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Category Archives for "Networking"

Don’t Rely on Long Support Lifecycles

I hate long support lifecycles for hardware and software. Yes, you should be able to buy a new iPhone or switch and use it for 3+ years. But some people want 10+yrs of support, and wail and moan when vendors end support. This is wrong. It drives up costs & complexity, and makes your systems less robust, not more. It’s a false sense of security. Plan to buy smaller & cheaper, and upgrade frequently.

Why Vendors Don’t Like Them

Vendors don’t want to do long support lifecycles. They will do them, because people pay for it, but there comes a point where they put a line in the sand. “Sorry, that system is now EoL.”

Why?

  • Costs: Testing software and hardware combinations is hard work. Add many years of released hardware & software combinations, and it gets much harder. More racks of gear & more permutations == more costs.

  • Complexity: It’s hard enough to test against a small set. But now you have to deal with obscure systems acquired from a third party 7 years ago? Complexity == time and money.

  • Motivation: Hands up who wants to work on legacy systems? Exactly. It’s hard to motivate engineers to support Continue reading

Ubuntu image for EVE-NG – Python for network engineers

Lately I’ve started working more and more with EVE-NG to test various network scenarios, automation and in general to try and learn something everyday. If you’re familiar with EVE-NG, you know where to find various Linux images which you can download and install . Very helpful indeed, however all of them are coming without any … Continue reading Ubuntu image for EVE-NG – Python for network engineers

Salt SSH Getting Started

Salt SSH allows you to execute commands and apply state to minions without having to install a salt-minion. The only requirement is for the minion to have python installed unless using the -r option to execute raw commands. For reference the following software will be used in this post. ...

Weekend Reads 061518: A 51% attack materializes

In recent days the nightmare scenario for any cryptocurrency is playing out for Bitcoin Gold, as an attacker has taken control of its blockchain and proceeded to defraud cryptocurrency exchanges. All the Bitcoin Gold in circulation is valued at $786 million, according to data provider Coinmarketcap. Blockchains are designed to be decentralized but when an individual or group acting in concert controls the majority of a blockchain’s processing power, they can tamper with transactions and pave the way for fraud. This is known as a 51% attack.—Joon Ian Wong @Quartz

We have also discovered a new stage 3 module that injects malicious content into web traffic as it passes through a network device. At the time of our initial posting, we did not have all of the information regarding the suspected stage 3 modules. The new module allows the actor to deliver exploits to endpoints via a man-in-the-middle capability (e.g. they can intercept network traffic and inject malicious code into it without the user’s knowledge). With this new finding, we can confirm that the threat goes beyond what the actor could do on the network device itself, and extends the threat into the networks that a compromised network Continue reading

Show 394: Technology Problems Are Mostly People Problems

You are a problem…maybe the biggest problem of all. No? The crashing router code is the biggest problem? The leaking memory in the switch?

The app needs layer 2 stretched between data centers–what problem could be worse than that?

Today on the show, we re here to argue that, no…it s you. And me. And everyone else you work with.

With us today to defend the idea that technology problems are really people problems is Eyvonne Sharp, network architect and co-founder of The Network Collective.

We talk about how people and processes can contribute more to a problem than a technology. We also talk about three different organizational culture types (Pathological, Bureaucratic, and Generative), how to evaluate your own organization, and Eyvonne recommends a few books on team building and culture development.

Show Links:

Eyvonne Sharp on Twitter

The Network Collective

Using the Westrum typology to measure culture – Andy Kelk

Forget about broad-based pay hikes, executives say – Axios

The Undoing Project – Michael Lewis

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable – Patrick M. Lencioni

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World – General Stanley McChrystal

The post Show 394: Technology Continue reading

EuroDIG 2018 Gathers the Internet Community: What’s New

The 12th edition of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance or the EuroDIG, as it is commonly known, took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 5-6 June. The Internet Society (ISOC) is an institutional partner to EuroDIG and the ISOC European Regional Bureau helped shape the agenda and were involved in several sessions.

This year, a few specific aspects caught my attention and created a lot of debate during the sessions and in the corridors.

Reinforcing the multistakeholder model

While European governments have traditionally been strong supporters of the Internet Governance Fora (IGF) and the multistakeholder model, this support has been to some extent compromised by concerns over national security and other priorities in the recent times. Several core members of the European Internet community have talked about a “fatigue” with the regional and national IGFs.

This year’s EuroDIG offered some fresh food for thought. Larry Strickling, who leads the Internet Society’s Collaborative Governance project, made several interventions during the EuroDIG. Strickling’s extensive experience of driving multistakeholder processes and his practical approach were received with great interest and curiosity. In parallel, high participation from young people injected heaps of new energy and optimism to the event.

Embracing the Internet opportunity Continue reading

Hackathon@AIS: Summary report

The annual Hackathon@AIS, in its second year, is aimed at exposing engineers from the Africa region to open Internet Standards Development. This year, the event was held 9-10 May 2018 in Dakar Senegal at the Radisson Blu Hotel during the Africa Internet Summit (AIS-2018).

The event was attended by more than 75 engineers from 15 countries including 11 fellows who were supported to attend the event. The event featured participants with English and or French-speaking backgrounds encouraging collaboration to work. Organized into 3 tracks, the event allowed participants to choose which track they were interested in participating in. The tracks were as follows:

1. Network Time Protocol Track

Objectives:

  • Make NTP more secure (Privacy)
  • Using WireShark NTP Plugin to read/analyze NTP traffic
  • Code changes to NTP implementations to make them compliant with the draft
  • Read and understand Draft RFC

Facilitators:

  • Loganaden Velvindron (Mauritius)
  • Nitin Mutkawoa (Mauritius)
  • Serge-Parfait Goma (Congo)

Participants were introduced to NTP and asked to test out an IETF draft and implement it in open source NTP clients.

Outcome:

Participants were able to successfully implement draft and made presentations demonstrating their work and accomplishments.

2. Network Programmability

Objectives:

  • Introduce participants to Software Defined Networking (SDN)
  • Introduce network Continue reading

Worth Reading: Discovering Issues with HTTP/2

A while ago I found an interesting analysis of HTTP/2 behavior under adverse network conditions. Not surprisingly:

When there is packet loss on the network, congestion controls at the TCP layer will throttle the HTTP/2 streams that are multiplexed within fewer TCP connections. Additionally, because of TCP retry logic, packet loss affecting a single TCP connection will simultaneously impact several HTTP/2 streams while retries occur. In other words, head-of-line blocking has effectively moved from layer 7 of the network stack down to layer 4.

What exactly did anyone expect? We discovered the same problems running TCP/IP over SSH a long while ago, but then too many people insist on ignoring history and learning from their own experience.

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