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Category Archives for "Networking"

Cisco CEO not big on spin-ins

Cisco’s emphasizing the establishment of small internal “start-ups” for innovation rather than forming, funding and acquiring spin-in companies to develop new products for key markets. CEO Chuck Robbins says Cisco is setting up small teams internally to “give them big hairy problems to solve” in areas the company prioritizes for product development and revenue growth. Such areas include data center, security, service provider routing, software programmability – including automation and orchestration -- collaboration, and analytics for the Internet of Things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

State-sponsored cyberspies inject victim profiling and tracking scripts in strategic websites

Web analytics and tracking cookies play a vital role in online advertising, but they can also help attackers discover potential targets and their weaknesses, a new report shows.Security researchers from FireEye have discovered an attack campaign that has injected computer profiling and tracking scripts into over 100 websites visited by business executives, diplomats, government officials and academic researchers.The researchers believe the compromised websites attract visitors involved in international business travel, diplomacy, energy production and policy, international economics and official government work. They include sites belonging to embassies, educational and research institutions, governments, visa services, energy companies, media organizations and non-profit organizations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

General – Behavior Of QoS Queues On Cisco IOS

I have been running some QoS tests lately and wanted to share some of my results. Some of this behavior is described in various documentation guides but it’s not really clearly described in one place. I’ll describe what I have found so far in this post.

QoS is only active during congestion. This is well known but it’s not as well known how congestion is detected. the TX ring is used to hold packets before they get transmitted out on an interface. This is a hardware FIFO queue and when the queue gets filled, the interface is congested. When buying a subrate circuit from a SP, something must be added to achieve the backpressure so that the TX ring is considered full. This is done by applying a parent shaper and a child policy with the actual queue configuration.

The LLQ is used for high priority traffic. When the interface is not congested, the LLQ can use all available bandwidth unless an explicit policer is configured under the LLQ.

A normal queue can use more bandwidth than it is guaranteed when there is no congestion.

When a normal queue wants to use more bandwidth than its guaranteed, it can if Continue reading

New products of the week 11.16.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Blue Jeans 3.0Key features: new integrations and centralized control, ROI and management tools. Specifically, Blue Jeans 3.0 will include: A refreshed and unified user interface offering new audio capabilities and one-click connections; WebRTC support for Google Chrome, including a new user interface, new audio capabilities, and usability improvements for frictionless meeting entry. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.16.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Blue Jeans 3.0Key features: new integrations and centralized control, ROI and management tools. Specifically, Blue Jeans 3.0 will include: A refreshed and unified user interface offering new audio capabilities and one-click connections; WebRTC support for Google Chrome, including a new user interface, new audio capabilities, and usability improvements for frictionless meeting entry. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

REVIEW: Best VPN routers for small business

We looked at six VPN routers designed for small businesses, ranging from the popular Cisco brand to lesser-known names like DrayTek and UTT Technologies. We setup and evaluated each to determine how they compare in regards to price, features, and user-friendliness. When choosing a VPN router, you want to pick one that supports the VPN protocol of your choice. If you’re look for an IPSec VPN, consider those that provide a way to simplify the configuration, such as the Cisco, Linksys or Netgear units. If you’re looking for a wide variety of VPN options, consider D-Link. If you’re looking for an inexpensive option, consider UTT Technologies. And if you’re looking for unique features, consider the DrayTek unit, or their other models with integrated Wi-Fi, fiber, or VoIP support.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacktivists claim ISIS terrorists linked to Paris attacks had bitcoin funding

During Dateline coverage after the terrorist attacks on Paris, Lestor Holt asked, “Does this change the game in terms of intelligence?”Andrea Mitchell replied, “It does,” before discussing how intelligence missed any type of communication regarding the coordinated attacks. She added, “There’s such good surveillance on cell phones and there’s such good communications ability by the intelligence gathering in Europe, especially in France, especially in Great Britain and in the United States. So they may have been communicating via social media or through codes. And that’s the kind of thing that is very concerning to U.S. intelligence.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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k8s + opencontrail on AWS

For anyone interested in running a testbed with Kubernetes and OpenContrail on AWS i managed to boil down the install steps to the minimum:

  • Use AWS IAM to create a user and download a file “credentials.csv”
  • Checkout the scripts via `git clone https://github.com/pedro-r-marques/examples.git`
  • Change to the “ec2-k8s-cluster” directory (e.g. /Users/roque/src/examples/ec2-k8s-cluster)
  • Edit “credentials.sh” with the location of you csv file and user name and then “eval” this script.
  • Run ./setup.sh

The setup script will:

  • Create 5 VMs in a VPC on AWS;
  • Run the ansible provisioning script that installs the cluster;
  • Run a minimal sanity check on the cluster;
  • Launch an example;
  • Fetch the status page of the example app in order to check whether it is running successfully.

Please let me know if you run into any glitch… the “setup.sh” script can be rerun multiple times (the ansible provisioning is designed to be idempotent).

Next, I need to wrap this up with a Jenkins CI pipeline. And build permutations for:

  • kubernetes vs openshift;
  • single vs multiple network interfaces;
  • direct internet access vs http-proxy;
  • software gateway or a vSRX (for hybrid cloud interconnect);

The fun never stops !


BitLocker encryption can be defeated with trivial Windows authentication bypass

Companies relying on Microsoft BitLocker to encrypt the drives of their employees' computers should install the latest Windows patches immediately. A researcher disclosed a trivial Windows authentication bypass, fixed earlier this week, that puts data on BitLocker-encrypted drives at risk.Ian Haken, a researcher with software security testing firm Synopsys, demonstrated the attack Friday at the Black Hat Europe security conference in Amsterdam. The issue affects Windows computers that are part of a domain, a common configuration on enterprise networks.When domain-based authentication is used on Windows, the user's password is checked against a computer that serves as domain controller. However, in situations when, for example, a laptop is taken outside of the network and the domain controller cannot be reached, authentication relies on a local credentials cache on the machine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The secret to a successful identity provider deployment: federate your identity data with a hub

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Companies are securing more users who are accessing more applications from more places through more devices than ever before, and all this diversity is stretching the current landscape of identity and access management (IAM) into places it was never designed to reach. At the same time, security has never been more paramount—or difficult to ensure, given today’s outdated and overly complex legacy identity systems. I call this the “n-squared problem,” where we’re trying to make too many hard-coded connections to too many sources, each with its own protocols and requirements.

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How to solve today’s top three virtual environment challenges

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Virtualization is a mature technology but if you don’t have a virtualization wizard on staff managing the environment can be a challenge. Benefits such as flexibility, scalability and cost savings can quickly give way to security risks, resource waste and infrastructure performance degradation, so it is as important to understand common virtual environment problems and how to solve them.

The issues tend to fall into three main areas: virtual machine (VM) sprawl, capacity planning and change management. Here’s a deeper look at the problems and what you can do to address them:

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Stupidity rules: Almost 24 aircraft hit with lasers in one night

Maybe it was a full moon or maybe all the dolts just came out at once, but the Federal Aviation Administration reported that lasers hit nearly two dozen aircraft across the US last night. Sadly the average number of laser strikes on aircraft is about 16 per day. FBI The FAA said three laser strikes were reported in the New York City/Newark, N.J early in the evening, followed by three incidents in Texas, where jets were struck while preparing to land at Dallas Love Field. By late evening, pilots reported laser incidents in cities from Dallas to Los Angeles and San Juan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here