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Category Archives for "Networking"

Getting Started with Python Development

Over the last several years I’ve made a couple of efforts to become better at Python. As it stands now – I’d consider myself comfortable with Python but more in terms of scripting rather than actual Python development. What does Python Development mean? To me – at this point – it’s means writing more than a single Python file that does one thing. So why have my previous efforts failed? I think there have been a few reasons I never progressed much past scripting…

  • I didn’t have a good understanding of Python tooling and the best way to build a project. This meant that I spent a large chunk of time messing around with Python versions, packages, and not actually writing any code.  I was missing the fundamentals in terms of how to work in Python.
  • I didn’t have a real goal in mind.  Trying to learn something through ‘Hello World’ type examples doesn’t work for me.  I need to see real world examples of something I’d actually use in order to understand how it works.  I think this is likely why some of the higher level concepts in Python didn’t fully take hold on the Continue reading

The Current Approach to Data Handling Isn’t Working – The Equifax Breach Illustrates Why

Are you from the United States or Canada? If so, there is a big chance you had sensitive personal information stolen in the biggest data breach of the summer. Equifax, a major consumer credit agency in North America, experienced a data breach resulting in the loss of the personal information of over 140 million individuals, which puts its victims at increased risk of identity theft and other forms of fraud. The Equifax breach is on a massive scale, but it is only the latest in a very long list of reported data breaches in recent years. According to Gemalto, over nine billion individual records have been lost or stolen in reported data breaches since 2013 – and the vast majority of breaches go unreported. Data handlers of all types continue to act irresponsibly, failing to protect the data of their users or to even attempt to apply basic data protection procedures.

How data handlers protect the privacy of user data isn’t working.

The dominant approach to data handling, based around the concepts of risk and compliance, is over 35-years-old. With this approach, data handlers try to adhere to regulatory requirements and minimize the risk to themselves – not necessarily Continue reading

Dobar dan, Hrvatska! Announcing Cloudflare’s Zagreb Data Center

Dobar dan, Hrvatska! Announcing Cloudflare's Zagreb Data Center

Dobar dan, Hrvatska! Announcing Cloudflare's Zagreb Data Center

Fire the Gric Cannon! Hot on the heels of several birthday week product announcements, we continue to expand our global network.

Cloudflare is excited to announce the launch of our newest data center in Zagreb, Croatia, furthering the breadth of our network to 118 cities across 58 countries. Our Europe network alone now spans 33 cities across 25 countries (with at least ten new cities being planned). [For trivia fans: Our list of data centers beginning with the letter Z now spans four cities, with the others being Zhengzhou, Zhuzhou and Zurich].

Zagreb: A Thousand Years

Dobar dan, Hrvatska! Announcing Cloudflare's Zagreb Data Center
CC BY 2.0 image by Mario Fajt, sobrecroacia.com

With a rich history going back almost a thousand years, Zagreb is sometimes called the City of Museums. Visitors can join the Saturday spica to Dolac market to try out the traditional paprenjak biscuit, hop on the shortest cable car in the world, explore Maksimir Park and more in this charming European city.

Local Interconnection

Croatia is home to over 3 million Internet users, with Internet penetration approaching 75%, which is high but still significantly lower than the European average of ~85%. Our newest deployment improves the security and Continue reading

Proof that our customers’ success is our success

From the start, one mission has driven us: to bring the economics and agility that the web-scale giants enjoy in networking to companies of all sizes.

We announced Cumulus Express at the start of the year with that mission front of mind. The response has exceeded our expectations and reaffirmed our belief that web-scale IT is something companies across the spectrum are serious about. open chassis based on Facebook Backpack — has helped us attract some amazing new customers within the Fortune 100, helping us boost bookings by more than 20%. An interesting insight from speaking to our customers is that established enterprises are looking to create a web-scale architecture with fixed and modular platforms. Both our fixed-form Cumulus Express offering as well as our modular platforms like Backpack cater to companies like those that need a joint solution that is easy to procure and quick to deploy. On average, the availability of Cumulus Express has cut the time it takes from initial conversation to live proof of concept (PoC) in half, meaning that our customers are seeing value faster.

But it isn’t just the Fortune 100 taking an interest; we’ve also seen uptake among other mainstream enterprises. For example, both Healthcare Realty, a major real estate trust, and Perth Radiological Clinic chose Express as a means of quickly expanding their existing Cumulus deployments. What’s more, we’re speaking to a whole range of other companies that are interested in following in their footsteps.

So how did we get here? Simple: we listened.

Many cloud architects we spoke with in the process of developing this product wanted more choice. Many companies were eager to build modern, web-scale networks, but needed the ability to deploy a PoC quickly before committing to the disaggregated model. This was particularly true among large, established enterprises. Others were already on board, but were used to buying their networking system as an appliance. We needed to create an option that would make buying Cumulus Linux — and getting a PoC up and running — quick and easy in both instances.

Enter Cumulus Express. With it, you get a fixed or modular switch preloaded with Cumulus Linux and a set of certified cables and optics. Offering our open networking software and high performance switching hardware in one ready-to-run package was one more way we could make web-scale networking more accessible to more companies and help them be successful.

It’s been a great year for us so far, but we never feel our work is done. I’ve always been steadfast in my belief that building great, enduring companies requires great products — built by listening to customers — so that’s what we’re going to continue to do. Keep sharing your feedback and ideas with us, because it fuels us to keep improving.

Alongside Cumulus Express, we’ve worked extremely hard to bring other standard-setting products like Host Pack to market and build further on our mission of bringing web-scale to the masses. What Cumulus Networks now has is the most mature offering on the market, so we’re perfectly placed to serve the demand for web-scale for years to come.

The post Proof that our customers’ success is our success appeared first on Cumulus Networks Blog.

Community Networks: By Indigenous Communities, for Indigenous Communities

At the Internet Society, we believe that the Internet is for everyone. We’re standing by that belief by supporting network development and deployment for indigenous communities that face Internet access challenges.

Community networks, communications infrastructure deployed and operated by local people, offer indigenous communities a way to access the Internet to meet their own needs. These community networks offer a connection to health, education, and economic strength. For many, affordable, high-quality Internet access means community sustainability. In addition, community networks encourage policymakers and regulators to examine new ways and means to fill local digital divides, like supporting local content in the appropriate language(s).

These benefits are not theoretical; we have seen great changes through small projects and united community members working toward a common goal. There are many success stories of indigenous community networks around the world. Take a look at how some of our partners have been working with indigenous communities to develop community networks:

  • The First Mile Connectivity Consortium supports remote and rural First Nations developing and innovating with information and communication technologies (ICT) through research, policy, and outreach. Their website highlights stories of people like Bruce Buffalo, who developed a system that offers four free Internet access Continue reading

IoT can learn from smartphone security

The massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices over the next one to three years should give us pause. As companies rush to get to market first, are we seeing a “dumbing down” of basic device principals that we have been working with for years, particularly enhanced security and privacy. With so many distinct applications, device scope and diversity represent a unique security challenge that so far has not been met.I estimate that 85 percent or more of current IoT devices deployed in the real world do not have adequate security installed, and it’s likely that the vast majority of those will never be upgraded (or are not even capable of being upgraded). That means not only do current devices being installed pose a risk, but over the next one to two years, the vast majority of devices that will be deployed also pose a risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT can learn from smartphone security

The massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices over the next one to three years should give us pause. As companies rush to get to market first, are we seeing a “dumbing down” of basic device principals that we have been working with for years, particularly enhanced security and privacy. With so many distinct applications, device scope and diversity represent a unique security challenge that so far has not been met.I estimate that 85 percent or more of current IoT devices deployed in the real world do not have adequate security installed, and it’s likely that the vast majority of those will never be upgraded (or are not even capable of being upgraded). That means not only do current devices being installed pose a risk, but over the next one to two years, the vast majority of devices that will be deployed also pose a risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Making a Clickable HTML Network Diagram using OmniGraffle

As a Mac user, I have to give my diagramming love to OmniGraffle and I try not to envy the Visio users too much. I maintain that Graffle diagrams subjectively look nicer than Visio, but in terms of features, Visio wins the day. Despite that, sometimes poor old Graffle does so something helpful and in this case, it’s being able to export a diagram as an image with an HTML image map.

The Plan For A Web-Based Network Diagram

My plan was to create a web-based network diagram for my home network where I could click on any device on the diagram and be connected to it using the appropriate protocol handler (e.g. SSH or HTTPS). This hypothetical page would not serve as a diagram of the network, but might also provide useful information for my long-suffering, geek wife, who tells me with despair in her eyes that she has no idea what the network looks like any more after I’ve messed around with it so much. She has a point. After considering making something in HTML, I realized that OmniGraffle would do the hard work for me, and it would be much easier to update later, too.

For Continue reading

Apstra intent-based networking bridges the physical, virtual

Intent-based systems have been all the rage since Cisco announced its “Network Intuitive” solution earlier this year. For Cisco customers, its solution is certainly interesting. But what about businesses that want an alternative to Cisco? Or companies that want to run a multi-vendor environment?Over a year before Cisco’s launch, a start-up called Apstra shipped the closed-loop, intent-based solution. It was designed to be multi-vendor in nature with support for Cisco but also Arista, Juniper, HP and others, including white box. Apstra operates as an overlay to networks built on any of the leading vendors to deliver intent-based networking in heterogeneous environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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