Last Month in Internet Intelligence: December 2018

Closing out 2018, in December the Oracle Internet Intelligence team observed Internet disruptions in countries around the world due to power outages, government direction, technical faults, and possible issues relating to satellite connectivity. While these causes have become relatively common, it is interesting to note that other common reasons for Internet disruptions, including severe weather (such as typhoons and hurricanes), concerns over cheating on exams, and denial-of-service attacks did not appear to drive significant Internet disruptions observed in Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Map during the month. And while we tend to focus on Internet disruptions, it is also important to highlight that after several rounds of testing, nationwide mobile Internet access was finally activated across Cuba.

Cuba

In three tranches (based on the first two digits of a subscriber’s mobile phone number) over December 6, 7, and 8, ETECSA, Cuba’s national telecommunications company, enabled nationwide mobile Internet access. The rollout was reportedly stable, in contrast to the congestion experienced during the trials conducted several months prior. The figure below shows the gradual adoption of this newly available connectivity through changes in the DNS Query Rate. As seen in the graph, the query rate was comparatively low in the days ahead of Continue reading

Zipping files on Linux: the many variations and how to use them

Some of us have been zipping files on Unix and Linux systems for many decades — to save some disk space and package files together for archiving. Even so, there are some interesting variations on zipping that not all of us have tried. So, in this post, we’re going to look at standard zipping and unzipping as well as some other interesting zipping options. [ Two-Minute Linux Tips: Learn how to master a host of Linux commands in these 2-minute video tutorials ] The basic zip command First, let’s look at the basic zip command. It uses what is essentially the same compression algorithm as gzip, but there are a couple important differences. For one thing, the gzip command is used only for compressing a single file where zip can both compress files and join them together into an archive. For another, the gzip command zips “in place”. In other words, it leaves a compressed file — not the original file alongside the compressed copy. Here's an example of gzip at work:To read this article in full, please click here

Edge gateways: Flexible, rugged IoT enablers

Edge gateways have emerged as architectural components that improve the performance of IoT networks, and vendors have stepped up with off-the-shelf devices flexible enough to meet the varying demands of individual deployments.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

To Centralize or not to Centralize, That’s the Question

One of the attendees of the Building Next-Generation Data Center online course solved the build small data center fabric challenge with Virtual Chassis Fabric (VCF). I pointed out that I would prefer not to use VCF as it uses centralized control plane and is thus a single failure domain.

In case you’re interested in data center fabric architecture options, check out this section in the Data Center Fabric Architectures webinar.

Here are his arguments for using VCF:

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SageDB: a learned database system

SageDB: a learned database system Kraska et al., CIDR’19

About this time last year, a paper entitled ‘The case for learned index structures’ (part I, part II) generated a lot of excitement and debate. Today’s paper choice builds on that foundation, putting forward a vision where learned models pervade every aspect of a database system.

The core idea behind SageDB is to build one or more models about the data and workload distribution and based on them automatically build the best data structures and algorithms for all components of the database system. This approach, which we call “database synthesis” will allow us to achieve unprecedented performance by specializing the implementation of every database component to the specific database, query workload, and execution environment.

For the want of a model

In the absence of runtime learning and adaptation, database systems are engineered for general purpose use and do not take full advantage of the specific characteristics of the workload and data at hand. The size of the opportunity for SageDB is the gap between such an approach and what is possible when designing a specialised solution with full knowledge of the data distribution and workload.

Consider an Continue reading

Cisco SP Nails It at NFDx

The Networking Field Day Exclusive one-day event with Cisco’s Service Provider business unit definitely exceeded my expectations, and I believe showcased a different approach to technology and their customers than we might have seen from the Cisco Systems of four or five years ago.

Segment Routing

The topic-du-jour was definitely Segment Routing, and Cisco delivered great presentations on both SR-TE (Segment Routing – Tunnel Engineering) with SR Flexible Algorithm, and SRv6 (Segment Routing for IPv6). 

SR FlexAlgo

SR FlexAlgo effectively allows a network to calculate metric- and constraint-based primary and backup paths on demand and in a distributed fashion. For example, a policy might be that traffic to a given prefix should follow the lowest latency path using only MACSEC encrypted links, or perhaps the lowest cost path while staying within a particular geographical region. Cool stuff, and while it won’t fix every problem, conceptually I can see this as a relatively accessible way into Segment Routing, and one which could deliver tunnel engineering in a way that would be highly complex or impossible using RSVP-TE and a constraint-based IGP calculation.

SRv6

I had not looked at SRv6 before, and it’s a fascinatingly different beast to regular IPv4-based Segment Continue reading

Spanning The Database World With Google

If relational databases had just worked at scale to begin with, the IT sector would be a whole lot more boring and we wouldn’t be having conversation a conversation with Andrew Fikes, the vice president and Engineering Fellow at search engine, application, and cloud computing giant Google who has been instrumental in the creation of many of its databases and datastores since joining the company in 2001. …

Spanning The Database World With Google was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at .

IDG Contributor Network: Zero trust: The transition from legacy to cloud-native

Enterprises operating in the traditional monolithic environment may have strict organizational structures. As a result, the requirement for security may restrain them from transitioning to a hybrid or cloud-native application deployment model.In spite of the obvious difficulties, the majority of enterprises want to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities. Today, most entities are considering or evaluating cloud-native to enhance their customer’s experience. In some cases, it is the ability to draw richer customer market analytics or to provide operational excellence.Cloud-native is a key strategic agenda that allows customers to take advantage of many new capabilities and frameworks. It enables organizations to build and evolve going forward to gain an edge over their competitors.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Zero trust: The transition from legacy to cloud-native

Enterprises operating in the traditional monolithic environment may have strict organizational structures. As a result, the requirement for security may restrain them from transitioning to a hybrid or cloud-native application deployment model.In spite of the obvious difficulties, the majority of enterprises want to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities. Today, most entities are considering or evaluating cloud-native to enhance their customer’s experience. In some cases, it is the ability to draw richer customer market analytics or to provide operational excellence.Cloud-native is a key strategic agenda that allows customers to take advantage of many new capabilities and frameworks. It enables organizations to build and evolve going forward to gain an edge over their competitors.To read this article in full, please click here

Reaction: Open Source

As long-standing contributor to open standards, and someone trying to become more involved in the open source world (I really need to find an extra ten hours a day!), I am always thinking about these ecosystems, and how the relate to the network engineering world. This article on RedisDB, and in particular this quote, caught my attention—

There’s a longstanding myth in the open-source world that projects are driven by a community of contributors, but in reality, paid developers contribute the bulk of the code in most modern open-source projects, as Puppet founder Luke Kanies explained in our story earlier this year. That money has to come from somewhere.

The point of the article is a lot of companies that support open source projects, like RedisDB, are moving to a more closed source solutions to survive. The cloud providers are called out as a source of a lot of problems in this article, as they consume a lot of open source software, but do not really spend a lot of time or effort in supporting it. Open source, in this situation, becomes a sort of tragedy of the commons, where everyone things someone else is going to do the Continue reading

Research Brief: Successful Hardware Strategies for a Software-dominated World

Successful Hardware Strategies Download a copy of this research brief aimed at providing NEPs and SIs with a practical guide on how to add value to customers with innovative hardware strategies in a software-centric world, and how differentiation can be achieved in the face of commoditization.

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