Weekends Reads 020218: GDPR, taxes, and security
Security is always changing and failure always exists. This toxic scenario requires a fresh perspective on how we think about operational security. We must understand that we are often the primary cause of our own security flaws. The industry typically looks at cybersecurity and failure in isolation or as separate matters. We believe that our lack of insight and operational Continue reading
OpenSwitch
This article describes how to enable industry standard sFlow telemetry using the open source Host sFlow agent. The Host sFlow agent uses Control Plane Services (CPS) to configure sFlow instrumentation in the hardware and gather metrics. CPS in turn uses the Open Compute Project (OCP) Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) as a vendor independent method of configuring the hardware. Hardware support for sFlow is a standard feature supported by Network Processing Unit (NPU) vendors (Barefoot, Broadcom, Cavium, Innovium, Intel, Marvell, Mellanox, etc.) and vendor neutral sFlow configuration is part of the SAI.
Installing and configuring Host sFlow agent
Installing the software is simple. Log into the switch and type the following commands:wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/sflow/host-sflow/releases/download/v2.0.17-1/hsflowd-opx_2.0.17-1_amd64.debThe sFlow agent requires very little configuration, automatically monitoring all switch ports using the following default settings:
sudo dpkg -i hsflowd-opx_2.0.17-1_amd64.deb
| Link Speed | Sampling Rate | Polling Continue reading |
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Live Training at Safari Books: How the Internet Really Works
I will be teaching my first live training course at Safari Books Online on the 9th of March, starting at noon ET: How the Internet Really Works. It’s hard to describe the level and background for this training, as it will be all over the place; this is a bit of an experiment in this realm. The course description is—
This live training will provide an overview of the systems, providers, and standards bodies important to the operation of the global Internet, including the Domain Name System (DNS), the routing and transport systems, standards bodies, and registrars. For DNS, the process of a query will be considered in some detail, who pays for each server used in the resolution process, and tools engineers can use to interact DNS. For routing and transport, the role of each kind of provider will be considered, along with how they make money to cover their costs, and how engineers can interact with the global routing table (the Default Free Zone, of DFZ). Finally, registrars and standards bodies will be considered, including their organizational structure, how they generate revenue, and how to find their standards.
Sprint Joins 5G Race by Promising Nationwide Network in 2019
Sprint is increasing its capex by $1 billion for the quarter to pay for its network upgrades.
Is ACI Coming For The CLI?
I’m soon to depart from Cisco Live Barcelona. It’s been a long week of fun presentations. While I’m going to avoid using the words intent and context in this post, there is one thing I saw repeatedly that grabbed my attention. ACI is eating Cisco’s world. And it’s coming for something else very soon.
Devourer Of Interfaces
Application-Centric Infrastructure has been out for a while and it’s meeting with relative success in the data center. It’s going up against VMware NSX and winning in a fair number of deals. For every person that I talk to that can’t stand it I hear from someone gushing about it. ACI is making headway as the tip of the spear when it comes to Cisco’s software-based networking architecture.
Don’t believe me? Check out some of the sessions from Cisco Live this year. Especially the Software-Defined Access and DNA Assurance ones. You’re going to hear context and intent a lot, as those are the key words for this new strategy. You know what else you’re going to hear a lot?
Contract. Endpoint Group (EPG). Policy.
If you’re familiar with ACI, you know what those words mean. You see the parallels between the data center Continue reading
SDxCentral’s Weekly Roundup — February 2, 2018
AT&T to release its dNOS to Linux; Cisco buys BroadSoft; Aryaka and Radware team up.
AT&T Data Center Assets on the Block, Report Says
Maybe Kenny Rogers was right in stating you gotta "know when to fold 'em."
Microsoft Azure Revenues Grew 98% in Latest Quarter
AWS and Google also saw big cloud revenue gains.
This History Of Networking, from The Network Collective
I mentioned The Network Collective previously when I responded to the very first episode of the videocast/podcast (what TWiT would call a netcast
). Since then the three founders and co-hosts (Jordan, Eyvonne and Phil) have published an impressive 20 community roundtable episodes and have somehow also found time to launch a History of Networking
series co-hosted by Russ White (yes, that Russ White).
History Of Networking
I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to computer history, and I love reading books that give the inside story about the birth of the personal computer, the story of Silicon Valley, the rise and fall of technology companies and so on. However, the history of networking is nowhere near as well covered, which is a real shame. Thankfully, The Network Collective are filling that gap handsomely with a list of guests so far that blows my mind. For example:
Paul Vixie
If you’ve ever heard of Vixie cron, BIND DNS, DNSSEC, the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), you’ve found things Mr Vixie has had his hands all over. It’s fascinating to hear him talking about the history of DNS adoption, and his role in maintaining BIND in a nascent Continue reading
Dell Technologies Confirms Possible VMware Merger, IPO
A reverse merger with VMware would allow Dell Technologies to be traded publicly without going through a formal listing.
How we made our page-load optimisations even faster
In 2017 we made two of our web optimisation products - Mirage and Rocket Loader - even faster! Combined, these products speed up around 1.2 billion web-pages a week. The products are both around 5 years old, so there was a big opportunity to update them for the brave new world of highly-tuned browsers, HTTP2 and modern Javascript tooling. We measured a performance boost that, very roughly, will save visitors to sites on our network between 50-700ms. Visitors that see content faster have much higher engagement and lower bounce rates, as shown by studies like Google’s. This really adds up, representing a further saving of 380 years of loading time each year and a staggering 1.03 petabytes of data transfer!
Cycling image Photo by Dimon Blr on Unsplash.
What Mirage and Rocket Loader do
Mirage and Rocket Loader both optimise the loading of a web page by reducing and deferring the number of assets the browser needs to request for it to complete HTML parsing and rendering on screen.