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Category Archives for "Networking"

Why Cisco Catalyst 9K is so special ?

Well today I am going to talk about the new Switches which Cisco introduces in July 2017. These are very much powerful switches and going to replace Cisco 3850 and Cisco 4500 Switches with more innovation and high qualities.

I already wrote two articles on Cisco catalyst 9K series switches and articles are below

Cisco Catalyst 9300 Switch
Cisco Catalyst 9400 Switch

Now the question is Why Cisco Catalyst 9K is so special ?
Cisco Catalyst 9K is a next Generation platform switches introduces to support DNA infrastructure which Cisco just came up this year. Cisco comes up with the innovation and below are the support features set up in Cisco Catalyst 9K Switches.

  • IOT devices convergenceCoAP / IoT Device profiling, Perpetual PoEIEEE 1588 / AVB and Emerging Standards: MUD
  • Mobility Device Features : Fabric Enabled Wireless, Embedded WLC, Distributed Wireless Scale, Unified Control & Policy with Wired & Wireless Guest
  • Security : Encrypted Traffic Analytics; 256bit MacSec / IPSec; Trustworthy Systems; Group based policy; Full Netflow for StealthWatch
  • Open to Cloud: DevOps Toolkit; Netconf/Yang Models; Streaming telemetry; Patching/GIR and Application Hosting.
  • IOS Features : Open IOS-XE with UDAP 2.0 features best in industry.
Fig 1.1- Cisco Continue reading

Go Hack Nights at Cloudflare

At Cloudflare we're extensively using the Go programming language to build a better Internet. Go is a free and open source programming language created by Google in 2007 and open sourced in 2009. Earlier this year, Go made news when it entered the list of top 10 programming languages on the TIOBE Index.

Our inaugural Go Hack Night

Recently we launched an internal monthly Go Hack Night at our San Francisco office, open to anyone who works at Cloudflare regardless of their department or position. Anyone from newbie programmers to our most experienced Go engineers are encouraged to attend, and experienced engineers are asked to throw on a mentor badge and help guide colleagues with installing and learning Go.

We had over 30 attendees at our inaugural Go Hack Night, and our survey reveals some great stats:

  • 26% of attendees were completely new to programming
  • 61% of attendees were experienced in other languages but new to Go
  • Every attendee said they learned something!

We actively encourage an inclusive learning culture and we're super excited to make the Go programming language more accessible to our entire company.

If you're interested in working with Go and helping to build a better Internet, we're hiring!

P.S. if Continue reading

Cisco POE, POE+ and UPOE introduction

Today I am going to talk about Cisco UPOE. Before we are going to discuss about the Cisco UPOE we will run through POE and POE+

Cisco POE : Cisco POE means Power over Ethernet by which you can provide the power to the endpoint in the LAN infrastructure. So now question is where and why we required POE in the LAN infrastructure. Well sometimes we have the infrastructure where we have some power issues or cabling issues while extending the power to the IP phones. The best to provide the power via LAN network POE switch.

Fig 1.1- Basic POE Switch connected with IP Cameras


IP telephones need power for operation, and Power over Ethernet supports scalable, manageable power delivery and simplifies IP telephony deployments. As wireless networking emerged, Power over Ethernet began powering wireless devices in locations where local power access did not exist.

As per the Cisco offers a comprehensive range of 802.3af-based Power over Ethernet support across the Cisco Catalyst Intelligent Switching portfolio which includes both 10/100/1000 and 10/100 PoE LAN connections, including a 96-port 10/100 PoE module for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch.

Fig 1.2- POE switch with IP-Phones

Well Cisco 802. Continue reading

A New Cybersecurity Strategy for Europe

October is European Cybersecurity Month, an annual advocacy campaign to raise awareness of cyber risks among citizens and businesses, and to share best practices in cybersecurity. This year’s campaign was launched at an event in Estonia, a country which both holds the current Presidency seat of the European Council and is well known as being highly cyber aware and digitally savvy.

It is fitting, therefore, that it is under Estonia’s Presidency that the European Commission announced a number of initiatives last month aimed at stepping up the European Union’s cybersecurity capacity and response to cyber attacks, while laying the foundations for increased cyber awareness and better cyber hygiene overall.

This EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy is a welcome initiative, as we already know that the overall cyber threat level is rising. At Cloudflare, we deal with a new type of DDoS attack every 3 minutes, and it has been that way for the last 6 months. This year alone, we've seen a DDoS attack that peaked at 300 Mpps and another at 480 Gbps. Furthermore, as DDoS mitigation companies like Cloudflare have become adept at handling 'traditional' DDoS attacks, the attackers have also adapted and increasingly try out new techniques.

A holistic Continue reading

Introduction to Sophos XG Firewalls

Today I am going to talk about the Sophos Firewall. The article is basically an introduction to the firewalls by Sophos. I am not taking all segment firewalls here and will take you through for Sophos XG firewall series in this article.

Sophos XG Firewall brings a fresh new approach to the way you manage your rewall, respond to threats, and monitor what’s happening on your network. Get ready for a whole new level of simplicity, security and insight. 

Sophos XG Firewalls provide the unified policy and provide you the single pane of glass to manage, view, filter of the users on the basis of the traffic flow, application used and other stuff in a single screen, I knew we have other firewalls in this segments who are doing the same. Looking what NGFW is doing now a days, all vendors are working hard to make the innovation in this segment. Palo-Alto and Cisco NGFW are head to head in this space. I am so impressed with the Cisco NGFW and Palo-Alto feature sets what they are providing to their customers.

Here, I am not going to talk about the Cisco NGFW or Palo-Alto as this article is basically Continue reading

All Of Ethan’s Podcasts And Articles For September 2017

Here’s a catalog of all the media I produced (or helped produce) in September 2017.

Packet Pushers Weekly Podcast

Packet Pushers Priority Queue Podcast

Datanauts Podcast

EthanCBanks.com

Newsletters

I closed down the Hot Aisle newsletter after months of struggling to know what to do with it. Originally, the Hot Aisle was a way for me to express my individual voice about networking, design, emerging trends, and the IT industry without necessarily having that opinion attached to Packet Pushers, my company. It was also an unsponsored newsletter, which I felt was a nice thing to be able to Continue reading

All Of Ethan’s Podcasts And Articles For September 2017

Here’s a catalog of all the media I produced (or helped produce) in September 2017.

Packet Pushers Weekly Podcast

Packet Pushers Priority Queue Podcast

Datanauts Podcast

EthanCBanks.com

Newsletters

I closed down the Hot Aisle newsletter after months of struggling to know what to do with it. Originally, the Hot Aisle was a way for me to express my individual voice about networking, design, emerging trends, and the IT industry without necessarily having that opinion attached to Packet Pushers, my company. It was also an unsponsored newsletter, which I felt was a nice thing to be able to Continue reading

Arista’s Programmability Strategy

Arista is largely known for its operating system, best known as EOS. Arista has been known to deploy new features at a more rapid pace than other vendors and to have a more open OS–since EOS was the first production-grade network network operating system to expose any form of Linux to end users.

Because of this, I believe it’s perceived Arista has a better programmability strategy than other vendors. From what I can tell, it is not the case. However, given a few features Arista has in EOS, it makes programming EOS a bit easier than other platforms. Let’s take a look.

At Network Field Day 16, Arista reviewed their programmability strategy. There were 5 core components reviewed:

  1. EAPI
  2. OpenConfig
  3. NetDB Streaming
  4. Turbines
  5. EosSdk

Arista Programmability Strategy

Before diving into each of these, I’ll first point out that when I look at “OS programmability,” what is important [to me] is device-level programmability (not controllers or streaming capabilities–those are important topics, but should be covered on their own). Programmability is the ability to program change on a device, isn’t it? Now let’s look at the 5 components in Arista’s strategy.

EAPI - it’s a great API for learning to program an EOS switch. This Continue reading

Arista’s Programmability Strategy

Arista is largely known for its operating system, best known as EOS. Arista has been known to deploy new features at a more rapid pace than other vendors and to have a more open OS–since EOS was the first production-grade network network operating system to expose any form of Linux to end users.

Because of this, I believe it’s perceived Arista has a better programmability strategy than other vendors. From what I can tell, it is not the case. However, given a few features Arista has in EOS, it makes programming EOS a bit easier than other platforms. Let’s take a look.

At Network Field Day 16, Arista reviewed their programmability strategy. There were 5 core components reviewed:

  1. EAPI
  2. OpenConfig
  3. NetDB Streaming
  4. Turbines
  5. EosSdk

Arista Programmability Strategy

Before diving into each of these, I’ll first point out that when I look at “OS programmability,” what is important [to me] is device-level programmability (not controllers or streaming capabilities–those are important topics, but should be covered on their own). Programmability is the ability to program change on a device, isn’t it? Now let’s look at the 5 components in Arista’s strategy.

EAPI - it’s a great API for learning to program an EOS switch. This Continue reading

Not Rolling the KSK

Until a few days ago the intention was to roll the KSK of the root zone of the DNS on the 11th October, altering the root to trust used by DNSSEC for all DNSSEC-validating DNS resolvers. However, earlier this week, ICANN announced the postponement of this key roll.

America’s first exascale supercomputer set for 2021 debut

The next step up in supercomputer performance is exaflops, and there is something of an arms race between nations to get there first — although it’s much more benign than the nuclear arms race of the last century. If anything, it’s beneficial because these monster machines will allow all kinds of advanced scientific research. An exascale computer is capable of processing one exaflop, one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations of floating point operations per second. That’s about a trillion times more powerful than a consumer laptop. + Also on Network World: Texas goes big with 18-petaflop supercomputer + China has said it will have an exascale computer by 2020, one year sooner than the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

America’s first exascale supercomputer set for 2021 debut

The next step up in supercomputer performance is exaflops, and there is something of an arms race between nations to get there first — although it’s much more benign than the nuclear arms race of the last century. If anything, it’s beneficial because these monster machines will allow all kinds of advanced scientific research. An exascale computer is capable of processing one exaflop, one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations of floating point operations per second. That’s about a trillion times more powerful than a consumer laptop. + Also on Network World: Texas goes big with 18-petaflop supercomputer + China has said it will have an exascale computer by 2020, one year sooner than the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why it pays to spend more on premium people

To spend, or not to spend — that is the question. Whether it’s wiser to invest in the latest and most-hyped hardware and suffer the great misfortune of mediocre talent, or to take the hit and invest in greater minds, and thus end troubles. We can wax poetic for much longer on the many dilemmas that accompany partitioning a budget, but we think our time is better spent providing an actual solution. The reality is that too much of funding is spent on hardware, and not enough is spent on investing in the people who make the technology mean something. In this blog post, we’ll help you understand the benefits of investing more money in employees, and then show you how you can reduce your TCO so that you can stop overspending on hardware and start investing in premium people.

What are the benefits of investing in people?

It pays to invest in people who can really make your company great. In fact, failing to properly invest in your hires can actually cost your company. A study in 2013 showed that seventy percent of American workers were actively disengaged at their job, which cost businesses more than $450 million. So, Continue reading

The Internet Society’s 25th Anniversary and the Renewal of Commitment

Last week was a proud and memorable moment for us at the Internet Society as we celebrated our 25th anniversary in Los Angeles. In addition to the well-known Internet Hall of Fame award ceremony and the annual InterCommunity 2017 event, this year’s event also had a dialogue on topics from  the 2017 Internet Society Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future and introduced the 25 under 25 award ceremony, which celebrated inspiring and remarkable ideas and projects that young and motivated entrepreneurs in the Internet space have initiated.

I was equally, however, touched by the strong drive and energy in the Internet Society leadership and staff, whose efforts and attention to detail have been clearly visible throughout the two-day event. The joyful spirit demonstrated by the Internet Society team at the Brussels interactive node helped ensure that the 15-hour InterCommunity 2017 marathon covering 16 interactive regional nodes was truly a global conversation. Using the Internet to connect those nodes demonstrated one practical application of the Internet to run a global event with precision and high productivity. Furthermore, the positive mood at Brussels appeared to be quite contagious as reflected by the celebrations that took place in at least another 55 Continue reading