Archive

Category Archives for "Networking"

25 is the New 10

I am continually amazed at the productivity of the Cumulus Networks development team who recently collaborated with the Mellanox development team to do some amazing things in this new Cumulus Linux 3.1 release. Besides innovating on a number of important new software features, they added support for five new switches from Mellanox, including the first native 25 Gigabit Open Ethernet switch as well as the highest capacity 10/100GbE switch on the market.

 

Screen Shot 2016-08-22 at 7.54.46 AM

The Mellanox SN2410 is the industry’s first generally available switch with native 25 Gigabit Ethernet (25GbE) ports. Working for *the* provider of 99% of all 25GbE NICs sold worldwide, I can say with confidence that, until now, all 25GbE servers have been connected to 100GbE switch ports via breakout cables. The SN2410 changes all that by providing 48 SFP28 ports that can natively operate in 1G, 10G, or 25G modes, which is great for cutting-edge deployments while providing backward compatibility for legacy devices. Just like 10GbE SFP+ ports, the 25GbE SP28 ports can utilize inexpensive passive copper direct-attach cables.

Who needs 25 Gigabit Ethernet?

Without my naming names, you can safely assume that the hyperscalers and other early consumers of 10GbE are now moving to 25GbE Continue reading

A mystery user breached an email account on Clinton’s server

In 2013, an unknown user accessed an email account on Hillary Clinton’s private email server through Tor, the anonymous web surfing tool, according to new FBI documents.On Friday, the FBI provided details on the possible breach in newly released files about its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was the U.S. secretary of state.The affected email account belonged to a member of Bill Clinton's staff. In January 2013, an unknown user managed to log in to the account and browse email folders and attachments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A mystery user breached an email account on Clinton’s server

In 2013, an unknown user accessed an email account on Hillary Clinton’s private email server through Tor, the anonymous web surfing tool, according to new FBI documents.On Friday, the FBI provided details on the possible breach in newly released files about its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was the U.S. secretary of state.The affected email account belonged to a member of Bill Clinton's staff. In January 2013, an unknown user managed to log in to the account and browse email folders and attachments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Quagga Routing Software with EIGRP Support

In May 2013, Cisco opened its proprietary EIGRP protocol and released an informational RFC 7868 - Cisco's Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). It gives other vendors an opportunity to implement EIGRP protocol into their devices. A group students led by an assistant professor and Cisco CCIE Peter Paluch who is an instructor trainer at the Faculty of Management Science and Informatics, University of Zilina, Slovakia implemented EIGRP support into Quagga routing software.

The goal of this tutorial is to provide a VMware vmdk disk with installed Linux Core and Quagga which supports Cisco EIGRP protocol. The image can be used to test compatibility between EIGRP configured on native Cisco devices and an implementation of EIGRP daemon in Quagga . I also share my findings about issues that I have noticed during my tests.

Here you can download Linux Core vmdk disk with installed Quagga 0.99.24-rc1 which supports EIGRP.

How did I create Quagga Qemu Image with EIGRP Support
I installed Linux Core 7.2 to Qemu virtual machine and remastered Core for sending output to a serial port according to this tutorial. I download Quagga version which supports EIGRP from github and I installed it from source. Afterwards I created Linux Core Quagga extension. I did not submit Continue reading

Point-of-sale data breaches have now reached the cloud

The latest in a string of hacks against retail point-of-sale systems has hit the operator of a cloud-based service with about 38,000 business clients.Montreal-based Lightspeed reported the breach on Thursday and said it affected a system that retailers can use from tablets, smartphones and other devices.  The incident occurs as a growing number of retailers and hotels have been targeted by hackers, who typically install malware into the point-of-sale systems to steal credit card numbers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Point-of-sale data breaches have now reached the cloud

The latest in a string of hacks against retail point-of-sale systems has hit the operator of a cloud-based service with about 38,000 business clients.Montreal-based Lightspeed reported the breach on Thursday and said it affected a system that retailers can use from tablets, smartphones and other devices.  The incident occurs as a growing number of retailers and hotels have been targeted by hackers, who typically install malware into the point-of-sale systems to steal credit card numbers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A series of tubes: What’s next for home automation

"A series of tubes" is one of the most famous explanations of what makes the internet work, but it's also what many Europeans use to heat their homes. That's made room-by-room heating automation difficult -- until now.Heating systems in Europe typically circulate hot water from a boiler to radiators around the home, with the pump and boiler controlled by a central thermostat. Programmable timers can boost the temperature on winter evenings or lower it at night.Generally, though, such control is an all-or-nothing, whole-home affair, making it impossible to heat the living room only in the evening but warm the bathroom for a morning shower. Smart controllers like Nest and its European competitors Tado and Netatmo can't change that, as the series of tubes in most homes doesn't allow for independent control of different heating zones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft fixes freezing problems in Anniversary Update

Microsoft has issued fixes to the problem plaguing its Anniversary Update, aka Redstone, a major update to Windows 10 issued this past August. The fixes are available via the Windows Update utility.The Anniversary Update was an ambitious update, far more than a mere patch, so problems are not too big of a surprise. However, issues quickly piled up in this instance. Almost immediately there were reports of login issues, a bug causing webcams to fail, and Kindle's causing the PC to crash when the Kindle was plugged into the PC via USB.The big one, though, was freezing and slowdowns on the PC after installing the Anniversary Update. It took Microsoft roughly a month to figure out the problem, but users can now apply a Windows Update, which was released Aug. 31, to alleviate the problem. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hybrid tablets will continue to grow in popularity

The tablet market has declined over the past year, and trend will continue through the end of the year, according to recent data from IDC.Sales of tablets and hybrids fell 11.5 percent, with an all-time year-over-year low of just 183.4 million units sold. But IDC is optimistic about the future, predicting "positive growth" in 2018 that will continue to rise over the following two years, potentially reaching 194.2 million units sold by 2020.The future is hybrid Hybrid devices like the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 are shaping the market, and pushing innovation from other tech companies as they try to keep pace. The market has already seen a slew of enterprise-ready hybrids, and if IDC's data suggests that the popularity of these devices will only grow in the coming years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMworld: My Cybersecurity-Centric Impressions

In my last blog, I wrote about what I was anticipating as far as cybersecurity for VMworld.  Now that I’m back from Vegas, it’s time for me to report on how reality aligned with my expectations.1.      NSX penetration.  It seems like VMware has made progress in terms of NSX market penetration over the past year.  At VMworld 2015, VMware talked about around 1,000 production environments for NSX while at VMworld 2016, VMware mentioned somewhere between 1,700 to 2,000 production NSX customers.  Still a small percentage of the total VMware installed base but at least 70% growth year-over-year.  Yes, some of these customers are likely just getting started or are using NSX on an extremely limited basis, but I still see good progress happening as more and more organizations begin playing with and using NSX.  VMware describes three primary uses for NSX:  Disaster recovery, security, and network operations automation.  It is worth noting that around 60% to 70% of NSX deployment is skewed toward security use cases. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMworld: My Cybersecurity-Centric Impressions

In my last blog, I wrote about what I was anticipating as far as cybersecurity for VMworld.  Now that I’m back from Vegas, it’s time for me to report on how reality aligned with my expectations.1.      NSX penetration.  It seems like VMware has made progress in terms of NSX market penetration over the past year.  At VMworld 2015, VMware talked about around 1,000 production environments for NSX while at VMworld 2016, VMware mentioned somewhere between 1,700 to 2,000 production NSX customers.  Still a small percentage of the total VMware installed base but at least 70% growth year-over-year.  Yes, some of these customers are likely just getting started or are using NSX on an extremely limited basis, but I still see good progress happening as more and more organizations begin playing with and using NSX.  VMware describes three primary uses for NSX:  Disaster recovery, security, and network operations automation.  It is worth noting that around 60% to 70% of NSX deployment is skewed toward security use cases. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell believes VR will be as important as gaming to PCs

Twenty years ago, Frank Azor and three other Alienware founders built and sold their first gaming PCs. Gaming was a niche market at the time, but two decades later, it's booming.Virtual reality occupies a similar space as gaming for Azor, who is general manager for Alienware and XPS products at Dell. For him, VR is the future of PCs and will be as hot as gaming. Though full of promise, VR is still raw, however.VR is important for Dell, but Azor doesn't want to rush in and then regret it. He's taking a measured approach to evaluating VR because problems with headsets and user experiences have yet to be resolved."There's so much to learn still. We don't want to be haphazard about jumping in and doing something careless and making some mistake," Azor said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here