Awaiting IBM’s Power Systems Growth Spurt

Given the rollout of the “ZZ” and “Boston” variants of its Power9 systems, which are aimed at customers who are building clusters and at midrange enterprises that use a Power System server as their main back-end system, you might be expecting for the Power Systems line at IBM to have had a big bump in the second quarter of this year. …

Awaiting IBM’s Power Systems Growth Spurt was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at .

Steven G. Huter – The 2018 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award Winner

With so many moving parts to advancing Internet access and enabling communities to reach the rest of the world, the biggest key to success, according to this year’s Jonathan B. Postel Award winner, is listening.

Steven Huter listens. He says it’s his most important job. The Director for the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and a Research Associate at the University of Oregon says before configuring community networks and setting Internet development goals, his organization has to make sure they are solving the right problems.

“Listening first to what local Internet developers request and desire in terms of assistance, based on their respective conditions and challenges, is vital for a successful outcome,” Huter says.

Only half the people in the world have Internet access, and the NSRC works on creating “a sustainable community of Internet-savvy engineers and local operators that can enable continuous progress in their countries to bring more affordable Internet access and better network performance for their respective communities.”

Essentially, they go to areas in need, help set up the hardware and digital necessities for Internet access, and train local operators and system workers to handle that network independently. And Huter has been an integral part Continue reading

Site Reliability Engineering at the Network Collective

The Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) role often seems a bit mysterious to folks working at smaller and mid-sized companies, where the team isn’t large enough to separate into SRE, operations, and other teams. What does and SRE do, and how is it different from what the average network engineer does? In this Network Collective Off the Cuff, we sit with Michael Kehoe of LinkedIn to discuss the role of the SRE.

Cloning All Repositories in a GitHub Organization

I’ve recently started playing around with Ballerina, and upon the suggestion of some folks on Twitter wanted to clone down some of the “official” Ballerina GitHub repositories to provide code examples and guides that would assist in my learning. Upon attempting to do so, however, I found myself needing to clone down 39 different repositories (all under a single organization), and so I asked on Twitter if there was an easy way to do this. Here’s what I found.

Fairly quickly after I posted my tweet asking about a solution, a follower responded indicating that I should be able to get the list of repositories via the GitHub API. He was, of course, correct:

curl -s https://api.github.com/orgs/ballerina-guides/repos

This returns a list of the repositories in JSON format. Now, if you’ve been paying attention to my site, you know there’s a really handy way of parsing JSON data at the CLI (namely, the jq utility). However, to use jq, you need to know the overall structure of the data. What if you don’t know the structure?

No worries, this post outlines another tool—jid—that allows us to interactively explore the data. So, I ran:

curl  Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Communications hubs emerge as a bridge to hybrid IT

Adoption of hybrid IT for delivery of applications across legacy enterprise data centers, and increasingly cloud SaaS and IaaS platforms, is rendering traditional network architectures obsolete. Numerous analysts and articles have predicted the coming obsolescence of hub and spoke MPLS networks anchored on legacy enterprise data centers. While few have detailed what to do about it, a growing number of enterprises are taking matters into their own hands. Those in the know are leveraging communication hubs, sometimes also referred to as cloud hubs, to bridge the gap between their legacy data center environments and the cloud.The growing challenge of SaaS application performance As enterprises accelerate their move to cloud, including the growing trend toward cloud office suites, such as Office 365 and Google Suite, where users expect LAN-like performance, challenges are mounting. According to Microsoft, Office 365 is growing at 43 percent, and as of the end of 2017 was boasting 120 million active users. A 2017 survey by TechValidate noted that despite increasing both firewall and network bandwidth capacity, nearly 70 percent of companies experienced weekly network-related performance issues after deploying Office 365. Gartner’s 2018 Strategic Roadmap for Networking, released earlier this year, noted that nearly all enterprises Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Communications hubs emerge as a bridge to hybrid IT

Adoption of hybrid IT for delivery of applications across legacy enterprise data centers, and increasingly cloud SaaS and IaaS platforms, is rendering traditional network architectures obsolete. Numerous analysts and articles have predicted the coming obsolescence of hub and spoke MPLS networks anchored on legacy enterprise data centers. While few have detailed what to do about it, a growing number of enterprises are taking matters into their own hands. Those in the know are leveraging communication hubs, sometimes also referred to as cloud hubs, to bridge the gap between their legacy data center environments and the cloud.The growing challenge of SaaS application performance As enterprises accelerate their move to cloud, including the growing trend toward cloud office suites, such as Office 365 and Google Suite, where users expect LAN-like performance, challenges are mounting. According to Microsoft, Office 365 is growing at 43 percent, and as of the end of 2017 was boasting 120 million active users. A 2017 survey by TechValidate noted that despite increasing both firewall and network bandwidth capacity, nearly 70 percent of companies experienced weekly network-related performance issues after deploying Office 365. Gartner’s 2018 Strategic Roadmap for Networking, released earlier this year, noted that nearly all enterprises Continue reading

ExtremeXOS 22.5.1 adds support Broadcom ASIC table utilization statistics

ExtremeXOS 22.5.1 is now available! describes added support in sFlow for "New data structures to support reporting on hardware/table utilization statistics." The feature is available on Summit X450-G2, X460-G2, X670-G2, X770, and ExtremeSwitching X440-G2, X870, X620, X690 series switches.

Figure 1 shows the packet processing pipeline of a Broadcom ASIC. The pipeline consists of a number of linked hardware tables providing bridging, routing, access control list (ACL), and ECMP forwarding group functions. Operations teams need to be able to proactively monitor table utilizations in order to avoid performance problems associated with table exhaustion.

Broadcom's sFlow specification, sFlow Broadcom Switch ASIC Table Utilization Structures, leverages the industry standard sFlow protocol to offer scaleable, multi-vendor, network wide visibility into the utilization of these hardware tables.

The following output from the open source sflowtool command line utility shows the raw table measurements (this is in addition to the extensive set of measurements already exported via sFlow by ExtremeXOS): 
bcm_asic_host_entries 4
bcm_host_entries_max 8192
bcm_ipv4_entries 0
bcm_ipv4_entries_max 0
bcm_ipv6_entries 0
bcm_ipv6_entries_max 0
bcm_ipv4_ipv6_entries 9
bcm_ipv4_ipv6_entries_max 16284
bcm_long_ipv6_entries 3
bcm_long_ipv6_entries_max 256
bcm_total_routes 10
bcm_total_routes_max 32768
bcm_ecmp_nexthops 0
bcm_ecmp_nexthops_max 2016
bcm_mac_entries 3
bcm_mac_entries_max 32768
bcm_ipv4_neighbors 4
bcm_ipv6_neighbors 0
bcm_ipv4_routes 0
bcm_ipv6_routes 0
bcm_acl_ingress_entries  Continue reading

Securing U.S. Democracy: Athenian Project Update

Securing U.S. Democracy: Athenian Project Update

Securing U.S. Democracy: Athenian Project Update
Last December, Cloudflare announced the Athenian Project to help protect U.S. state and local election websites from cyber attack.

Since then, the need to protect our electoral systems has become increasingly urgent. As described by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the “digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.” Just last week, we learned new details about how state election systems were targeted for cyberattack during the 2016 election. The U.S. government’s indictment of twelve Russian military intelligence officers describes the scanning of state election-related websites for vulnerabilities and theft of personal information related to approximately 500,000 voters.

This direct attack on the U.S. election systems using common Internet vulnerabilities reinforces the need to ensure democratic institutions are protected from attack in the future. The Athenian Project is Cloudflare’s attempt to do our part to secure our democracy.

Engaging with Elections Officials

Since announcing the Athenian Project, we’ve talked to state, county, and municipal officials around the country about protecting their election and voter registration websites. Today, we’re proud to report that we have Athenian Project participants in 19 states, and are in talks with many more. We have also strategized with civil Continue reading

Bienvenue au Chapitre ISOC Madagascar! 35e Chapitre de l’Internet Society en Afrique.

Le Directeur Régional Afrique de l’Internet Society (ISOC),  Dr. Dawit Bekele a rejoint la communauté Internet de Madagascar les 15 et 16 Juin 2018 pour l’inauguration du Chapitre ISOC Madagascar (ISOC Madagascar Chapter), le 35e Chapitre de l’Internet Society en Afrique. Cette inauguration a été marquée par une série de deux conférences  : la première a eu lieu le 15 juin 2018 à l’Akademia Malagasy sur le thème «Quel Internet voulons-nous réellement à Madagascar ? », et la seconde le 16 juin 2018 à l’Hôtel du Louvre sur le thème «Future de l’Internet : Enjeux et Opportunités». Dr. Bekele a profité de cette occasion pour présenter l’Internet Society à la Communauté Internet malgache et discuter des opportunités de collaboration et de partenariat pour le développement d’un Internet pour tous, ouvert, sécurisé et digne de confiance à Madagascar.

Pendant la première conférence  du 15 juin 2018, Dawit a discuté avec toutes les parties prenantes de l’écosystème Internet malgache sur l’état des lieux, les challenges et opportunités du développement de l’Internet à Madagascar. Il a profité pour présenter les axes prioritaires (campagnes) de l’Internet Society pour l’année 2018 avec un accent particulier sur l’alternative Réseaux Communautaires comme solution durable pour connecter Continue reading

Why NVMe? Users weigh benefits of NVMe-accelerated flash storage

IBM has an answer for some of the biggest trends in enterprise data storage – including Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), artificial intelligence, multi-cloud environments and containers – and it comes in a 2U package.The new FlashSystem 9100 is an all-flash NVMe-accelerated storage platform. It delivers up to 2 petabytes of effective storage in 2U and can provide up to 32 petabytes of all-flash storage in a 42U rack.[ Check out AI boosts data-center availability, efficiency. Also learn what hyperconvergence is and whether you’re ready for hyperconverged storage. For regularly scheduled insights sign up for Network World newsletters. ] NVMe is a protocol for accessing high-speed storage media that’s designed to reduce latency and increase system and application performance. It's optimized for all-flash storage systems and is aimed at enterprise workloads that require low latency and top performance, such as real-time data analytics and high-performance relational databases.To read this article in full, please click here

Why NVMe? Users weigh benefits of NVMe-accelerated flash storage

IBM has an answer for some of the biggest trends in enterprise data storage – including Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), artificial intelligence, multi-cloud environments and containers – and it comes in a 2U package.The new FlashSystem 9100 is an all-flash NVMe-accelerated storage platform. It delivers up to 2 petabytes of effective storage in 2U and can provide up to 32 petabytes of all-flash storage in a 42U rack.[ Check out AI boosts data-center availability, efficiency. Also learn what hyperconvergence is and whether you’re ready for hyperconverged storage. For regularly scheduled insights sign up for Network World newsletters. ] NVMe is a protocol for accessing high-speed storage media that’s designed to reduce latency and increase system and application performance. It's optimized for all-flash storage systems and is aimed at enterprise workloads that require low latency and top performance, such as real-time data analytics and high-performance relational databases.To read this article in full, please click here

IETF 102, Day 4: DNS, IoT & TLS

This week is IETF 102 in Montreal, Canada, and we’re bringing you daily blog posts highlighting the topics of interest to us in the ISOC Internet Technology Team. Today we’re focusing on DNS, IoT and TLS issues.

LPWAN is the first event of the day starting at 09.30 EDT/UTC-4. There will be a discussion relating to the Working Group Last Call on the Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) framework, which provides both header compression and fragmentation functionalities; and on how to advance the LPWAN Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) for CoAP specification. Two other drafts are being presented for adoption by the Working Group relating to SCHC specifications (see https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-petrov-lpwan-ipv6-schc-over-lorawan-02 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-zuniga-lpwan-schc-over-sigfox-03).

NOTE: If you are unable to attend IETF 102 in person, there are multiple ways to participate remotely.

The first session of V6OPS commences at 13.30 EDT/UTC-4, and will continue on Friday morning. Today’s agenda items include a presentation on World IPv6 Trends from APNIC Labs, followed by discussion on a new draft NAT64/464XLAT Deployment Guidelines in Operator and Enterprise Networks which describes considerations with respect to applications or devices using literal IPv4 addresses or non-IPv6 compliant APIs, as well Continue reading

IPv6 in China

IPv6 in China

IPv6 in China
Photo by chuttersnap / Unsplash

At the end of 2017, Xinhua reported that there will be 200 Million IPv6 users inside Mainland China by the end of this year. Halfway into the year, we’re seeing a rapid growth in IPv6 users and traffic originating from Mainland China.

Why does this matter?

IPv6 is often referred to the next generation of IP addressing. The reality is, IPv6 is what is needed for addressing today. Taking the largest mobile network in China today, China Mobile has over 900 Million mobile subscribers and over 670 Million 4G/LTE subscribers. To be able to provide service to their users, they need to provide an IP address to each subscriber’s device. This means close to a billion IP addresses would be required, which is far more than what is available in IPv4, especially as the available IP address pools have been exhausted.

What is the solution?

To solve the addressability of clients, many networks, especially mobile networks, will use Carrier Grade NAT (CGN). This allows thousands, possibly up to hundreds of thousands, of devices to be shared behind a single internet IP address. The CGN equipment can be very expensive to scale and further, given the Continue reading

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