Security ‘net: Internet of Things and iPhones edition
One of my college professors has suggested that the question of whether or not Apple should help the FBI break the encryption on the iPhone used by a terrorist is an ideal diagnostic question for your view of all things privacy. There are, of course, gray area answers, like “Apple should help the FBI break the encryption in this case, but not others.” The problem is, of course, that this isn’t the simple answer it might seem. First, there are motives behind the apparent motives. Many people see Apple as just “doing what’s right to save the world.” I don’t see it that way at all. Given I’m a bit cynical (who would have guessed), I see two motives from Apple’s point of view.
First, Apple is trying to protect a marketing stance. They’ve as much as admitted this in court documents and the implied threat of suing the U.S. Government for loss of revenue if they’re forced to build a version of their O/S that will allow the FBI to break the encryption. Just Security notes—
There are other interests at stake here too. Apple has a liberty interest in not being dragooned into writing forensic Continue reading
Mirantis Shores Up OpenStack Stability
Mirantis polishes OpenStack.
Cisco Dives Into Hyperconvergence
HyperFlex integrates software from Springpath into the Cisco UCS platform.
Slacking Off
A Candlestick Phone (image courtesy of WIkipedia)
There’s a great piece today on how Slack is causing disruption in people’s work habits. Slack is a program that has dedicated itself to getting rid of email, yet we now find ourselves mired in Slack team after Slack team. I believe the real issue isn’t with Slack but instead with the way that our brains are wired to handle communication.
Interrupt Driven
People get interrupted all the time. It’s a fact of life if you work in business, not just IT. Even if you have your head down typing away at a keyboard and you’ve closed out all other forms of distraction, a pop up from an email or a ringing or vibrating phone will jar your concentration out of the groove and force your brain to deal with this new intruder into your solitude.
That’s evolution working against you. When we were hunters and gatherers our brain had to learn how to deal with external threats when we were focused on a task like stalking a mammoth or looking for sprouts on the forest floor. Our eyes are even developed to take advantage of this. Your peripheral vision will pick up Continue reading
Worth Watching: The Basics of ASIC Design
The post Worth Watching: The Basics of ASIC Design appeared first on 'net work.
Docker Networking Design Philosophy
From the experimental networking in Docker 1.7 to the initial release in Docker 1.9, the reception from the community has been fantastic! First of all we want to thank you for all the discussions, evaluations, PRs and filed issues. As … ContinuedOPNFV Lets the Rivers of Brahmaputra Flow
It’s in a race with vendors doing similar work.
Staying afloat: the DROWN Attack and CloudFlare
CloudFlare customers are automatically protected against the recently disclosed DROWN Attack. We do not have SSLv2 enabled on our servers.
We publish our SSL configuration here so that others can use it. We currently accept TLS 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.
We are proactively testing our customers' origin web servers to detect vulnerable servers and will be reaching out to any that have a server that is vulnerable to DROWN.
In the interim, ensure that SSLv2 is fully disabled and/or that private keys are not shared with servers that still need to have SSLv2.
Networking: Best-of-Breed Vs. Single Vendor
Should you take a multi-vendor approach to your network or is a homogeneous network the best bet?
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Bridging Loops
Continuing our bridging loops discussion Christoph Jaggi sent me another question:
Theoretically STP should avoid bridging loops, and yet you claim they cause data center meltdowns. What am I missing?
In theory, STP avoids bridging loops. In practice, there are numerous reasons STP got a bad name.
Read more ...Taking The Mystery Out Of IoT
Some networking pros may still scoff at the impending Internet of Things, but ignore it at your peril.
Does your Wave2 AP need NBase-T?
Cisco recently launched the 2800 and 3800 series 802.11ac wave-2 access points. The 3800 Datasheet quotes a theoretical maximum throughput of 5.2Gbps when operating in Dual 5GHz radio mode (2 x 2.6Gbps). If you ran two cables to your AP you could … Continue reading
The post Does your Wave2 AP need NBase-T? appeared first on The Network Sherpa.
Does your Wave2 AP need NBase-T?
Cisco recently launched the 2800 and 3800 series 802.11ac wave-2 access points. The 3800 Datasheet quotes a theoretical maximum throughput of 5.2Gbps when operating in Dual 5GHz radio mode (2 x 2.6Gbps). If you ran two cables to your AP you could use the second ethernet port to create a 2 x 1Gbps LAG. However there is still some debate about whether 2Gbps of throughput is sufficient for a single-radio Wave2 AP.
Some companies may not be willing to invest the time and expense to swap out their copper for fiber or run yet more copper to their APs. The NBase-T standard 802.3bz provides an alternative approach, promising speeds of 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps over Cat5e cabling over 100 Meter runs.
Peter Jones from Cisco is the chair of the NBase-T alliance and presented to us in Tech field day on the new 802.3bz standard and the technology behind it. Cisco terminology for NBase-T-like functionality is ‘MultiGigabit Ethernet’. Currently the Cisco Catalyst 2k, 3K, and 4K switching line have specific models or line cards which support a number of combined UPoE/MultiGig ports. The reason for new hardware is that new digital signal processors (DSPs) are required to achieve the 2.5Gbps Continue reading