Using Fortran on Cloudflare Workers

In April 2020, we blogged about how to get COBOL running on Cloudflare Workers by compiling to WebAssembly. The ecosystem around WebAssembly has grown significantly since then, and it has become a solid foundation for all types of projects, be they client-side or server-side.

As WebAssembly support has grown, more and more languages are able to compile to WebAssembly for execution on servers and in browsers. As Cloudflare Workers uses the V8 engine and supports WebAssembly natively, we’re able to support languages that compile to WebAssembly on the platform.

Recently, work on LLVM has enabled Fortran to compile to WebAssembly. So, today, we’re writing about running Fortran code on Cloudflare Workers.

Before we dive into how to do this, here’s a little demonstration of number recognition in Fortran. Draw a number from 0 to 9 and Fortran code running somewhere on Cloudflare’s network will predict the number you drew.

Try yourself on handwritten-digit-classifier.fortran.demos.cloudflare.com.

This is taken from the wonderful Fortran on WebAssembly post but instead of running client-side, the Fortran code is running on Cloudflare Workers. Read on to find out how you can use Fortran on Cloudflare Workers and how that demonstration works.

Wait, Fortran? Continue reading

Cisco vPC in VXLAN/EVPN Network – Part 3 – Verifying Connectivity

The following topology is used:

We want to verify connectivity and traffic flow towards:

  • Gateway of Server3.
  • Server1.
  • Server2.
  • Server4.

Let’s start with the gateway. The gateway is at 10.0.0.1 and has a MAC address of 0001.0001.0001:

server3:~$ ip neighbor | grep 10.0.0.1
10.0.0.1 dev bond0 lladdr 00:01:00:01:00:01 STALE

This is an anycast gateway MAC. When initiating a ping towards 10.0.0.1, it can go to either Leaf1 or Leaf2. I will run Ethanalyzer on the switches to confirm which one is receiving the ICMP Echo Request:

Leaf1# ethanalyzer local interface inband display-filter "icmp" limit-captured-frames 0
Capturing on 'ps-inb'

Leaf2# ethanalyzer local interface inband display-filter "icmp" limit-captured-frames 0
Capturing on 'ps-inb'

Then initiate ping from Server3:

server3:~$ ping 10.0.0.1
PING 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.19 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.29 ms
^C
--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.192/1.242/1.292/0.050 ms

Continue reading

Repost: State of Lisp Implementations (2024)

You might remember Béla Várkonyi’s use of LISP to build resilient ground-to-airplane networks from last week’s repost. It seems he’s not exactly happy with the current level of LISP support, at least based on what he wrote as a response to Jeff McLaughlin’s claim that “I can tell you that our support for EVPN does not, in any way, indicate the retirement of LISP for SD-Access.”:

Nice to hear the Cisco intends to support LISP. However, it is removed from IOS XR already. So it is not that clear…

If Cisco will stop supporting LISP, then we will be forced to create our own LISP routers, since we need it for extreme mobility environments.

Read more …

Repost: State of Lisp Implementations (2024)

You might remember Béla Várkonyi’s use of LISP to build resilient ground-to-airplane networks from last week’s repost. It seems he’s not exactly happy with the current level of LISP support, at least based on what he wrote as a response to Jeff McLaughlin’s claim that “I can tell you that our support for EVPN does not, in any way, indicate the retirement of LISP for SD-Access.”:

Nice to hear the Cisco intends to support LISP. However, it is removed from IOS XR already. So it is not that clear…

If Cisco will stop supporting LISP, then we will be forced to create our own LISP routers, since we need it for extreme mobility environments.

Read more …

Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

Hi all, in this quick blog post, let's look at how to run Palo Alto firewalls in Containerlab. If you've been following me for a while, you might know that I've started using Containerlab more often in my projects. If you're new to Containerlab or need a quick recap, check out my other introductory post below. Now, let's dive in.

Containerlab - Creating Network Labs Can’t be Any Easier
What if I tell you that all you need is just a YAML file with just a bunch of lines to create a Network Lab that can run easily on your laptop? I’ll walk you through what Containerlab is
Running Palo Alto Firewall in ContainerlabPacketswitchSuresh Vina
Running Palo Alto Firewall in Containerlab

boxen or vrnetlab

Palo Alto doesn't provide a containerized VM image (not CN-Series), it only has a VM-based image. You can create a container from this VM image using two methods. The official documentation recommends using 'boxen' to generate a container image from the VM. However, I chose to use the vrnetlab project instead.

Creating a containerized image using vrnetlab

First things first, download the VM image (qcow2) from the Palo Alto support portal. You might need a valid support contract to access this image. For this Continue reading

NB477: Arista Assembles Switch-Based Microperimeters; FCC Wants More Money for Telcos Dumping Huawei Gear

Take a Network Break! This week we cover a new microsegmentation offering from Arista, new GenAI assistants from Fortinet, and a GenAI firewall from Versa Networks to monitor and report on how organizations are using generative AI tools and applications. AWS will stop selling VMware Cloud on AWS (but you can still get it through... Read more »

Tech Bytes: Real-Time Network Performance Monitoring with NetBeez (Sponsored)

Network monitoring is growing increasingly complicated. Companies are facing more distributed applications and more remote employees. NetBeez, our sponsor today, is here to talk about how they monitor network performance in real time for the campus, WAN, and more. From proactively testing networks after configuration changes to identifying how well a worker’s laptop is connecting... Read more »

Famous Last Words: I’m Too Stupid for That

Some networking vendors realized that one way to gain mindshare is to make their network operating systems available as free-to-download containers or virtual machines. That’s the right way to go; I love their efforts and point out who went down that path whenever possible1 (as well as others like Cisco who try to make our lives miserable).

However, those virtual machines better work out of the box, or you’ll get frustrated engineers who will give up and never touch your warez again, or as someone said in a LinkedIn comment to my blog post describing how Junos vPTX consistently rejects its DHCP-assigned IP address: “If I had encountered an issue like this before seeing Ivan’s post, I would have definitely concluded that I am doing it wrong.”2

Read more …

Famous Last Words: I’m Too Stupid for That

Some networking vendors realized that one way to gain mindshare is to make their network operating systems available as free-to-download containers or virtual machines. That’s the right way to go; I love their efforts and point out who went down that path whenever possible1 (as well as others like Cisco who try to make our lives miserable).

However, those virtual machines better work out of the box, or you’ll get frustrated engineers who will give up and never touch your warez again, or as someone said in a LinkedIn comment to my blog post describing how Junos vPTX consistently rejects its DHCP-assigned IP address: “If I had encountered an issue like this before seeing Ivan’s post, I would have definitely concluded that I am doing it wrong.”2

Read more …

Weekend Reads 050424


Quantum sensing is poised to revolutionize virtually every aspect of our world. Quantum sensing’s distinctive ability to detect magnetic signatures is already aiding in navigation for countless fuel tankers worldwide, providing otherwise unachievable medical scans, and keeping all of our computer clocks in sync.


Surprisingly, most network attacks are not exceptionally sophisticated, technologically advanced, or reliant on zero-day tools that exploit edge-case vulnerabilities.


A growing number of data center operators and equipment vendors are anticipating the proliferation of direct liquid cooling systems (DLC) over the next few years. As far as projections go, Uptime Institute’s surveys agree: the industry consensus for the mainstream adoption of liquid-cooled IT converges on the latter half of the 2020s.


The recent discovery of a backdoor in XZ Utils (CVE-2024-3094), a data compression utility used by a wide array of various open-source, Linux-based computer applications, underscores the importance of open-source software security.


The IETF has had a long tradition of doing its technical work through a consensus process, taking into account the different views among IETF participants and coming to (at least rough) consensus on technical matters.


This is where Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) steps in as a powerful tool to bolster security. Let’s delve into Continue reading

Supermicro Finally Mints Some Coin Peddling Rackscale Iron

With new generations of GPUs and other kinds of AI accelerators either shipping or soon to start shipping and new CPUs also soon to be available from Intel and AMD, and sales already at a historical high level at Supermicro, you might not be expecting for sales to bust through a whole new higher ceiling starting in the next quarter. …

Supermicro Finally Mints Some Coin Peddling Rackscale Iron was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Cilium’s Past Points to Its Future 

Cilium is obviously undergoing a lot of changes as a dynamic and popular open source project that heavily utilizes eBPF, but its original reason remains in check:  a tool that offers security, observability and networking capabilities. Its capabilities — or hooks — extend from the kernel to throughout the network, including cloud, on-premises or other infrastructures. This definition covers a lot of things, while Cilium should continue to adapt and extend as infrastructure needs change. @tgraf__ ‘s « Cilium Vision » has a lot of future but the core design remains in place. @thenewstack March 19, 2024 In this article, we look at Thomas Graf, who is CTO of Isovalent, described during his KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe talk Continue reading

IPB150: IPv6 Basics: ICMPv6

As part of our ongoing series on IPv6 basics, today we cover the differences you should be aware of between ICMPv4 and ICMPv6. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is the protocol that lets you test reachability: Pings, echoes, TCP connections, etc. We explain what you need to know and why you need to know it,... Read more »

How To Make More Money Renting A GPU Than Nvidia Makes Selling It

It is not a coincidence that the companies that got the most “Hopper” H100 allocations from Nvidia in 2023 were also the hyperscalers and cloud builders, who in many cases wear both hats and who are as interested in renting out their GPU capacity for others to build AI models as they are in innovating in the development of large language models. …

How To Make More Money Renting A GPU Than Nvidia Makes Selling It was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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