Podcasts I’m Playing in 2020
Since I seem to have a lot more time on my hands without travel thanks to current…things, I’ve been consuming podcasts more and more during my morning workouts. I’ve got a decent list going now and I wanted to share it with you. Here are my favorite podcasts (not including the one that I do for Gestalt IT, the On-Premise IT Roundtable:
- Packet Pushers – The oldest and best is still my go-to for listening. I started back at Episode 3 or 4. i can remember the intro music. And I’ve been a guest and a participant more times than I can count. Greg, Ethan, and Drew do an amazing job of collecting all the info about the networking world and pushing it to my ears daily. When you through in their news feed (Network Break), cloud (Day Two Cloud), DevOps (Full Stack Journey), IPv6 (IPv6 Buzz), and one-off stuff (Briefings in Brief) there’s a lot to consume aside from their Heavy Networking “main” feed. You can sub to any or all of these if you want. And stay tuned because you might hear me from time to time.
- Network Collective – Jordan is one of my old and Continue reading
YAML anchors and aliases and how to disable them
Introduction
In this short post I explain what are YAML aliases and anchors. I then show you how to stop PyYAML from using these when serializing data structures.
While references are absolutely fine to use in YAML files meant for programmatic consumption I find that it sometimes confuses humans, especially if they’ve never seen these before. For this reason I tend to disable anchors and aliases when saving data to YAML files meant for human consumption.
Contents
- YAML aliases and anchors
- When does YAML use anchors and aliases
- YAML dump - don’t use anchors and aliases
- Conclusion
- References
- GitHub repository with resources for this post
YAML aliases and anchors
YAML specification has provision for preserving information about nodes pointing to the same data. This basically means that if you have some data that is referenced in multiple places in your data structure then YAML dumper will:
- add an anchor to the first occurrence
- replace any subsequent occurrences of that data with aliases
Now, how do these anchors and aliases look like?
&id001 - example of an anchor, placed with the first occurrence of data
*id001 - example of an alias, replaces subsequent occurrence Continue reading
Cisco ACI Tips and Tricks
Tips and Tricks for Cisco ACI and other tails of pain and woe.Weekend Reads 070320
Insider threats can be accidental or intentional, but the impact of insider breaches remain the same. Negligence at the organization regarding data privacy requirements and compliance can cause catastrophic data loss. To implement effective mitigation measures, employees must be aware of their Continue reading
Packet Pushers: The New Network Challenge
A couple of weeks ago Scott Morris, Ethan Banks, and I sat down to talk about a project I’ve been working on for a while—a different way of looking at reaching for and showing your skills as a network engineer.
You can listen over at Packet Pushers, or download the show directly here.
Internet2 Ramps up MANRS Support for U.S. Research and Education Community
The research and education community in the U.S. relies on a critical infrastructure to meet our education and research missions: the global Internet. This has been especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it has enabled the rapid transition from on-campus to at-home learning.
In addition to being intense Internet users, we also operate a significant part of the Internet that’s tuned to meet higher education’s unique needs. The Internet2 network interconnects more than 1,000 individual networks across the U.S., and collectively we coordinate our activities and operations to ensure researchers and educators have the capabilities they need.
The Internet2 community is increasing participation in MANRS because routing security is a growing area of concern for network operators around the globe.
Whether from accidental misconfiguration or malicious hijack, the results are often more than just inconvenient. As academic and business critical functions are hosted or off-prem, the Internet is no longer a nice to have, but a key component of an organization’s IT infrastructure.
Colleges and universities have a long history of being connected to the Internet, and there was a time when connecting to the Internet was nearly “set it and forget it.”
But, today, Continue reading
Heavy Networking 527: New Ideas For A Network Certification Program
Today's Heavy Networking explores ideas for designing a new networking certification program built around a network design challenge that focuses on broad, systems-oriented knowledge. The goal isn't to replace current certifications, but to create an option that emphasizes deep knowledge of protocols and networking concepts. Our guests are Russ White and Scott Morris.Heavy Networking 527: New Ideas For A Network Certification Program
Today's Heavy Networking explores ideas for designing a new networking certification program built around a network design challenge that focuses on broad, systems-oriented knowledge. The goal isn't to replace current certifications, but to create an option that emphasizes deep knowledge of protocols and networking concepts. Our guests are Russ White and Scott Morris.
The post Heavy Networking 527: New Ideas For A Network Certification Program appeared first on Packet Pushers.
The Internet “Just Works”: The EARN IT Act Threatens That and More
When the EARN IT Act was introduced in March 2020, technologists, civil society organizations, academics, and even a former FBI General Counsel blasted the bill as a thinly veiled attempt to prevent platforms from keeping users safe with strong encryption. The bill had implications for intermediary liability, of course, but it was clearly a play to take down the strongest digital security tool we have online.
The EARN IT Act is now a monstrous version of its previous self. It would not only weaken the ability of platforms to protect users through encryption, but fundamentally alter how platforms operate, leading to dangerous consequences for users and the global Internet.
While the new version of the bill would prevent the federal government from forcing platforms to weaken encryption to maintain their intermediary liability protection (a foundational aspect of most companies’ business plans), it would essentially allow states to pass their own version of the original EARN IT Act. This would create a chaotic patchwork of state-level laws, threatening user security across the country and creating borders for a networking system that was never meant to recognize them. This bill would not only weaken the ability of platforms to protect users through Continue reading
Cisco ACI Tips and Tricks
Cisco ACI does things a bit differently to traditional networking. I find myself constantly duck hunting to do simple things so I am documenting them here so they are easier for me to fine. Get VRF Names Get a list of VRFs with the show vrf command from a leaf node. How to Ping To ping a...Bayesian Non-Finite Mixture Models
Motivation
Following up from our previous post on Bayesian Finite Mixture Models, here are my notes on Non-Finite mixture model.
Non-finite Mixture Models
Bayesian finite mixture models can be used when we have a prior knowledge or some good guess on the number of groups present in the dataset. But if we do not know this beforehand, then we can use Non-Finite mixture models. Bayesian solution for this kind of problems is related to Dirichlet process.
Dirichlet Process(DP)
We briefly mentioned about Dirichlet distribution in the previous post Bayesian Finite Mixture Models,
which is a generalization of beta distribution, similarly Dirichlet Process is an infinite-dimensional generalization of Dirichlet
distribution. The Dirichlet distribution is a probability distribution on the space of probabilities, while Dirichlet Process
is a probability distribution on the space of distributions. A Dirichlet Process is a distribution over distributions.
When I first read this, my mind went
.
What this means is, that a single draw from a Dirichlet distribution will give us a probability and a single draw from a Dirichlet Process will give us a Dirichlet distribution. For finite mixture models, we used Dirichlet distribution to assign a prior for the fixed number of clusters, Continue reading
How to Meet Interesting People in Your Industry
The easiest way to meet interesting people in your industry is to attend a networking event, work related conference, or a training course. These types of event usually do attract a high turnout so as well as the information on offer; you do get a chance to network with others who are in the same business as you.
Mingling at Industry Events
The good thing about industry events is that you will meet people at all different levels and stages of their career. This can seem daunting if you are just starting out, but remember that everyone had to start somewhere and most people are going to be supportive and friendly if you have the right approach.
To handle a networking event and actually get to meet interesting people, you can employ some handy strategies to make introductions and social interaction much easier. One tip is to email the organizers and let them know that you are new. You will probably find that they offer to meet you and introduce you to a couple of people which will help get the ball rolling.
In addition, it is a good idea to arrive a bit early, rather than fashionably late Continue reading
Internet Society Foundation Announces $1.5 Million in COVID-19 Response Grants
The Internet plays a more important role than ever, serving as a lifeline so that children can continue learning, families and friends can stay connected, and vital public health information can keep circulating. At the Internet Society Foundation, we believe access to the Internet and its solutions can create healthier and safer communities, reduce vulnerabilities, and help build the resilience communities need to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and emerge better prepared in the future.
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve completed the selection process for our Emergency Response: COVID-19 grants, awarding USD$1.5 million in funding to four innovative projects that are using the Internet to help communities respond and adapt to the challenges created by the current pandemic.
The funding will support the following efforts around the globe:
- Expanding an online platform which connects and trains caregivers across Asia
- Extending the reach of a COVID-19 training program to support 10,000 health workers in five African countries
- Enabling a disaster response team to expand Internet connectivity for 24 critical primary health and coordination facilities across eight countries
- Expanding the scope of an innovative technology platform that supports fact-checkers in Latin America
Established Continue reading
BIB096 Considering KPIs For Network Operations
I was asked what Key Performance Indicators would I consider for an operational data network. I spent an hour coming up with ideas and here they are.
The post BIB096 Considering KPIs For Network Operations appeared first on Packet Pushers.
BIB096 Considering KPIs For Network Operations
I was asked what Key Performance Indicators would I consider for an operational data network. I spent an hour coming up with ideas and here they are.The Hedge Podcast Episode 42: Andrei Robachevsky and MANRS
The security of the global routing table is foundational to the security of the overall Internet as an ecosystem—if routing cannot be trusted, then everything that relies on routing is suspect, as well. Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) is a project of the Internet Society designed to draw network operators of all kinds into thinking about, and doing something about, the security of the global routing table by using common-sense filtering and observation. Andrei Robachevsky joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to talk about MANRS.
Working with TC on Linux systems
Hi folks! Long time no talk : ) Life has been incredibly busy for me over the last few months so I’ll apologize in advance for the lack of posts. However – I’m aiming to get back on the horse so please stay tuned!
With that out of the way – I wanted to spend some time in this post talking about the command line tool found on Linux systems called tc. We’ve talked about tc before when we discussed creating some network/traffic simulated topologies and it worked awesome for that use case. If you recall from that earlier post tc is short for Traffic Control and allows users to configure qdiscs. A qdisc is short for Queuing Discipline. I like to think of it as manipulating the Linux kernels packet scheduler.
Note: tc is traditionally part of the iproute2 toolset which Im pretty sure (but not positive) is included in most base Linux distros these days.
When tc comes up – it’s easy to immediately start thinking about QOS, queuing, and packet(traffic) control. And while some of the actions available to you when using tc seem obvious, or at least fit within the mindset of queue disciplines (the drop Continue reading
Open Standards Everywhere: How the Kolkata Chapter Got a Perfect Score
In early May 2020, the Open Standards Everywhere (OSE) project held a series of virtual training sessions for Internet Society Chapters. Over 70 Chapter representatives from around the world learned, in English, French, or Spanish, how to improve the overall security and availability of their Chapter’s websites and web servers by enabling IPv6, HTTP/2, TLS, and DNSSEC.
To assess everyone’s progress we tested each Chapter’s website before and after the training sessions using internet.nl and http2.pro. As a result of the OSE training sessions, many Chapters were able to significantly increase their website’s compliance. But one Chapter in particular, ISOC Kolkata, was able to take its website from 32% compliance to a whopping 100%. We caught up with ISOC Kolkata member Rittika Ratawa, who was nominated by the Chapter to attend the training, to find out more.
The Internet Society: What changes did you make to isockolkata.in as a direct result of the OSE virtual training session?
Rittika: After the training session, the Chapter made several changes. Firstly, we changed our DNS service provider as the one we had been using did not offer DNSSEC services or IPv6. Then we enabled DNSSEC by providing Continue reading
Urban Terror Server on Cisco CSR1000v
We have discussed the configuration of Guest Shell on Cisco CSR 1000v platform in a previous tutorial. The guest shell is a built-in Linux container with CentOS 7 installed, which can be activated on the fly when Linux applications are needed. Our lives are currently affected by SARS-CoV-2 and long-standing quarantine, so why not do […]Continue reading...