Coherent Optical Transceivers

I had the opportunity to participate in the New Zealand Network Operators Group meeting (NZNOG) in Nelson earlier this month. This article was prompted by a presentation from Thomas Weible of Flexoptix at NZNOG on the topic of Coherent Optical Transceivers.

DNS Topics at IETF119

The Internet is rapidly shifting to a name-based network and the DNS is now the underlying technology that lies the core of today's network. So, let’s see what we are currently thinking about in terms of names and the DNS at the recent IETF meeting.

Simple BGP Lab with Containerlab and Nornir (Lab-as-a-Code)

Simple BGP Lab with Containerlab and Nornir (Lab-as-a-Code)

I'm sure many of you can relate to the familiar headache that comes with setting up Network Labs. Suppose you just want to test some BGP functionalities, perhaps exploring how to use Route Map with BGP route filtering. Normally, you'd start by setting up a lab environment. This involves selecting a platform like EVE-NG or Cisco CML, adding a bunch of routers, and connecting everything with virtual cables.

Once your setup is physically ready, the real "fun" begins. You start configuring each router, setting interface IPs, adding descriptions, and configuring BGP attributes like neighbours and network statements. If this sounds tedious, that's because it is! I've configured interfaces countless times myself, and it never gets any less painful. Ever typed the wrong IP and then spent hours troubleshooting why you can't ping your peer? If you're nodding in agreement, you're definitely not alone. I know how to configure an interface already, I just don't want to do it for the 1000th time this year.

And just when you think about doing some automation or integrating with 3rd party tools (NMS, NCM etc), you're faced with another set of challenges. Setting up local user accounts, configuring management IPs, creating SSH keys—it Continue reading

Why Did No One Tell Me About This VSCode Remote – SSH Feature?

Why Did No One Tell Me About This VSCode Remote - SSH Feature?

I just discovered the VSCode Remote - SSH feature, and it's a game-changer (at least for me). This tool lets you code directly on a remote server (Linux VM for example) through SSH, right from your local VSCode. It brings your remote environment to your local workspace, making remote development much easier.

The Visual Studio Code Remote - SSH extension allows you to open a remote folder on any remote machine, virtual machine, or container with a running SSH server and take full advantage of VS Code's feature set. Once connected to a server, you can interact with files and folders anywhere on the remote filesystem.

No source code needs to be on your local machine to gain these benefits since the extension runs commands and other extensions directly on the remote machine.

What Problem Does it Solve?

Let me share a challenge I faced until recently. My main machine runs Windows, but for my work with automation tools like Python, Ansible, Terraform, and others such as containerlabs and Git, I prefer a Mac or Linux command line environment. I didn't want to install these tools directly on Windows due to potential issues.

Initially, I thought about using WSL, but Continue reading

Explore: Why No IPv6? (IPv6 SaaS)

Lasse Haugen had enough of the never-ending “we can’t possibly deploy IPv6” excuses and decided to start the IPv6 Shame-as-a-Service website, documenting top websites that still don’t offer IPv6 connectivity.

His list includes well-known entries like twitter.com, azure.com, and github.com plus a few unexpected ones. I find cloudflare.net not having an AAAA DNS record truly hilarious. Someone within the company that flawlessly provided my website with IPv6 connectivity for years obviously still has some reservations about their own dogfood ;)

Explore: Why No IPv6? (IPv6 SaaS)

Lasse Haugen had enough of the never-ending “we can’t possibly deploy IPv6” excuses and decided to start the IPv6 Shame-as-a-Service website, documenting top websites that still don’t offer IPv6 connectivity.

His list includes well-known entries like twitter.com, azure.com, and github.com plus a few unexpected ones. I find cloudflare.net not having an AAAA DNS record truly hilarious. Someone within the company that flawlessly provided my website with IPv6 connectivity for years obviously still has some reservations about their own dogfood ;)

Weekend Reads 041224


Future AMD processors could feature domain-specific accelerators – even some created by third parties, according to senior execs at the chip shop.


We tolerate such things even though we understand these practices usually harm those who willingly engage in them. Consider it one price we pay for relative freedom. But what should we do when these practices destroy the lives of innocent bystanders?


Thread hijacking attacks. They happen when someone you know has their email account compromised, and you are suddenly dropped into an existing conversation between the sender and someone else.


The first thing to note about the rumored “Stargate” system that Microsoft is planning to build to support the computational needs of its large language model partner, OpenAI, is that the people doing the talking – reportedly OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman – are talking about a datacenter, not a supercomputer


Now we’re going to go much deeper into the layers that relate to the PHY, which is PCS, PMA, and Autonegotiation. First though, let’s review the objectives of 1000BASE-T.


macOS has been gaining the unwanted attention of more and more backdoor operators since late 2023. In February 2024, Bitdefender uncovered RustDoor, which was written in Rust Continue reading

AWS Hedges Its Bets With Nvidia GPUs And Homegrown AI Chips

There was a time – and it doesn’t seem like that long ago – that the datacenter chip market was a big-money but relatively simple landscape, with CPUs from Intel and AMD and Arm looking to muscle its way in and GPUs mostly from Nvidia with some from AMD and Intel looking to muscle its way in. …

AWS Hedges Its Bets With Nvidia GPUs And Homegrown AI Chips was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Architecture and Process

Driving through some rural areas east of where I live, I noticed a lot of collections of buildings strung together being used as homes. The process seems to start when someone takes a travel trailer, places it on blocks (a foundation of sorts) and builds a spacious deck just outside the door. Over time, the deck is covered, then screened, then walled, becoming a room.

Once the deck becomes a room, a new deck is built, and the process begins anew. At some point, the occupants decide they need a place to store some sort of equipment, so they build a shed. Later, the shed is connected to the deck, the whole thing becomes an extension of the living space, and a new shed is built.

These … interesting … places to live are homes to the people who live in them. They are often, I assume, even happy homes.

But they are not houses in the proper sense of the word. There is no unifying theme, no thought of how traffic should flow and how people should live. They are a lot like the paths crisscrossing a campus—built where the grass died.

Our networks are like these homes—they are Continue reading

Improving authoritative DNS with the official release of Foundation DNS

We are very excited to announce the official release of Foundation DNS, with new advanced nameservers, even more resilience, and advanced analytics to meet the complex requirements of our enterprise customers. Foundation DNS is one of Cloudflare's largest leaps forward in our authoritative DNS offering since its launch in 2010, and we know our customers are interested in an enterprise-ready authoritative DNS service with the highest level of performance, reliability, security, flexibility, and advanced analytics.

Starting today, every new enterprise contract that includes authoritative DNS will have access to the Foundation DNS feature set and existing enterprise customers will have Foundation DNS features made available to them over the course of this year. If you are an existing enterprise customer already using our authoritative DNS services, and you’re interested in getting your hands on Foundation DNS earlier, just reach out to your account team, and they can enable it for you. Let’s get started…

Why is DNS so important?

From an end user perspective, DNS makes the Internet usable. DNS is the phone book of the Internet which translates hostnames like www.cloudflare.com into IP addresses that our browsers, applications, and devices use to connect to services. Without Continue reading

How we ensure Cloudflare customers aren’t affected by Let’s Encrypt’s certificate chain change

Let’s Encrypt, a publicly trusted certificate authority (CA) that Cloudflare uses to issue TLS certificates, has been relying on two distinct certificate chains. One is cross-signed with IdenTrust, a globally trusted CA that has been around since 2000, and the other is Let’s Encrypt’s own root CA, ISRG Root X1. Since Let’s Encrypt launched, ISRG Root X1 has been steadily gaining its own device compatibility.

On September 30, 2024, Let’s Encrypt’s certificate chain cross-signed with IdenTrust will expire. After the cross-sign expires, servers will no longer be able to serve certificates signed by the cross-signed chain. Instead, all Let’s Encrypt certificates will use the ISRG Root X1 CA.

Most devices and browser versions released after 2016 will not experience any issues as a result of the change since the ISRG Root X1 will already be installed in those clients’ trust stores. That's because these modern browsers and operating systems were built to be agile and flexible, with upgradeable trust stores that can be updated to include new certificate authorities.

The change in the certificate chain will impact legacy devices and systems, such as devices running Android version 7.1.1 (released in 2016) or older, as those exclusively Continue reading

HN729: Open Source to Closed

With “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” as his guide, Srivats launched Ostinato, his open source project, in 2010. He needed an affordable network traffic generator at his day job, he was passionate enough to build one during his nights and weekends, and end users loved it– it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.... Read more »

Hedge 221: Energy Aware Protocols

A lot of people are spending time thinking about how to make transport and control plane protocols more energy efficient. Is this effort worth it? What amount of power are we really like to save, and what downside potential is there in changing protocols to save energy? George Michaelson joins us from Australia to discuss energy awareness in protocols.

 

 

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Enhancing Kubernetes Network Security with Microsegmentation

Microsegmentation represents a transformative approach to enhancing network security within Kubernetes environments. This technique divides networks into smaller, isolated segments, allowing for granular control over traffic flow and significantly bolstering security posture. At its core, microsegmentation leverages Kubernetes network policies to isolate workloads, applications, namespaces and entire clusters, tailoring security measures to specific organizational needs and compliance requirements. The Essence of Microsegmentation Strategies Scalability and Flexibility The fundamental advantage of microsegmentation through network policies lies in its scalability and flexibility. Kubernetes’ dynamic, label-based selection process facilitates the addition of new segments without compromising existing network infrastructure, enabling organizations to adapt to evolving security landscapes seamlessly. Labeling the assets is a key to microsegmentation success. Prevent Lateral Movement of Threats Workload isolation, a critical component of microsegmentation, emphasizes the importance of securing individual microservices within a namespace or tenant by allowing only required and approved communication. This minimizes the attack surface and prevents unauthorized lateral movement. Namespace and Tenant Isolation Namespace isolation further enhances security by segregating applications into unique namespaces, ensuring operational independence and reducing the impact of potential security breaches. Similarly, tenant isolation addresses the needs of multitenant environments by securing shared Kubernetes infrastructure, thus protecting tenants from Continue reading

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