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Category Archives for "Networking"

OMG: Hop-by-Hop Path MTU Discovery

Straight from the “Bad Ideas Never Die” (see also RFC 1925 Rule 11) department: Geoff Huston described a proposal to use hop-by-hop IPv6 extension headers to implement Path MTU Discovery. In his words:

It is a rare situation when you can create an outcome from two somewhat broken technologies where the outcome is not also broken.

IETF should put rules in place similar to the ones used by the patent office (Thou Shalt Not Patent Perpetual Motion Machine), but unfortunately we’re way past that point. Back to Geoff:

It appears that the IETF has decided that volume is far easier to achieve than quality. These days, what the IETF is generating as RFCs is pretty much what the IETF accused the OSI folk of producing back then: Nothing more than voluminous paperware about vapourware!

OMG: Hop-by-Hop Path MTU Discovery

Straight from the “Bad Ideas Never Die” (see also RFC 1925 Rule 11) department: Geoff Huston described a proposal to use hop-by-hop IPv6 extension headers to implement Path MTU Discovery. In his words:

It is a rare situation when you can create an outcome from two somewhat broken technologies where the outcome is not also broken.

IETF should put rules in place similar to the ones used by the patent office (Thou Shalt Not Patent Perpetual Motion Machine), but unfortunately we’re way past that point. Back to Geoff:

It appears that the IETF has decided that volume is far easier to achieve than quality. These days, what the IETF is generating as RFCs is pretty much what the IETF accused the OSI folk of producing back then: Nothing more than voluminous paperware about vapourware!

Heavy Networking 627: Network Automation As A Business Culture

The business benefits of network automation are sometimes lost in discussion about technology and tools. Guest Tim Fiola joins this episode of Heavy Networking to discuss how to engage the business at a cultural level so that network automation is properly embraced and supported by management.

The post Heavy Networking 627: Network Automation As A Business Culture appeared first on Packet Pushers.

BGP AS Override Feature Explained in 2022

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

What is BGP AS Override

BGP AS Override feature is used to change the AS number or numbers in the AS Path attribute. Without BGP AS-Override, 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 is running EBGP with the Customer, because they have different BGP Autonomous Systems.

The service provider in the above topology has BGP AS 200.

Left customer router, when it advertises BGP update message to the R2, R2 sends to R3 and when R3 sends to R4, R4 wouldn’t accept the BGP update,

When R4 receives that update, it will check the AS-Path attribute and would see its own BGP AS number in the AS Path.

Thus is by default rejected, due to EBGP loop prevention.

If the router sees its Continue reading

Ease of Use or Ease of Repair

HammerAndSaw

Have you tried to repair a mobile device recently? Like an iPad or an MacBook? The odds are good you’ve never even tried to take one apart, let alone put in replacement parts. Devices like these are notorious to try and repair because they aren’t designed to be fixed by a normal person.

I’ve recently wondered why it’s so hard to repair things like this. I can recall opening up my old Tandy Sensation computer to add a Sound Blaster card and some more RAM back in the 90s but there’s no way I could do that today, even if the devices were designed to allow that to happen. In my thinking, I realized why that might be.

Build to Rebuild

When you look at the way that car engine bays were designed in the 80s and 90s you might be surprised to see lots of wasted space. There’s room to practically crawl in beside the engine and take a nap. Why is that? Why waste all that space? Well, if you’re a mechanic that wants to get up close and personal with some part of the engine you want all the space you can find. You’d rather waste a Continue reading

On Securing BGP

The US Federal Communications Commission recently asked for comments on securing Internet routing. While I worked on the responses offered by various organizations, I also put in my own response as an individual, which I’ve included below.

I am not providing this answer as a representative of any organization, but rather as an individual with long experience in the global standards and operations communities surrounding the Internet, and with long experience in routing and routing security.

I completely agree with the Notice of Inquiry that “networks are essential to the daily functioning of critical infrastructure [yet they] can be vulnerable to attack” due to insecurities in the BGP protocol. While proposed solutions exist that would increase the security of the BGP routing system, only some of these mechanisms are being widely deployed. This response will consider some of the reasons existing proposals are not deployed and suggest some avenues the Commission might explore to aid the community in developing and deploying solutions.

9: Measuring BGP Security.
At this point, I only know of the systems mentioned in the query for measuring BGP routing security incidents. There have been attempts to build other systems, but none of these systems have been Continue reading

BGP Route Reflector vs Confederation

BGP Route Reflector – RR vs Confederation is one of the first things Network Engineers would like to understand when they learn both of these Internal BGP scalability mechanisms. For those who don’t know the basics of these mechanisms, please read BGP Route Reflector in Plain English and BGP Confederation Blog posts from the website first.

BGP Route Reflector vs BGP Confederation

There are many differences when we compare Confederation vs Route Reflector and in this post, some of the items in the comparison chart will be explained.

 

bgp route reflector vs confederation

BGP Route Reflector vs Confederation Scalability

Both of these techniques are used in Internal BGP for scalability purposes. But BGP RR changes the Full Mesh IBGP topologies to the Hub and Spoke. BGP confederation divides the Autonomous System into the sub-ASes but inside every Sub-AS, IBGP rules are applied.

Inside BGP Sub Autonomous System, full Mesh IBGP or Route Reflector is used. So, we consider BGP RR compare to Confederation to be more scalable because inside Sub-AS still full-mesh IBGP might be used.

If RR inside Sub-AS is deployed, then configuration complexity would increase.

BGP Route Reflector vs Confederation Loop Prevention

BGP Route Reflector in order to prevent the routing loop Continue reading

Happy Earth Day: Announcing Green Compute open beta

Happy Earth Day: Announcing Green Compute open beta
Happy Earth Day: Announcing Green Compute open beta

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. We continue to grow our network, and it is important for us to do so responsibly.

Since Earth Day 2021, some pieces of this effort have included:

And we are just getting started. We are working to make the Cloudflare network — and our customers’ websites, applications, and networks — as efficient as possible in terms of design, hardware, systems, and protocols. After all, we do not want to lose sight of our responsibilities to our home: our planet Earth.

Green Compute for Workers Cron Triggers

During Impact Week last year, we began testing Green Compute in a closed beta. Green Compute makes Workers Cron Triggers run only in facilities that are powered by renewable energy. We are hoping to incentivize more facilities to implement responsible climate and energy policies.

With Green Compute enabled, Workers Cron Triggers will run Continue reading

BGP vs EIGRP 10 Important differences between them!

In this post, we will compare BGP and EIGRP. We will look at some of the important aspects when we compare BGP vs EIGRP. Although EIGRP is used as an IGP and BGP is used mainly as an External routing protocol, we will compare from many different design aspects. Also, BGP can be used as an Internal IGP protocol as well and we will take that into consideration as well.

bgp vs eigrp

 

We prepared the above comparison chart for BGP vs EIGRP comparison. We will look at some of those important Comparison criteria from a design point of view.

BGP vs EIGRP Scalability

One of the biggest reasons we choose BGP, not EIGRP is Scalability. BGP is used as a Global Internet routing protocol and as of 2022, the Global routing table size for IPv4 unicast prefixes is around 900 000. So almost a million prefixes we carry over BGP on the Internet.

So, proven scalability for BGP we can say. EIGRP usually can carry only a couple of thousands of prefixes, this is one of the reasons, EIGRPrp is used as an Internal dynamic routing protocol, not over the Internet.

BGP vs EIGRP in Full Mesh, Ring and Hub and Continue reading

The Network Anyverse

An explanation of my Network Anyverse Strategy. Normal practice for data networking was that technology was narrow: fixed bandwidth, focus on selected technology, and there were only service I  look at the progression of Networking in the new future that I sometimes call the Four A’s:  Anyhow Anywhere Anytime Anyway Anywhere Distributed work means that […]

Hop by Hop

It is a rare situation when you can create an outcome from two somewhat broken technologies where the outcome is not also broken. I’m referring to a recent effort to try and salvage something from the debacle that is IPv6 packet fragmentation support by taking another piece of operationally broken IPv6, namely Hop-by-Hop (HBH) extension headers, and trying to use that to solve the IPv6 Path Maximum Transfer Unit Discovery (PMTUD) problem.

Dell releases reference designs for retail, manufacturing edge solutions

Dell will offer new "validated" designs — a term used for edge devices that have been tested for compatibility in a range of important capabilities in a particular field — for retail edge computing deployments and the manufacturing sector later this year, according to an announcement issued today.The idea behind both the retail and manufacturing validated designs is to provide a central infrastructure stack for the numerous individual applications that might be in use in any given location. For retail, that can range from inventory tracking systems and smart labels on shelves, to connected point-of-sale terminals, all the way up through numerous smart vision capabilities.To read this article in full, please click here

Dell releases reference designs for retail, manufacturing edge solutions

Dell will offer new "validated" designs — a term used for edge devices that have been tested for compatibility in a range of important capabilities in a particular field — for retail edge computing deployments and the manufacturing sector later this year, according to an announcement issued today.The idea behind both the retail and manufacturing validated designs is to provide a central infrastructure stack for the numerous individual applications that might be in use in any given location. For retail, that can range from inventory tracking systems and smart labels on shelves, to connected point-of-sale terminals, all the way up through numerous smart vision capabilities.To read this article in full, please click here

SolarWinds launches overarching management, monitoring for hybrid cloud

IT management software provider SolarWinds has launched Hybrid Cloud Observability to help organizations address issues across cloud and hybrid environments.The software and services package can monitor network performance, servers and applications; analyze logs; manage IP addresses; track user devices; and manage network quality to support real-time IP applications including VoIP and video, the company says. [ Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] With all these capabilities brought together on a common interface, Hybrid Cloud Observability can simplify optimizing performance, improving availability, and reducing the time to fix problems it spots, the company says.To read this article in full, please click here

Duke University to test private LTE/5G network using CBRS spectrum

Cisco and DISH Wireless are teaming with Duke University and the Internet2 research network to pilot a neutral host network for higher education institutions using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) shared spectrum.CBRS is a band of radio-frequency spectrum from 3.5GHz to 3.7GHz that the Federal Communications Commission has designated for sharing among three tiers of users: incumbent users, priority licensees, and generally authorized/lightly licensed. Private 5G resources Private 5G as a service is now a thing Cisco details delivery of its private 5G services Tips on how to implement private 5G, from enterprises that already have Private 5G can solve some problems that Wi-Fi can’t Private 5G keeps Whirlpool driverless vehicles rolling 5G can make for cost-effective private backhaul CBRS can bring private 5G to enterprises Neutral host networks typically let public and private entities use the same network, which is then managed by the enterprise itself or by one of the providers. In this case, the neutral host network will integrate Duke University’s private network, which uses Cisco’s Private 5G as a service platform, and Internet2’s national research and education network with DISH Wireless’ 5G network.To read this article in full, please click here