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Category Archives for "Networking"

Working with image files on the Linux command line

While the best way to view or manipulate image files on Linux is to open them on your desktop for viewing or manipulating with tools like Gimp, there are quite a few ways to get important details on the command line.Identifying image type by file extension In general, image files can be identified on the command line by listing their names. Clearly ".jpg" represents a jpeg file, ".png" a portable network graphics file, ".gif" a graphics interchange format file, ".tiff" a tagged image file and so on.$ ls -l images -rw-rw-r--. 1 shs shs 256093 Jul 15 2018 mycats.jpg -rw-r-----. 1 shs shs 784238 Jul 15 2018 mycats.png -rw-rw-r--. 1 shs shs 6760 Jul 15 2018 arrow.jpg -rw-r-----. 1 shs shs 8853 Jul 15 2018 arrow.png Nearly all of the time you can rely on file extensions accurately reporting the file type, but there's more you can do with additional commands.To read this article in full, please click here

AWS pledges $35 billion of additional investment for Virginia data centers

Amazon Web Services has confirmed it plans to invest a further $35 billion by 2040 in Virginia, expanding its US-EAST-1 region by establishing multiple data center campuses across the state and creating 1,000 new jobs.Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin announced the news on January 20, saying he was excited that AWS has chosen to continue its growth in the region.“Virginia will continue to encourage the development of this new generation of data center campuses across multiple regions of the Commonwealth,” he said in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here

A new role for network pros: application-flow architect

There are a lot of issues that network-management people worry about. We all have heard about faults, failures, breaches. But want to know what long-term problem is keeping the smart members of the network leadership of enterprises up at night? It’s an empty chair. Their chair, at the table that makes the plans that set network requirements and directions today and for years to come. These leaders used to sit in that chair, but now they say there’s no place for them.Application designs determine network requirements We used to build networks from primitive pieces, like digital trunks and routers. Then we built them from services, like IP VPNs. That transformation was jarring to many who’d cut their teeth on real private-network technology, but they were still a big part of the game. Today, we’re still building networks from services, but the services of today are application services that include implicit network features. The really new network is built from connectivity services that are included in cloud and even data-center hosting packages. Application planners design these services, and the decisions they make frame the building-blocks of the network. One chief network officer said he’d gone from building technology to stocking Continue reading

netlab: Building a Layer-2 Fabric

A friend of mine decided to use netlab to build a simple traditional data center fabric, and asked me a question along these lines:

How do I make all the ports be L2 by default i.e. not have IP address assigned to them?

Trying to answer his question way too late in the evening (I know, I shouldn’t be doing that), I focused on the “no IP addresses” part. To get there, you have to use the l2only pool or disable IPv4 prefixes in the built-in address pools, for example:

Worth Reading: Do We Need Network Automation

A long, long time ago, Mircea Ulinic (the author of Salt networking modules) wrote a long and thoughtful blog post on whether we need network automation (TL&DR spoiler: yes).

After reading the article, you might want to listen to the Salt and SaltStack podcast we did with Mircea a long while ago, and watch his presentation in Building Network Automation Solutions online course (also accessible with Expert Subscription).

IP Addresses through 2022

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.

IP Addresses through 2022

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.

Buffer overflow — Linux Process — Stack Creation and Inspection

< MEDIUM: https://raaki-88.medium.com/buffer-overflow-linux-process-stack-creation-and-i-d6f28b0239dc >

Process and what happens during process creation have been discussed in this post previously — https://medium.com/@raaki-88/linux-process-what-happens-under-the-hood-49e8bcf6173c

Now, let’s understand what is buffer overflow:

A buffer overflow is a type of software vulnerability that occurs when a program tries to store more data in a buffer (a temporary storage area) than it can hold. This can cause the program to overwrite adjacent memory locations, potentially leading to the execution of malicious code or the crashing of the program. Buffer overflow attacks are a common method used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to a system.

Generally, C and C++ languages are more vulnerable to Buffer Overflow while programming languages like Python and Go have implementations which protect stack.

I have written the program in Python but had to use underlying C functionality to achieve similarly.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import ctypes
import pdb
buffer = ctypes.create_string_buffer(8)
ctypes.memmove(buffer, b"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA",1000)
print('end of the program')

This is a very simple implementation where we created a buffer which can hold 8 bytes of memory, next we will create a new object which moves from one block of the memory to another but with a newer size, which will Continue reading

Friday Networking Field Day Thoughts

I’m wrapping up Networking Field Day 30 this week and as is always the case there was a lot of great discussion from both the presenters and the delegates outside of the presentations. It’s one of the reasons why I love doing this job even after almost ten years. I get to meet fun people and have an impact on so many things in the tech industry.

  • Network-as-a-Service is coming. We recorded a roundtable discussion about it and I think the impact that it’s going to have on mid-sized businesses is massive. It’s going to be like cloud. Not just in operational capability. It’s also going to be a huge driver for what you can do with your network in support of applications. The snowflakes may melt under the weight of the cookies we make from the cookie cutter deployments.
  • It feels like a lot of companies are trying to find what’s next. Part of that is coming from the ways that organizations are changing their outlook for what an office should be after the pandemic shutdowns. But still others are realizing they can’t use the same revenue stream for the next five years and hope to survive. This isn’t Continue reading

IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability

Cutting-edge server chips are turning heads for their potential to boost performance, but next-generation processors also run hotter than older designs, and data-center operators will struggle to figure out what to do with limited guidance from chip makers.At the same time, there’s going to be increased scrutiny on the role that IT equipment can play in energy efficiency efforts. These interrelated trends are among the top predictions Uptime Institute is making for data centers this year.“Operators will struggle with new, hotter server chips,” said Jacqueline Davis, research analyst at Uptime, during a web conference on the institute’s 2023 data-center predictions. Meanwhile, “energy-efficiency focus is going to expand to include the IT equipment itself, something that we think is overdue.”To read this article in full, please click here

IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability

Cutting-edge server chips are turning heads for their potential to boost performance, but next-generation processors also run hotter than older designs, and data-center operators will struggle to figure out what to do with limited guidance from chip makers.At the same time, there’s going to be increased scrutiny on the role that IT equipment can play in energy efficiency efforts. These interrelated trends are among the top predictions Uptime Institute is making for data centers this year.“Operators will struggle with new, hotter server chips,” said Jacqueline Davis, research analyst at Uptime, during a web conference on the institute’s 2023 data-center predictions. Meanwhile, “energy-efficiency focus is going to expand to include the IT equipment itself, something that we think is overdue.”To read this article in full, please click here