Networking Archives - Page 139 of 3413

CompTIA to offer advanced cloud networking certification

A new series of advanced certifications from CompTIA aims to validate IT pros who have multiple years of work experience and expert-level skills in data, cybersecurity, and cloud networking.“Each certification exam will validate deep expertise in job roles recognized as being at the expert level,” said Thomas Reilly, chief product officer at CompTIA, in a statement. “Beyond validating technical skills, IT pros who earn a CompTIA Xpert Series certification will have demonstrated their ability to understand, implement, and articulate advanced technology solutions in any business environment.”To read this article in full, please click here

Fortinet adds wireless and IoT security features to SASE platform

Fortinet continues to enhance its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) package by adding support for microbranches, extending wireless LAN protections, and improving data loss prevention (DLP) and end-user monitoring capabilities.The vendor added the new features to its FortiSASE offering, which includes SD-WAN, secure web gateway, firewall as a service, cloud access security broker, and zero trust network access (ZTNA), all running on top of its FortiOS operating system. The package can be centrally managed via the firm’s FortiManager software, which sets network and security policies across the Fortinet product line.To read this article in full, please click here

Fortinet adds wireless and IoT security features to SASE platform

Private 5G: Not As Scary As You Think

When one thinks of 5G, it’s easy to associate the technology with complex carrier deployments, but enterprise-focused companies, like VMware, have designed products for corporate environments.

Cloudflare’s tenant platform in action: Meter deploys DNS filtering at scale

In January 2023, we announced support for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and other businesses to create 'parent-child' and account-level policy configurations when deploying Cloudflare for DNS filtering. Specifically, organizations leverage the integration between our Tenant API and Cloudflare Gateway, our Secure Web Gateway (SWG) to protect their remote or office end users with web filtering and inspection. Already, customers like the US federal government, MalwareBytes, and a large global ISP take advantage of this integration to enable simpler, more flexible policy management across larger deployments across their end customers

Today, we're excited to showcase another similar story: Meter, a provider of Internet infrastructure, is leveraging the Tenant API integration for DNS filtering to help their clients enforce acceptable Internet use policies.

How Meter deploys Cloudflare to secure Internet browsing

Meter, headquartered in San Francisco and founded in 2015, provides Internet infrastructure that includes routing, switching, wireless, and applications. They help deliver faster, more efficient, more secure networking experiences for a diverse range of corporate spaces, including offices, warehouses, retail, manufacturing, biotech, and education institutions.

Meter integrates with the Cloudflare Tenant API to provide DNS filtering to their customers. With the Meter dashboard, Meter customers can set policies to Continue reading

Grave flaws in BGP Error handling

A broken fuse

Border Gateway Protocol is the de facto protocol that directs routing decisions between different ISP networks, and is generally known as the “glue”

Worth Reading: Looking Inside Large Language Models

Bruce Davie published an interesting overview article about Large Language Models. It would be worth reading just for the copious links to in-depth article; I particularly like his conclusions:

We mistake performance (producing realistic text) for competence (understanding the world).

Having a model for language is different from having a model of the world.

And that’s a perfect explanation why it makes no sense to expect ChatGPT and friends to produce picture-perfect device configurations or always-working code.

Worth Reading: Looking Inside Large Language Models

Bruce Davie published an interesting overview article about Large Language Models. It would be worth reading just for the copious links to in-depth article; I particularly like his conclusions:

We mistake performance (producing realistic text) for competence (understanding the world).

Having a model for language is different from having a model of the world.

And that’s a perfect explanation why it makes no sense to expect ChatGPT and friends to produce picture-perfect device configurations or always-working code.

Is One Protocol Simpler Than Two?

I’ve been in a lot of interesting discussions the last couple of days on what protocol to use for the underlay when building a VXLAN datacenter network. Do you use an IGP such as OSPF or ISIS or do you use BGP? A common argument for BGP is that running one protocol is less complex than two. Is it, though?

We can argue about if OSPF or BGP is the more well known protocol. What I think is going on here though is that OSPF is perceived as complex due to the following reasons:

Utilizes both unicast and multicast for messaging.
Maintains a link state database and runs SPF to calculate best paths.
Different LSA types and flooding behavior.
Does not advertise routes.

On the other hand, BGP has the following characteristics:

Utilizes only unicast for messaging.
Rides over TCP.
Advertises prefixes (NLRI).

Is OSPF complex? That’s debateable but everything is difficult if you don’t know it well enough. If you don’t know your way around the LSDB then it can be difficult to understand how routes get into the RIB and later FIB. Not knowing a protocol doesn’t make it complex, though. I would argue that someone with the Continue reading

Tech Bytes: How StackPath Uses Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring To Accelerate MTTI (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk about monitoring network and application performance. Our sponsor is Catchpoint, and they’ve sent a customer, StackPath, to talk about using Catchpoint in production. This includes real-time BGP monitoring and Catchpoint’s observability network that lets you test networks and applications from multiple vantage points, and instant tests when you need immediate data.

The post Tech Bytes: How StackPath Uses Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring To Accelerate MTTI (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Tech Bytes: How StackPath Uses Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring To Accelerate MTTI (Sponsored)

Network Break 444: NVIDIA Mines GPU Gold; VMware Wants To Sell You Private AI; SUSE Prepares To Go Private

Take a Network Break! On today's episode we discuss two announcements from VMware Explore 2023: a private AI offering, and a revamped NSX for public and private cloud networking. We also discuss recent rule changes at the SEC that require public companies to disclose material security incidents in a timely manner, NVIDIA's huge revenue results, SUSE going private, and more tech news.

The post Network Break 444: NVIDIA Mines GPU Gold; VMware Wants To Sell You Private AI; SUSE Prepares To Go Private appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Network Break 444: NVIDIA Mines GPU Gold; VMware Wants To Sell You Private AI; SUSE Prepares To Go Private

C 001. Intro into the IPv4/IPv6 Application Support from the Software/System Point of View.

Dear friend,

Being a long-time network engineer, I’ve seen (and done) it all: talking about about IPv6, designing and implementing IPv6 in production service providers and data center networks, holly wars IPv6 vs IPv4, industries saying they aren’t going to use IPv6 ever, and many others. For some network engineers, it could be even quite an “innovation” project (I clearly remember some senior person told me back in 2018 that introduction of IPv6 is an innovation; quite a statement in the 20-years anniversary of IPv6). But today I want to talk about it from a different angle.

How Is Network Relevant for Software?

In many cases every day we rely on the software, which works over Internet: whatever you need to buy or sell some goods, order a table in your favorite cafe, book ticket to train to visit your friends. Connected world is around us and, if for whatever reason it breaks, our life immediately becomes much more difficult. That’s because the applications rely on the Internet and their capability to provide you the service depends on their capabilities to connect from your smartphone or laptop to the application servers. And this capability is significantly affected by Continue reading

Most hyped network technologies and how to deal with them

The appeal of promising network technologies can be jaded by pressure to adopt untested ideas. When I look over the comments I’ve gotten from enterprise technologists this year, one thing that stands out is that almost three-quarters of them said that entrenched views held by company executives is a “significant problem” for them in sustaining their network and IT operations.“Every story that comes out gets me a meeting in the board room to debunk a silly idea,” one CIO said. I’ve seen that problem in my own career and so I sympathize, but is there anything that tech experts can do about it? How do you debunk the “big hype” of the moment?For starters, don’t be too dismissive. Technologists agree that a dismissive response to hype cited by senior management is always a bad idea. In fact, the opening comment that most technologists suggested is “I agree there’s real potential there, but I think there are some near-term issues that need to be resolved before we could commit to it.” The second-most-cited opening is “I’ve already launched a study of that, and I’ll report back to you when it’s complete.” There’s usually a grain (yeah, often Continue reading

Most hyped network technologies and how to deal with them

Cisco services help enterprises set infrastructure, operations priorities

Cisco has unveiled a new Lifecycle Services (LCS) offering that's aimed at enabling enterprise customers to get the most out of their networking and technology investments.LCS is being delivered by Cisco’s Global Customer Experience (CX) team, which includes some 20,000 employees that focus on supporting organizations as they choose, deploy and operate the technologies they need to achieve their business goals.Cisco CX and its partner organizations offer a suite of services to help customers optimize their network infrastructure, security, collaboration, cloud and data center operations – from planning and design to implementation and maintenance.To read this article in full, please click here

Why Distributedness is a Measure of Digital Maturity

Digital maturity takes a lot of work and a variety of skill sets. That’s why multi-cloud networking (MCN) exists as a market and why it continues to gain traction.

What are network assurance tools and why are they important?

Network assurance tools, which use advanced analytics to optimize and automate network management, are becoming an essential component in every network team’s toolkit.Network assurance was once viewed as a routine IT responsibility. "This attitude essentially reduced assurance to a checkbox," says SQL server consultant Mark Varnas. As enterprises became increasingly data-driven, this perfunctory approach no longer worked. IT leaders needed a better handle on their network in order to advance their data capabilities.And these tools are more than just a simple technology investment. "They're a strategic decision that supports business growth and customer satisfaction," says Matt Aird, CTO at Custom Neon, which makes and sells LED neon lights and signs. "Regular monitoring, clear insights, and preventative measures are vital in competitive markets."To read this article in full, please click here

ARP Details Behind the Scenes

When figuring out how unnumbered IPv4 interfaces work, Daniel Dib asked an interesting question: How does ARP work when the source and destination IPv4 address are not in the same segment (as is usually the case when using unnumbered interfaces)?

TL&DR: ARP doesn’t care about subnets. If the TCP/IP stack needs to find a MAC address of a node it thinks is adjacent, ARP does its best, no matter what.