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Category Archives for "Networking"

What is CDN – Content Delivery Networks?

Content Delivery Network companies replicate content caches close to a large user population. They don’t provide Internet access or transit service to the customers or ISPs but distribute the content of the content providers. Today, many Internet Service Providers started their own CDN businesses as well. An example is Level 3. Level 3 provides its CDN services from its POP locations which are spread all over the World.

Content distribution networks reduce latency and increase service resilience (Content is replicated to more than one location). More popular contents are cached locally and the least popular ones can be served from the origin

Why CDN – Content Delivery Networks are necessary?

Before CDNs, the contents were served from the source locations which increased latency, thus reducing throughput. Contents were delivered from the central site. User requests were reaching the central site where the source was located.

 

CDN - Content Delivery Networks

 

Figure 1 – Before CDN

With CDN Technology, the Contents are distributed to the local sites.

 

 

CDN - Content Delivery Networks

 

Figure 2 – After CDN

 

Amazon, Akamai, Limelight, Fastly, and Cloudflare are the largest CDN providers which provide services to different content providers all over the world. Also, some major content providers such Continue reading

Simplify and Standardize Mantra Encounters Reality

I’m usually telling networking engineers seriously considering whether to automate their networks to cleanup their design and simplify the network services first.

The only reasonable way forward is to simplify your processes – get rid of all corner cases, all special deals that are probably costing you more than you earned on them, all one-off kludges to support badly-designed applications – and once you get that done, you might realize you don’t need a magic platform anymore, because you can run your simpler network using traditional tools.

While seasoned automation practitioners agree with me, a lot of enterprise engineers face a different reality. Straight from a source that wished to remain anonymous…

Simplify and Standardize Mantra Encounters Reality

I’m usually telling networking engineers seriously considering whether to automate their networks to cleanup their design and simplify the network services first.

The only reasonable way forward is to simplify your processes – get rid of all corner cases, all special deals that are probably costing you more than you earned on them, all one-off kludges to support badly-designed applications – and once you get that done, you might realize you don’t need a magic platform anymore, because you can run your simpler network using traditional tools.

While seasoned automation practitioners agree with me, a lot of enterprise engineers face a different reality. Straight from a source that wished to remain anonymous…

Cloudflare Middle East & Turkey: a path to growth

Cloudflare Middle East & Turkey: a path to growth

This post is also available in عربي.

Cloudflare Middle East & Turkey: a path to growth

I am excited to announce that I have joined Cloudflare as Managing Director for the Middle East and Turkey (MET) region. Having worked in the domain of cyber security for more than two decades, I can see that Cloudflare is genuine in its mission of building a better Internet that is fast, safe and reliable for everyone. Being part of this journey that touches everyone’s life is surely an exciting thing to do, and I look forward to putting my experience in play towards successfully achieving this goal.

Cloudflare has been associated with delivering fast content over cloud in a most reliable and secure manner, accounting for at least 20% of the global Internet traffic. Cloudflare can cater for and support all types of organizations (businesses and public sector) including those with a social mission. The Middle East and Turkey as an emerging market is characterized by a relatively young population, with 70% of it being under the age of 30. This dynamic youth segment has an insatiable demand for both content and knowledge. To that extent, there has been a rapid uptake in Internet use, and digital transformation initiatives have significantly accelerated Continue reading

The rumored Broadcom purchase of VMware could raise enterprise concerns

If chipmaker Broadcom buys virtualization and multi-cloud vendor VMware as rumored, enterprise customers should watch out for whether the deal hampers the software vendor’s innovation, experts say.Others say the purchase—valued to be about $60 billion by the The Wall Street Journal—could be a boon for Broadcom by moving forward its years-long efforts to acquire enterprise technology.To read this article in full, please click here

The rumored Broadcom purchase of VMware could raise enterprise concerns

If chipmaker Broadcom buys virtualization and multi-cloud vendor VMware as rumored, enterprise customers should watch out for whether the deal hampers the software vendor’s innovation, experts say.Others say the purchase—valued to be about $60 billion by the The Wall Street Journal—could be a boon for Broadcom by moving forward its years-long efforts to acquire enterprise technology.To read this article in full, please click here

Learning BGP Module 2 Lesson 3: Messages And Updates – Video

Russ White’s BGP course continues with a lesson on messages and updates. Topics include: -BGP Open -BGP Reach -BGP MP-Reach -Address families -BGP Update -Update processing -TCP interaction You can subscribe to the Packet Pushers’ YouTube channel for more videos as they are published. It’s a diverse a mix of content from Ethan and Greg, […]

The post Learning BGP Module 2 Lesson 3: Messages And Updates – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

It’s Time For Zero Trust Network Access With Zero Exceptions

Today’s digital and cloud-first businesses everywhere are struggling to get a handle on the risks associated with hybrid work and direct-to-app connectivity. For many businesses, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) offers an opportunity to modernize and consolidate architectures while also providing a logical entrance into a broader Zero Trust journey.

The post It’s Time For Zero Trust Network Access With Zero Exceptions appeared first on Packet Pushers.

3 Consul Service Mesh Myths Busted

Van Phan Van is a technical product marketing manager for Consul at HashiCorp. He has been in the infrastructure space for most of his career and loves learning about new technologies and getting his hands dirty. When not staring at this computer screen, he's sharing pictures of food to his wife's dismay. He lives in San Jose, California, with his wife and two young boys. Most infrastructure engineers have a good idea what Terraform does, and those who care about security likely know about HashiCorp Vault, but what about popular open source networking tool back in 2014, it has grown into a much more comprehensive networking platform. So let’s take a look at three Consul capabilities you may have misconceptions about or not be taking full advantage of. Consul Bolsters Zero Trust Networking Ashher Syed Ashher is a product marketing leader at HashiCorp and is based in Austin, Texas. When he's Continue reading

Broadening Your Horizons, or Why Broadcom Won’t Get VMware

You might have missed the news over the weekend that Broadcom is in talks to buy VMware. As of right now this news is still developing so there’s no way of knowing exactly what’s going to happen. But I’m going to throw my hat into the ring anyway. VMware is what Broadcom really wants and they’re not going to get it.

Let’s break some of this down.

Broad Street

Broadcom isn’t just one of the largest chip manufactures on the planet. Sure, they make networking hardware that goes into many of the products you buy. Yes, they do make components for mobile devices and access points and a whole host of other things, including the former Brocade fibre channel assets. So they make a lot of chips.

However, starting back in November 2018, Broadcom has been focused on software acquisitions. They purchased CA Technologies for $19 billion. They bought Symantec the next year for $10 billion. They’re trying to assemble a software arm to work along with their hardware aspirations. Seems kind of odd, doesn’t it?

Ask IBM how it feels to be the dominant player in mainframes. Or any other dominant player in a very empty market. It’s lonely Continue reading

Broadcom reportedly working to acquire VMware

Silicon Valley chipmaker Broadcom is working on a deal to acquire cloud service and virtualization provider VMware, although an agreement is not expected to be imminent, according to published reports.VMware's market cap sits around $40 billion, although no proposed purchase price has been disclosed as yet. If a deal is eventually reached, it would be the latest in a long line of acquisitions for Broadcom, which has built itself up, in large part, on the basis of multiple high-profile buyouts.The company acquired network switching manufacturer Brocade in November 2016 for nearly $6 billion, development and security software firm CA Technologies in November 2018 for $19 billion, and the enterprise security division of Symantec in August 2019 for more than $10 billion.To read this article in full, please click here

Tech Bytes: MSP Softchoice And VMware Tackle Hybrid And Multi-Cloud Deployments (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with Managed Service Provider (MSP) and VMware partner of the year Softchoice on how Softchoice helps customers navigate multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments using VMware. We cover details about two real-world Softchoice/VMware customer use cases: a Major League Baseball team and a financial services firm.

The post Tech Bytes: MSP Softchoice And VMware Tackle Hybrid And Multi-Cloud Deployments (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Tech Bytes: MSP Softchoice And VMware Tackle Hybrid And Multi-Cloud Deployments (Sponsored)

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with Managed Service Provider (MSP) and VMware partner of the year Softchoice on how Softchoice helps customers navigate multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments using VMware. We cover details about two real-world Softchoice/VMware customer use cases: a Major League Baseball team and a financial services firm.

What are New in Cisco CCDE v3 Exam?

Currently, in 2022, the CCDE exam version is version 3. There are many new changes in CCDE v3 compared to CCDE v2 and in this blog post, some are the new changes will be explained, also for the things that stay the same will be highlighted as well. Also, I will share my takes in the post about these changes.

Before starting the technical changes, let’s start with the exam result announcement change.

CCDE v2 exam has been announced in 8-12 weeks. This was effectively allowing CCDE exam candidates to schedule the exam two times maximum in a year.

Students wouldn’t schedule the exam if they fail because the announcement date and new exam date were usually overlapping.

This changed anymore.

With CCDE v3, exam results are announced in 48 hours. It is almost like CCIE exams.

The CCDEv3 Practical Exam will be in the Cisco CCIE Lab locations anymore

CCDE v2 Lab/Practical exam was done in Professional Pearson Vue Centers. There were 300 of them and done in many different countries.

Unfortunately, this change may not be good for many exam takers as Cisco CCIE Lab locations are not available in many countries and are not as common as Continue reading

BGP Allowas-in feature Explained in 2022

BGP Allowas-in feature needs to be understood well in order to understand the BGP loop prevention behavior, But also, why the BGP Allowas-in configuration might create a dangerous situation, and what are the alternatives of BGP Allowas-in will be explained in this post.

What is the BGP Allowas-in feature?

BGP Allow-as-in feature is used to allow the BGP speaker to accept the BGP updates even if its own BGP AS number is in the AS-Path attribute.

By default EBGP loop prevention is, if any BGP speaker sees its own AS Number in the BGP update, then the update is rejected, thus the advertisement cannot be accepted. But there might be situations to accept the prefixes, thus there are two options to overcome this behavior.

Either accepting the BGP update even if the AS number is in the AS-Path list, with the BGP Allow AS feature or changing the behavior with the BGP AS Override feature.

Without BGP Allowas, let’s see what would happen.

BGP AS Override

In this topology, Customer BGP AS is AS 100. The customer has two locations.

Service Provider, in the middle, let’s say providing MPLS VPN service for the customer.

As you can understand from the topology, Service Provider Continue reading

SASE or SSE? Don’t let hype distract from enterprise needs

Secure access service edge (SASE) has generated a buzz over the last couple of years, particularly in light of the pandemic and its associated surge in remote employees. But SASE hasn’t quite materialized in the way Gartner – which first coined the term in a 2019 white paper – initially expected. In particular, there’s been pushback around the idea that SASE should be delivered by a single vendor, as a single integrated cloud service at the network edge.The SASE model combines network security functions with WAN capabilities, delivering the security elements in the cloud and using SD-WAN at the edge or in the cloud. Key security functions include secure web gateway (SWG), zero trust network access (ZTNA), firewall as a service (FWaaS), and cloud access security broker (CASB).To read this article in full, please click here