Tech Bytes: Fortinet Advisor Brings GenAI To Support SecOps Teams (Sponsored)
Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Fortinet, we dive into Fortinet Advisor. This is a new generative AI offering designed to act as an assistant to SoC analysts and security teams by providing context-aware event summaries, potential impacts, and recommended responses while also keeping humans in the loop.
The post Tech Bytes: Fortinet Advisor Brings GenAI To Support SecOps Teams (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Datacenter Infrastructure Report Card, Q3 2023
It is hard to keep a model of datacenter infrastructure spending in your head at the same time you want to look at trends in cloud and on-premises spending as well as keep score among the key IT suppliers to figure out who is winning and who is losing. …
The post Datacenter Infrastructure Report Card, Q3 2023 first appeared on The Next Platform.
Datacenter Infrastructure Report Card, Q3 2023 was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Kill the CLI
As the conversation about Network Automation flows around us, this topic seems to be getting some traction (and quite a reaction!). Have you disabled the CLI? Should we disable the CLI? How long before the CLI is disabled? I don’t believe those are the question we should be asking but it made me examine why READ MORE
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2023 Network Computing Words of the Year
Which words captured our attention, piqued our fancy, sparked our interest, made our dreams come true, or kept us up at night in 2023? Drumroll, please ...NB460: VMware Ditches Perpetual Licenses; GenAI Is Coming To Network Ops
Broadcom’s VMware has announced an end to perpetual licensing, network automation provider Anuta Networks is adding generative AI capabilities to its Atom platform, and high-end firewall revenues dip but campus switch sales soared in Q3 2023. The Open Networking Foundation, which oversaw open projects around software-defined networking, is closing its doors and folding its projects... Read more »NB460: VMware Ditches Perpetual Licenses; GenAI Is Coming To Network Ops
On today's Network Break we discuss why Broadcom wants VMware customers on subscription licenses, whether GenAI will be a free or paid feature for network management software, how Cisco doged a multi-billion-dollar patent infringement, what a successful test of space lasers means for satellite broadband means for Amazon's Project Kuiper, and more IT news.
The post NB460: VMware Ditches Perpetual Licenses; GenAI Is Coming To Network Ops appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Production Reductions
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been writing quite as much this year as I have in years past. I finally hit the wall that comes for all content creators. A combination of my job and the state of the industry meant that I found myself slipping off my self-appointed weekly posting schedule more and more often in 2023. In fact, there were several times I skipped a whole week to get put something out every other week, especially in the latter half of the year.
I’ve always wanted to keep the content level high around here and give my audience things to think about. As the year wore on I found myself running out of those ideas as portions of the industry slowed down. If other people aren’t getting excited about tech why should I? Sure, I could probably write about Wi-Fi 7 or SD-WAN or any number of topics over and over again but it’s harder to repeat yourself for an audience that takes a more critical eye to your writing than it is for someone that just wants to churn out material.
My Bruce Wayne job kept me busy this year. I’m proud of all the content Continue reading
Dynamically Enabling the Azure CLI with Direnv
I’m a big fan of direnv, the tool that lets you load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory. It’s so very useful! Not too terribly long ago, I wanted to find a way to “dynamically activate” the Azure CLI using direnv. Basically, I wanted to be able to have the Azure CLI disabled (no configuration information) unless I was in a directory where I needed or wanted it to be active, and be able to make it active using direnv. I finally found a way to make it work, and in this blog post I’ll share how you can do this, too.
First, you’ll need both direnv and the Azure CLI installed (obviously). I’ll leave this as an exercise for the readers, but I’ll mention that if you want to use Azure CLI in a Python virtual environment you might find this article really helpful.
Next, you’ll want to create a couple of directories. I chose to “hide” these directories in a .config directory in my home directory. This directory is very commonly found (and used) on many Linux systems, but doesn’t typically exist on a macOS system. You can use this command to create the Continue reading
Integrating Turnstile with the Cloudflare WAF to challenge fetch requests
Two months ago, we made Cloudflare Turnstile generally available — giving website owners everywhere an easy way to fend off bots, without ever issuing a CAPTCHA. Turnstile allows any website owner to embed a frustration-free Cloudflare challenge on their website with a simple code snippet, making it easy to help ensure that only human traffic makes it through. In addition to protecting a website’s frontend, Turnstile also empowers web administrators to harden browser-initiated (AJAX) API calls running under the hood. These APIs are commonly used by dynamic single-page web apps, like those created with React, Angular, Vue.js.
Today, we’re excited to announce that we have integrated Turnstile with the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall (WAF). This means that web admins can add the Turnstile code snippet to their websites, and then configure the Cloudflare WAF to manage these requests. This is completely customizable using WAF Rules; for instance, you can allow a user authenticated by Turnstile to interact with all of an application’s API endpoints without facing any further challenges, or you can configure certain sensitive endpoints, like Login, to always issue a challenge.
Challenging fetch requests in the Cloudflare WAF
Millions of websites protected by Cloudflare’s WAF leverage our Continue reading
Review: Unnumbered Interfaces in netlab
A while ago, Chris Parker published a nice blog post explaining how to configure unnumbered interfaces with IS-IS in Junos. It’s well worth reading, but like my Unnumbered Ethernet Interfaces blog post, it only covers one network operating system. What if you want to do something similar on another platform?
How about using the collective efforts of the team developing device configuration templates for netlab? As of December 2023 netlab supports:
Review: Unnumbered Interfaces in netlab
A while ago, Chris Parker published a nice blog post explaining how to configure unnumbered interfaces with IS-IS in Junos. It’s well worth reading, but like my Unnumbered Ethernet Interfaces blog post, it only covers one network operating system. What if you want to do something similar on another platform?
How about using the collective efforts of the team developing device configuration templates for netlab? As of December 2023 netlab supports:
Cybersecurity, Cloud and AI: Top-of-mind themes heading into 2024
Recently I had the opportunity to host a group of forward-thinking CISOs, CIOs and other executive decision makers drawn from several enterprise organizations in the United States. The goal was to frame perspectives on trends and priorities emerging within their respective organizations while co-relating to broader industry trends. Specifically, the intent here was not to x-ray the requirements of any single organization, but rather to identify, detect and understand patterns that could, in turn guide priorities over the next few years, benefiting the broader community. The discussions unearthed a lot of commonality in terms of shared pain points and higher order goals, and I thank the leaders that participated in the exercise, as well as the talented members of my team that came together to create a successful forum for discussion.
This multi-part blog series will summarize prominent patterns and insights that emerged from these sessions, that would hopefully serve as guideposts for the next 12-24 months, mostly in the areas of security, cloud infrastructure and deployment models.
Over a few sessions, broadly we had the cohort dive engage along three axis –
- The first was to really examine their top pain points. Issues, that if solved, would help Continue reading
Debian on IPng’s VPP Routers
Introduction
When IPng Networks first built out a european network, I was running the Disaggregated Network Operating System [ref], initially based on AT&T’s “dNOS” software framework. Over time though, the DANOS project slowed down, and the developers with whom I had a pretty good relationship all left for greener pastures.
In 2019, Pierre Pfister (and several others) built a VPP router sandbox [ref], which graduated into a feature called the Linux Control Plane plugin [ref]. Lots of folks put in an effort for the Linux Control Plane, notably Neale Ranns from Cisco (these days Graphiant), and Matt Smith and Jon Loeliger from Netgate (who ship this as TNSR [ref], check it out!). I helped as well, by adding a bunch of Netlink handling and VPP->Linux synchronization code, which I’ve written about a bunch on this blog in the 2021 VPP development series [ref].
At the time, Ubuntu and CentOS were the supported platforms, so I installed a bunch of Ubuntu machines when doing the deploy with my buddy Fred from IP-Max [ref]. But as time went by, I fell back to my old habit of running Debian Continue reading
Worth Reading: The AI Supply Paradox
Eric Hoel published a spot-on analysis of AI disruptiveness, including this gem:
The easier it is to train an AI to do something, the less economically valuable that thing is. After all, the huge supply of the thing is how the AI got so good in the first place.
TL&DR: AI can easily disrupt things that are easy to generate and thus have little value. Seeing investors trying to recoup the billions pouring into the latest fad will be fun.
Worth Reading: The AI Supply Paradox
Eric Hoel published a spot-on analysis of AI disruptiveness, including this gem:
The easier it is to train an AI to do something, the less economically valuable that thing is. After all, the huge supply of the thing is how the AI got so good in the first place.
TL&DR: AI can easily disrupt things that are easy to generate and thus have little value. Seeing investors trying to recoup the billions pouring into the latest fad will be fun.
Worth Reading: State-of-the-Art AI
Gerben Wierda published another AI-buster article describing what exactly “state-of-the-art” means in AI benchmarks.
Hint: you give an AI model 32 step-by-step examples before asking a question, and it still gets it wrong 10% of the time.
Worth Reading: State-of-the-Art AI
Gerben Wierda published another AI-buster article describing what exactly “state-of-the-art” means in AI benchmarks.
Hint: you give an AI model 32 step-by-step examples before asking a question, and it still gets it wrong 10% of the time.