Are Routing Protocols Automation ?
Declarative and intentional. So maybe ?
Debugging Hardware Performance on Gen X Servers
In Cloudflare’s global network, every server runs the whole software stack. Therefore, it's critical that every server performs to its maximum potential capacity. In order to provide us better flexibility from a supply chain perspective, we buy server hardware from multiple vendors with the exact same configuration. However, after the deployment of our Gen X AMD EPYC Zen 2 (Rome) servers, we noticed that servers from one vendor (which we’ll call SKU-B) were consistently performing 5-10% worse than servers from second vendor (which we'll call SKU-A).
The graph below shows the performance discrepancy between the two SKUs in terms of percentage difference. The performance is gauged on the metric of requests per second, and this data is an average of observations captured over 24 hours.
Compute performance via DGEMM
The initial debugging efforts centered around the compute performance. We ran AMD’s DGEMM high performance computing tool to determine if CPU performance was the cause. DGEMM is designed to measure the sustained floating-point computation rate of a single server. Specifically, the code measures the floating point rate of execution of a real matrix–matrix multiplication with double Continue reading
Announcing our Spring Developer Challenge
After many announcements from Platform Week, we’re thrilled to make one more: our Spring Developer Challenge!
The theme for this challenge is building real-time, collaborative applications — one of the most exciting use-cases emerging in the Cloudflare ecosystem. This is an opportunity for developers to merge their ideas with our newly released features, earn recognition on our blog, and take home our best swag yet.
Here’s a list of our tools that will get you started:
- Workers can either be powerful middleware connecting your app to different APIs and an origin — or it can be the entire application itself. We recommend using Worktop, a popular framework for Workers, if you need TypeScript support, routing, and well-organized submodules. Worktop can also complement your existing app even if it already uses a framework, such as Svelte.
- Cloudflare Pages makes it incredibly easy to deploy sites, which you can make into truly dynamic apps by putting a Worker in front or using the Pages Functions (beta).
- Durable Objects are great for collaborative apps because you can use websockets while coordinating state at the edge, seen in this chat demo. To help scale any load, we also recommend Durable Object Groups.
- Workers Continue reading
Ethernet Encryptor Market Overview (2022 Edition)
Christoph Jaggi, the author of Ethernet Encryption webinar, published a new version of Ethernet Encryptor Market Overview including:
- Network standards and platforms
- Data plane encryption
- Control plane security
- Key- and system management
- Relevant approvals
- Vendors and products, including detailed feature support matrices.
Ethernet Encryptor Market Overview (2022 Edition)
Christoph Jaggi, the author of Ethernet Encryption webinar, published a new version of Ethernet Encryptor Market Overview including:
- Network standards and platforms
- Data plane encryption
- Control plane security
- Key- and system management
- Relevant approvals
- Vendors and products, including detailed feature support matrices.
Using Python to Calculate Cisco SD-WAN Tunnel Numbers – Part 2
In the first post I shared with you my code to calculate tunnel numbers in Cisco SD-WAN. I’m a beginner in Python so I thought it would be a great learning experience to have someone experienced in Python, such as Rodrigo, take a look at the code and come up with improvements. As I like to share knowledge, I’m taking this journey with you all. Let’s get started!
You may recall that I had a function to calculate the tunnel number. It looked like this:
def calculate_tunnel_number(interface_name:str) -> int:
<SNIP>
return total_score
Rodrigo’s comment was that the function name is excellent as it is clear what the function does. However, my return statement returns total_score which is not clear what it does. It would be better to return tunnel_number which is what the function is calculating.
The next comment is that when splitting things and it is known how many pieces you have, it is better to unpack them, that is, assign the unwanted piece to a throwaway variable rather than using indexing. My code looked something like this:
interface_number = split_interface(interface_name)[1]
It would be better to do something like this:
_, interface_number = split_interface(interface_name)[1]
The first variable, a Continue reading
Tech Bytes: Cloudflare Simplifies Wide Area Networks With Magic WAN (Sponsored)
Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we’re talking WAN architectures and how to simplify and secure them with sponsor Cloudflare. Cloudflare's Magic WAN is a network-as-a-service offering. Customers can connect data centers, branches, and users to Cloudflare's private network; add security services; and integrate with third-party SD-WANs.
The post Tech Bytes: Cloudflare Simplifies Wide Area Networks With Magic WAN (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Tech Bytes: Cloudflare Simplifies Wide Area Networks With Magic WAN (Sponsored)
Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we’re talking WAN architectures and how to simplify and secure them with sponsor Cloudflare. Cloudflare's Magic WAN is a network-as-a-service offering. Customers can connect data centers, branches, and users to Cloudflare's private network; add security services; and integrate with third-party SD-WANs.LwM2M Holds More Promise Than MQTT
While MQTT can work with LPWAN, lightweight M2M (LwM2M) is much more efficient and provides a simpler, full-stack set of protocols that offer simplified management of deployments with less power consumption and data.Network Break 382: Intel Charts DPU Roadmap; Juniper Brings Contrail SDN To Kubernetes
This week's Network Break podcast discuss Intel's roadmap for its Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs). We get more insight into Nokia's deal to provide hardware for Azure, and examine why Juniper has extended its Contrail SDN platform to Kubernetes (hint: because of the cloud). Plus Cisco releases new Wi-Fi capabilities.MikroTik – ROSv7 – VPLS over IPv6 MPLS with LDPv6
The great migration
IPv6 adoption has really picked up in the last 12 months and MikroTik RouterOSv7 development is no exception. Dual stack networks are still the most common and easiest to initially deploy for carriers.
However, single stack networks with IPv4 as a service overlay are definitely on the horizon for MikroTik users now that MPLS can operate purely on IPv6.
Single stack networks are easier and cheaper to operate in the long run and are a natural evolution of dual stack networks as we begin to turn IPv4 off for underlay infrastructure.
LDPv6
There are a few different ways to distribute labels in IPv6 MPLS. SR-MPLS (less common and usually with IS-IS) and SRv6 are the other options besides LDPv6.
While I generally am in favor of SR-MPLS/SRv6 long term due to the protocol simplification and traffic management capabilities, having an IPv6 MPLS stack is a great starting point for MikroTik.
LDPv6 is defined by RFC 7552 and is fairly recent as it finalized in 2015. It generally operates in much the same way as LDPv4.
Use Cases
The most common use case among MikroTik users is more efficient subnetting of IPv4 and directly replaces LDPv4 for this Continue reading
Network performance update: Platform Week
In September 2021, we shared extensive benchmarking results of 1,000 networks all around the world. The results showed that on a range of tests (TCP connection time, time to first byte, time to last byte), and on different measures (p95, mean), Cloudflare was the fastest provider in 49% of networks around the world. Since then, we’ve worked to continuously improve performance, with the ultimate goal of being the fastest everywhere and an intermediate goal to grow the number of networks where we’re the fastest by at least 10% every Innovation Week. We met that goal during Security Week (March 2022), and we’re carrying the work over to Platform Week (May 2022).
We’re excited to update you on the latest results, but before we do: after running with this benchmark for nine months, we've also been looking for ways to improve the benchmark itself — to make it even more representative of speeds in the real world. To that end, we're expanding our measured networks from 1,000 to 3,000, to give an even more accurate sense of real world performance across the globe.
In terms of results: using the old benchmark of 1,000 networks, we’re the fastest in 69% of them. Continue reading
How Ramadan shows up in Internet trends
What happens to the Internet traffic in countries where many observe Ramadan? Depending on the country, there are clear shifts and changing patterns in Internet use, particularly before dawn and after sunset.
This year, Ramadan started on April 2, and it continued until May 1, 2022, (dates vary and are dependent on the appearance of the crescent moon). For Muslims, it is a period of introspection, communal prayer and also of fasting every day from dawn to sunset. That means that people only eat at night (Iftar is the first meal after sunset that breaks the fast and often also a family or community event), and also before sunrise (Suhur).
In some countries, the impact is so big that we can see in our Internet traffic charts when the sun sets. Sunrise is more difficult to check in the charts, but in the countries more impacted, people wake up much earlier than usual and were using the Internet in the early morning because of that.
Cloudflare Radar data shows that Internet traffic was impacted in several countries by Ramadan, with a clear increase in traffic before sunrise, and a bigger than usual decrease after sunset. All times Continue reading
Proof of Stake and our next experiments in web3
A little under four years ago we announced Cloudflare's first experiments in web3 with our gateway to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Three years ago we announced our experimental Ethereum Gateway. At Cloudflare, we often take experimental bets on the future of the Internet to help new technologies gain maturity and stability and for us to gain deep understanding of them.
Four years after our initial experiments in web3, it’s time to launch our next series of experiments to help advance the state of the art. These experiments are focused on finding new ways to help solve the scale and environmental challenges that face blockchain technologies today. Over the last two years there has been a rapid increase in the use of the underlying technologies that power web3. This growth has been a catalyst for a generation of startups; and yet it has also had negative externalities.
At Cloudflare, we are committed to helping to build a better Internet. That commitment balances technology and impact. The impact of certain older blockchain technologies on the environment has been challenging. The Proof of Work (PoW) consensus systems that secure many blockchains were instrumental in the bootstrapping of the web3 ecosystem. However, these Continue reading
Public access for our Ethereum and IPFS gateways now available
Today we are excited to announce that our Ethereum and IPFS gateways are publicly available to all Cloudflare customers for the first time. Since our announcement of our private beta last September the interest in our Eth and IPFS gateways has been overwhelming. We are humbled by the demand for these tools, and we are excited to get them into as many developers' hands as possible. Starting today, any Cloudflare customer can log into the dashboard and configure a zone for Ethereum, IPFS, or both!
Over the last eight months of the private beta, we’ve been busy working to fully operationalize the gateways to ensure they meet the needs of our customers!
First, we have created a new API with end-to-end managed hostname deployment. This ensures the creation and management of gateways as you continue to scale remains extremely quick and easy! It is paramount to give time and focus back to developers to focus on your core product and services and leave the infrastructural components to us!
Second, we’ve added a brand new UI bringing web3 to Cloudflare's zone-level dashboard. Now, regardless of the workflow you are used to, we have parity between our UI and API to ensure Continue reading