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Category Archives for "Networking"

Hedge 210: Eric Chou and Technical Publishing

Have you ever thought about publishing a book or recording a professional video? It’s not as simple as proposing an idea, doing the work, and becoming famous (or infamous, as the case might be). Eric Chou joins Rick Graziani and Russ to talk about the ins and outs of technical publishing. We are planning a part 2 of this in a few months to cover things we left on the table for later discussion.

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Cyber attacks targeting Jewish and Holocaust educational websites surge by 872% in 2023

Tomorrow is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a mournful occasion to remember those who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. The Holocaust, a catastrophic event in human history, resulted in the extermination of one-third of the Jewish population in Europe — totaling six million Jews during the Second World War. It also claimed the lives of countless others from minority and disability groups targeted under the Nazis' brutal regime of intolerance.

At Cloudflare, through Project Galileo, we are committed to safeguarding Jewish and Holocaust educational websites. This initiative offers complimentary protection to vulnerable groups worldwide. You can apply for the project using this form.

Combating antisemitism with education and cyber defense

Today more than ever, it’s important to ensure educational websites about the Holocaust are protected and available. Education about the Holocaust helps communities understand the dangers of prejudice and dehumanization, and can play an important role in combating antisemitism. As only 13 countries worldwide have mandated Holocaust education, publicly available resources play an important role in ensuring access to information.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, over 1 billion people globally are reported to hold antisemitic attitudes. In the United States, the Continue reading

Reflecting on the GDPR to celebrate Privacy Day 2024

Just in time for Data Privacy Day 2024 on January 28, the EU Commission is calling for evidence to understand how the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been functioning now that we’re nearing the 6th anniversary of the regulation coming into force.

We’re so glad they asked, because we have some thoughts. And what better way to celebrate privacy day than by discussing whether the application of the GDPR has actually done anything to improve people’s privacy?

The answer is, mostly yes, but in a couple of significant ways – no.

Overall, the GDPR is rightly seen as the global gold standard for privacy protection. It has served as a model for what data protection practices should look like globally, it enshrines data subject rights that have been copied across jurisdictions, and when it took effect, it created a standard for the kinds of privacy protections people worldwide should be able to expect and demand from the entities that handle their personal data. On balance, the GDPR has definitely moved the needle in the right direction for giving people more control over their personal data and in protecting their privacy.

In a couple of key areas, however, we Continue reading

A Handy Acronym for Troubleshooting

While I may be getting further from my days of being an active IT troubleshooter it doesn’t mean that I can’t keep refining my technique. As I spend time looking back on my formative years of doing troubleshooting either from a desktop perspective or from a larger enterprise role I find that there were always a few things that were critical to understand about the issues I was facing.

Sadly, getting that information out of people in the middle of a crisis wasn’t always super easy. I often ran into people that were very hard to communicate with during an outage or a big problem. Sometimes they were complicit because they made the mistake that caused it. They also bristled at the idea of someone else coming to fix something they couldn’t or wouldn’t. Just as often I ran into people that loved to give me lots of information that wasn’t relevant to the issue. Whether they were nervous talkers or just had a bad grasp on the situation it resulted in me having to sift through all that data to tease out the information I needed.

The Method

Today, as I look back on my career I would like Continue reading

BGP EVPN Part IV: MAC-VRF L2RIB Update: Local MAC Address

In Figure 1-3 we have VLAN 10 mapped to EVI/MAC-VRF L2VNI10000. TS-A1 (IP: 192.168.11.12/MAC: 1000.0010.beef) is connected to VLAN10 via Attachment Circuit (AC) Ethernet 1/2, (ifindex: 1a000200). 

Figure 1-3: MAC-VRF: L2RIB Local Learning Process.


Example 1-1 shows the VLAN to L2VNI mapping information. 


Leaf-101# show vlan id 10 vn-segment
VLAN Segment-id
---- -----------
10   10000       

Example 1-1: VLAN to EVPN Instance Mapping Information.


Step-1 and 2: MAC Table Update 


During the startup process, TS-A1 sends a Gratuitous ARP (GARP) message to announce its presence on the network and validate the uniqueness of its IP address. It uses its IP address in the Target IP field (Example 1-2). If another host responds to this unsolicited ARP reply, it indicates a potential IP address conflict. 

Ethernet II, Src: 10:00:00:10:be:ef, Dst: Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff)
Address Resolution Protocol (reply/gratuitous ARP)
    Hardware type: Ethernet (1)
    Protocol type: IPv4 (0x0800)
    Hardware size: 6
    Protocol size: 4
    Opcode: reply (2)
    [Is gratuitous: True]
    Sender MAC address: 10:00:00:10:be:ef (10:00:00:10:be:ef)
    Sender IP address: 192.168.11.12
    Target MAC address: Broadcast Continue reading

Introducing Foundations – our open source Rust service foundation library

In this blog post, we're excited to present Foundations, our foundational library for Rust services, now released as open source on GitHub. Foundations is a foundational Rust library, designed to help scale programs for distributed, production-grade systems. It enables engineers to concentrate on the core business logic of their services, rather than the intricacies of production operation setups.

Originally developed as part of our Oxy proxy framework, Foundations has evolved to serve a wider range of applications. For those interested in exploring its technical capabilities, we recommend consulting the library’s API documentation. Additionally, this post will cover the motivations behind Foundations' creation and provide a concise summary of its key features. Stay with us to learn more about how Foundations can support your Rust projects.

What is Foundations?

In software development, seemingly minor tasks can become complex when scaled up. This complexity is particularly evident when comparing the deployment of services on server hardware globally to running a program on a personal laptop.

The key question is: what fundamentally changes when transitioning from a simple laptop-based prototype to a full-fledged service in a production environment? Through our experience in developing numerous services, we've identified several critical differences:

HW019: The Crucial Collaboration Between Wireless Engineers And Architects

Host Keith Parsons and guest Kelly Burroughs from iBwave discuss the crucial need for collaboration between Wi-Fi engineers and architects to ensure optimal wireless connectivity in building designs. They explore the use of BIM file formats for better integration and the importance of considering wireless as a utility in the architectural process. The conversation addresses... Read more »

How the Kubernetes Gateway API Beats Network Ingress

CHICAGO — Incoming traffic looking to access your network and platform probably uses the network’s ingress. But the ingress carries with it scaling, availability and security issues. For instance, said Kate Osborn, a software engineer at NGINX, suggested in this episode of TNS Makers recorded On the Road at KubeCon + CloudNative Con North America. “One of the biggest issues is it’s not extensible,” Osborn said. “So it’s a very simple resource. But there’s a bunch of complex routing that people want to do. And in Continue reading

HS063: What’s On Our Minds

Hosts Greg Ferro and Johna Till Johnson reflect on the technological advancements of 2023 and discuss the trends for 2024. In this wide-ranging conversation, they chat about the rise of AI, tech consolidation, and the impact of automation on infrastructure. They also explore the geopolitical impact on supply chains, the move away from Chinese manufacturing,... Read more »

MikroTik ROS 7.14beta8 released

MikroTik Routers and Wireless – Software

RouterOS continues to mature as we move through the versions in the teens.

When we transitioned between ROSv5 and ROSv6 in the early 2010s, it was right around this version numbering that we started to see production stability. By the time 6.2x versions came out, the general consensus was that v6 was ready for prime time. We are getting closer to that point in ROSv7 – depending on your use case.

Certainly, there are still issues to solve for advanced users like ISPs and Data Centers that need protocols like BGP, OSPF, IS-IS and MPLS, but simpler use cases seem to really be stabilizing with the last few months of releases.

Notable changes in this release:

*) bgp – allow to leak routes between local VRFs;

There are a few reasons this is a really important addition to ROSv7. First, it’s an issue that’s been on the roadmap for a very long time as noted in the Routing Protocol Overview section of MikroTik’s help docs. This is encouraging because it’s likely been one of the harder problems for the development team to solve given the length of time it sat open.

Secondly, it’s Continue reading