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Category Archives for "Networking"

ECL set to build modular, hydrogen-powered data centers

ECL has announced what it says will be the world’s first modular, sustainable, off-grid data center that uses hydrogen as its primary power source, promising carbon neutral performance and 99.9999% uptime.Modular data centers are designed to go together like building blocks, allowing companies to start small and grow as their capacity needs increase. The ECL data centers will come in 1 megawatt blocks.ECL's data-center-as-a-service offering is geared primarily to mid-sized data center operators, as well as large companies with a mix of cloud and on-premises IT environments. It claims its data centers will have a total cost of ownership that's two-thirds of what a traditional colocation data center environment would cost when measured over five years.To read this article in full, please click here

Containerlab dashboard

The GitHub sflow-rt/containerlab project contains example network topologies for the Containerlab network emulation tool that demonstrate real-time streaming telemetry in realistic data center topologies and network configurations. The examples use the same FRRouting (FRR) engine that is part of SONiC, NVIDIA Cumulus Linux, and DENT network operating systems. Containerlab can be used to experiment before deploying solutions into production. Examples include: tracing ECMP flows in leaf and spine topologies, EVPN visibility, and automated DDoS mitigation using BGP Flowspec and RTBH controls.
The screen capture at the top of this article shows a real-time dashboard displaying up to the second traffic analytics gathered from the 5 stage Clos fabric shown above. This article walks through the steps needed to run the example.
git clone https://github.com/sflow-rt/containerlab.git
cd containerlab
./run-clab
Run the above commands to download the project and run Containerlab on a system with Docker installed. Docker Desktop is a conventient way to run the labs on a laptop.
containerlab deploy -t clos5.yml
Start the emulation.
./topo.py clab-clos5
Post topology to sFlow-RT REST API. Connect to http://localhost:8008/app/containerlab-dashboard/html/ to access the Dashboard shown at the top of this article.
docker exec -it clab-clos5-h1 iperf3 -c 172.16. Continue reading

Network Break 442: HashiCorp Swaps Open Source For BSL; Open Enterprise Linux Goes After RHEL

Today on Network Break we discuss big moves in open source, including HashiCorp switching from an open source license to "business source" and Red Hat competitors banding together to offer an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We also discuss Google's odd attempt to get employees back to the office by charging them to stay at an on-campus hotel.

The post Network Break 442: HashiCorp Swaps Open Source For BSL; Open Enterprise Linux Goes After RHEL appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Network Break 442: HashiCorp Swaps Open Source For BSL; Open Enterprise Linux Goes After RHEL

Today on Network Break we discuss big moves in open source, including HashiCorp switching from an open source license to "business source" and Red Hat competitors banding together to offer an alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We also discuss Google's odd attempt to get employees back to the office by charging them to stay at an on-campus hotel.

Wasm core dumps and debugging Rust in Cloudflare Workers

Wasm core dumps and debugging Rust in Cloudflare Workers
Wasm core dumps and debugging Rust in Cloudflare Workers

A clear sign of maturing for any new programming language or environment is how easy and efficient debugging them is. Programming, like any other complex task, involves various challenges and potential pitfalls. Logic errors, off-by-ones, null pointer dereferences, and memory leaks are some examples of things that can make software developers desperate if they can't pinpoint and fix these issues quickly as part of their workflows and tools.

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a binary instruction format designed to be a portable and efficient target for the compilation of high-level languages like Rust, C, C++, and others. In recent years, it has gained significant traction for building high-performance applications in web and serverless environments.

Cloudflare Workers has had first-party support for Rust and Wasm for quite some time. We've been using this powerful combination to bootstrap and build some of our most recent services, like D1, Constellation, and Signed Exchanges, to name a few.

Using tools like Wrangler, our command-line tool for building with Cloudflare developer products, makes streaming real-time logs from our applications running remotely easy. Still, to be honest, debugging Rust and Wasm with Cloudflare Workers involves a lot of the good old time-consuming and Continue reading

Kubernetes 005. Overview of MicroK8s from Canonical (Ubuntu-folks).

Dear friend,

This year I had a pleasure and privilege to attend KubeCon Europe 2023 and this was the first time I’ve heard about MicroK8s. That sounded interesting and I decided I shall experiment with it and write a blogpost; but it didn’t catch my attention to a degree that I put it on top of my list; instead, I’ve put it to back burner. The last week I was talking to a colleagues of mine, who told me that he needs to test something in his production Kubernetes at home. I was quite interested, what does the one mean by “production Kubernetes cluster at home” and it appeared to be MikroK8s. At this stage I though, I don’t have any more excuses, so I just should sit and write it.

Is Kubernetes Used in Network Automation?

It is, indeed. The last week when we posted a blog about starting programming in C we got an interesting discussion in LinkedIn about Go vs Python with one right-honorable gentleman, who rightfully suggested that one of the main weaknesses of Python is that it requires to install dependencies on the host before you can use application. However, to be brutally honest, many Continue reading

Measuring the Use of DNSSEC

It's challenging to measure the uptake of DNSSEC in the DNS. There are just so many aspects of the DNS that are occluded from view! How many DNS names are there in the DNS? How many of these are signed? How many queries are processed by DNS infrastructure? How many queries add DNSSEC validcation. We present a new measurement here which is a query-weighted view of the DNS, looking the amount of queries for DNS names that are DNSSEC-signed as a proportion of the total query load.

Red Hat rivals form Open Enterprise Linux Association

Three of Red Hat’s chief enterprise Linux competitors are banding together to create an alternative to Red Hat-based software, after the company made changes to its terms of use earlier this summer, making it more difficult to access its source code.Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ, in a joint statement issued Thursday, said that the new Open Enterprise Linux Association will “encourage the development” of Linux distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux by providing free access to source code.“With OpenELA, CIQ, Oracle and SUSE join forces with the open source community to ensure a stable and resilient future for both upstream and downstream communities to leverage Enterprise Linux,” said CIQ CEO Gregory Kurtzer, in the statement.To read this article in full, please click here

Red Hat rivals form Open Enterprise Linux Association

Three of Red Hat’s chief enterprise Linux competitors are banding together to create an alternative to Red Hat-based software, after the company made changes to its terms of use earlier this summer, making it more difficult to access its source code.Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ, in a joint statement issued Thursday, said that the new Open Enterprise Linux Association will “encourage the development” of Linux distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux by providing free access to source code.“With OpenELA, CIQ, Oracle and SUSE join forces with the open source community to ensure a stable and resilient future for both upstream and downstream communities to leverage Enterprise Linux,” said CIQ CEO Gregory Kurtzer, in the statement.To read this article in full, please click here

Argument Farming

The old standard.

I’m no stranger to disagreement with people on the Internet. Most of my popular posts grew from my disagreement with others around things like being called an engineer, being a 10x engineer, and something about IPv6 and NAT. I’ve always tried to explain my reasoning for my positions and discuss the relevant points with people that want to have a debate. I tend to avoid commenting on people that just accuse me of being wrong and tell me I need to grow up or work in the real world.

Buying the Farm

However, I’ve noticed recently that there have been some people in the realm of social media and influencing that have taken to posting so-called hot takes on things solely for the purpose of engagement. It’s less of a discussion and more of a post that outlines all the reasons why a particular thing that people might like is wrong.

For example, it would be like me posting something about how an apple is the dumbest fruit because it’s not perfectly round or orange or how the peel is ridiculous because you can eat it. While there are some opinions and points to be Continue reading

Performant and Programmable Telco Networking with eBPF

To keep the world connected, telecommunication networks demand performance and programmability to meet customers when and where they are, from streaming the winning goal of the world cup to coordinating responses to the latest natural disaster. When switchboards were still run by human operators, telco companies were all about custom hardware with “black boxes” from vendors providing the speed the network needed. These black boxes controlled the performance of the network, which also made it dependent on where they were actually deployed. As telcos moved from traditional phone calls to additional services like messaging and mobile data, the demands on the network pushed the boundaries of what was possible. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) sought to allow telcos to use “white box” commodity hardware to scale out throughput and increase flexibility. Technologies like the Data Plane Development Kit (

Integrating Calico statistics with Prometheus

Metrics are important for a microservices application running on Kubernetes because they provide visibility into the health and performance of the application. This visibility can be used to troubleshoot problems, optimize the application, and ensure that it is meeting its SLAs.

Some of the challenges that metrics solve for microservices applications running on Kubernetes include:

  • Visibility: Microservices applications are typically composed of many small, independent services. This can make it difficult to get a clear picture of the overall health and performance of the application. Metrics provide a way to aggregate data from all of the services, giving you a single view of the application.
  • Troubleshooting: When something goes wrong with a microservices application, it can be difficult to identify the root cause of the problem. Metrics can help you to track down the problem by providing information about the state of the application at the time of the failure.
  • Optimization: Metrics can be used to optimize the performance of a microservices application. By tracking metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic, you can identify areas where the application can be improved.
  • SLAs: Many microservices applications have SLAs that they must meet. Metrics can be used to Continue reading

Heavy Networking 694: A Network Engineering Roundtable

This week on Heavy Networking we've assembled a roundtable of network engineers to talk about...stuff. Each guest has brought a topic to discuss with the table, so we've got lots of subjects and lots of experiences and opinions. In particular we explore SPB, career advice, getting network automation off the ground, and the joys and perils of self-hosting.

The post Heavy Networking 694: A Network Engineering Roundtable appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 694: A Network Engineering Roundtable

This week on Heavy Networking we've assembled a roundtable of network engineers to talk about...stuff. Each guest has brought a topic to discuss with the table, so we've got lots of subjects and lots of experiences and opinions. In particular we explore SPB, career advice, getting network automation off the ground, and the joys and perils of self-hosting.

Kubernetes Unpacked 032: AI Use Cases For Kubernetes

On today's Kubernetes Unpacked we speak with Evis Drenova about whether AI has a role to play in the Kubernetes ecosystem. We discuss everything from using chat-based generative AI tools to interact with Kubernetes to data models and data sets on Kubernetes to Machine Learning with Kubernetes.

The post Kubernetes Unpacked 032: AI Use Cases For Kubernetes appeared first on Packet Pushers.