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Category Archives for "Networking"

How Routers Really Work Live Webinar

I’m teaching a webinar on router internals through Pearson (Safari Books Online) on the 23rd of July. From the abstract—

A network device—such as a router, switch, or firewall—is often seen as a single “thing,” an abstract appliance that is purchased, deployed, managed, and removed from service as a single unit. While network devices do connect to other devices, receiving and forwarding packets and participating in a unified control plane, they are not seen as a “system” in themselves.

Register here.

How to dig up configuration details on your Linux system with getconf

Linux systems can report on a lot more configuration details than you likely ever knew were available. The trick is using the getconf command and having an idea what you are looking for. Watch out though. You might find yourself a bit overwhelmed with how many settings are available.To start, let's look at a few settings that you might have expected to see to answer  some important questions.Summarizing your command-line usage on Linux For starters, how long can a filename be?You can check this setting by looking at the NAME_MAX setting.To read this article in full, please click here

How to dig up configuration details on your Linux system with getconf

Linux systems can report on a lot more configuration details than you likely ever knew were available. The trick is using the getconf command and having an idea what you are looking for. Watch out though. You might find yourself a bit overwhelmed with how many settings are available.To start, let's look at a few settings that you might have expected to see to answer  some important questions.Summarizing your command-line usage on Linux For starters, how long can a filename be?You can check this setting by looking at the NAME_MAX setting.To read this article in full, please click here

The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021

When the pandemic hit last spring, employees suddenly began working from home, enterprises quickly shifted applications to the cloud, and secure remote access became critical. As we move (hopefully) beyond the pandemic, it’s clear that enterprise networking has been changed forever.Companies are looking at new technologies like SASE to combine networking and edge security into one manageable platform. Zero-trust network access has moved from the back burner to the hotseat as companies seek a more effective way to fight cyberattacks in a world where the traditional perimeter no longer exists. The lines between security and networking are blurring, with traditional security companies moving into the networking realm, and networking companies upping their security game.To read this article in full, please click here

The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021

When the pandemic hit last spring, employees suddenly began working from home, enterprises quickly shifted applications to the cloud, and secure remote access became critical. As we move (hopefully) beyond the pandemic, it’s clear that enterprise networking has been changed forever.Companies are looking at new technologies like SASE to combine networking and edge security into one manageable platform. Zero-trust network access has moved from the back burner to the hotseat as companies seek a more effective way to fight cyberattacks in a world where the traditional perimeter no longer exists. The lines between security and networking are blurring, with traditional security companies moving into the networking realm, and networking companies upping their security game.To read this article in full, please click here

Details and Complexity

What is the first thing almost every training course in routing protocols begin with? Building adjacencies. What is considered the “deep stuff” in routing protocols? Knowing packet formats and processes down to the bit level. What is considered the place where the rubber meets the road? How to configure the protocol.

I’m not trying to cast aspersions at widely available training, but I sense we have this all wrong—and this is a sense I’ve had ever since my first book was released in 1999. It’s always hard for me to put my finger on why I consider this way of thinking about network engineering less-than-optimal, or why we approach training this way.

This, however, is one thing I think is going on here—

The typical program aims to counter the inherent complexity of the decision by providing in-depth information. By providing such extremely detailed and complex information, these interventions try to enable people to make perfect decisions.

We believe that by knowing ever-deeper reaches of detail about a protocol, we are not only more educated engineers, but we will be able to make better decisions in the design and troubleshooting spaces.

To some degree, we think we are managing the Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: EU Launches Antitrust Investigation of Google

the text "in the news" on an orange background

Competing for ads: The European Union has launched an antitrust investigation of Google’s advertising practices, with investigators looking into whether the company favored its own online advertising technology, CNBC reports. The probe will look into whether made it harder for other online advertising services to compete. Blocking the ads: In a related story, Google has […]

The post The Week in Internet News: EU Launches Antitrust Investigation of Google appeared first on Internet Society.

What Makes A Senior IT Engineer “Senior”?

Ravi asks the following…

I’m trying to figure out what makes a network engineer truly a “senior” engineer. What skills, mostly non-technical, do they possess in order to bring value to the work place?

I’ll share my opinions based on my experience having held junior and senior IT engineering roles, as well as multiple managerial stints with engineers as direct reports. I’m mostly going to address IT engineering broadly rather than networking specifically, as my opinion is the same no matter which tech silo an engineer might hail from.

Technical Skills

As Ravi asked about “mostly non-technical” skills, I’ll be brief here. From a technical perspective, I believe a senior IT engineer is primarily differentiated from a junior in one word–experience. The senior engineer has installed more systems, planned more changes, fixed more problems, and survived more outages than a junior engineer in the same organization.

Ideally, that experience has led to wisdom about how technology can best serve the business needs of an organization. This wisdom will tend to eschew needlessly complex designs, nerd knobs, and “science experiments” conducted in production. This wisdom will also result in difficult problems being resolved more quickly. Experienced folks know somewhat instinctively Continue reading

Tech Bytes: What Telia Carrier’s 400G Expansion Means For Your WAN (Sponsored)

We talk global IP backbones and 400G with sponsor Telia Carrier on today's Tech Bytes podcast. The company offers IP services from multiple PoPs in the US and is making significant investments in 400G, creating new opportunities for Telia Carrier and its customers. Our guest is Mattias Fridstrom, VP & Chief Evangelist at Telia Carrier.

The post Tech Bytes: What Telia Carrier’s 400G Expansion Means For Your WAN (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Network Break 339: HPE Raises The Stakes On Its GreenLake Strategy; Windows 11 Injects Itself With Teams

Take a Network Break! We discuss how HPE raises the stakes on its GreenLake hybrid cloud strategy with new features, look at new products from Aruba Networks, review the latest changes in Windows 11, and more tech news. Guest commentator Tom Hollingsworth brings the virtual donuts this week.

The post Network Break 339: HPE Raises The Stakes On Its GreenLake Strategy; Windows 11 Injects Itself With Teams appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Peering into binary files on Linux

Any file on a Linux system that isn't a text file is considered a binary file--from system commands and libraries to image files and compiled programs. But these files being binary doesn't mean that you can't look into them. In fact, there are quite a few commands that you can use to extract data from binary files or display their content. In this post, we'll explore quite a few of them.file One of the easiest commands to pull information from a binary file is the file command that identifies files by type. It does this in several ways--by evaluating the content, looking for a "magic number" (file type identifier), and checking the language. While we humans generally judge a file by its file extension, the file command largely ignores that. Notice how it responds to the command shown below.To read this article in full, please click here

Peering into binary files on Linux

Any file on a Linux system that isn't a text file is considered a binary file--from system commands and libraries to image files and compiled programs. But these files being binary doesn't mean that you can't look into them. In fact, there are quite a few commands that you can use to extract data from binary files or display their content. In this post, we'll explore quite a few of them.file One of the easiest commands to pull information from a binary file is the file command that identifies files by type. It does this in several ways--by evaluating the content, looking for a "magic number" (file type identifier), and checking the language. While we humans generally judge a file by its file extension, the file command largely ignores that. Notice how it responds to the command shown below.To read this article in full, please click here

Fugaku still reigns as the world’s fastest supercomputer

Fugaku, the supercomputer built by Fujitsu, remains at number one in the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, where it is still three times faster than the nearest competition.The contest for the fastest remains tight, with only one new entry into the top 10 on the latest list—Perlmutter, at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is part of the US Department of Energy. It joins the list at number five and bumps down numbers six through 10 from the previous list published in November 2020.(A system called Dammam-7 dropped off the top 10.)To read this article in full, please click here

Fugaku still reigns as the world’s fastest supercomputer

Fugaku, the supercomputer built by Fujitsu, remains at number one in the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, where it is still three times faster than the nearest competition.The contest for the fastest remains tight, with only one new entry into the top 10 on the latest list—Perlmutter, at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is part of the US Department of Energy. It joins the list at number five and bumps down numbers six through 10 from the previous list published in November 2020.(A system called Dammam-7 dropped off the top 10.)To read this article in full, please click here

How VMware IT Achieved Zero Trust in the Data Center: a Step-by-Step Approach

Security keeps getting more complex, and despite a multitude of products, tools and processes, organizations find it challenging to prevent 100 percent of breaches or unwanted access. Zero Trust holds the promise of achieving tighter security by only trusting network traffic that is specifically permitted by a security policy. While the task appears daunting, those organizations that follow a step-by-step approach can achieve success.

The process followed by VMware IT (VMIT) can serve as a blueprint for other organizations, removing some of the mystery and complexity. VMIT embarked on a Zero Trust project for data center security to prevent unwanted lateral movement, restricting communication among workloads to only the minimum needed to complete their jobs. The goal was to make Zero Trust the new normal for all applications in the data center. To do so, the team needed to gain a complete understanding of all applications, down to the workload level. Once understood, effective policies can be crafted to permit only the desired behavior.

Step one: macro-segmentation

Achieving Zero Trust fits neatly into a five-step approach (see A Practical Path to Zero Trust in the Data Center white paper), which starts with macro-segmenting the network and culminates in micro-segmenting all Continue reading

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