My Personal Look Back on 2017
Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I’ve again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I’m not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the “me” behind the scenes.
Let’s go through the list!
New Job
In January, I joined the CPOC team at Cisco based in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was 
something I worked towards over the course of many months in 2016 and was offered the position in late 2016. Come January of 2017, I had fully transitioned from my prior role and was working full time for CPOC. This change set the stage for everything that happened in my professional life during 2017 and if my gut can be trusted, will end up being a major turning point in my career.
The first thing that we had to do as a result of this new job…
We’re Moving!
…was planning to uproot Continue reading
2017 End of Year Blog Statistics
Didn't I just write the 2016 statistics post like… last week? Another year has flown by and with it another year of attempting to prioritize my writing. I'll be honest, I'm not optimistic about what I'm going to find when I compare 2017 to 2016. It was a year filled with a lot of change and opportunity so I'll use that as my excuse as to why I didn't write as much or as often as I had planned.
I was thinking though: every year I set a goal of writing more posts than the previous year, but that's only 1 metric to go by. Most of my posts are very detailed and fleshed out. It's nothing to write a post that's 1000 words. I regularly eclipse 2000 words and have even hit 3000 words. Perhaps I should be thinking more about word count and not post count? Certainly a 2000 word post takes more effort than a 1000 word post. On the other hand, word count says nothing about quality and could easily lead to excessive wordiness and run-on posts just to tilt the metrics.
Enough musing. Let's review the data!
My Personal Look Back on 2017
Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I've again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I'm not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the “me” behind the scenes.
Let's go through the list!
Digital DVB-T on Raspbian
Recently, I have been asked to get working Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestria (DVB-T) tunner on Raspberry PI 3. The tunner is Cinergy DVB-T stick from Terratec. Below are my notes describing installation of the stick on Raspbian Linux 9.1 Stretch. I hope someone find them useful.
1. Copy Raspbian to SD CARD (on Ubuntu)
First, we need to copy Raspbian installation image to SD card. Below is the example using dd command on Linux.
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=2017-09-07-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress conv=fsync
Insert SD card to Raspberry and power on the box. The default user is pi with the password raspberry. Enable SSH and VNC server for remote box administration. Navigate to Menu-> Preferences-> Raspberry PI Configuration.
2. Install Firmware
Inspect kernel for any error message connected with DVB-T tunner.
$ dmesg
Picture 1 - Missing firmware isdbt_rio.imp
Download firmware file isdbt_rio.imp (md5 - 9b762c1808fd8da81bbec3e24ddb04a3) from here. I have also uploaded it to Google disk. You can download and copy the file to the directory /lib/firmware with the command below.
$ sudo wget https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1MwDGSG4ZEm3eeJuf0gS686Be-ngx4rKR -O /lib/firmware/isdbt_rio.inp
Reboot PI and check kernel for any other kernel error messages.
Picture 2 - Continue reading
Reading EEPROM – Obtaining the GE Concord Express Installer Code
One of the more frustrating things for me is when someone, or some company, attempts to control me. Typically having the desire for less responsibility, I have no desire to control individuals in this way. Recently, I started looking into what moving my alarm system to a new monitoring service would entail. The primary goal included eliminating the dependence on a landline and getting the flexibility to do reconfigurations myself. I own the alarm system and I felt like I should be able to make those changes.
Upon investigation, I found that my alarm system was a bit challenging to reset the installer code. Searching the Internet yielded several options to try–1234, 9876, 4112 and 6112. Unfortunately, none of those worked for my system and a call to my current alarm service company was met with, “We don’t provide those, we want to protect you from
making accidental changes.” They eventually agreed to try to change the code to another value and called me back a few times. Eventually, their remote effort fizzled out, but I’m
sure they would’ve changed them with an on-site visit and a $75 service fee.
A few searches on the internet suggested copying Continue reading
Making a Lasting Impact: A Look Back at 2017
As just a couple of days remain in 2017, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the year’s highlights! It was an extraordinary year, with the Internet Society celebrating its 25th anniversary and launching a new website – while continuing to advocate for an Internet that is open, globally connected, and secure. These values were evident in the many projects undertaken throughout the year and in some of my favorite blog posts:
Access is fundamental.
We shared stories of people working to create community networks around the world, including remote Tusheti, Georgia, where pack horses carried equipment up mountain peaks; rural South Africa, where one of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the country became a telecom operator; and Yemen, where the Internet@MySchool project connected classrooms in four secondary schools. We also published resources such as Spectrum Approaches for Community Networks and the Small Island Developing States report, which offered practical solutions to building community networks. But access also means accessibility, and the Internet Society recently launched the Accessibility Toolkit, which aims to reduce barriers so that people with disabilities can get online.
So is privacy and trust.
The WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks Continue reading
2018 Predictions: a new year for the Net
Happy New Year! I was thinking back on the last year, reflecting on all of the changes in the IT industry, and in true nerd fashion, I opened a bottle of wine in search of the most poignant change that I expect to see in 2018. In the end, I ended up with two predictions linked to a common theme: the repeal of net neutrality.
First, I predict that we’ll start seeing effects of that legislation early in 2018, likely by the summer time. The anti net neutrality sponsors won’t be able to help themselves; they’ve got to institutionalize changes before the winds can blow in a different direction. I predict the first signs to emerge will be Internet access plans that distinguish based on access to content. These won’t be subtle plans — they’ll look a lot like your TV subscription in the flavor of something like “basic browsing” that will cost less than your current rate and a more expensive “streaming media” package that gives you access to content outside of that offered by your service provider.
The second is that we’ll see an emergence of one or more access/service providers that use this as a land grab Continue reading
Driving Open Standards in a Fragmented Networking Landscape
Standards — once critical for achieving interoperability — have failed to adapt.
Unraveling the MEC Standards Puzzle
Several different groups are trying to bring order to multi-access edge computing.
Serverless Computing Strides in 2017 Set the Table for a Strong 2018
Cost and efficiency benefits continue to battle familiarity.
NVMe: The Best Is Yet to Come
The storage interface improves flash performance, and will reshape the industry when coupled with SCM.
Joyent Partners with LunchBadger to Bridge Containers and Serverless
The combined product offers a single-pane of glass for management.
VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX: Connecting SDDCs Across Different AWS Regions
I prior shared this post on the LinkedIN publishing platform and my personal blog at HumairAhmed.com. In my prior blog post, I discussed how with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) customers get the best of both worlds for their move to a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) – the leading compute, storage, and network virtualization stack for... Read more →
VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX: Connecting SDDCs Across Different AWS Regions
I prior shared this post on the LinkedIN publishing platform and my personal blog at HumairAhmed.com. In my prior blog post, I discussed how with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) customers get the best of both worlds for their move to a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) – the leading compute, storage, and network virtualization stack for enterprises deployed on dedicated, elastic, bare-metal, and highly available AWS infrastructure. Another benefit of VMC on AWS, and the focus of this post, is that you can easily have a global footprint by deploying multiple VMC SDDCs in different regions. Continue reading
How “expensive” is crypto anyway?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the title of this post attracts some Bitcoin aficionados, but if you are such, I want to disappoint you. For me crypto means cryptography, not cybermoney, and the price we pay for it is measured in CPU cycles, not USD.
If you got to this second paragraph you probably heard that TLS today is very cheap to deploy. Considerable effort was put to optimize the cryptography stacks of OpenSSL and BoringSSL, as well as the hardware that runs them. However, aside for the occasional benchmark, that can tell us how many GB/s a given algorithm can encrypt, or how many signatures a certain elliptic curve can generate, I did not find much information about the cost of crypto in real world TLS deployments.
CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Michele M. F.
As Cloudflare is the largest provider of TLS on the planet, one would think we perform a lot of cryptography related tasks, and one would be absolutely correct. More than half of our external traffic is now TLS, as well as all of our internal traffic. Being in that position means that crypto performance is critical to our success, and as it Continue reading
How “expensive” is crypto anyway?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the title of this post attracts some Bitcoin aficionados, but if you are such, I want to disappoint you. For me crypto means cryptography, not cybermoney, and the price we pay for it is measured in CPU cycles, not USD.
If you got to this second paragraph you probably heard that TLS today is very cheap to deploy. Considerable effort was put to optimize the cryptography stacks of OpenSSL and BoringSSL, as well as the hardware that runs them. However, aside for the occasional benchmark, that can tell us how many GB/s a given algorithm can encrypt, or how many signatures a certain elliptic curve can generate, I did not find much information about the cost of crypto in real world TLS deployments.
CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Michele M. F.
As Cloudflare is the largest provider of TLS on the planet, one would think we perform a lot of cryptography related tasks, and one would be absolutely correct. More than half of our external traffic is now TLS, as well as all of our internal traffic. Being in that position means that crypto performance is critical to our success, and as it Continue reading
From Zero to One Hundred in the Arctic Slope
In November 2017, the Internet Society hosted the inaugural Indigenous Connectivity Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event brought together community network operators, Internet service providers, community members, researchers, policy makers, and Indigenous leadership. One of the participants shared her story.
“‘Mom, did you have YouTube?’” Patuk Glenn, recalls her six year old son asking. Glenn, who lives in Utqiaġvik – a city in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle – laughs as she remembers one of his first words: “loading,” thanks to the sluggish Internet speeds on the Arctic Slope. But things are changing, and soon. Fiber optic cable is going live in Glenn’s community and she has travelled to the Indigenous Connectivity Summit looking for lessons from other Indigenous communities. “We’re going from zero to one hundred overnight,” says Glenn. “How can we best prepare our people?”
It’s not just a question of digital literacy. Glenn’s looking for information on cybersecurity and entrepreneurship – as high-speed Internet opens avenues for economic development and for community members to share their own content with the rest of the world. Like many summit participants, Glenn sees connectivity as a pathway to enable education: not only unlocking online courses, but Continue reading
Twinax – Cheap, Cheerful and Annoyingly Chubby
What’s not to love about twinax? Formerly the exclusive domain of IBM systems, twinax has seen itself reborn in the last few years in the form of the Direct Attach Cable (DAC) used to connect systems at speeds of 10Gbps and 40Gbps (by way of bundling four twinax pairs in a single cable).
Direct Attach Cables
Before diving into the pros and cons of DAC, it’s important to understand the different varieties that are available. A DAC is a cable which has SFP+ format connectors hard-wired on each end; plug each end into an SFP+ socket and, vendor support notwithstanding, the link should come up. A direct attach cable is frequently and erroneously referred to as a “DAC cable”, so if the words “PIN number” give you the jitters, working anywhere with DACs is likely to drive you to drink.
Passive Copper DAC (Twinax)
The most common kind of DAC is the passive DAC. The SFP+ connector on a passive DAC, give or take some electrical protection circuitry, is pretty much a direct connection from the copper in the twinax to the copper contacts which connect to the host device:
Sending a 10G signal over a single copper pair requires Continue reading
From Microsegmentation to DevOps Nirvana: Here Are the Top Analysis Posts of 2017
Our analysis posts provide a deeper dive on what certain trends mean to the industry. In 2017 these articles coveraged a wide swath of topics from the best tools for deploying containers to how network virtualization will help companies track compliance issues.