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Category Archives for "Networking"

MikroTik – RouterOSv7 first look – MLAG on CRS 3xx switches

What is MLAG?

Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group or MLAG is an idea that’s been around for a while.

It allows for the ability to form LACP channels across multiple physical switches.

Wikipedia shows a few different topology examples here


Vendor implementations are proprietary but the idea of MLAG was first mentioned in 802.1AX-2008 in 2008.

It first started to become popular in data center networking in the late 2000s

What makes the addition of MLAG to MikroTik’s RouterOS feature set notable is that it lowers the barrier to entry for this particular feature.

CRS 3xx switches are very inexpensive (starting at $149 USD) and may very well be the lowest cost MLAG capable hardware available on the market.

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Introduced in 7.1beta6

MLAG has been asked for by the MikroTik community a number of times and the most active feature request thread started here in 2020:

new feature request MLAG!!! – MikroTik

MikroTik added several version 7 beta releases in 2021 and included MLAG for all CRS 3xx series switches in 7.1beta6 on May 18th, 2021.

Overview of protocol requirements

MLAG is fairly consistent across vendors with the need Continue reading

New Cisco servers embrace hybrid cloud

Cisco has added a new class of servers to its Unified Computing System that are more flexible and outfitted with management software geared to hybrid cloud.The UCS X-Series is the first major redisign since UCS hit the market in 2009. The company says the modular hardware architecture is future-proofed because it can accomodate new generations of processors, storage, nonvolatile memory, accelerators, and interconnects as they come along. Prior UCS chassis were either blade systems for power efficiency or rack systems for expandability, but the UCS X-Series combines both in the same chassis.This means the single server type is able to support a broader range of tasks, from virtualized workloads, traditional enterprise applications, and databases to private cloud and cloud-native applications. The individual modules are interconnected into a fabric that can support IP networking, Fibre Channel SAN, and management connectivity.To read this article in full, please click here

New Cisco servers embrace hybrid cloud

Cisco has added a new class of servers to its Unified Computing System that are more flexible and outfitted with management software geared to hybrid cloud.The UCS X-Series is the first major redisign since UCS hit the market in 2009. The company says the modular hardware architecture is future-proofed because it can accomodate new generations of processors, storage, nonvolatile memory, accelerators, and interconnects as they come along. Prior UCS chassis were either blade systems for power efficiency or rack systems for expandability, but the UCS X-Series combines both in the same chassis.This means the single server type is able to support a broader range of tasks, from virtualized workloads, traditional enterprise applications, and databases to private cloud and cloud-native applications. The individual modules are interconnected into a fabric that can support IP networking, Fibre Channel SAN, and management connectivity.To read this article in full, please click here

Heavy Networking 581: How Gluware Lab Brings DevOps To NetOps (Sponsored)

On today's Heavy Networking, we get practical with infrastructure-as-code, talking with sponsor Gluware about how their users have integrated network automation into their IT practices, bringing DevOps to NetOps. We also explore Gluware Lab, an IDE for network engineers can develop network features and workflows. Our guests are Olivier Huynh Van, Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder; and Michael Haugh, VP of Product Marketing.

The post Heavy Networking 581: How Gluware Lab Brings DevOps To NetOps (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Heavy Networking 581: How Gluware Lab Brings DevOps To NetOps (Sponsored)

On today's Heavy Networking, we get practical with infrastructure-as-code, talking with sponsor Gluware about how their users have integrated network automation into their IT practices, bringing DevOps to NetOps. We also explore Gluware Lab, an IDE for network engineers can develop network features and workflows. Our guests are Olivier Huynh Van, Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder; and Michael Haugh, VP of Product Marketing.

Weekend Reads 060421


Comcast recently conducted its first test of the DOCSIS 4.0 technology and achieved a symmetrical 4-gigabit connection. The test was enabled by a DOCSIS 4.0 chip from Broadcom.


Ultimately, the incident stemmed from a ransomware infection in which a well-known threat actor took volumes of corporate data in just two hours and made their demands including the threat to block and encrypt the company’s network.


Last week, someone began began posting classified notices on LinkedIn for different design consulting jobs at Geosyntec Consultants, an environmental engineering firm based in the Washington, D.C. area. Those who responded were told their application for employment was being reviewed and that they should email Troy Gwin — Geosyntec’s senior recruiter — immediately to arrange a screening interview.


Seagate has been working on dual-actuator hard drives—drives with two independently controlled sets of read/write heads—for several years. Its first production dual-actuator drive, the Mach.2, is now “available to select customers,” meaning that enterprises can buy it directly from Seagate, but end-users are out of luck for now.


The purpose of cloud migration is to move your on-premise network to a bigger network operated by someone else. It replaces and improves network security, Continue reading

Network-based policies in Cloudflare Gateway

Network-based policies in Cloudflare Gateway

Over the past year, Cloudflare Gateway has grown from a DNS filtering solution to a Secure Web Gateway. That growth has allowed customers to protect their organizations with fine-grained identity-based HTTP policies and malware protection wherever their users are. But what about other Internet-bound, non-HTTP traffic that users generate every day — like SSH?

Today we’re excited to announce the ability for administrators to configure network-based policies in Cloudflare Gateway. Like DNS and HTTP policy enforcement, organizations can use network selectors like IP address and port to control access to any network origin.

Because Cloudflare for Teams integrates with your identity provider, it also gives you the ability to create identity-based network policies. This means you can now control access to non-HTTP resources on a per-user basis regardless of where they are or what device they’re accessing that resource from.

A major goal for Cloudflare One is to expand the number of on-ramps to Cloudflare — just send your traffic to our edge however you wish and we’ll make sure it gets to the destination as quickly and securely as possible. We released Magic WAN and Magic Firewall to let administrators replace MPLS connections, define routing decisions, and apply packet-based Continue reading

Charting the Course For Aruba

By now you’ve seen the news that longtime CEO of Aruba Keerti Melkote is retiring. He’s decided that his 20-year journey has come to a conclusion and he is stepping down into an advisory role until the end of the HPE fiscal year on October 31, 2021. Leaving along with him are CTO Partha Narasimhan and Chief Architect Pradeep Iyer. It’s a big shift in the way that things will be done going forward for Aruba. There are already plenty of hot takes out there about how this is going to be good or bad for Aruba and for HPE depending on which source you want to read. Because I just couldn’t resist I’m going to take a stab at it too.

Happy Trails To You

Keerti is a great person. He’s smart and capable and has always surrounded himself with good people as well. The HPE acquisition honestly couldn’t have gone any better for him and his team. The term “reverse acquisition” gets used a lot and I think this is one of the few positive examples of it. Aruba became the networking division of HPE. They rebuilt the husk that was HP’s campus networking division and expanded it Continue reading

Supermicro launches liquid cooling initiative

Super Micro Computer, a.k.a. Supermicro, is adding a range of liquid cooling solutions to its server products. Working with customers, Supermicro will design, implement and test the latest liquid cooling technologies at the rack level. Customers who implement liquid cooling can improve data center PUE (power usage effectiveness) and TCO by more than 40% by cutting power costs, the company says.The cooling is for new systems coming to market. Like most OEMs that support liquid cooling, Supermicro isn’t recommending retrofits to existing installations. It cites two reasons: One, it would be expensive, as you’d have to drill into the rack and server chassis to make room for the cooling piping. And two, the entire rack or cluster would have to be inactive while the retrofit was being done, and most firms won’t tolerate that.To read this article in full, please click here

Supermicro launches liquid cooling initiative

Super Micro Computer, a.k.a. Supermicro, is adding a range of liquid cooling solutions to its server products. Working with customers, Supermicro will design, implement and test the latest liquid cooling technologies at the rack level. Customers who implement liquid cooling can improve data center PUE (power usage effectiveness) and TCO by more than 40% by cutting power costs, the company says.The cooling is for new systems coming to market. Like most OEMs that support liquid cooling, Supermicro isn’t recommending retrofits to existing installations. It cites two reasons: One, it would be expensive, as you’d have to drill into the rack and server chassis to make room for the cooling piping. And two, the entire rack or cluster would have to be inactive while the retrofit was being done, and most firms won’t tolerate that.To read this article in full, please click here

Experimental Morpheus CPU is ‘mind-bogglingly terrible’ to crack

To many of us, Morpheus is a character played by Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix movies. To others, Morpheus is the Greek god of sleep and dreams. To others still, Morpheus is a digital synthesizer from the early ‘90s that developed a cult following.The Morpheus we’re discussing today, however, is of far greater relevance to enterprise IT professionals who constantly are searching for ways to protect their networks from the ever-present threat of hackers.Developed by a team at the University of Michigan, this Morpheus is a CPU that ingeniously protects against hacking attempts by using encryption that changes every few milliseconds, which prevents intruders from getting a fix on how a system is set up. This makes cracking the encryption nearly impossible and is sure to drive hackers crazy.To read this article in full, please click here

Experimental Morpheus CPU is ‘mind-bogglingly terrible’ to crack

To many of us, Morpheus is a character played by Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix movies. To others, Morpheus is the Greek god of sleep and dreams. To others still, Morpheus is a digital synthesizer from the early ‘90s that developed a cult following.The Morpheus we’re discussing today, however, is of far greater relevance to enterprise IT professionals who constantly are searching for ways to protect their networks from the ever-present threat of hackers.Developed by a team at the University of Michigan, this Morpheus is a CPU that ingeniously protects against hacking attempts by using encryption that changes every few milliseconds, which prevents intruders from getting a fix on how a system is set up. This makes cracking the encryption nearly impossible and is sure to drive hackers crazy.To read this article in full, please click here

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