Graceful Restart and Routing Protocol Convergence
I’m always amazed when I encounter networking engineers who want to have a fast-converging network using Non-Stop Forwarding (which implies Graceful Restart). It’s even worse than asking for smooth-running heptagonal wheels.
As we discussed in the Fast Failover series, any decent router uses a variety of mechanisms to detect adjacent device failure:
- Physical link failure;
- Routing protocol timeouts;
- Next-hop liveliness checks (BFD, CFM…)
Graceful Restart and Routing Protocol Convergence
I’m always amazed when I encounter networking engineers who want to have a fast-converging network using Non-Stop Forwarding (which implies Graceful Restart). It’s even worse than asking for smooth-running heptagonal wheels.
As we discussed in the Fast Failover series, any decent router uses a variety of mechanisms to detect adjacent device failure:
- Physical link failure;
- Routing protocol timeouts;
- Next-hop liveliness checks (BFD, CFM…)
Live Stream: The Journey to Architect
On Thursday the 19th of October at 1PM ET, I’ll be joining Keith Bogart for the em>INE Live live stream. You can find the details on their web site.
In this session, Keith Bogart will interview prolific author and Network Architect, Russ White Ph.D. One of only a handful of people who have attained CCAr status, Russ White has authored several books such as “Practical BGP”, “The Art of Network Architecture” and “Computer Networking Problems And Solutions”. During this session we’ll find out about his journey to becoming a Network Architect and how his passion for technology can inspire you!
Between 0x2 Nerds on Network Complexity
On the 14th (this Thursday), I’ll once again be a guest on a live stream with Jeff T and Jeff D on Between -x2 Nerds.. I think this is the URL, but you can check on their web page later to make certain.
AWS Networking – Part X: VPC Internet Gateway Service – Part Two
Associate SG and Elastic-IP with EC2
In the previous section, we create an Internet Gateway for our VPC. We also add a static route towards IGW into the Route Table of Subnet 10.10.0.0/24. In this section, we first create a Security Group (SG). The SG allows SSH connection to the EC2 instance and ICMP from the EC2. Then we launch an EC2 and attach the previously configure SG to it. As the last step, we allocate an Elastic IP address (EIP) from the AWS Ipv4 address pool and associate it with the EC instance. When we are done with all the previous steps, we will test the connection. First, we take ssh connection from MyPC to EC2. Then, we ping MyPC from the EC2. We also use AWS Reachability Analyzer to validate the path from IGE to EC2 instance. The last section introduces AWS billing related to this chapter.
Figure 3-20: EC2 Instance, Elastic IP, and Security Group.
Continue reading
Announcing Cloudflare Research Hub
As highlighted yesterday, research efforts at Cloudflare have been growing over the years as well as their scope. Cloudflare Research is proud to support computer science research to help build a better Internet, and we want to tell you where you can learn more about our efforts and how to get in touch.
Why are we announcing a website for Cloudflare Research?
Cloudflare is built on a foundation of open standards which are the result of community consensus and research. Research is integral to Cloudflare’s mission as is the commitment to contribute back to the research and standards communities by establishing and maintaining a growing number of collaborations.
Throughout the years we have cherished many collaborations and one-on-one relationships, but we have probably been missing a lot of interesting work happening elsewhere. This is our main motivation for this Research hub of information: to help us build further collaborations with industrial and academic research groups, and individuals across the world. We are eager to interface more effectively with the wider research and standards communities: practitioners, researchers and educators. And as for you, dear reader, we encourage you to recognize that you are our audience too: we often hear that Continue reading
Internship Experience: Research Engineer
I spent my summer of 2020 as an intern at Cloudflare working with the incredible research team. I had recently started my time as a PhD student at the University of Washington’s Paul G Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering working on decentralizing and securing cellular network infrastructure, and measuring the adoption of HTTPS by government websites worldwide. Here's the story of how I ended up on Cloudflare TV talking about my award-winning research on a project I wasn't even aware of when the pandemic hit.
Prior to the Internship
It all started before the pandemic, when I came across a job posting over LinkedIn for an internship with the research team at Cloudflare. I had been a happy user of Cloudflare’s products and services and this seemed like a very exciting opportunity to really work with them towards their mission to help build a better Internet. While working on research at UW, I came across a lot of prior research work published by the researchers at Cloudflare, and was excited to possibly be a part of the research team and interact with them. Without second thoughts, I submitted an application through LinkedIn and waited to hear back from Continue reading
Cloudflare invites visiting researchers!
As part of Cloudflare’s effort to build collaborations with academia, we host research focused internships all year long. Interns collaborate cross-functionally in research projects and are encouraged to ship code and write a blog post and a peer-reviewed publication at the end of their internship. Post-internship, many of our interns have joined Cloudflare to continue their work and often connect back with their alma mater strengthening idea sharing and collaborative initiatives.
Last year, we extended the intern experience by hosting Thomas Ristenpart, Associate Professor at Cornell Tech. Thomas collaborated for half a year on a project related to password breach alerting. Based on the success of this experience we are taking a further step in creating a structured Visiting Researcher program, to broaden our capabilities and invest further on a shared motivation with academics.
Foster engagement and closer partnerships
Our current research focuses on applied cryptography, privacy, network protocols and architecture, measurement and performance evaluation, and, increasingly, distributed systems. With the Visiting Researcher program, Cloudflare aims to foster a shared motivation with academia and engage together in seeking innovative solutions to help build a better Internet in the mentioned domains.
We expect to support the operationalization of ideas that emerge Continue reading
Why Packet Data is the Secret to a Successful Cloud Migration
The cloud migration is the beginning of a process, not the end. Once applications have been lifted and shifted to the cloud, packet data still serves a vital role.New Content in AWS Networking Webinar
Last week’s update session of the AWS Networking webinar covered two hours worth of new (or not-yet-covered) features, including:
- Transit Gateway Connect functionality (GRE tunnel+BGP between Transit Gateway and in-cloud SD-WAN appliances)
- AWS Private Link
- Intra-VPC static routes that you can use to send inter-subnet traffic to a BYOD security appliance
- IGMPv2 support
- Custom global accelerators
- Assigning whole IP prefixes to VM interfaces
The recordings have already been published, either as independent videos or integrated with the existing materials. Enjoy ;)
New Content in AWS Networking Webinar
Last week’s update session of the AWS Networking webinar covered two hours worth of new (or not-yet-covered) features, including:
- Transit Gateway Connect functionality (GRE tunnel+BGP between Transit Gateway and in-cloud SD-WAN appliances)
- AWS Private Link
- Intra-VPC static routes that you can use to send inter-subnet traffic to a BYOD security appliance
- IGMPv2 support
- Custom global accelerators
- Assigning whole IP prefixes to VM interfaces
The recordings have already been published, either as independent videos or integrated with the existing materials. Enjoy ;)