Shifting Your Network from Manual to Automatic

There is far too much going on in networks for humans to handle on their own.

The Myth of The Greenest Field

A fun anecdote: I had to upgrade my home landline (I know, I know) from circuit switched to packet switched last week. I called the number I was told to call and I followed the upgrade procedure. I told them exactly what I wanted – the bare minimum necessary to move the phone circuit. No more. No less.

When the technician arrived to do the upgrade, he didn’t seem to know what was going on. Instead of giving me the replacement modem I asked for, he tried to give me their “upgraded, Cadillac model” home media gateway router. I told him that I didn’t need it. I had a perfectly good router/firewall. I had wireless in my house. I didn’t need this huge monstrosity. Yet, he persisted. No amount of explanation from me could make him understand I neither wanted or needed what he was trying to install.

Finally, I gave in. I let him finish his appointment and move on. Once he was gone, I disassembled the router and took it to the nearest cable company store. I walked in and explained exactly what I wanted and what I needed. It took the techs there less than five minutes Continue reading

VeloCloud launches an SD-WAN security ecosystem

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  It’s a great time to be in the SD-WAN business. IDC estimates that worldwide SD-WAN revenues will exceed $6 billion in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 90% over the 2015-to-2020 forecast period. According to IHS, as of the end of 2016, 13% of North American enterprises already have the technology in production and 62% are in lab trials. By 2018, 82% are expected to be using SD-WAN.Those are some pretty remarkable adoption rates for a technology that is still in its early days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VeloCloud launches an SD-WAN security ecosystem

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  It’s a great time to be in the SD-WAN business. IDC estimates that worldwide SD-WAN revenues will exceed $6 billion in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 90% over the 2015-to-2020 forecast period. According to IHS, as of the end of 2016, 13% of North American enterprises already have the technology in production and 62% are in lab trials. By 2018, 82% are expected to be using SD-WAN.Those are some pretty remarkable adoption rates for a technology that is still in its early days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s now easier to check if that used smartphone you might buy is stolen

First of all, that used phone you’re thinking about buying – the one on Craigslist going for a ridiculously low price – is almost certainly stolen. You know that. We all know it.Yet if you’re intent on buying a used phone – and don’t want to buy a hot one – the wireless industry has just given you a new tool that will allow you to be reasonably confident that the phone hasn’t been reported stolen lost.From a CTIA press release: CTIA, the U.S. wireless industry association, today announced the launch of a new tool www.stolenphonechecker.org to provide consumers with free one stop access to determine if a used or refurbished smartphone has been reported as stolen or lost.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s now easier to check if that used smartphone you might buy is stolen

First of all, that used phone you’re thinking about buying – the one on Craigslist going for a ridiculously low price – is almost certainly stolen. You know that. We all know it.Yet if you’re intent on buying a used phone – and don’t want to buy a hot one – the wireless industry has just given you a new tool that will allow you to be reasonably confident that the phone hasn’t been reported stolen lost.From a CTIA press release: CTIA, the U.S. wireless industry association, today announced the launch of a new tool www.stolenphonechecker.org to provide consumers with free one stop access to determine if a used or refurbished smartphone has been reported as stolen or lost.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CNCF Snares Four New Members for Open Source Container Orchestration

The new entrants will join existing members like AT&T and Google.

Reflexive Access List

How Does Internet Work - We know what is networking

Some of my readers commented on my old article about reflexive access-list with issues in the configuration. I tried it in the lab again to be sure I didn’t make any mistake in the configuration example and here I’m sharing the lab and the config used. About Reflexive Access Lists Extended ACLs are a special kind of extended access-lists that have limited stateful behaviour technique implemented for TCP sessions. It is better to say that reflexive access-list is simulating stateful behaviour because it, by use of ‘established’ command, is allowing TCP packets that have the ‘ACK’ bit set but not

Reflexive Access List

Review: Tableau takes self-service BI to new heights

Since I reviewed Tableau, Qlik Sense, and Microsoft Power BI in 2015, Tableau and Microsoft have solidified their leadership in the business intelligence (BI) market: Tableau with intuitive interactive exploration, Microsoft with low price and Office integration. Qlik is still a leader compared to the other 20 vendors in the sector, but trails both Tableau and Power BI.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

A third of virtual servers are zombies

New research finds that 25% of all physical servers -- and 30% of all virtual servers -- are comatose. These are systems that have no activity in the last six months.The problem with comatose, or zombie, physical servers is well known. Past studies have routinely put the number of undead enterprise physical servers in the 20% to 30% range. But this latest research looked at virtual servers as well, and they may represent a significant cost to IT departments.[ Further reading: The march toward exascale computers ] That's because users may be paying licensing fees on their virtual servers, as well as on the software they support, said the researchers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A third of virtual servers are zombies

New research finds that 25% of all physical servers -- and 30% of all virtual servers -- are comatose. These are systems that have no activity in the last six months.The problem with comatose, or zombie, physical servers is well known. Past studies have routinely put the number of undead enterprise physical servers in the 20% to 30% range. But this latest research looked at virtual servers as well, and they may represent a significant cost to IT departments.[ Further reading: The march toward exascale computers ] That's because users may be paying licensing fees on their virtual servers, as well as on the software they support, said the researchers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SMBs and Hybrid IT

Q&A Citrix CSO: How to deal with security across multiple generations of employees

Citrix’s CSO Stan Black has been in the cybersecurity field for 20 years. He has seen generations of employees come and go at the software and data security company. There are three generations working side by side at Citrix – and a fourth on the way. Citrix has 9,500 employees with 51 percent being Millennials. With each generation comes a new security challenge that employers need to be overcome so that eventually enterprise security is second nature by the time future generations are in the workforce. CSO Managing Editor Ryan Francis recently asked Black how these challenges can be lessened in future generations.   What is the biggest security issue you see of new employees?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Q&A Citrix CSO: How to deal with security across multiple generations of employees

Citrix’s CSO Stan Black has been in the cybersecurity field for 20 years. He has seen generations of employees come and go at the software and data security company. There are three generations working side by side at Citrix – and a fourth on the way. Citrix has 9,500 employees with 51 percent being Millennials. With each generation comes a new security challenge that employers need to be overcome so that eventually enterprise security is second nature by the time future generations are in the workforce. CSO Managing Editor Ryan Francis recently asked Black how these challenges can be lessened in future generations.   What is the biggest security issue you see of new employees?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Testing on Software Gone Wild

Network automation and orchestration is a great idea… but how do you verify that what your automation script wants to do won’t break the network? In Episode 78 of Software Gone Wild we discussed the intricacies of testing network automation solutions with Kristian Larsson (developer of Terastream orchestration softare) and David Barroso of the NAPALM and SDN Internet Router fame.

Install the CORE Network Emulator from source code

To install the CORE network emulator in recently released Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 16.04 and later, you must install it from source code. There is a bug in CORE that prevents Quagga from starting its routing daemons in newer Linux distributions that is fixed in the latest version of the source code. However, the fix is not in the pre-built CORE packages available on the CORE web site, nor in the Ubuntu repository.

To further create problems, the CORE web site contains old versions of source code and does not point to the latest version of CORE on Github.

Also, the Ubuntu maintainers will remove CORE packages from the Ubuntu repository in the near future because CORE allows unprivileged users to access root privileges, which creates a security problem if CORE is run on a computer used by more than one person.

In this post, I provide a detailed procedure to install CORE from the source code on Github, and to set up your system to run network experiments using the CORE network emulator.

Install CORE from Github

The latest version of CORE is available on Github. To install CORE, first install some prerequisite packages that allow you to Continue reading

Linux SSH Session Management for Network Engineers

A short post about how I do SSH session management for network devices in Linux

Certain HP laptops are found recording users’ keystrokes

Over two dozen HP laptop models have been secretly recording users’ keystrokes, possibly by mistake, according to a Swiss security firm.The keylogger is found within the PCs' audio driver software and has existed since at least Dec. 2015, the security firm Modzero said in a Thursday blog post.   The audio driver was designed to identify when a special key on the PC was used. But in reality, the software will capture all the keystrokes and write them in an unencrypted file located on the laptop.In other cases, the keystrokes will be passed to a Microsoft Windows debugging interface on the PC, and expose them to possible capture, Modzero said.      To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Certain HP laptops are found recording users’ keystrokes

Over two dozen HP laptop models have been secretly recording users’ keystrokes, possibly by mistake, according to a Swiss security firm.The keylogger is found within the PCs' audio driver software and has existed since at least Dec. 2015, the security firm Modzero said in a Thursday blog post.   The audio driver was designed to identify when a special key on the PC was used. But in reality, the software will capture all the keystrokes and write them in an unencrypted file located on the laptop.In other cases, the keystrokes will be passed to a Microsoft Windows debugging interface on the PC, and expose them to possible capture, Modzero said.      To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

36% off AUKEY LED Desk Lamp With USB Charging Port and Smart Touch Sensor – Deal Alert

Aukey's desk lamp features an extra-large panel, USB charging port, dimmable brightness adjustment & adjustable color temperature, smart touch sensor and sleep mode for reading. Right now its typical list price of $49.99 has been reduced by 20% on Amazon to $39.99, but if you enter the code AUKLTST6 at checkout you'll activate another big price drop down to just $32. See the AUKEY LED Desk Lamp deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here