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Calico monthly roundup: November 2023

Welcome to the Calico monthly roundup: November edition! From open source news to live events, we have exciting updates to share—let’s get into it!

 

Find your Cluster Security Score

Calico Cloud is releasing new capabilities for security posture management called Security Scoring and Recommended Actions. Start measuring and tracking your security posture.

Learn more.

Customer case study: Boundless Software

Calico Cloud enabled SOC 2 compliance for Boundless Software while also drastically reducing onboarding times for the company’s customers. Read our case study to find out how.

Read case study.

Secure Kubernetes traffic with Calico Egress gateway

Discover how egress gateways enable users to assign meaningful network identity to selected traffic so that this information can be further used by traditional tools to enforce granular policies to traffic based on identity or bandwidth.

Read blog post.

Open source news

  • NEW features
    • Streamlined Operations with Windows HostProcess Container – Automated node pool scaling and upgrades, eliminating the need for manual node initialization to streamline operations and management of Windows container-based applications.
    • Performance and Scalability with IPv6 Support for Calico eBPF Dataplane – IPv6 support for eBPF in Calico empowers enterprises to enhance the performance and scalability of their applications by alleviating Continue reading

NB459: IBM Aims To Own The Quantum Realm; Amazon Hitches A Ride With SpaceX

Today on Network Break we cover IBM's new quantum processor and modular quantum computer and its effort to own the next generation of computing. We also cover Cisco's AI assistant for firewalls, Marvell's new DPUs for networking devices, why Amazon has to rely on SpaceX to get Project Kuiper satellites into orbit, and more IT news.

The post NB459: IBM Aims To Own The Quantum Realm; Amazon Hitches A Ride With SpaceX appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Response: Vendor Network Automation Tools

Drew Conry-Murray published a excellent summary of his takeaways from the AutoCon0 event, including this one:

Most companies want vendor-supported tools that will actually help them be more efficient, reduce human error, and increase the velocity at which the network team can support new apps and services.

Yeah, that’s nothing new. Most Service Providers wanted vendors to add tons of nerd knobs to their products to adapt them to existing network designs. Obviously, it must be done for free because a vast purchase order1 is dangling in the air. We’ve seen how well that worked, yet learned nothing from that experience.

Response: Vendor Network Automation Tools

Drew Conry-Murray published a excellent summary of his takeaways from the AutoCon0 event, including this one:

Most companies want vendor-supported tools that will actually help them be more efficient, reduce human error, and increase the velocity at which the network team can support new apps and services.

Yeah, that’s nothing new. Most Service Providers wanted vendors to add tons of nerd knobs to their products to adapt them to existing network designs. Obviously, it must be done for free because a vast purchase order1 is dangling in the air. We’ve seen how well that worked, yet learned nothing from that experience.

OpenSpeedTest: Check the Speed of your LAN via Web Browser

Imagine you’re developing an application for your internal network that requires a certain network speed to function properly. You could open a web browser and point it to one of the many network speed tests on the market but I’m sure you know what that does… it tests your connection to the outside world. What if you’re looking to test the speed of your LAN itself? OpenSpeedTest comes in. OpenSpeedTest is a free, open source HTML5 network performance estimation tool that doesn’t require any client-side software or plugin to function. Once deployed, the tool can be accessed from a standard, modern web browser. Even better, OpenSpeedTest can be deployed with Docker. It uses a combination of NGINX and Alpine Linux to use very little resources on your Docker server. You can run OpenSpeedTest with or without

Trunk to Access – Will It Work?

Recently a posted a question to Twitter about connecting two Cisco Catalyst switches. One switch has already booted and has the following configuration:

interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 description SW02
 switchport mode trunk
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,10,20,30
 switchport nonegotiate

The other switch is connected to Gi1/0/48 and has just been powered on. It has no configuration so it is booting with the default configuration. The intention is to onboard a new switch via Catalyst Center using Plug and Play (PNP).

Based on the responses not many people were able to describe what would happen and why or why not this scenario would work. There are some interesting details here and before running into this scenario myself I thought that it might work. Before we can answer if it will work, let’s list what we know at this point in time about the two switches, SW01, and SW02. For SW01 we know that:

  • The port is configured as a trunk.
  • The VLANs allowed on the trunk are 1,10,20, and 30.
  • DTP has been disabled.
  • The native VLAN is 1.

For SW02 we know that:

  • It will boot with all ports enabled.
  • Those ports will be in VLAN 1.
  • DTP is enabled on the Continue reading

HN713: Network Automation: Where Are We, And Where Can We Go?

Today’s show is roundtable conversation on the state of automation in the networking industry. We discuss takeaways from the recent AutoCon event on network automation, and get into issues such as sources of truth and the role of abstractions in automation. We also talk about the learning, cultural, and business challenges of network automation--and how to get beyond them.

The post HN713: Network Automation: Where Are We, And Where Can We Go? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Hedge 205: OId Engineering Quotes

For this month’s roundtable, Eyvonne, Tom, and I return to Addresses to Engineering Students by Harrington and Waddell. This book, published in 1912, is a “product of its time,” and hence deserves some trigger warnings. But it is also interesting to see how advice given to engineering students over 100 years ago holds up for today. Have engineering challenges, and the engineering life, changed all that much? What kinds of advice stand the test of time, what kinds do not?

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Video: netlab IP Address Management (IPAM)

Did you know that netlab includes full-blown IP address management? You can define address pools (or use predefined ones) and get IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes from those pools assigned to links, interfaces, and loopbacks. You can also assign static prefixes to links, use static IP addresses, interface addresses as an offset within the link subnet, or use unnumbered interfaces.

For an overview of netlab IPAM, watch the netlab address management video (part of the Network Automation Tools webinar), for more details read the netlab addressing tutorial.

You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the video and Standard ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the rest of the webinar.

Video: netlab IP Address Management (IPAM)

Did you know that netlab includes full-blown IP address management? You can define address pools (or use predefined ones) and get IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes from those pools assigned to links, interfaces, and loopbacks. You can also assign static prefixes to links, use static IP addresses, interface addresses as an offset within the link subnet, or use unnumbered interfaces.

For an overview of netlab IPAM, watch the netlab address management video (part of the Network Automation Tools webinar), for more details read the netlab addressing tutorial.

You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the video and Standard ipSpace.net Subscription to watch the rest of the webinar.