DNSSEC – Moving the Needle
The New Zealand ISP market is dominated by Spark, Vodafone & CallPus/Orcon. A side effect of this is that if one player does the Right Thing™, it really moves the needle. Recently, Spark has done the Right Thing with DNSSEC.
DNSSEC takeup has been low with New Zealand ISPs. The APNIC stats indicated that around 5% of users were using DNS resolvers that had DNSSEC validation capabilities. But in December 2014, that number jumped to ~15%:
It turns out this is because Spark has enabled DNSSEC validation on some of their resolvers. NZRS have done some analysis, and found that Spark turned on 4 new resolvers that do DNSSEC validation:
They’re still running their old resolvers, so right now it’s hit & miss for their customers. But it’s a great start, and presumably they’ll upgrade the remaining systems soon.
So Vodafone, CallPlus, Snap, Trustpower…when are you going to take customer security seriously too? And Spark…how long until DNSSEC is enabled for all your resolvers?
And please, no arguments about “we’re not sure if it will work.” Google has been doing it since March 2013…who do you think processes more DNS requests per day? Google, or your ISP?
Raytracing Quake demos
I decided to combine these two problems into one solution:
- Modern CPUs are idle way too much of the time. Why have all this computational power if we don’t use it?
- I have these funny old Quake demos that there’s no good way to convert to something playable.
My solution is to convert Quake .dem files to .pov files and render them with POV-Ray.
Quake scene rendered in POV-Ray. Two more here and here.
Quake is closing in on 20 years old now, and it’s starting to get annoying to make it even work. Yes, it’s opensource, and there are a couple of forks. But they’ve also always been annoying to get working. Hell, even GLQuake in Steam won’t start for me. (yes, I know this is a bad reason, but I’m doing this for fun)
Many of the tools and resources are hard to find. I couldn’t find ReMaic, and only found lmpc thanks to FreeBSD having made it a package. Converting demos to an ASCII format using lmpc helped in confirming that my file parsing was correct.
The steps needed to render a demo:
- Extract .mdl files to .pov and .png (skin) files.
- Extract .bsp files to .pov Continue reading
Raytracing Quake demos
I decided to combine these two problems into one solution:
- Modern CPUs are idle way too much of the time. Why have all this computational power if we don’t use it?
- I have these funny old Quake demos that there’s no good way to convert to something playable.
My solution is to convert Quake .dem files to .pov files and render them with POV-Ray.
Update: New better screenshot:
Quake scene rendered in POV-Ray. Two more here and here.
Quake is closing in on 20 years old now, and it’s starting to get annoying to make it even work. Yes, it’s opensource, and there are a couple of forks. But they’ve also always been annoying to get working. Hell, even GLQuake in Steam won’t start for me. (yes, I know this is a bad reason, but I’m doing this for fun)
Many of the tools and resources are hard to find. I couldn’t find ReMaic, and only found lmpc thanks to FreeBSD having made it a package. Converting demos to an ASCII format using lmpc helped in confirming that my file parsing was correct.
The steps needed to render a demo:
- Extract .mdl files to .pov and .png (skin) files.
- Extract . Continue reading
A peek into the USM format
A peek into the USM format
A game that I really liked the visuals off, Crysis 3 uses a video file format called USM, This is a rather odd to me, since when I am used to pulling games apart for their assets, I am used to BINK video being used for th
OpenNSL – Thoughts
Recently, Broadcom has opensourced API for their network switching asic as part of OpenNSL project. I tried to dig little deep into what it really means and this blog is a result of that. What is really Opensourced? Following picture from Broadcom OpenNSL project clearly illustrates this: Following are some notes: OpenNSL is a layer … Continue reading OpenNSL – Thoughts
Show 229 – Network Break 32 – Juniper Innovation Showcase & More
Over-opinionated analysis on data network and IT Infrastructure. And virtual doughnuts.
Author information
The post Show 229 – Network Break 32 – Juniper Innovation Showcase & More appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
My mechanical keyboard
You spend all your waking time at a keyboard. This blog post is about keyboards, and can be summarized as: Buy quality, cry once.
I spend a lot of time typing on a keyboard, yet I have never looked into what keyboard would be best for me. There are natural keyboards and kinesis keyboards that people speak well of, but I spend a lot of time typing on laptops and don’t want a completely different setup for laptop and desktop.
I had the same concern before switching to Dvorak back when I was a consultant (thus often using other peoples managed machines), but happily switched after verifying that even on a locked down Windows machine as a non-admin user I could select Dvorak. Also there are adapters from Dvorak to Qwerty that I could use in extremely locked down environments such as the CCIE lab (they required a doctors note though, long story).
So it would have to be a keyboard that looks like a normal one. Preferably with Dvorak on the keycaps. It seems that mechanical keyboards are all the rage, so I thought I’d give that a go.
I ended up buying a 88 key Cherry MX brown-based Continue reading
My mechanical keyboard
You spend all your waking time at a keyboard. This blog post is about keyboards, and can be summarized as: Buy quality, cry once.
I spend a lot of time typing on a keyboard, yet I have never looked into what keyboard would be best for me. There are natural keyboards and kinesis keyboards that people speak well of, but I spend a lot of time typing on laptops and don’t want a completely different setup for laptop and desktop.
I had the same concern before switching to Dvorak back when I was a consultant (thus often using other peoples managed machines), but happily switched after verifying that even on a locked down Windows machine as a non-admin user I could select Dvorak. Also there are adapters from Dvorak to Qwerty that I could use in extremely locked down environments such as the CCIE lab (they required a doctors note though, long story).
So it would have to be a keyboard that looks like a normal one. Preferably with Dvorak on the keycaps. It seems that mechanical keyboards are all the rage, so I thought I’d give that a go.
I ended up buying a 88 key Cherry MX brown-based Continue reading
Could Facebook be your next phone company?
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.
Could Facebook or LinkedIn become the nexus for your voice calls and other communications? Not yet, but thanks to a technology known as WebRTC you can’t rule out the possibility.
WebRTC — the initials stand for Real Time Communications — is an open-source project that aims to transform the ordinary Web browser into a full-featured unified communications portal. With WebRTC, users establish real-time communication sessions from their browser, search, find and point to the servers of people they want to communicate with, and establish connections — all without needing to know the recipient’s phone number or email address.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Plexxi Pulse – Bringing Data to Life at Arrow’s IoT Immersions Conference
Next week, our co-founder, CTO and EVP of products and technology, Dave Husak, will be heading to Arrow’s Internet of Things Immersions Conference to participate in two panels. The event will be held on March 26 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA.
The first panel Husak will join will weigh in on the topic “Bringing Data to Life: How to Turn Data Intelligence into Actionable Sales Growth.” Husak will be joined on this panel by other industry thought leaders from Arrow, EMC, Intel, NXP and Oracle. Husak and the other panelists will analyze how to effectively harness massive amounts of sales data and turn it into something actionable and meaningful for their organization. He’ll follow up this panel with a general panel at 6:50 as part of the Innovator’s Showcase.
In case you’re in the area, you can register for the event here. If you aren’t, follow along with us on Twitter here.
Below please find a few of our top picks for our favorite news articles of the week. Have a great weekend!
Network Computing: SDN Benefits For The SME
By Tom Hollingsworth
Working in a small or medium enterprise (SME) is a constant juggling Continue reading
SDxCentral Weekly News Roundup — March 20, 2015
HP selling? EMC buying? This week's roundup digs into the rumor mill.
Routing on the CCIE Data Center Lab – How Deep Do We Need to Go?
Every time I teach NX-OS the same question often arises, “How good do we need to be at routing in order to pass the lab exam?” My first inkling is always to say ‘learn it all,’ but we all know that isn’t always possible. There is a ton of information to learn within the scope of this lab exam, so in order to fully understand this question, we need to look towards Cisco’s almighty guide, the blueprint!
They have gone pretty easy on us in terms of routing, but in their defense, they do have an entire lab dedicated to routing and switching. If we scan down the blueprint to Section 1.2, we see the category we are looking for:
While that comprises that entire section, I would also err on the side of caution and include Section 1.4a grouped within the L3 category, those being first-hop routing protocols such as HSRP, GLBP, and VRRP.
Look at what they ask us for here, and lets analyze it. They ask for BASIC EIGRP and OSPF, Bi-directional forwarding detection, and equal-cost multi-pathing. ECMP isn’t really its own ‘protocol’, rather something that most L3 protocols support. We will see that Continue reading
iPexpert’s Newest “CCIE Wall of Fame” Additions 3/20/2015
Please join us in congratulating the following iPexpert client’s who have passed their CCIE lab!
This Week’s CCIE Success Stories
- Mario Netuschil, CCIE #47059 (Wireless)
- Morgan Chou, CCIE #46394 (Routing and Switching)
- Russ Bartsch, CCIE #45792 (Collaboration)
- Robert Hakala, CCIE #45981 (Data Center)
We Want to Hear From You!
Have you passed your CCIE lab exam and used any of iPexpert’s self-study products, or attended a CCIE Bootcamp? If so, we’d like to add you to our CCIE Wall of Fame!