revolving around IoT, and the need to have a Continue reading

CLOS Topology

Edson Erwin invented this highly scalable and optimized way of connecting network nodes in the 1930s and Charles Clos made the telephone nodes interconnection design using that solution. It was even before we had IP networks. He invented it in order to optimize the architecture of telephony network systems back then. It was not used in IP based network for last few decades but it experienced a big comeback with new datacenter design in the last few years. It was first invented only for scalability requirements that it solved beautifully. In new datacenter design, CLOS topology of interconnecting network devices scalability

The post CLOS Topology appeared first on How Does Internet Work.

Firewall Ruleset Automation with CI Pipeline

One of my readers sent me a description of their automation system that manages firewall rulesets on Fortigate firewalls using NAPALM to manage device configurations.

In his own words:

We are now managing thousands of address objects, services and firewall policies using David Barroso’s FortiOS Napalm module. This works very well and with a few caveats (such as finding a way to enforce the ordering of firewall policies) we are able to manage all the configuration of our firewalls from a single Ansible playbook.

The did the right thing and implemented an abstracted data model using GitOps to manage it:

Read more ...

No Time Like the Present for Network Automation

The time has come for IT to once again dive into the world of homegrown automation for running their networks.

Network teams have a love/hate relationship with automation, and have had for decades. Time after time, they have tentatively extended the reach of automation, working with everything from PERL scripts, CLIs, and screen scrapes to Python and proper APIs in an effort to reduce the tedium of managing the enterprise campus, WAN, and data center networks. When network teams find ways to waste less time on rote work, they make IT more responsive.

Time after time, though, something goes wrong with the cobbled together systems. Soon, rolling back and correcting mistakes or nursing along the automation as platforms and environments evolve takes more time and effort than is ultimately saved by using it. IT folks pull back and wait for better circumstances, tools, and platforms. Eventually they get some of what they want via new consoles and management tools that hide within them some of the automation IT sought. Then the cycle starts up anew.

Now, the confluence of several trends in IT has made it clear that it is automation time again. First and foremost, the focus on digital Continue reading

Blending into software infrastructure


Electronic networks existed long before electronic compute and storage.   Early on, the network was simple wires and switch boards, and the endpoints were humans.  Telegraphs transcoded taps into on/off voltage on the wire and back to audible clicks.   Telephones transcoded voice into amplitude modulated voltage and back to voice. 

Since then, the network has existed as a unique entity apart from the things it connected.  Until now.  

Less than two decades ago most applications were built in vertical silos.  Each application got its own servers, storage, database and so on.  The only thing applications shared was the network.  The network was the closest thing to a shared resource pool — the original “cloud”.  With increasing digital transformation, other services were also pooled, such as storage and database.  However each application interfaced with these pooled resources and with other applications directly.  Applications had little in common other than Continue reading