Starting a new series: AWS ABCs

I'd be lying if I said that since starting my new job at Amazon Web Services (AWS), I wasn't looking forward to writing about all the new things I was going to learn. Obviously there's the technology and services that make up the platform itself. But there's also the architectural best practices, the design patterns, and answers to questions like “how does moving to the cloud improve my performance/security/reliability?” Admittedly, I have a lot to learn.

AWS ABCs — Logging Into a New EC2 Instance

Ok, you've just launched an Amazon EC2 instance (ie, a virtual machine) and you're ready to login and get to work. Just once teeeensy problem though… you have no idea how to actually connect to the instance!

This post will walk through how to log into brand new Linux/BSD and Windows instances (the steps are slightly different for different OS families).

California’s bad IoT law

California has passed an IoT security bill, awaiting the governor's signature/veto. It’s a typically bad bill based on a superficial understanding of cybersecurity/hacking that will do little improve security, while doing a lot to impose costs and harm innovation.


It’s based on the misconception of adding security features. It’s like dieting, where people insist you should eat more kale, which does little to address the problem you are pigging out on potato chips. The key to dieting is not eating more but eating less. The same is true of cybersecurity, where the point is not to add “security features” but to remove “insecure features”. For IoT devices, that means removing listening ports and cross-site/injection issues in web management. Adding features is typical “magic pill” or “silver bullet” thinking that we spend much of our time in infosec fighting against.

We don’t want arbitrary features like firewall and anti-virus added to these products. It’ll just increase the attack surface making things worse. The one possible exception to this is “patchability”: some IoT devices can’t be patched, and that is a problem. But even here, it’s complicated. Even if IoT devices are patchable in theory there is no guarantee vendors will Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Migrating to the cloud Is a good start, but what you do next is critical

Today, it seems like every business is migrating to the cloud. And it’s true – nearly three in four businesses are using cloud solutions to augment traditional networking practices, with no signs of slowing down. The cloud’s potential has captured the attention of business leaders across nearly every industry, thanks to its promise of speed, scale and control. In fact, nine out of ten companies rely on the cloud to accelerate digital transformation and drive business growth.To read this article in full, please click here

Think Like an Engineer, not a Cheerleader

When you see a chart like this—

—you probably think if I were staking my career on technologies, I would want to jump from the older technology to the new just at the point where that adoption curve starts to really drive upward.

Over at ACM Queue, Peter J. Denning has an article up on just this topic. He argues that if you understand the cost curve and tipping point of any technology, you can predict—with some level of accuracy—the point at which the adoption s-curve is going to begin its exponential growth phase.

Going back many years, I recognize this s-curve. It was used for FDDI, ATM, Banyan Vines, Novell Netware, and just about every new technology that has ever entered the market.

TL;DR
  • There are technology jump points where an entire market will move from one technology to another
  • From a career perspective, it is sometimes wise to jump to a new technology when at the early stages of such a jump
  • However, there are risks invovled, such as hidden costs that prevent the jump from occurring
  • Hence, you need to be cautious and thoughtful when considering jumping to a new technology

 

The problem with this curve, Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: IoT alphabet soup: when should an enterprise use MQTT versus LWM2M?

There is tremendous interest from industrial enterprises to understand the nuances of the two most debated IoT data communications protocols: MQTT and LWM2M. MQTT and LWM2M are protocols that create a standard way to get device data to systems, platforms, applications, and other devices.Let’s talk a little about each protocol and when it’s best used in an enterprise IoT deployment.MQTT and when to use it Message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) is an ISO standard which describes a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging protocol. Nearly all IoT platforms support MQTT communication, making it the de facto standard for device-to-platform IoT communication.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Ethernet Adventures: Learning to Thrive in a New World

Ciena Chris Sweetapple, Consultant, Managed Service Providers In our final post in this 3-part series covering one hero’s journey on the road to streamlined enterprise networking operations, Ciena’s Chris Sweetapple describes how Our Hero embraces business Ethernet to shed complexity and simplify operations, creating a network that grows with the business.To read this article in full, please click here

Public Cloud Postcentralization is the Thin Edge of the Wedge into the Enterprise

 

Like an amoeba the public cloud is extending fingerlike projections to the edge in a new kind of architecture that creates a world spanning distributed infrastructure under one centralized management, billing, and security domain.

This issue—the deep nature of centralization—came up as a comment on my article What Do You Believe Now That You Didn't Five Years Ago? Centralized Wins. Decentralized Loses.

Centralization can refer to the locus of computation, but it also refers to a boundary, to a domain of control.

Facebook, Netflix, and Google are all distributed across much of the world, but they are still centralized services because control is centralized. You know this because in a browser, no matter where you are in the world, you navigate to facebook.com, netflix.com, or google.com, you never enter the URL for independent shards, yet all your data and services magically follow you around like a hyperactive puppy. 

That's the world we've come to expect. That's how services built on a cloud work.

In an unexpected development, the public cloud is expanding control out to the edge. As I wrote in Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For July 27th, 2018:

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