Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

Google leaked prefixes – and knocked Japan off the Internet

Last Friday, 25 August, a routing incident caused large-scale internet disruption. It hit Japanese users the hardest, slowing or blocking access to websites and online services for dozens of Japanese companies.

What happened is that Google accidentally leaked BGP prefixes it learned from peering relationships, essentially becoming a transit provider instead of simply exchanging traffic between two networks and their customers. This also exposed some internal traffic engineering that caused many of these prefixes to get de-aggregated and therefore raised their probability of getting accepted elsewhere.

Andrei Robachevsky

Worth Reading: Dealing with IPv6 fragmentation in the DNS

It appears that rather than effecting a slight improvement from IPv4, the manner of fragmentation handling in IPv6 appears to be significantly worse than IPv4. Little wonder that there have been calls from time to time to completely dispense with packet fragmentation in IPv6, as the current situation with IPv6 appears to be worse than either no fragmentation or the IPv4-style of fragmentation. —Geoff Huston @ APNIC

The post Worth Reading: Dealing with IPv6 fragmentation in the DNS appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: 5 myths about Z-wave technology debunked

As the IoT and industries related to it continue to expand at mind-boggling speeds, it’s only natural that myths and hear-say about IoT-related technologies grow as well. One of the greatest victims of scandalous rumors is Z-Wave technology, a critical aspect of the IoT that is often unfairly castigated by those who present false or misleading information.So just how secure is Z-Wave technology? What are the most persistent myths about it, and why do some people benefit from spreading them? Below, we’ll go over five common myths about Z-Wave tech, and explain just how wrong they are.Z-Wave is difficult to integrate into the IoT One of the most heinous hoaxes proliferating around the internet is that Z-Wave technology is difficult to integrate into the IoT, and presents serious challenges to IoT application and gadget developers. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Some Z-Wave critics argue that its development kits are few and far-between, and challenging to both locate and utilize. The reality, however, is that a plethora of Z-Wave development kits are readily prepared to help IoT developers achieve their objectives easily.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 5 myths about Z-wave technology debunked

As the IoT and industries related to it continue to expand at mind-boggling speeds, it’s only natural that myths and hear-say about IoT-related technologies grow as well. One of the greatest victims of scandalous rumors is Z-Wave technology, a critical aspect of the IoT that is often unfairly castigated by those who present false or misleading information.So just how secure is Z-Wave technology? What are the most persistent myths about it, and why do some people benefit from spreading them? Below, we’ll go over five common myths about Z-Wave tech, and explain just how wrong they are.Z-Wave is difficult to integrate into the IoT One of the most heinous hoaxes proliferating around the internet is that Z-Wave technology is difficult to integrate into the IoT, and presents serious challenges to IoT application and gadget developers. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Some Z-Wave critics argue that its development kits are few and far-between, and challenging to both locate and utilize. The reality, however, is that a plethora of Z-Wave development kits are readily prepared to help IoT developers achieve their objectives easily.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

History of computers, part 1 — The bulletin board system

One weird little quirk about being human is that we (as a group) tend to think things have been the way they currently are for a lot longer than they actually have been — and that they're not likely to change.Even the most hard and well-backed-up science tends to change with the proverbial wind. Example: Cholesterol ... good or bad? See? Things (and ideas) change. Fast. And often we don't think they've changed at all. Sometimes it's good to sit back and look at how things have already changed — to see how things might change in the future.Let's apply that to servers. Computers serving up bits of data to other computers. What did those look like 10 years ago? 20? 50? In this article series, let's look over each major era and type of servers, in no particular order — I'll be bouncing around a bit as I tell the story of "Computer Servers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

History of computers, part 1 — The bulletin board system

One weird little quirk about being human is that we (as a group) tend to think things have been the way they currently are for a lot longer than they actually have been — and that they're not likely to change.Even the most hard and well-backed-up science tends to change with the proverbial wind. Example: Cholesterol ... good or bad? See? Things (and ideas) change. Fast. And often we don't think they've changed at all. Sometimes it's good to sit back and look at how things have already changed — to see how things might change in the future.Let's apply that to servers. Computers serving up bits of data to other computers. What did those look like 10 years ago? 20? 50? In this article series, let's look over each major era and type of servers, in no particular order — I'll be bouncing around a bit as I tell the story of "Computer Servers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why microservices are the foundation to a digital future

There’s no doubt that digital transformation (DX) is revolutionizing the way we do business, and cloud computing serves as a key cog in the DX machine. Cloud’s elasticity can indeed help digital businesses communicate more rapidly and increase innovation. But to extract full value from the cloud, companies must make sure that they aren’t bringing the equivalent of a cutlass to a gun fight when it comes to migrating existing applications and accelerating software development.Here is what I mean: many businesses start their migration journeys by lifting and shifting existing on-premises applications into the cloud, making few to no changes to the application itself.  But running such the same old monolithic application architectures in the cloud means that your applications aren’t built to maximize cloud benefits. Just the opposite: They often present scalability issues, increase cost and require time-consuming application support. Ultimately, this will erode DX strategies, which depend on modernizing, rapidly iterating, and scaling applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The rise of info-monopolies

Salil Mehta is a statistician and well-known public intellectual. See his impressive bio. He has been cited in major publications, such as the NYT. But Google closed his email and website (Statistical Ideas) down without notice or explanation. When he submitted an inquiry he got this. “After review, your account is not eligible to be reinstated due to a violation of our Google Terms of Service. We recommend viewing our Google Terms of Service …” —Fabius Maximus

The post Worth Reading: The rise of info-monopolies appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Large BGP Leak by Google Disrupts Internet in Japan

At 03:22 UTC on Friday, 25 August 2017, the internet experienced the effects of another massive BGP routing leak.  This time it was Google who leaked over 160,000 prefixes to Verizon, who in turn accepted these routes and passed them on.  Despite the fact that the leak took place in Chicago, Illinois, it had devastating consequences for the internet in Japan, half a world away. Two of Japan’s major telecoms (KDDI and NTT’s OCN) were severely affected, posting outage notices (KDDI / OCN pictured below).

Massive routing leaks continue

In recent years, large-scale (100K+ prefix) BGP routing leaks typically fall into one of two buckets:  the leaker either 1) announces the global routing table as if it is the origin (or source) of all the routes (see Indosat in 2014), or 2) takes the global routing table as learned from providers and/or peers and mistakenly announced it to another provider (see Telekom Malaysia in 2015).

This case is different because the vast majority of the routes involved in this massive routing leak were not in the global routing table at the time but instead were more-specifics of routes that were.  This is an important Continue reading

Staples Easy Button gets IoT makeover

“That was easy” is the iconic tagline of Staples. The international retailer has used that line since 2003. In 2005, the slogan took a material shape and appeared in ads as a red “easy” button. Now, Staples is giving its next-generation of the Easy Button a serious IoT makeover.The button was meant as a metaphor to represent easy business transactions. But that didn’t stop people from wanting an actual button. Staples responded by producing Easy Buttons as a “stress relieving” novelty. Pushing the button causes it to say, “That was easy.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The WireX Botnet: How Industry Collaboration Disrupted a DDoS Attack

Introduction

On August 17th, 2017, multiple Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and content providers were subject to significant attacks from a botnet dubbed WireX. The botnet is named for an anagram for one of the delimiter strings in its command and control protocol. The WireX botnet comprises primarily Android devices running malicious applications and is designed to create DDoS traffic. The botnet is sometimes associated with ransom notes to targets.

A few days ago, Google was alerted that this malware was available on its Play Store. Shortly following the notification, Google removed hundreds of affected applications and started the process to remove the applications from all devices.

Researchers from Akamai, Cloudflare, Flashpoint, Google, Oracle Dyn, RiskIQ, Team Cymru, and other organizations cooperated to combat this botnet. Evidence indicates that the botnet may have been active as early as August 2nd, but it was the attacks on August 17th that drew the attention of these organizations. This post represents the combined knowledge and efforts of the researchers working to share information about a botnet in the best interest of the internet community as a whole. This blog post was written together by researchers from numerous organizations and released Continue reading

40% off Lexar microSD To Lightning Reader – Deal Alert

Lexar's microSD-to-Lightning reader makes it easy to move all your favorite content to & from your iOS device on the go. So whether you’re offloading stunning action photos from that sporting event, or dramatic video from your drone, or if you just want a simple solution to back up or move around your files while mobile -- it’s got you covered. With its small footprint, you can put it in your pocket and go. And the Lightning connector fits with most iOS cases, providing simple plug-and-play functionality. An optional app from the app store allows you to back up files when connected to your device for greater peace of mind. Lexar's microSD to Lightning reader averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon, where its typical list price of $24.99 has been reduced a generous 40%, for now, to just $14.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

1 … 1,612 1,613 1,614 1,615 1,616 … 3,412