Show 162 – The Bourbonator Rises at #NFD6
The mostly nonsense title masks several discussions we have with many of the Networking Field Day 6 delegates around the following topics: Spirent’s new Avalanche NEXT testing platform for network transit and security platforms. What it is, what it does, and what we thought of the live demo we got. Our introduction to the ThousandEyes […]
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The post Show 162 – The Bourbonator Rises at #NFD6 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.
Finding a New Path (Part 2)
So –we’ve covered on of the two cases dealing with calculating a new path, and then I left you hanging for a week. What’s the second case? Let’s return to our small network for a moment to figure it out. What happens if D’s cost to reach the destination isn’t lower than E’s cost? E […]
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‘Dark Horse’ Networking – Private Networks for the control of Data
Next Generation Virtualization Demands for Critical Infrastructure and Public Services
Introduction
In recent decades communication technologies have realized significant advancement. These technologies now touch almost every part of our lives, sometimes in ways that we do not even realize. As this evolution has and continues to occur, many systems that have previously been treated as discrete are now networked. Examples of these systems are power grids, metro transit systems, water authorities and many other public services.
While this evolution has brought on a very large benefit to both those managing and using the services, there is the rising spectre of security concerns and the precedent of documented attacks on these systems. This has brought about strong concerns about this convergence and what it portends for the future. This paper will begin by discussing these infrastructure environments that while varied have surprisingly common theories of operation and actually use the same set or class of protocols. Next we will take a look at the security issues and some of the reasons of why they exist. We will provide some insight to some of the attacks that have occurred and what impacts they have had. Then we will discuss the traditional Continue reading
RIP – Basic Configuration on Juniper
This article is a continuation of previous post about RIP Auto-Summarization and it's impact on discontiguous networks in Cisco networks, but this time from Juniper's perspective. Using the default auto-summary on Cisco devices can lead to routing loops in case of discontiguous networks, as shown in quiz 15.
RIP – Auto Summarization and Impact on Discontiguous Networks
This article discusses the solutions for quiz 15. Yes, I know, I know... it's about RIP ! But you need to be ready for anything when facing the challenges of a CCIE exam. Read along to review some things about auto-summarization (which is "on" by default).
Leading cross-functional teams: foot-in-the-door theory
When I was at Juniper, my job was basically to sell internally those ideas that were deemed so controversial or hotly contested that no one could get them through the corporate machinery. This put me in a position that I was almost always leading cross-functional teams whose members did not directly report to me. I […]
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The post Leading cross-functional teams: foot-in-the-door theory appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Michael Bushong.
To Kill a VTP
The Devil! Yes, VTP is not the Devil itself, but it very well could be. I understand the “protect it” or make sure you know what you’re doing arguments. Those are all fine and dandy, and the fact...[[ Summary content only, you can read everything now, just visit the site for full story ]]
Ubuntu OVF images for download
Lately I’m playing a lot with virtualization features and for this I needed a rapid way to deploy from scratch new instances. First I had the virtual machines converted to templates, but then I had to rebuild from zero the entire ESXi environment and those images were gone. I realized then it was more easier […]Plexxi DSE: An Informal Analogy
Sitting in the NFD6 demo with Plexxi and got a great overview of the DSE product they’ve been working on. This service allows them to dynamically build network configurations based on external services like Openstack, puppet, etc. The example that Derick provided was the fact that an access list - instead of referring to a source IP address, or destination port, etc. - we can now refer to a puppet request, for instance.Plexxi DSE: An Informal Analogy
Sitting in the NFD6 demo with Plexxi and got a great overview of the DSE product they’ve been working on. This service allows them to dynamically build network configurations based on external services like Openstack, puppet, etc. The example that Derick provided was the fact that an access list - instead of referring to a source IP address, or destination port, etc. - we can now refer to a puppet request, for instance.Five selfish reasons to interview candidates
Lets be honest. It is hard to justify the time needed to interview people. It can be really hard to motivate yourself to interview potential new hires when project deadlines are looming. It is perfectly fair to ask yourself, “what’s in it for me?” I think there is a payoff for time spent on hiring. […]
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The post Five selfish reasons to interview candidates appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John Harrington.
NFD6 Preview: Solarwinds
You can’t really be in the networking industry without hearing about Solarwinds. Their IT management and monitoring products are very widely used. Nearly every customer I’ve worked with is using Solarwinds’ tools to some extent, whether it’s the ever-popular Orion NCM for network management and monitoring, or the slew of free tools that Solarwinds makes available for little troubleshooting or configuration tasks. Solarwinds has supported NFD for quite some time. At NFD5, they presented on quite a few things.NFD6 Preview: Solarwinds
You can’t really be in the networking industry without hearing about Solarwinds. Their IT management and monitoring products are very widely used. Nearly every customer I’ve worked with is using Solarwinds’ tools to some extent, whether it’s the ever-popular Orion NCM for network management and monitoring, or the slew of free tools that Solarwinds makes available for little troubleshooting or configuration tasks. Solarwinds has supported NFD for quite some time. At NFD5, they presented on quite a few things.Finding a New Path (Part 1)
In my last installment on the topic of fast convergence, I said I’d be discussing the calculation stage of fast convergence next. Orhan tried to scoop me in the comments, but that’s okay –I’m working at this through the process switched path, rather than interrupt context. In parallel with flooding information about the topology change […]
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Show 161 – VMware NSX – Real World SDN – Sponsored
Deep diving on VMware NSX ? You bet. Download the PDF file and read along with us as we unpack how VMware NSX works with Brad Hedlund and Scott Lowe. Network Virtualization is the certainly the biggest architecture shift in our careers and probably yours. And make no mistake, this is about networking. Greg Ferro often says that […]
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The post Show 161 – VMware NSX – Real World SDN – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.
Need more capacity: MPC4e cards are there!
Recently, we received in LAB 2 new MPC cards: - The MPC4e Combo card: 2x100GE + 8x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 2CGE+8XGE) - The MPC4e 32x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 32XGE) These 2 new cards need at least the Junos 12.3 and can be used on both dense chassis: MX960 and...Need more capacity: MPC4e cards are there!
Recently, we received in LAB 2 new MPC cards: - The MPC4e Combo card: 2x100GE + 8x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 2CGE+8XGE) - The MPC4e 32x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 32XGE) These 2 new cards need at least the Junos 12.3 and can be used on both dense chassis: MX960 and...Need more capacity: MPC4e cards are there!
Recently, we received in LAB 2 new MPC cards: - The MPC4e Combo card: 2x100GE + 8x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 2CGE+8XGE) - The MPC4e 32x10GE ports (MPC4E 3D 32XGE) These 2 new cards need at least the Junos 12.3 and can be used on both dense chassis: MX960 and...How bad is the OSPF vulnerability exposed by Black Hat?
I was asked a few weeks ago by our field engineers to provide a fix for the OSPF vulnerability exposed by Black Hat last month. Prima facie there appeared nothing new in this attack as everyone knows that OSPF (or ISIS) networks can be brought down by insider attacks. This isnt the first time that OSPF vulnerability has been announced at Black Hat. Way back in 2011 Gabi Nakibly, the researcher at Israel’s Electronic Warfare Research and Simulation Center, had demonstrated how OSPF could be brought down using insider attacks. Folks were not impressed, as anybody who had access to one of the routers could launch attacks on the routing infrastructure. So it was with certain skepticism that i started looking at yet another OSPF vulnerability exposed by Gabi, again at Black Hat. Its only when i started delving deep into the attack vector that the real scale of the attack dawned on me. This attack evades OSPF’s natural fight back mechanism against malacious LSAs which makes it a bit more insidious than the other attacks reported so far.
I exchanged a few emails with Gabi when i heard about his latest exposé. I wanted to understand how this attack Continue reading
Plumbing OpenBSD Software with gdb(1)
This post is about finding and fixing a memory leak I discovered in the SNMP daemon, snmpd(8), in OpenBSD. This sort of analysis is foreign territory for me; I’m not a software hacker by day. However, using instructions written by Otto Moerbeek as my Rosetta stone and Google to fill in the blanks when it came to usage of the GNU debugger, gdb(1), I was able to find and fix the memory leak.
I’m documenting the steps I used for my future self and for others.
The Problem
When walking the pfTblAddrTable in the OPENBSD-PF-MIB, the unprivileged snmpd process would grow in terms of SIZE and RES. Querying other parts of PF-MIB or other MIBS altogether resulted in no memory usage increase.
Since I knew roughly which code path must have the leak, I first examined it manually. I could not see where memory wasn’t being given back. I needed to instrument the process as it was running in order to find the leak.
Before Starting
This set of instructions from Otto Moerbeek was my guide. As per his guide, you have to rebuild libc with MALLOC_STATS enabled. This enables statistics collection that is used later on.
Edit /usr/src/lib/libc/stdlib/malloc. Continue reading