Weekend reads 031618: Notes on memcache, GDPR and whois, and the end of Symantec certificates
I’ve been prompted to write this brief opinion piece in response to a recent article posted on CircleID by Tony Rutkowski, where he characterises the IETF as a collection of “crypto zealots”. He offers the view that the IETF is behaving irresponsibly in attempting to place as much of the Internet’s protocols behind session level encryption as it possibly can. He argues that ETSI’s work on middlebox security protocols is a more responsible approach, and the enthusiastic application of TLS in IETF protocol Continue reading
History of Hardware Switching
On this episode of the history of networking, we talk to Tony Li about the origin and history of the Cisco Silicon Switching Engine.
Short Take: Side Channel Attacks
In this short take, recently posted over at the Network Collective, I discuss what a side channel attack is, and why they are important.
Low Latency Networking
Low latency is coming to a network near you. In fact, it’s probably coming to your network, whether or not you realize it.
While bandwidth has always been the primary measure of a network, and cross sectional or non-contending bandwidth for data center fabrics, further research and reflection has taught large scale network operators that latency is actually much more of a killer for application performance than lack of bandwidth—and not only latency, but its close cousin, jitter. Why is this?
To understand, it is useful to return to an example given by Tanenbaum in his book Computer Networks. He includes a humorous example of calculating the bandwidth of a station wagon full of VHS tapes, with each tape containing the maximum amount of data possible. For those young folks out there who didn’t understand a single word in that last sentence, think of an overnight delivery box from your favorite shipping service. Now stuff the box full of high density solid state storage of some kind, and ship it. You can calculate the bandwidth of the box by multiplying the number of devices you can stuff in there by the capacity of each device, and then dividing by roughly Continue reading
Administravia 030818: Added Navigation
I was asked by a reader to add categories and links for videos; I actually added three new categories, one for short videos, another for long videos, and a third for written posts. You can find these under the bottom menu item on the left. I am having a problem with the menu not showing up correctly, so I move the resources under the third menu item, as well.
Finally, I added a new archive page, which shows you all the posts in the “left” category across the three years this blog has been “in production.” I couldn’t figure out how to narrow things down so pictures and other stuff are not included, so there is more on the page than needed right now, but it’s a start.
Cloud Connectivity on the Network Collective
On this episode of the Network Collective, we’re chatting with Miguel Villareal and Scott Wheeler about cloud connectivity.