Deploying TLS 1.3
Last week saw the formal publication of the TLS 1.3 specification as RFC 8446. It’s been a long time coming – in fact it’s exactly 10 years since TLS 1.2 was published back in 2008 – but represents a substantial step forward in making the Internet a more secure and trusted place.
What is TLS and why is it needed?
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is widely used to encrypt data transmitted between Internet hosts, with the most popular use being for secure web browser connections (adding the ‘S’ to HTTP). It is also commonly (although less visibly) used to encrypt data sent to and from mail servers (using STARTTLS with SMTP and IMAP/POP etc..), but can be used in conjunction with many other Internet protocols (e.g. DNS-over-TLS, FTPS) where secure connections are required. For more information about how TLS works and why you should use it, please see our TLS Basics guide.
TLS is often used interchangeably with SSL (Secure Socket Layers) which was developed by Netscape and predates it as an IETF Standard, but many Certification Authorities (CAs) still market the X.509 certificates used by TLS as ‘SSL certificates’ due to their familiarity with Continue reading
Weekly Show 404: Running Open Networks In Production
Today's Weekly Show returns to the topic of open networking in production. Guest Andrey Khomyakov walks us through the management and operations side (rather than the hardware side) of network disaggregation, whiteboxes, and automation in a live environment.
The post Weekly Show 404: Running Open Networks In Production appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Dell XPS 15 (9560) Ubuntu 1804 Setup
Install and setup Ubuntu 1804 on Dell XPS.Dell XPS 15 (9560) Ubuntu 1804 Setup
I recently upgraded my Dell XPS (9560) to Ubuntu 1804 LTS from 1604 and I ran into a few issues along the way. This post may help others so I am documenting it here. Pre-Flight Prior to installing Ubuntu 1604 I upgraded the BIOS from Windows 10. Also in the BIOS settings I disabled secure...White Box Open Networking: A Cure for Your Regulatory Compliance Ills
Just about every major US regulatory requirement says companies must use software that’s fully supported by the vendor that sells it. Simply put, if you’re using software that is beyond its end of life, you’re not only posing a security risk to your company – you’re also out of regulatory compliance.
It’s an issue for any public company, given that they must all comply with the Sarbanes Oxley Act, as well as any company that must meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Those three acts alone cover an awful lot of, if not most, US companies.
All software has a lifecycle, including the network operating system (NOS) software controlling all the network switches and routers in enterprise networks. When that NOS is nearing its end of life, meaning you have no choice but to upgrade in order to stay in compliance, it’s a good time to assess your available options. In fact, given the pace of technology change, it’s a safe bet that you’ve got alternatives that quite literally didn’t exist when you installed your current NOS five, six — or more — years ago.
White Continue reading
SevOne Extends SD-WAN Monitoring to VMware NSX
The SevOne monitoring software previously only gave insights into Cisco’s SD-WAN service.
How to Get to the Cloud Computing ‘Goldilocks Zone’
Borrowing from the astrological meaning, the Goldilocks Zone refers to the space where organizations have the right amount of resources and combination of components to support network life.
Windmill Uses Blockchain to Solve IoT Security Issues
The company’s open source blockchain-based security platform is working with enterprises to secure their IoT data and devices.
Management of ISPs, Peering, China Firewall Cause Big Challenges for SD-WAN
These issues can delay deployments, result in inferior service quality, and make it difficult to reach return on investment goals, according to John Isch at Orange Business Services.
SDxCentral’s Weekly Roundup — August 24, 2018
Red Hat unveils infrastructure migration for containers; AT&T completes its AlienVault acquisition; BT, TIP, and Facebook launch a startup competition.
Array Networks Says Its the Nutanix of Private Cloud Networking and Security
Companies can run Array’s security and networking applications, open source applications, or those from third-party vendors like Cisco and F5 on the platform.
Introducing ebpf_exporter
This is an adapted transcript of a talk I gave at Promcon 2018. You can find slides with additional information on our Prometheus deployment and presenter notes here. There's also a video.
Tip: you can click on the image to see the original large version.
Here at Cloudflare we use Prometheus to collect operational metrics. We run it on hundreds of servers and ingest millions of metrics per second to get insight into our network and provide the best possible service to our customers.
Prometheus metric format is popular enough, it's now being standardized as OpenMetrics under Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It's exciting to see convergence in long fragmented metrics landscape.
In this blog post we'll talk about how we measure low level metrics and share a tool that can help you to get similar understanding of your systems.
There are two main exporters one can use to get some insight into a Linux system performance.
The first one is node_exporter that gives you information about basics like CPU usage breakdown by type, memory usage, disk IO stats, filesystem and network usage.
The second one is cAdvisor, that gives similar metrics, but drills down to a container level. Instead Continue reading
Short Take – State Optimization Surface
In this Network Collective Short Take, Russ White examines the relationship between state, optimization, and interaction surfaces when adding complexity to a network or system.
Russ White
The post Short Take – State Optimization Surface appeared first on Network Collective.
Fog Computing and Networking
To meet the needs of the emerging applications and networks, the clouds are descending toward the ground and even dispersed among the client devices – forming fog computing and networking or fog. Learn more about fog computing at Fog World Congress 2018.
Check Out Our Newest Collaboration Video!
Do you want to obtain your CCNP Collaboration or perhaps enhance your Cisco Collaboration skills for the real world? The CCNP Advanced Technologies v1 course from INE is targeted at network and voice professionals who want to take their Cisco Collaboration knowledge to the next level.
This course is intended for network and voice professionals looking to further improve their knowledge or prepare themselves for the CIPTV1 exam. In this course we will be looking at CUCM and VCS Dial Plan, Voice + Video Calling, IOS Gateway, Conferencing, QoS, On Cluster Calling with CUCM and Media Resources. This course will be delivered in lecture based format with plenty of hands on practical demonstrations.
CIPTV1 – Implementing Cisco IP Telephony & Video’ will cover professional to advanced level concepts and demonstrations around a large portion of the Cisco Unified Communications portfolio, including some of the below products and topics:
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Dial Plan and Media Resources
- Cisco VCS Dial Plan
- IOS Gateways – Digital Voice, Dial-Peers, Translation Rules
- Conferencing with Cisco Conductor and Cisco Telepresence Server
- Quality of Service
About The Instructor:
Dean Babbage is a Voice and Network Professional actively working in the Cisco Partner community. He carries Continue reading
Fixing My Twitter
It’s no surprise that Twitter’s developers are messing around with the platform. Again. This time, it’s the implementation of changes announced back in May. Twitter is finally cutting off access to their API that third party clients have been using for the past few years. They’re forcing these clients to use their new API structure for things like notifications and removing support for streaming. This new API structure also has a hefty price tag. For 250 users it’s almost $3,000/month.
You can imagine the feedback that Twitter has gotten. Users of popular programs like Tweetbot and Twitterific were forced to degrade client functionality thanks to the implementation of these changes. Twitter power users have been voicing their opinions with the hashtag #BreakingMyTwitter. I’m among the people that are frustrated that Twitter is chasing the dollar instead of the users.
Breaking The Bank
Twitter is beholden to a harsh mistress. Wall Street doesn’t care about user interface or API accessibility. They care about money. They care are results and profit. And if you aren’t turning a profit you’re a loser that people will abandon. So Twitter has to make money somehow. And how is Twitter supposed to make money in today’s Continue reading
The Internet Society and Global Scribes Work Together to Amplify Young Voices
On International Youth Day, the Internet Society and Global Scribes partnered to connect youth around the world to let their voices be heard, allowing them to become empowered and engaged global citizens, striving toward a more united and sustainable digital future.
As local and international actors innovate to solve the most pressing issues that we face in the world today, young people are often left out of the equation with little or no participation in important discussions and decision-making processes.
Youth across the world are often overlooked as a potential resource to solving global challenges, such as climate change, migration, health, and unemployment, despite being directly impacted by these issues and having opinions on how to solve them.
This also happens in the Internet ecosystem, where young people often do not have a place at the table when it comes to decisions that shape the Internet’s future.
While youth are recognized as “the future generation” and perceived as key to a more sustainable tomorrow, they are seldom given adequate platforms to let their voices be heard or allow them to contribute to their societies in a meaningful way, in their own right as youth.
Young people are often deprived of the opportunity to serve as catalysts for a more united and sustainable world Continue reading
How IT Pros Can Bridge the IT-Business Gap
By embracing a different mindset and changing their language, IT teams can better communicate with the business and finally overcome a long-standing division.