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Category Archives for "Networking"

MWC: Microsoft expands 5G, edge-network offerings through Azure

Microsoft announced a range of new carrier infrastructure offerings through Azure, including services for private 5G enterpise networks, at this week’s Mobile World Congress, in a move designed to bolster the company’s position as a partner to the telecom industry as 5G and edge computing deployments progess.To read this article in full, please click here

Cloud Engineering For The Network Pro: Part 3 – VPCs And Virtual Networks (Video)

The next installment of Michael Levan’s series on networking in public clouds walks through how to set up a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) in AWS and a VNet (Virtual Network) in Microsoft Azure. You can subscribe to the Packet Pushers’ YouTube channel for more videos as they are published. It’s a diverse a mix of […]

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Tech Bytes: How Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs Turns Billions Of Security Events Into Intelligence (Sponsored)

Today’s Tech Bytes podcast explores threat intelligence with sponsor Fortinet and its FortiGuard Labs. FortiGuard Labs analyzes billions of global security events daily and distills them into actionable information for network and security teams. Fortinet also uses those events to inform security updates to its products.

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VMware And NVIDIA Focus On The Far Edge To Host Network Services On SmartNICs

This post originally appeared on the Packet Pushers’ Ignition site on October 19, 2020. The network edge is desirable new territory for software and hardware vendors. The objective is to get compute, networking, storage, and security features as close as possible to data sources and data-hungry applications. VMware and NVIDIA have launched new initiatives to […]

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Topology aware fabric analytics

Real-time telemetry from a 5 stage Clos fabric describes how to emulate and monitor the topology shown above using Containerlab and sFlow-RT. This article extends the example to demonstrate how topology awareness enhances analytics.
docker run --rm -it --privileged --network host --pid="host" \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v /run/netns:/run/netns \
-v ~/clab:/home/clab -w /home/clab \
ghcr.io/srl-labs/clab bash
Start Containerlab.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sflow-rt/containerlab/master/clos5.yml
Download the Containerlab topology file.
sed -i "s/prometheus/topology/g" clos5.yml
Change the sFlow-RT image from sflow/prometheus to sflow/topology in the Containerlab topology. The sflow/topology image packages sFlow-RT with useful applications that combine topology awareness with analytics.
containerlab deploy -t clos5.yml
Deploy the topology.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sflow-rt/containerlab/master/clos5.json
Download the sFlow-RT topology file.
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d @clos5.json \
http://localhost:8008/topology/json
Post the topology to sFlow-RT.
Connect to the sFlow-RT Topology application, http://localhost:8008/app/topology/html/. The dashboard confirms that all the links and nodes in the topology are streaming telemetry. There is currently no traffic on the network, so none of the nodes in the topology are sending flow data.
docker exec -it clab-clos5-h1 iperf3 -c 172.16.4.2
Generate traffic. You should see the Nodes No Flows number drop Continue reading

How 6 top SD-WAN and SASE vendors are evolving

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on and continues to impact the way people work, SD-WAN vendors are responding by investing heavily in new capabilities that extend the enterprise edge to wherever workers happen to be—branches, campuses, home offices, co-working spaces, mobile, etc.The main thrust of this evolution in SD-WAN technology is the merger of networking and security functions into a single platform, which most vendors now call Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).Who’s selling SASE, and what do you get? SASE, a term coined by Gartner in 2019, converges SD-WAN with basic security offerings, including encryption, anti-malware, and firewalls, while adding advanced services, such as Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), Data Leak Prevention (DLP), Secure Internet Gateway (SIG), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).To read this article in full, please click here

Running a Ubuntu VM on a Mac M1

If you’re brand-new to Python and Ansible, you might be a bit reluctant to install a bunch of packages and Ansible collections on your production laptop to start building your automation skills. The usual recommendation I make to get past that hurdle is to create a Ubuntu virtual machine that can be destroyed every time to mess it up.

Creating a virtual machine is trivial on Linux and MacOS with Intel CPU (install VirtualBox and Vagrant). The same toolset no longer works on newer Macs with M1 CPU (VMware Fusion is in tech preview, so we’re getting there), but there’s an amazingly simple alternative: Multipass by Canonical.

Running a Ubuntu VM on a Mac M1

If you’re brand-new to Python and Ansible, you might be a bit reluctant to install a bunch of packages and Ansible collections on your production laptop to start building your automation skills. The usual recommendation I make to get past that hurdle is to create a Ubuntu virtual machine that can be destroyed every time to mess it up.

Creating a virtual machine is trivial on Linux and MacOS with Intel CPU (install VirtualBox and Vagrant). The same toolset no longer works on newer Macs with M1 CPU (VMware Fusion is in tech preview, so we’re getting there), but there’s an amazingly simple alternative: Multipass by Canonical.

A Bird feeder from re-usable plastics – we have to start something small to protect other beings.

Disclaimer: I speak about reducing plastic and still I use a 3d printer to print a very specific fixture, I have weighed in options and plastic that I end up printing will be out there hopefully feeding birds or can safely be re-cycled until I come up with something innovative, as of now this is the least I could come upon re-using old bottles, helping birds feed and using some plastic to print a fixture. If I have to buy a commercial one, that is again some plastic and I won’t end up re-using it as well, so 3d printing this small fixture for me outweighs the other currently viable solution and this is something I can give out to neighbours and they can easily associate with.

Am proud to say that I have started to take some responsibility towards the environment and other living beings, that to say it’s my first step and now I appreciate even more what environmentalists and other people do to protect other beings, earth and fellow human beings which we don’t have any time to notice and appreciate them.

Once I started doing the below things which are very trivial I feel good and Continue reading

Heavy Networking 619: Pluribus Empowers NetOps With Kubernetes Network Visibility (Sponsored)

Today's sponsored Heavy Networking dives into the latest features from Pluribus Networks, including Pluribus KubeTracker, which correlates containers with applications, maps hosts to the network fabric, and more. We also cover FlowTracker and a virtualized packet broker service. Our guest is Alessandro Barbieri, VP Product Management at Pluribus.

The post Heavy Networking 619: Pluribus Empowers NetOps With Kubernetes Network Visibility (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 619: Pluribus Empowers NetOps With Kubernetes Network Visibility (Sponsored)

Today's sponsored Heavy Networking dives into the latest features from Pluribus Networks, including Pluribus KubeTracker, which correlates containers with applications, maps hosts to the network fabric, and more. We also cover FlowTracker and a virtualized packet broker service. Our guest is Alessandro Barbieri, VP Product Management at Pluribus.

The Value of Old Ideas

I had a fun exchange on Twitter this week that bears some additional thinking. Emirage (@Emirage6) tweeted a fun meme about learning BGP:

I retweeted it and a few people jumped in the fun, including a couple that said it was better to configure BGP for reasons. This led to a blog post about routing protocols with even more great memes and a good dose of reality for anyone that isn’t a multi-CCIE.

Explain It Like I’m Five

I want you to call your mom and explain BGP to her. Go on and do that now because I’m curious to see how you’d open that conversation. Unless your mom is in networking already I’m willing to bet you’re going to have to start really, really basic. In fact, given the number of news organizations that don’t even know what the letters in the acronym stand for I’d guess you are going to have a hard time talking about the path selection process or leak maps or how sessions are established.

Now, try that same Continue reading