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Category Archives for "Networking"

The Network Impact of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

With so many countries in lockdown and so many people working (and learning) from home, online usage has risen significantly but so far, the internet is holding up well. Internet traffic is generally to 25% to 30% higher than usual, and what we do online is also changing. Internet usage often increases goes up in a typical month; for Akamai that’s usually 3% growth, in the last month it’s been 30%. In March 2019 their peak traffic was 82Tbps; this March it was 167Tbps and the sustained daily traffic rate is higher than last year’s peak for March. Internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London saw 10-20% increases in traffic around March 9th, which the exchange in Milan had a 40% increase the day Italy was quarantined. Disturbingly, attacks are up too: Akamai Cloudflare tracks varies by city; it’s only up 11% in Berlin and 22% in London between early January and late March (and 17% up for the UK as whole), but it’s grown by 40% in New York and 48% in San Francisco and Silicon Continue reading

Cisco Paves Rakuten’s Virtual Roaming Road

That road uses a signaling interface to allow 4G LTE customers to continue data sessions between...

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AMD Chips Give Clouds, Data Centers EPYC Power

IBM Cloud, Microsoft, Dell Technologies, HPE, VMware, Nutanix, Lenovo, and Supermicro platforms...

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Over 300 ISPs Now Improving Routing Security with MANRS

Today, we’re proud to announce another milestone: the number of network operators that commit to the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) has surpassed 300.

The current number of network operator program participants stands at 322. These Internet Service Providers (ISPs) joined the initiative by showing their conformance with the actions to improve the resilience and security of the Internet’s routing infrastructure.

Launched in 2014 with a group of nine operators, the number of MANRS participants reached 100 in 2018 and has risen rapidly in the last two years, with 156 joining in 2019 alone, and 45 so far in 2020.

This includes operators in more than 60 countries across all continents; with Brazil leading the way with nearly 70 MANRS participants, followed by the US with nearly 50.

According to BGPStream, the number of reported routing incidents was on the decrease from 2017 to 2019 (see chart below), while the number of MANRS participants grew in the period. While this does not mean one caused the other, a correlation between the two can be observed.

The MANRS community has grown rapidly through its other programs, too. In 2018, the initiative expanded to include Internet Exchange Providers (IXPs), which Continue reading

VMware Tanzu Gains Features, Availability

The updates include application and infrastructure additions designed to ease operations in a...

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VMware Boosts Hybrid-Cloud Visibility, Management

Some of the new features include better public cloud cost comparisons via integration with...

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Cisco $2.5B Financing Initiative Targets COVID-19 Impact

The Business Resiliency Program aims to provide organizations economically impacted by the pandemic...

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Comparing HTTP/3 vs. HTTP/2 Performance

Comparing HTTP/3 vs. HTTP/2 Performance
Comparing HTTP/3 vs. HTTP/2 Performance

We announced support for HTTP/3, the successor to HTTP/2 during Cloudflare’s birthday week last year. Our goal is and has always been to help build a better Internet. Collaborating on standards is a big part of that, and we're very fortunate to do that here.

Even though HTTP/3 is still in draft status, we've seen a lot of interest from our users. So far, over 113,000 zones have activated HTTP/3 and, if you are using an experimental browser those zones can be accessed using the new protocol! It's been great seeing so many people enable HTTP/3: having real websites accessible through HTTP/3 means browsers have more diverse properties to test against.

When we launched support for HTTP/3, we did so in partnership with Google, who simultaneously launched experimental support in Google Chrome. Since then, we've seen more browsers add experimental support: Firefox to their nightly builds, other Chromium-based browsers such as Opera and Microsoft Edge through the underlying Chrome browser engine, and Safari via their technology preview. We closely follow these developments and partner wherever we can help; having a large network with many sites that have HTTP/3 enabled gives browser implementers an excellent testbed against which to Continue reading

Daily Roundup: VMware Patches Critical Bug

VMware patched a critical bug; Ericsson scored a 5G win with Nex-Tech Wireless deal; and...

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Cloudflare for SSH, RDP and Minecraft

Cloudflare for SSH, RDP and Minecraft
Cloudflare for SSH, RDP and Minecraft

Almost exactly two years ago, we launched Cloudflare Spectrum for our Enterprise customers. Today, we’re thrilled to extend DDoS protection and traffic acceleration with Spectrum for SSH, RDP, and Minecraft to our Pro and Business plan customers.

When we think of Cloudflare, a lot of the time we think about protecting and improving the performance of websites. But the Internet is so much more, ranging from gaming, to managing servers, to cryptocurrencies. How do we make sure these applications are secure and performant?

With Spectrum, you can put Cloudflare in front of your SSH, RDP and Minecraft services, protecting them from DDoS attacks and improving network performance. This allows you to protect the management of your servers, not just your website. Better yet, by leveraging the Cloudflare network you also get increased reliability and increased performance: lower latency!

Remote access to servers

While access to websites from home is incredibly important, being able to remotely manage your servers can be equally critical. Losing access to your infrastructure can be disastrous: people need to know their infrastructure is safe and connectivity is good and performant. Usually, server management is done through SSH (Linux or Unix based servers) and RDP (Windows based Continue reading

Network Break 279: Cisco Acquires Fluidmesh; VMware NSX 3.0; MS Events Virtual Until July 2021

Take a Network Break! Grab a virtual donut, sit back and relax, and take a journey with us through Elysian fields of tech news analysis. We’ve got stories today on Cisco, VMware, a new PCAP appliance, a Tech Byte from sponsor Silver Peak with their SD-WAN customer C&S Wholesalers, and more.

The post Network Break 279: Cisco Acquires Fluidmesh; VMware NSX 3.0; MS Events Virtual Until July 2021 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Capex vs Opex – Hidden complexity by making an unmanageable network

Many networking solutions purport great Opex savings through automation, simulation and continuous integration. Similarly, there is a school of thought where network designs will have a single point in a network perform multiple roles. This will short change an initial Capex cost of purchasing additional switches with the intention of overlapping features on that single device.

Let’s take the simplest example. We have a 3 rack environment with dual-leaf per rack and 2 spines for inter-rack connectivity. In this design, we are leveraging VXLAN as the data plane overlay with BGP/EVPN as the control plane. Additionally, all 3 racks are compute, leaving no additional leafs to act as the service/border/exit leafs.

A network designer will look at the infrastructure and try to overlap features by repurposing the spines as exit leafs. Why will they think this way, you ask? Well, this is only an 8 switch design. Spending money on an additional 2 switches to act as dedicated border leafs uplifts my capex cost by 25 percent! I would then be required to buy 10 total switches instead of 8.

So instead, we end up overlaying the VXLAN onto the spines. So now the spines act as both interconnections between Continue reading

VMware Patches Critical Bug That Exposes Sensitive Data

The vulnerability could allow a hacker to “extract highly sensitive information which could be...

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Could the CARES Act Close the Digital Divide in the United States?

Last week, the U.S. Congress passed the third stimulus bill in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This bill primarily focused on economic relief for companies, individuals, cities, states, and tribal communities. It allocates over $2 trillion in funds for a variety of measures intended to ease the burden of COVID-19.

Some of the included measures have been in the news for weeks, including those related to individual checks for those financially impacted by the virus. But there is an element to this bill that is equally important, not only for our ability to cope with the virus now but also to permanently change our country for the better.

These emergency funds allocate $150 billion to states and territories, including $8 billion specifically for Tribal governments, for “coronavirus relief.” What that relief looks like, however, is relatively vague. If a community was financially impacted by the pandemic between March and December of this year, in a way that they did not originally anticipate in their budgets, this fund covers most of those expenses.

And what is one of the biggest impacts we’ve seen? Millions of people have been forced to isolate themselves at home and carry out their daily Continue reading

Bringing Reference Architectures to Multi-Cloud Networking

Recently I attended Aviatrix Certified Engineer training to better understand multi-cloud networking and how Aviatrix is trying to solve its many problems, some of which I have experienced first-hand. Disclaimer: Since 2011, I’ve been an avid listener of the Packet Pushers podcast, where Aviatrix has sponsored 3 shows since December 2019. Ever since I embarked … Continue reading Bringing Reference Architectures to Multi-Cloud Networking