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Category Archives for "Networking"

OpenStack SDN – Building a Containerized OpenStack Lab

For quite a long time installation and deployment have been deemed as major barriers for OpenStack adoption. The classic “install everything manually” approach could only work in small production or lab environments and the ever increasing number of project under the “Big Tent” made service-by-service installation infeasible. This led to the rise of automated installers that over time evolved from a simple collection of scripts to container management systems.

Evolution of automated OpenStack installers

The first generation of automated installers were simple utilities that tied together a collection of Puppet/Chef/Ansible scripts. Some of these tools could do baremetal server provisioning through Cobbler or Ironic (Fuel, Compass) and some relied on server operating system to be pre-installed (Devstack, Packstack). In either case the packages were pulled from the Internet or local repository every time the installer ran.

The biggest problem with the above approach is the time it takes to re-deploy, upgrade or scale the existing environment. Even for relatively small environments it could be hours before all packages are downloaded, installed and configured. One of the ways to tackle this is to pre-build an operating system with all the necessary packages and only use Puppet/Chef/Ansible to change configuration files and Continue reading

The Story of Two Outages

The Story of Two Outages

Over the last two days, Cloudflare observed two events that had effects on global Internet traffic levels. Cloudflare handles approximately 10% of all Internet requests, so we have significant visibility into traffic from countries and networks across the world.

On Tuesday, September 5th, the government of Togo decided to restrict Internet access in the country following political protests. The government blocked social networks and rate-limited traffic, which had an impact on Cloudflare.

The Story of Two Outages

This adds Togo to the list of countries like Syria (twice), Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, etc that have restricted or revoked Internet access.

The second event happened on Wednesday, September 6th, when a category 5 hurricane ravaged the Caribbean Islands.

The affected countries at the moment are:

  • Anguilla
  • Antigua and Barbuda
  • British Virgin Islands
  • Puerto Rico
  • Saint Barthelemy
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis
  • Saint Martin
  • Sint Maarten
  • U.S. Virgin Islands

Losing the routes

Most of the network cables are buried underground or laying at the bottom of the oceans but the hardware which relies on electricity is the first one to go down.

Cell towers sometime have their own power source thus allowing local phone calls but without a backbone no outside Continue reading

Google service promotes hybrid clouds

Google is offering enterprises a new way to build hybrid infrastructure, with a service that extends corporate networks into its cloud platform.Called Dedicated Interconnect, it allows companies to treat servers in Google's cloud as if they were part of their own private address space. This can be useful for businesses operating in financial services, video editing, or other industries that need to be able to scale up processing capabilities, but want to keep their data on a private network, according to product manager John Veizades.By buying multiple 10 Gbit/s connections, customers can boost the throughput of the interconnect between the cloud and their on-premises networks, or improve its availability, or both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google service promotes hybrid clouds

Google is offering enterprises a new way to build hybrid infrastructure, with a service that extends corporate networks into its cloud platform.Called Dedicated Interconnect, it allows companies to treat servers in Google's cloud as if they were part of their own private address space. This can be useful for businesses operating in financial services, video editing, or other industries that need to be able to scale up processing capabilities, but want to keep their data on a private network, according to product manager John Veizades.By buying multiple 10 Gbit/s connections, customers can boost the throughput of the interconnect between the cloud and their on-premises networks, or improve its availability, or both.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

You can now plug your data center directly into Google cloud

Google has launched a new service called Google Cloud Interconnect Dedicated that allows companies to directly connect their data center network to its public cloud.The company already has an interconnect service, which has been renamed Carrier Peering, where co-location provider or carrier customers can buy private links to Google’s cloud. Here the third party has been eliminated, and the link is direct.+ Also on Network World: Deep dive on AWS vs. Azure vs. Google cloud storage options + Interconnect Dedicated service goes much further than Google’s Cloud VPN service. While that created a secure tunnel to Google’s cloud, those connections were limited to 3 Gbps, and traffic traveled over the public internet. Interconnect Dedicated offers a direct line to Google’s network with up to 80 Gbps in bandwidth, which is far more useful for moving large amounts of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

You can now plug your data center directly into Google cloud

Google has launched a new service called Google Cloud Interconnect Dedicated that allows companies to directly connect their data center network to its public cloud.The company already has an interconnect service, which has been renamed Carrier Peering, where co-location provider or carrier customers can buy private links to Google’s cloud. Here the third party has been eliminated, and the link is direct.+ Also on Network World: Deep dive on AWS vs. Azure vs. Google cloud storage options + Interconnect Dedicated service goes much further than Google’s Cloud VPN service. While that created a secure tunnel to Google’s cloud, those connections were limited to 3 Gbps, and traffic traveled over the public internet. Interconnect Dedicated offers a direct line to Google’s network with up to 80 Gbps in bandwidth, which is far more useful for moving large amounts of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Cloud data storage data planes

And while such backup solutions solved the traditional data center backup to tape, and eventually disk, really well, the solution does not readily translate into a distributed multicloud solution. That’s where a data protection solution requires cloud-scale, multiprovider integration with clear separation of control, data movement and multitier data storage. The separation not only provides independent scaling at the control and data level, but also creates the opportunity for vendor or cloud provider independence. Additionally, the separation of data plane services allows the solution to leverage all current and future innovations around data movement, data copy and storage optimizations that the cloud storage provides natively. —Prasenjit Sarkar @ The New Stack

The post Worth Reading: Cloud data storage data planes appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Enterprise Network on GNS3 – Part 1 – Introduction

Several months ago I had created a simple GNS3 network topology for practicing my networking skills. What had firstly begun as a simple lab, later grew in to a real world enterprise network consisting of a campus, data center, DMZ network blocks and ISPs. During the next several weeks I added new devices into the topology, struggling with no time due to complicated family circumstances. In March 2017 I completely stopped working on this project. Luckily, I was done with the configuration of all devices and I wrote several articles describing my progress. Now, almost a half of the year later, I am ready to share my experience with the blog readers and publish the articles. Below is the list of the articles. I hope you find them useful.

Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 1 - Introduction
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 2 - Access Layer
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 3 - Distribution and Core Layers
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 4 - Cisco ASAv-I
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 5 - Data Center
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 6 - Edge Router and ISPs
Enterprise Network on GNS3 - Part 7 - Continue reading

Containers vs. hypervisors: A death knell for hypervisors?

Containers vs. hypervisors: the battle is ongoing, but the two technologies don’t need to be pitted against one another—in fact, they each offer benefits that are more suitable for certain workloads than others.

Containers are considered resilient, in part, because they can be deployed both as classic monolithic applications as well as highly composable microservices. They are portable, and can be scaled up or down and deleted when no longer needed. Among many other benefits, containers pack more applications into a single physical server than a virtual machine (VM) is capable of, which means they are superior if you need the maximum amount of applications on a bare minimum number of servers.

When it comes to hypervisors in our current technology climate, their value seems to be slowly diminishing—and containers continue to enjoy a steady increase in popularity. Part of VM’s decline is due to resource allocation: they use a lot of system resources, requiring a full copy of the OS and a virtual copy of the hardware that the OS needs to run, while containers only need the supporting libraries required to run a specific program.

Furthermore, VM’s don’t provide the same level of portability, consistency, or speed that Continue reading

New theme on blog.ipspace.net

You might have noticed that my blog looks a bit different than it did a few hours ago thanks to fantastic work by Nils & Mathias from Strandrover.Agency (and a bit of homegrown blogger template hacking). We tested all functionality we could think of, if we missed something, please write a comment (they still work ;).

When reporting a problem, please tell me what browser (and browser version) you're using and whether you're using a web proxy (like Cisco Web Security Appliance).

ISOC Togo Chapter Calls On Togo Government to Restore Internet Access

Today our Internet Society chapter in Togo issued a statement (in French) calling on the government of Togo to restore Internet access. Reports in the media and from our own members there indicate that that the government has shut down Internet access in the wake of protests after their recent election. The president of our ISOC Togo Chapter alerted us today that the shutdown has now even extended to SMS text messages.

Verengai Mabika

25 Under 25: Using the Internet to Make a Difference in Communities

On September 18th in Los Angeles, California, the Internet Society will celebrate a selected group of exceptional young people under the age of 25 who are using the Internet to make a difference in peoples’ lives.

I had the privilege of reading hundreds of submissions and nominations, many of which left me feeling humbled and inspired. The incredible impact these individuals have already had in such a short time is a model for youth around the world and for those of us who already have some years of experience!

Their efforts include creating an anti-cyberbullying youth movement in Australia, providing health education to teens in Tanzania, reducing the gender technology gap in Gambia, and using ICTs to break the cycle of poverty for families in Costa Rica. You can read more about the awardees and honourable mention recipients and their extraordinary work here.

Although the awardees’ stories are as individual as they are compelling, they do share a common theme: an unwavering commitment to solving an identified problem and a passion for using the Internet to shape tomorrow in their communities.

This is the same theme that motivated young innovators, pioneers, and connectors in their twenties and thirties to imagine the Continue reading

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