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Category Archives for "Networking"

Intel updates FPGA product line

Intel refreshed its FPGA line-up with cost-optimized offerings, released its FPGA software stack as open source, and added a new processor design based on the RISC-V architecture.The first of the new products is the Agilex 3 family of power- and cost-optimized FPGAs available in compact form factors. Agilex follows the same product-naming convention as the desktop Core series; 3 is the lowest end of the performance spectrum, followed by 5, 7, and 9 series in ascending order.The Agilex 3 family will come with two branches: the B-Series and C-Series. The B-Series FPGAs have higher I/O density in smaller form factors at lower power than other Intel FPGAs​. B-Series FPGAs are targeted for board and system management, including server platform management (PFM) applications.To read this article in full, please click here

Taking control of your fortunes on Linux

The fortune command is generally considered one of the just-for-fun commands that you’ll find on linux systems, but it can prove useful in some interesting ways.How it works Probably most Linux users run the fortune command only when they’re bored, though I’ve known a few who added the fortune command to the end of their .bashrc files so that every login would provide a little quote or a saying that they’d ponder for as much as 30 seconds before proceeding to more serious work.The fortune command is, however, more versatile than many Linux users realize. In fact, most of the responses to typing “fortune” are not really fortunes at all. Rather than predicting your future or even just the outcome of your day, they provide quotes or lighthearted comments.To read this article in full, please click here

Taking control of your fortunes on Linux

The fortune command is generally considered one of the just-for-fun commands that you’ll find on linux systems, but it can prove useful in some interesting ways.How it works Probably most Linux users run the fortune command only when they’re bored, though I’ve known a few who added the fortune command to the end of their .bashrc files so that every login would provide a little quote or a saying that they’d ponder for as much as 30 seconds before proceeding to more serious work.The fortune command is, however, more versatile than many Linux users realize. In fact, most of the responses to typing “fortune” are not really fortunes at all. Rather than predicting your future or even just the outcome of your day, they provide quotes or lighthearted comments.To read this article in full, please click here

Does EVPN/VXLAN over SD-WAN Make Sense?

It looks like we might be seeing VXLAN-over-SDWAN deployments in the wild. Here’s the “why that makes sense” argument I received from a participant of the ipSpace.net Design Clinic in which I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea.

Also, the EVPN-over-WAN idea is not hypothetical since EVPN+VXLAN is now the easiest way to build L3VPN with data center switches that don’t support MPLS LDP. Folks with no interest in EVPN’s L2 features are still using it for L3VPN.

Let’s unravel this scenario a bit:

Does EVPN/VXLAN over SD-WAN Make Sense?

It looks like we might be seeing VXLAN-over-SDWAN deployments in the wild. Here’s the “why that makes sense” argument I received from a participant of the ipSpace.net Design Clinic in which I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea.

Also, the EVPN-over-WAN idea is not hypothetical since EVPN+VXLAN is now the easiest way to build L3VPN with data center switches that don’t support MPLS LDP. Folks with no interest in EVPN’s L2 features are still using it for L3VPN.

Let’s unravel this scenario a bit:

Why Single-Port LAGs?

I recommend always using LACP for external connections. It will make your life easier, even when you only have a single connection. Here’s why we do it.

If you set up a PNI with AS32590, we will strongly recommend the use of LACP, even for a single link. If you have two PNIs with us, they will each be separate single-member LAGs, because they will be on different routers on our side.

It’s only once you have more than 2 links that we start using LACP in the way most people think of it.

It’s not just us. In Google’s Peering Policy, under “Private peering physical connection requirements”, it states

Link aggregation via LACP is required for all links, including single links

Ever wondered why that is? What’s the point in setting up a LAG if I only have one link? What does it give me? More lines of config for no operational enhancement? And I thought we should use L3 everywhere anyway?

I can’t speak for Google, only for the way we operate our network. But I’m pretty sure their reasons are similar to ours. The obvious reason is for future growth, but there are operational benefits too.

Continue reading

Welcome to Birthday Week 2023

Welcome to Birthday Week 2023
Welcome to Birthday Week 2023

Having been at Cloudflare since it was tiny it’s hard to believe that we’re hitting our teens! But here we are 13 years on from launch. Looking back to 2010 it was the year of iPhone 4, the first iPad, the first Kinect, Inception was in cinemas, and TiK ToK was hot (well, the Kesha song was). Given how long ago all that feels, I'd have a hard time predicting the next 13 years, so I’ll stick to predicting the future by creating it (with a ton of help from the Cloudflare team).

Building the future is, in part, what Birthday Week is about. Over the past 13 years we’ve announced things like Universal SSL (doubling the size of the encrypted web overnight and helping to usher in the largely encrypted web we all use; Cloudflare Radar shows that worldwide 99% of HTTP requests are encrypted), or Cloudflare Workers (helping change the way people build and scale applications), or unmetered DDoS protection (to help with the scourge of DDoS).

This year will be no different.

Winding back to the year I joined Cloudflare we made our first Birthday Week announcement: our automatic IPv6 gateway. Fast-forward to today and Continue reading

Heavy Networking 702: Supporting Network Automation With The Pandas Python Library

Today's Heavy Networking covers Pandas. Not the cuddly bears that eat bamboo, but the Python library that makes it easy for you to work with a set of data. Import Pandas at the top of your Python script, follow one of many Pandas tutorials online, and in short order you’ll be able to perform data operations in a spreadsheet-like way. We talk network automation use cases for Pandas with Rick Donato.

The post Heavy Networking 702: Supporting Network Automation With The Pandas Python Library appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 702: Supporting Network Automation With The Pandas Python Library

Today's Heavy Networking covers Pandas. Not the cuddly bears that eat bamboo, but the Python library that makes it easy for you to work with a set of data. Import Pandas at the top of your Python script, follow one of many Pandas tutorials online, and in short order you’ll be able to perform data operations in a spreadsheet-like way. We talk network automation use cases for Pandas with Rick Donato.

Typo traps: analyzing traffic to exmaple.com (or is it example.com?)

Typo traps: analyzing traffic to exmaple.com (or is it example.com?)
Typo traps: analyzing traffic to exmaple.com (or is it example.com?)

A typo is one of those common mistakes with unpredictable results when it comes to the Internet’s domain names (DNS). In this blog post we’re going to analyze traffic for exmaple.com, and see how a very simple human error ends up creating unintentional traffic on the Internet.

Cloudflare has owned exmaple.com for a few years now, but don’t confuse it with example.com! example.com is a reserved domain name set by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), under the direction of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It has been used since 1999 as a placeholder, or example, in documentation, tutorials, sample network configurations, or to prevent accidental references to real websites. We use it extensively on this blog.

As I’m writing it, the autocorrect system transforms exmaple.com into example.com, every time, assuming I must have misspelled it. But in situations where there’s no automatic spelling correction (for example, while editing a configuration file) it’s easy for example to become exmaple.

And so, lots of traffic goes to exmaple.com by mistake — whether it was a typoed attempt to reach example.com or due to other random reasons. Fake email accounts in Continue reading

Repost: L2 Is Bad

Roman Pomazanov documented his thoughts on the beauties of large layer-2 domains in a LinkedIn article and allowed me to repost it on ipSpace.net blog to ensure it doesn’t disappear


First of all: “L2 is a single failure domain”, a problem at one point can easily spread to the entire datacenter.

Repost: L2 Is Bad

Roman Pomazanov documented his thoughts on the beauties of large layer-2 domains in a LinkedIn article and allowed me to repost it on ipSpace.net blog to ensure it doesn’t disappear


First of all: “L2 is a single failure domain”, a problem at one point can easily spread to the entire datacenter.

Kubernetes Unpacked 035: Chaos Engineering In Kubernetes And The Litmus Project

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and Kristina catch up with Prithvi Raj and Sayan Mondal to talk about all things Chaos Engineering in the Kubernetes space! We chat about the open source and CNCF incubating project, Litmus, and various other topics  including why Chaos Engineering is important, how it can help all organizations, how every engineer can use it, and more.

The post Kubernetes Unpacked 035: Chaos Engineering In Kubernetes And The Litmus Project appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Kubernetes Unpacked 035: Chaos Engineering In Kubernetes And The Litmus Project

In today's Kubernetes Unpacked, Michael and Kristina catch up with Prithvi Raj and Sayan Mondal to talk about all things Chaos Engineering in the Kubernetes space! We chat about the open source and CNCF incubating project, Litmus, and various other topics  including why Chaos Engineering is important, how it can help all organizations, how every engineer can use it, and more.

Cisco significantly bolsters security portfolio with $28B Splunk buy

Looking to significantly reinforce its security software portfolio, Cisco has struck a $28 billion cash deal to acquire enterprise and cloud protection company Splunk.Founded in 2003, Splunk’s software platform is known for its wide-reaching ability to search, monitor and analyze data from a variety of systems. Network security teams can use this information to gain better visibility into and gather insights about network traffic, firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDSes), intrusion prevention systems (IPSes), and security information and event management (SIEM) systems, from on premise and or its cloud-based package, according to Splunk.To read this article in full, please click here