Software Engineers and Network Automation

I was saying “you’ll get the best network automation (or SDN) results if you pair network engineers with software engineers” for ages, but there’s always someone else saying it more eloquently, in this case Jeremy Schulman in his recent blog post.

Jeremy will talk about ChatOps in Autumn 2019 Building Network Automation Solutions online course, but of course you’re more than welcome to ask him other questions as well.

African Peering and Interconnection Forum 2019 Fellows Announced

The 10th African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF-10) has selected twenty fellows to participate in the meeting next month.

The fellows are drawn from various fields such as interconnection, content, infrastructure, and policy. They represent Kenya, Lesotho, Somalia, Nigeria, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Egypt, Uganda, South Africa, Republic of the Congo (Congo), Ethiopian Cameroon, Benin, and Gambia.

Among the chosen fellows are six women sponsored by the Women in Tech partners. The women are drawn from Kenya, South Africa, Gambia, and Congo.

Representing DR Congo in this year’s AfPIF forum is Eric Nsilu Moanda. Eric works as a Senior Core Data Network Architect for Vodacom DR Congo. He has held the position at the Vodafone Group subsidiary for 12 years now, designing all IP Integration Solutions for the company.

“I look forward to learning how to produce attractive local content in Africa, for Africans, obtaining a fresh technical and marketing perspective, and gaining awareness in the evolution of continental interconnection projects,” Eric said.

In the past, Eric has peered on integrating Vodacom to KINIX (Kinshasa Exchange point) and he also worked on the Internet update link for the CDN of Kinix via Continue reading

Report: Smart-city IoT isn’t smart enough yet

Security arrangements for smart-city IoT technology around the world are in an alarming state of disrepair, according to a report from Forrester Research that argues serious changes are needed in order to avoid widespread compromises.Much of what’s wrong has to do with a lack of understanding on the part of the people in charge of those systems and a failure to follow well-known security best practices, like centralized management, network visibility and limiting attack-surfaces. More on IoT: What is the IoT? How the internet of things works What is edge computing and how it’s changing the network Most powerful Internet of Things companies 10 Hot IoT startups to watch The 6 ways to make money in IoT What is digital twin technology? [and why it matters] Blockchain, service-centric networking key to IoT success Getting grounded in IoT networking and security Building IoT-ready networks must become a priority What is the Industrial IoT? [And why the stakes are so high] Those all pose stiff challenges, according to “Making Smart Cities Safe And Secure,” the Forrester report by Merritt Maxim and Salvatore Schiano. The attack surface for a smart city is, by default, enormous, given the volume of Internet-connected hardware involved. Continue reading

Kernel of Truth season 2 episode 11: Network monitoring

Subscribe to Kernel of Truth on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Cast Box and Sticher!

Click here for our previous episode.

Don’t let your switch be the one who called wolf! Network monitoring is a hot topic here at Cumulus Networks and to talk about it more, host Brian O’Sullivan is joined by two new guests to the podcast Justin Betz and Faye Ly. They sit down to chat about the evolution of monitoring, the challenges in achieving robust monitoring and visibility, and what does it even mean to have “good network monitoring and visibility?” Listen, learn and hopefully enjoy!

Guest Bios

Brian O’Sullivan: Brian currently heads Product Management for Cumulus Linux. For 15 or so years he’s held software Product Management positions at Juniper Networks as well as other smaller companies. Once he saw the change that was happening in the networking space, he decided to join Cumulus Networks to be a part of the open networking innovation. When not working, Brian is a voracious reader and has held a variety of jobs, including bartending in three countries and working as an extra in a German soap opera. You can find him on Twitter at @bosullivan00.

Faye Continue reading

BrandPost: Part 3: Assessing Your WAN Strategy: Resiliency and Security at Branch Locations

In part 1 of this 3-part series on how to conduct a wide-area network assessment and determine necessary updates, we looked at foundational issues including current challenges and objectives. Part 2 examined considerations around applications and bandwidth. In this third and final installment we’ll look at two issues that are critical for any organization: resiliency and security.To read this article in full, please click here

IoT’s role in expanding drone use

As faithful readers of TechWatch (love you, Mom) may know, the rollout of many companies’ ambitious drone delivery services has not gone as quickly as promised. Despite recent signs of progress in Australia and the United States—not to mention clever ideas for burger deliveries to cars stuck in traffic—drone delivery remains a long way from becoming a viable option in the vast majority of use cases. And the problem affects many areas of drone usage, not just the heavily hyped drone delivery applications.To read this article in full, please click here

Storage management a weak area for most enterprises

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Companies are racing to a new technological paradigm but are using yesterday’s tech to do it.I know. Shocking.A survey of more than 300 storage professionals by storage vendor NGD Systems found only 11% of the companies they talked to would give themselves an “A” grade for their compute and storage capabilities.Why? The chief reason given is that while enterprises are rapidly deploying technologies for edge networks, real-time analytics, machine learning, and internet of things (IoT) projects, they are still using legacy storage solutions that are not designed for such data-intensive workloads. More than half — 54% — said their processing of edge applications is a bottleneck, and they want faster and more intelligent storage solutions.To read this article in full, please click here

Storage management a weak area for most enterprises

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Companies are racing to a new technological paradigm but are using yesterday’s tech to do it.I know. Shocking.A survey of more than 300 storage professionals by storage vendor NGD Systems found only 11% of the companies they talked to would give themselves an “A” grade for their compute and storage capabilities.Why? The chief reason given is that while enterprises are rapidly deploying technologies for edge networks, real-time analytics, machine learning, and internet of things (IoT) projects, they are still using legacy storage solutions that are not designed for such data-intensive workloads. More than half — 54% — said their processing of edge applications is a bottleneck, and they want faster and more intelligent storage solutions.To read this article in full, please click here

Kubernetes Operators with Ansible Deep Dive: Part 1

blog_ansible-and-kubernetes-deep-dive-1

This deep dive series assumes the reader has access to a Kubernetes test environment. A tool like minikube is an acceptable platform for the purposes of this article. If you are an existing Red Hat customer, another option is spinning up an OpenShift cluster through cloud.redhat.com. This SaaS portal makes trying OpenShift a turnkey operation.

In this part of this deep dive series, we'll:

  1. Take a look at operators overall, and what they do in OpenShift/Kubernetes.
  2. Take a quick look at the Operator SDK, and why you'd want to use an Ansible operator rather than other kinds of operators provided by the SDK.
  3. And finally, how Ansible Operators are structured and the relevant files created by the Operator SDK.

What Are Operators?

For those who may not be very familiar with Kubernetes, it is, in its most simplistic description - a resource manager. Users specify how much of a given resource they want and Kubernetes manages those resources to achieve the state the user specified. These resources can be pods (which contain one or more containers), persistent volumes, or even custom resources defined by users.

This makes Kubernetes useful for managing resources that don't contain any state (like Continue reading

Reports: As the IoT grows, so do its threats to DNS

The internet of things is shaping up to be a more significant threat to the Domain Name System through larger IoT botnets, unintentional adverse effects of IoT-software updates and the continuing development of bot-herding software.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and IBM’s X-Force security researchers have recently issued reports outlining the interplay between DNS and IoT that includes warnings about the pressure IoT botnets will put on the availability of DNS systems.More about DNS: DNS in the cloud: Why and why not DNS over HTTPS seeks to make internet use more private How to protect your infrastructure from DNS cache poisoning ICANN housecleaning revokes old DNS security key ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) wrote in a report that “a significant number of IoT devices will likely be IP enabled and will use the DNS to locate the remote services they require to perform their functions. As a result, the DNS will continue to play the same crucial role for the IoT that it has for traditional applications that enable human users to interact with services and content,” ICANN stated. “The  role of  the  DNS  might  become  even  more  crucial  from  a  security  and  stability Continue reading

Day Two Cloud 014: Turning A “Get Us Into Cloud” Order Into Operational Reality

On today's Day Two Cloud we dive into the challenges of adopting and operationalizing a cloud deployment with guest Mark Gossa. We discuss how to incorporate DevOps principles and automation tools into the organization, examine tool options such as Terraform, and chat about going serverless.

The post Day Two Cloud 014: Turning A “Get Us Into Cloud” Order Into Operational Reality appeared first on Packet Pushers.

How BMW’s new annual fee for Apple CarPlay could define the IoT

Apple calls CarPlay “the ultimate co-pilot.” BMW calls it the “smart and fast way to conveniently use your iPhone features while in your car. ... You can control your iPhone and use apps with the touchscreen display, the iDrive Controller or voice commands.”However you describe it, though, Apple’s CarPlay system suddenly finds itself in the center of what could be a defining conversation about the future of the internet of things (IoT).You see, the German luxury carmaker’s plans to charge $80 a year to access CarPlay have suddenly become the talk of the internet, from tech blogs to car sites. The hue and cry makes CarPlay the perfect illustration of the promise—and the pitfalls—of the IoT.To read this article in full, please click here

Hackathon at Africa Internet Summit 2019: Network Programmability, Network Time, IPv6, IPWAVE, and Measurement

The Internet Society and AFRINIC collaborated to organize the 3rd Hackathon@AIS in Kampala, Uganda, which took place alongside the 2019 Africa Internet Summit. The event attracted more than one hundred participants who took part in five different tracks at the event. The event has grown from three tracks and 39 participants in 2017 and three tracks with 75 participants in 2018, to five tracks with 100 participants this year. Cisco DevNet has been helping organize the event since the first edition, and this year, they sponsored t-shirts for the Hackathon.

Objectives
The goals of the Hackathon@AIS and other open standards promotion activities in the African region are to identify, encourage, and expose engineers from Africa to open Internet Standards development, so that they can contribute to the work at organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Format
The event ran for two days, organized as follows:

  • Day 1, June 19th, Morning
    • Opening session covering the goals of the meeting and the overall structure
    • Registration formalities of participants – using information gathered during the registration process earlier in the year, participants were added into corresponding tracks with each track having its own meeting room and facilitators
    • Room and lab Continue reading

Introducing the new Docker Technology Partner Program

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Docker Technology Partner (DTP) program as a strong foundation for the ongoing collaboration with our ecosystem partners. Together through the new program, Docker and our partners will accelerate providing our enterprise customers with proven collaborative solutions. 
Our industry-leading container platform has proceeded to become central to continuous, high-velocity innovation for more than 750 enterprises around the world. As such, we recognized the need to enhance our partner program to make it easier for customers to identify key partners from the ecosystem that will provide them with the most value. The DTP program is designed to ensure that Docker customers across a variety of company sizes and industries have access to our massive ecosystem of partners and are able to integrate Docker containers with other chosen technologies.  This program provides clear insight into our formal partnerships, as well as the depth of joint product integration. 
Our partners also receive due recognition for their hard work in ensuring compatibility and support with Docker Enterprise. As always, we truly do appreciate the continued support of our partners, and are proud to showcase their accomplishments in integrating and validating with the Docker platform. Continue reading

Heavy Networking 461: Key Concepts Of Intent-Based Networking

On today’s Heavy Networking, we peer behind the curtain of Intent-Based Networking (IBN) with guest Phil Gervasi, who wrote a pair of white papers for the Packet Pushers' Ignition membership site. We discuss core concepts of IBN, including network abstraction, continuous validation, and automated remediation.

The post Heavy Networking 461: Key Concepts Of Intent-Based Networking appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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