Why 802.11ax is the next big thing in Wi-Fi

I know, I know, I’ve heard it before. A new technology comes along, and it promises to be the next big thing. Consumers and businesses buy it, and what happens? It fails to live up to the hype. In my opinion, almost every iPhone release over the past five years has been that way. Sure there were some cool new features, but overall it’s not something I’d say was game changing. One technology that does promise to live up to the hype is 802.11ax, the next standard for wireless LANs. I say that because this next generation of Wi-Fi was engineered for the world we live in where everything is connected and there’s an assumption that upload and download traffic will be equivalent. Previous generations of Wi-Fi assumed more casual use and that there would be far more downloading of information than uploading. To read this article in full, please click here

The release of Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7

RedHat-Ansible-Engine

Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 is now available, featuring improved stability, speed and performance.

Preparing for the Future

Ansible Engine 2.7 continues to improve compatibility with modern versions of Python. As a result of changes to support newer versions of Python, support for running Ansible Engine with Python 2.6 has been removed. Management of systems with Python 2.6 installed is still possible, though the system Ansible Engine is running from must have Python 2.7 or Python 3.5 or later. This means if ansible-pull is being used the system running ansible-pull will need Python 2.7 or Python 3.5 or later.

A new file locking feature is designed to prevent race conditions when delegating to a central resource. For example, if a play calls for several hosts to write to a single file on a remote host it is likely multiple hosts would attempt to write to the file at the same time. This can now be done in Ansible Engine 2.7.

Deprecating use of features is often a challenging task. This task can be even more challenging when it involves multiple Ansible core modules. In Ansible Engine 2.7, several modules have Continue reading

Intel’s FPGA strategy comes into focus

Three years after acquiring FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion, Intel’s strategy and positioning is coming into focus with the disclosure of its plans for Stratix 10 hardware and accompanying application development and acceleration stack.Altera made two FPGAs, chips that are reprogrammable to do different functions. The Arria 10, which is the low-end card, and Stratix 10, the high-performance card. The two are aimed at different target markets and use cases.“Each has its own tier, its own sweet spot for features and form factor,” said Sabrina Gomez, director of product marketing at Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group. “Arria is smaller, fits in 1U form factors. Stratix is dual PCI card. The power draw for Arria is 75 watts, while it’s 225 watts for Stratix.”To read this article in full, please click here

Intel’s FPGA strategy comes into focus

Three years after acquiring FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion, Intel’s strategy and positioning is coming into focus with the disclosure of its plans for Stratix 10 hardware and accompanying application development and acceleration stack.Altera made two FPGAs, chips that are reprogrammable to do different functions. The Arria 10, which is the low-end card, and Stratix 10, the high-performance card. The two are aimed at different target markets and use cases.“Each has its own tier, its own sweet spot for features and form factor,” said Sabrina Gomez, director of product marketing at Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group. “Arria is smaller, fits in 1U form factors. Stratix is dual PCI card. The power draw for Arria is 75 watts, while it’s 225 watts for Stratix.”To read this article in full, please click here

Wi-Fi 6 is coming to a router near you

Just when we were all getting used to the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi nomenclature that differentiates between generations of the technology, the industry’s Wi-Fi Alliance has gone and made it simpler and more digestible for the user on the street.As a result, starting this month what we know as 802.11ax is officially called Wi-Fi 6.[ Find out how 5G wireless could change networking as we know it and how to deal with networking IoT. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] The new, vastly simplified system also means that 802.11ac is now Wi-Fi 5, and 802.11n is Wi-Fi 4. The idea, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, is to make matching endpoint and router capabilities a simpler matter for the rank-and-file user of Wi-Fi technology.To read this article in full, please click here

Understanding Network IP Fragmentation

Overview

In this post, I’m going to talk about what IP fragmentation is, how it works and why it’s needed. And while learning that, we’re going to touch on subjects like OSI Layers / PDU / MTU / MRU and PMTUD.

Knowledge about them is required for truly understanding IP fragmentation process and troubleshooting network connection issues in general.

OSI model

This is basically a standardized model for network communications which breaks them into what’s called abstraction layers.

The original model consists of 7 layers: Physical, Data link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application .

Going up the OSI model hierarchy, layers stack up on top of one another.

Example 1:

In the reverse order, loading a secure web page would consist of:

  1. HTTP (Application layer)
  2. TLS (Presentation Layer)
  3. TCP (Transport Layer)
  4. IP (Network Layer)
  5. Ethernet (Data Link Layer)
  6. Ethernet physical layer (Physical Layer)

Each layer would add an overhead to the final size (Yes, even the physical layer!)1

More info can be found Here.

PDU

In the OSI model, each layer consists of units. They are called Protocol Data Units.

Any transmission between 2 entities on a layer, would be be done Continue reading

Feedback: Ansible for Networking Engineers

One of my subscribers sent me a nice email describing his struggles to master Ansible:

Some time ago I started to hear about Ansible as the new power tool for network engineer, my first reaction was “What the hell is this?” I searched the web and found many blah blahs about it… until I landed on your pages.

He found Ansible for Networking Engineers material sufficient to start an automation project:

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