The Week in Internet News: India Pushes for Sites to Remove ‘Unlawful’ Content, Break Encryption
Not this again: India’s government wants websites and social media platforms to remove content regulators determine as “unlawful” within 24 hours and to create automated tools to identify this material, BuzzFeed reports. The government also wants the tech companies to trace the source of the content, requiring platforms like WhatsApp to break encryption. This follows passage of an Australian law that forces online services to provide the government there with encryption workarounds.
The Wire of India defends the proposal, however, saying it’s aimed at holding websites and social media platform more responsible for the content they distribute.
More blocking: The government of Sudan has shut down most Internet access in the country and blocked access to social media platforms, Rogue Media Labs says. The government blamed the shutdown on massive protests over income inequality and other issues.
Missed assignments: In a related story, some college students in the Indian region of Kashmir have missed deadlines for submitting online application forms of their bachelors of education examination because of frequent and lengthy Internet shutdowns there, reports Kashmir Reader. Students are asking the University of Kashmir to extend its deadline.
Blockchain vs. national security? An ex-CIA official is targeting blockchain, saying the Continue reading
SDxCentral’s Top 10 Articles of 2018
Cisco lays off hundreds in California; Cisco updates its routers with SD-WAN; and all the details of Verizon's outsourcing deal.
Smart Data: The Secret Weapon Underpinning the Cloud
By applying the insights of smart data, businesses can add strategic value from the cloud, while also gaining the flexibility, agility, and scalability needed to remain competitive.
2019 Is The King of Content
2018 was a year full of excitement and fun. And for me, it was a year full of writing quite a bit. Not only did keep up my writing here for my audience but I also wrote quite a few posts for GestaltIT.com. You can find a list of all the stuff I wrote right here. I took a lot of briefings from up-and-coming companies as well as talking to some other great companies and writing a couple of series about SD-WAN.
It was also a big year for the Gestalt IT Rundown. My co-host with most Rich Stroffolino (@MrAnthropology) and I had a lot of fun looking at news from enterprise IT and some other fun chipset and cryptocurrency news. And I’ve probably burned my last few bridges with Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg to boot. I look forward to recording these episodes every Wednesday and I hope that some of you will join us on the Gestalt IT Facebook page at 12:30 EST as well.
Content Coming Your Way
So, what does that leave in store for 2019? Well, since I hate predictions on an industry scale, that means taking a look at what I Continue reading
CircleCI, Docker and Systemd
I have been battling to get the combination of CircleCI, Docker and systemd to play together. After much frustration, I have a workable solution. Machine Executor, privileged: true, cgroup passthrough, and disabling AppArmor.
Background: CircleCI for Ansible Linting & Checks
In the StackStorm team we use CircleCI with most of our repositories. We check things like code style checks, and run unit tests. With every Pull Request we trigger these checks, and checks must pass before merging. Some repos also use CircleCI for post-merge deployment steps.
We use Ansible and Terraform to manage some of our internal infrastructure. All configurations are stored in Git. All changes to that configuration must be submitted as a Pull Request. All PRs need approval, and all commit checks must pass. We use CircleCI to run these commit checks.
We run multiple checks, but for Ansible playbooks, they include using ansible-lint, and ansible-playbook --syntax-check. We then spin up a Docker container using CircleCI and run some of our playbooks twice, checking that it passes both times, and that the second run records no changes.
Here’s a snippet of some of our CircleCI configuration:
version: 2
jobs:
build:
working_directory: Continue readingCircleCI, Docker and Systemd
I have been battling to get the combination of CircleCI, Docker and systemd to play together. After much frustration, I have a workable solution. Machine Executor, privileged: true, cgroup passthrough, and disabling AppArmor.
Background: CircleCI for Ansible Linting & Checks
In the StackStorm team we use CircleCI with most of our repositories. We check things like code style checks, and run unit tests. With every Pull Request we trigger these checks, and checks must pass before merging. Some repos also use CircleCI for post-merge deployment steps.
We use Ansible and Terraform to manage some of our internal infrastructure. All configurations are stored in Git. All changes to that configuration must be submitted as a Pull Request. All PRs need approval, and all commit checks must pass. We use CircleCI to run these commit checks.
We run multiple checks, but for Ansible playbooks, they include using ansible-lint, and ansible-playbook --syntax-check. We then spin up a Docker container using CircleCI and run some of our playbooks twice, checking that it passes both times, and that the second run records no changes.
Here’s a snippet of some of our CircleCI configuration:
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Continue reading
CircleCI, Docker and Systemd
I have been battling to get the combination of CircleCI, Docker and systemd to play together. After much frustration, I have a workable solution. Machine Executor, privileged: true, cgroup passthrough, and disabling AppArmor.
Background: CircleCI for Ansible Linting & Checks
In the StackStorm team we use CircleCI with most of our repositories. We check things like code style checks, and run unit tests. With every Pull Request we trigger these checks, and checks must pass before merging. Some repos also use CircleCI for post-merge deployment steps.
We use Ansible and Terraform to manage some of our internal infrastructure. All configurations are stored in Git. All changes to that configuration must be submitted as a Pull Request. All PRs need approval, and all commit checks must pass. We use CircleCI to run these commit checks.
We run multiple checks, but for Ansible playbooks, they include using ansible-lint, and ansible-playbook --syntax-check. We then spin up a Docker container using CircleCI and run some of our playbooks twice, checking that it passes both times, and that the second run records no changes.
Here’s a snippet of some of our CircleCI configuration:
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Continue reading
Keep Pace with Network Infrastructure Tech Changes in 2019
Here is a quick overview of the key infractructure technologies that will imapct your networks in the coming year.
NAT64Check Version 2 is launched!
With the New Year comes the launch of NAT64Check version 2 from the Internet Society. The first version of NAT64Check was introduced a couple of years ago and has proved very popular and successful, so for the past year we’ve been working on a number of enhancements in response to feedback and requests. And we’re very happy to be able to make the new version available as we welcome in 2019.
NAT64Check is a tool developed by the Internet Society in collaboration with Stichting IPv6 Nederland, Go6, SJM Steffann, Internetbureau Max and Simply Understand. This allows you to enter the URL of a particular website, and then run tests over IPv4, IPv6 and NAT64 in order to check whether the website is actually reachable in each case, whether identical web pages are returned, and whether all the resources such as images, stylesheets and scripts load correctly. It also compares responsiveness using the different protocols, therefore allowing network and system administrators to easily identify anything is ‘broken’, to pinpoint where any non-IPv6 compatible elements need to be fixed.
The original version of NAT64Check though, ran on two separate servers at Go6 and the IPv6 Lab which each had a limited view of the Internet Continue reading
2019 Goals
My 2019 ambition statement.2019 Goals
Writing down what I want to achieve helps me stay focused and keeps me from getting distracted by all the shinny things in the world. 2019 Goals Loose 20kgs Family Read 20 non-technical books JNCIX SP Azure solution architect One post a week Move to rails Loose 20kgs Over the...How to Transition to DevOps in Less Than 30 Days
It doesn't take long to lay the foundation for an agile enterprise. Get the initiative going and sort out the bumps along the way.
7 Enterprise Infrastructure Predictions for 2019
It is no secret that enterprise infrastructures are undergoing major changes. Growing use of public cloud, SaaS, and SD-WAN in 2019 will play a significant role in the way infrastructures evolve.
Another Step Closer to Our Mission
The Internet now reaches more than half the world.
A recent estimate indicates that nearly 4 billion people – more than half the world’s population – now use the Internet. More people are now online than existed in the world the year I was born. Everyone, it seems, values the Internet. We all still know the Internet is for everyone.
The Internet Society, including all our chapters and members, was part of Internet growth in this period. 2018 was a year of many changes at the Internet Society. We changed the staff and ways of organizing work to make things clearer. We changed our CEO. But at the same time, we brought infrastructure to some of the most remote parts of the world. We pushed for better security for many of the new devices that are connecting to the Internet. And we worked to include the whole range of voices when it comes to who’s making decisions about the Internet’s future.
These are just a few of the things we, the whole Internet Society, did together. We work together because that’s what internetworking is: working together, each of us making a greater whole of our individual parts.
So, as Continue reading
Vendor Lock-in – Is It Really That Bad?!
In today’s IT infrastructure, open source software is a common component. Many organizations and network engineers stay away from certain architectures and products citing vendor lock-in as their only argument but often lack the understanding to why they think vendor lock-in is a problem. Let me explain.
There are lock-ins of different forms. For example if you are buying MPLS VPN service from a SP, you are somewhat locked in to their offering and pricing. I see at least three types of different lock-in:
Vendor lock-in – This is the one that everyone is familiar in. It means that the vendor has a solution that is proprietary, perhaps using proprietary management or routing protocols so that it can’t interact with solutions from other vendors.
Tools lock-in – This may or may not be as much of a lock-in as vendor lock-in, but when an organization has invested enough time, money and manpower into a specific toolset, it’s difficult to move to other tooling.
People lock-in – An often oversighted form of lock-in. Depending on architecture, toolset and so on, your organization may need a certain type of engineers to work on the network. These may be difficult to find which Continue reading