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Category Archives for "Networking"

Wi-Fi 6 with OFDMA opens a world of new wireless possibilities

Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, is viewed by many to be game changing, as it’s the first major architectural change to the wireless LAN since its inception. Unlike other standards, which were just faster versions of the previous incarnation, Wi-Fi 6 is built from the ground up to support a world that is hyper-connected over Wi-Fi. To accomplish this, Wi-Fi 6 includes several new features and design enhancements.OFDMA enables more clients to connect to access points Many industry people I have discussed Wi-Fi 6 with believe the most important new feature is something called orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), which allows multiple clients with varying bandwidth requirements to be connected to a single AP simultaneously.To read this article in full, please click here

South Africa Gauteng Community Outreach: Why Community Networks Matter

On 14 December 2018, the young and old people of Mamaila Tribal Authority convened at Wholesale Village in the Limpopo Province in South Africa to learn about community networks (CNs). The workshop, with the theme Why Community Networks Matter, took place at Moratabatho Missionary Church International, and was organized by the Internet Society South Africa Gauteng Chapter and supported by the Beyond the Net Funding Programme. The purpose was to create awareness about community networks as innovative solutions that contribute towards closing the digital divides experienced by communities that lack access to telecommunication infrastructure. The workshop was delivered in partnership with Soweto Wireless User Group (SOWUG) and the Zuri Foundation. Thato Mfikwe, the president of the South Africa Gauteng Chapter, introduced participants to the Internet ecosystem and the opportunities available within the Internet value chain. The presentation by Thato stimulated a conversation with participants curious to know how to:

  • Make money from the Internet, specifically how to monetize their content on YouTube
  • Participate in the Internet ecosystem
  • Contribute to policy making

The session introduced participants to cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts, and the basic infrastructure required for setting up a community network. The presentation created curiosity among Continue reading

Cuba’s New 3G Service, Six Years After ALBA-1

Last month, ETECSA (Cuba’s state telecom) activated national 3G mobile service.  For the first time in the nation’s history, a very modest level of internet service is now available to anyone on the island with a 3G-capable device and the funds to pay for it (i.e., 45cuc per month or almost twice the monthly salary of a Cuban state worker).

The development was announced in a tweet from Cuba’s new president Miguel Díaz-Canel and came almost six years since the activation of the ALBA-1 submarine cable connecting Cuba to the global internet via Venezuela.

The activation of Cuba’s mobile internet service appeared in our Internet Intelligence Map as a dramatic increase in the number of authoritative DNS queries handled by Dyn’s servers, as we tweeted below.

Continue reading

What does ASLR do for Linux?

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a memory-protection process for operating systems that guards against buffer-overflow attacks. It helps to ensure that the memory addresses associated with running processes on systems are not predictable, thus flaws or vulnerabilities associated with these processes will be more difficult to exploit.ASLR is used today on Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems. It was first implemented on Linux in 2005. In 2007, the technique was deployed on Microsoft Windows and MacOS. While ASLR provides the same function on each of these operating systems, it is implemented differently on each one.The effectiveness of ASLR is dependent on the entirety of the address space layout remaining unknown to the attacker. In addition, only executables that are compiled as Position Independent Executable (PIE) programs will be able to claim the maximum protection from ASLR technique because all sections of the code will be loaded at random locations. PIE machine code will execute properly regardless of its absolute address.To read this article in full, please click here

How ASLR protects Linux systems from buffer overflow attacks

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a memory-protection process for operating systems that guards against buffer-overflow attacks. It helps to ensure that the memory addresses associated with running processes on systems are not predictable, thus flaws or vulnerabilities associated with these processes will be more difficult to exploit.ASLR is used today on Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems. It was first implemented on Linux in 2005. In 2007, the technique was deployed on Microsoft Windows and MacOS. While ASLR provides the same function on each of these operating systems, it is implemented differently on each one.The effectiveness of ASLR is dependent on the entirety of the address space layout remaining unknown to the attacker. In addition, only executables that are compiled as Position Independent Executable (PIE) programs will be able to claim the maximum protection from ASLR technique because all sections of the code will be loaded at random locations. PIE machine code will execute properly regardless of its absolute address.To read this article in full, please click here

What does ASLR do for Linux?

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a memory-protection process for operating systems (OSes) that guards against buffer-overflow attacks. It helps to ensure that the memory addresses associated with running processes on systems are not predictable and, thus, flaws or vulnerabilities associated with these processes will be more difficult to exploit. ASLR is used today on Linux, Windows and MacOS systems. It was first implemented on Linux in 2005. In 2007, the technique was deployed on Microsoft Windows and MacOS. While ASLR provides the same function on each of these operating systems, it is implemented differently on each OS.The effectiveness of ASLR is dependent on the entirety of the address space layout remaining unknown to the attacker. In addition, only executables that are compiled as Position Independent Executable (PIE) programs will be able to claim the maximum protection from ASLR technique because all sections of the code will be loaded at random locations. PIE machine code will execute properly regardless of its absolute address.To read this article in full, please click here

How ASLR protects Linux systems from buffer overflow attacks

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a memory-protection process for operating systems that guards against buffer-overflow attacks. It helps to ensure that the memory addresses associated with running processes on systems are not predictable, thus flaws or vulnerabilities associated with these processes will be more difficult to exploit.ASLR is used today on Linux, Windows, and MacOS systems. It was first implemented on Linux in 2005. In 2007, the technique was deployed on Microsoft Windows and MacOS. While ASLR provides the same function on each of these operating systems, it is implemented differently on each one.The effectiveness of ASLR is dependent on the entirety of the address space layout remaining unknown to the attacker. In addition, only executables that are compiled as Position Independent Executable (PIE) programs will be able to claim the maximum protection from ASLR technique because all sections of the code will be loaded at random locations. PIE machine code will execute properly regardless of its absolute address.To read this article in full, please click here

Wi-Fi Mesh: What to know about enterprise mesh networks

Wireless mesh has been around since the early times of Wi-Fi, and it's getting more attention lately in the consumer world. There are mesh systems available from Google, Eero, Linksys, Netgear, and nearly every networking brand that targets homes and small offices. But there are Wi-Fi mesh solutions for the enterprise market as well, and advances in wireless technology have increased the viability of deploying enterprise mesh networks, particularly in settings where it's not practical to run cabling.The idea behind Wi-Fi mesh networks is that not all the access points (AP) have to plug into the wired infrastructure. Those that aren't plugged in get their network connection wirelessly from a nearby mesh AP. Small mesh networks might require only a single mesh AP plugged into the wired network. Larger networks require multiple mesh APs to be plugged into the network to support those that are connected wirelessly.To read this article in full, please click here

NAE: Automation and Time

Time is the enemy of everything in the field of IT. It doesn’t matter whether you are a designer or operator. Time is your sworn enemy.

In all the training and certifications I’ve ever done, all that is missing is a knighting ceremony in which a sword is laid on your shoulders and you’re sworn in to be an enemy of the phenomena.

Time

Time is a speculative investment, time is relative, highly subjective and makes us emotional. It offers us unsolvable yet predictable challenges. We only ever hear "we need more time". Managers demand it and engineers beg for it. Everything costs time and nothing will give us time back. Given that last statement, high return time investments are key.

In software, we’ve moved to agile, which lets us split software releases up in to super tiny chunks. Instead of a huge development cycle followed by huge deployment and troubleshooting window, we’ve moved to a tiny slice model, in which we do a tiny amount of design, a tiny amount of coding and a tiny amount of deployment and troubleshooting. This move allows us to target the highest priorities quicker and target more accurately, which results in appearing to Continue reading

Network Automation Is More than Just Ansible

One of the attendees of my Building Network Automation Solutions online course sent me this suggestion:

Stick to JUST Ansible - no GitHub, Vagrant, Docker or even Python - all of which come with their own significant learning curves.

While I understand how overwhelming the full-blown network automation landscape is to someone who never touched programming, you have to make a hard choice when you decide to start the learning process: do you want to master a single tool, or understand a whole new technology area and be able to select the best tool for the job on as-needed basis.

Read more ...

ICANN housecleaning will revoke old DNS security key this week

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will this week do some important housecleaning from its successful, first-ever cryptographic key change performed last October.In October ICANN rolled out a new, more secure root zone Key Signing Key -2017 (KSK-2017) but the process wasn’t complete as the old key, KSK-2010 remained in the zone. On January 10 ICANN will revoke the old key and remove it from the root zone. The KSK helps protect the internet’s address book – the Domain Name System (DNS) and overall Internet security.To read this article in full, please click here

ICANN housecleaning revokes old DNS security key

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) this week will do some important housecleaning from its successful, first-ever cryptographic key change performed last October.In October, ICANN rolled out a new, more secure root zone Key Signing Key -2017 (KSK-2017), but the process wasn’t complete because the old key, KSK-2010 remained in the zone. On Jan. 10, ICANN will revoke the old key and remove it from the root zone. The KSK helps protect the internet’s address book — the Domain Name System (DNS) and overall Internet security.To read this article in full, please click here

ICANN housecleaning will revoke old DNS security key this week

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will this week do some important housecleaning from its successful, first-ever cryptographic key change performed last October.In October ICANN rolled out a new, more secure root zone Key Signing Key -2017 (KSK-2017) but the process wasn’t complete as the old key, KSK-2010 remained in the zone. On January 10 ICANN will revoke the old key and remove it from the root zone. The KSK helps protect the internet’s address book – the Domain Name System (DNS) and overall Internet security.To read this article in full, please click here

ICANN housecleaning revokes old DNS security key

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) this week will do some important housecleaning from its successful, first-ever cryptographic key change performed last October.In October, ICANN rolled out a new, more secure root zone Key Signing Key -2017 (KSK-2017), but the process wasn’t complete because the old key, KSK-2010 remained in the zone. On Jan. 10, ICANN will revoke the old key and remove it from the root zone. The KSK helps protect the internet’s address book — the Domain Name System (DNS) and overall Internet security.To read this article in full, please click here

Percentage of HTTPS (TLS) Encrypted Traffic on the Internet ?

Reviewing a Threat report from Fortinet Networks suggests that 73% of internet traffic is now encrypted. Thats a substantial change in five years for a network protocol. More than I expected but good news that the status quo CAN be changed. I wonder what happened to telcos that were selling data extracted from capturing HTTP […]

The post Percentage of HTTPS (TLS) Encrypted Traffic on the Internet ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

IoT devices proliferate, from smart bulbs to industrial vibration sensors

While the IoT is already a well-known phenomenon in the tech world, the specifics of IoT implementations are sometimes less than obvious. Here’s a quick-and-dirty overview of the wildly diverse and still evolving landscape of the IoT devices themselves, divided for your reading pleasure into the consumer and enterprise realms.Consumer IoT devices The consumer side of the IoT is mostly about inserting Internet connectivity into objects that a person born before 1990 wouldn’t really have thought needed it – from the toaster and refrigerator in your kitchen, to the locks on your doors, to your car and your wristwatch.[ Read also: 20 hot jobs ambitious IT pros should shoot for ] Smart home IoT devices are, arguably, the biggest deal on the consumer side of things – some people really like the idea of being able to control their lights, door locks and so on from their smartphones. Smart lightbulbs, locks and their ilk are big business, according to Statista, which estimated the total revenue from their sales at nearly $12 billion in 2018. The devices themselves have a wide range of sophistication – a smartlock could be as simple as a device with a servo to move Continue reading

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