Additive Loops with Ansible and Jinja2

I don’t know if “additive” is the right word, but it was the best word I could come up with to describe the sort of configuration I recently needed to address in Ansible. In retrospect, the solution seems pretty straightforward, but I’ll include it here just in case it proves useful to someone else. If nothing else, it will at least show some interesting things that can be done with Ansible and Jinja2 templates.

First, allow me to explain the problem I was trying to solve. As you may know, Kubernetes 1.11 was recently released, and along with it a new version of kubeadm, the tool for bootstrapping Kubernetes clusters. As part of the new release, the Kubernetes community released a new setup guide for using kubeadm to create a highly available cluster. This setup guide uses new functionality in kubeadm to allow you to create “stacked masters” (control plane nodes running both the Kubernetes components as well as the etcd key-value store). Because of the way etcd clusters work, and because of the way you create HA control plane members, the process requires that you start with a single etcd node, then add the second node, and Continue reading

Converting and manipulating image files on the Linux command line

Most of us probably know how wonderful a tool Gimp is for editing images, but have you ever thought about manipulating image files on the command line? If not, let me introduce you to the convert command. It easily coverts files from one image format to another and allows you to perform many other image manipulation tasks as well -- and in a lot less time than it would take to make these changes uses desktop tools. Let's look at some simple examples of how you can make it work for you.Converting files by image type Coverting an image from one format to another is extremely easy with the convert command. Just use a convert command like the one in this example:To read this article in full, please click here

Taking the temperature of IoT for healthcare

The Internet of Things (IoT) is full of promises to transform everything from transportation to building maintenance to enterprise security. But no field may have more to gain than the healthcare industry. Healthcare providers and device makers are all looking to the IoT to revolutionize the gathering of healthcare data and the delivery of care itself.But while many of those benefits are already becoming reality, others are still on the drawing board. Two very different IoT healthcare stories crossed by desk this month — taken together they provide a surprisingly nuanced picture of healthcare IoT.[ For more on IoT, see tips for securing IoT on your network and our list of the most powerful internet of things companies. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] Smart bandages still in prototype First, I was excited to hear about the development of advanced prototypes of “smart bandages.” Developed by researchers at Tufts University using flexible electronics, these smart bandages not only monitor the conditions of chronic skin wounds, but they also use a microprocessor to analyze that information to electronically deliver the right drugs to promote healing. By tracking temperature and pH of Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: Startup Finds a Way to Glue Fiber to Roadways

Why don’t we glue it in the road? A technology startup has patented a way to integrate broadband fiber to blacktop, reports Motherboard. The patented technique, inspired by dentistry, uses a blend of resins to stick fiber optic cables to roads.

Major spending to fix IoT security: The Internet of Things security market will grow to US$6 billion by 2023, with spending to rise 300 percent between 2018 and 2023, according to Juniper Research. However, poor long-term device support and little fear of ramifications will keep security spending on connected homes lagging behind other markets, the research firm says.

Data breaches cost big bucks: The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million, up more than 6 percent from last year, according to a study from IBM and the Ponemon Institute. Compromised organizations took 197 days to identify a breach and an additional 69 days to contain it, reports IT Pro. A data breach cost organizations an average of $148 per lost or stolen record.

AI takes over the world: About three-quarters of all consumers have interacted with artificial intelligence systems, reports ComputerWeekly.com. A Capgemini survey of 10,000 consumers found, however, that more than half of consumers prefer Continue reading

Free Webinars and Videos Are Now Easier to Spot

Another summer break project: replacing the stars next to webinar names in descriptions of various technology areas (example: Data Center) with something more useful. Turns out that marking the webinar title as being Free or having Free items works really well.

Bonus feature: clicking on show free content shows you the content available with free subscription.

During the summer break, I’m publishing blog posts about the projects I’m working on. Regular blog posts will return in autumn.

Extreme faces challenges, girds for future networking battles

Extreme Networks is contending for greater influence from the data center to the network edge, but it has some obstacles to overcome.The company is still grappling with how to best integrate, use and effectively sell the technologies it has acquired from Avaya and Brocade in the past year, as well as incorporate and develop its own products to do battle in the cloud, mobile and edge computing environments of the future. Remember, too, that Extreme bought wireless player Zebra Technologies in 2016 for $55 million.[ Now see: The hidden cause of slow internet and how to fix it.] In terms of results that Wall Street watches, Extreme Networks grew revenue 76% to $262 million in its recent fiscal third quarter. According to Extreme, those gains were fueled mostly by growth from its acquisitions and around an 8% growth in its own products. To read this article in full, please click here

Extreme faces challenges, girds for future networking battles

Extreme Networks is contending for greater influence from the data center to the network edge, but it has some obstacles to overcome.The company is still grappling with how to best integrate, use and effectively sell the technologies it has acquired from Avaya and Brocade in the past year, as well as incorporate and develop its own products to do battle in the cloud, mobile and edge computing environments of the future. Remember, too, that Extreme bought wireless player Zebra Technologies in 2016 for $55 million.[ Now see: The hidden cause of slow internet and how to fix it.] In terms of results that Wall Street watches, Extreme Networks grew revenue 76% to $262 million in its recent fiscal third quarter. According to Extreme, those gains were fueled mostly by growth from its acquisitions and around an 8% growth in its own products. To read this article in full, please click here

Extreme faces challenges, girds for future networking battles

Extreme Networks is contending for greater influence from the data center to the network edge, but it has some obstacles to overcome.The company is still grappling with how to best integrate, use and effectively sell the technologies it has acquired from Avaya and Brocade in the past year, as well as incorporate and develop its own products to do battle in the cloud, mobile and edge computing environments of the future. Remember, too, that Extreme bought wireless player Zebra Technologies in 2016 for $55 million.[ Now see: The hidden cause of slow internet and how to fix it.] In terms of results that Wall Street watches, Extreme Networks grew revenue 76% to $262 million in its recent fiscal third quarter. According to Extreme, those gains were fueled mostly by growth from its acquisitions and around an 8% growth in its own products. To read this article in full, please click here

IETF 102, Day 1: IETF arrive à Montréal

Tomorrow sees kickoff of the Working Groups sessions at IETF 102 in Montreal, Canada, we’re bringing you daily blog posts highlighting the topics of interest to us in the ISOC Internet Technology Team. Monday is an important day, with meetings of the TLS, 6MAN and SIDROPS Working Groups, along with two other IoT related groups.

6MAN commences at 09.30 EDT/UTC-4, and has six new drafts up for discussion covering IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Extensions for Prefix Delegation, IPv6 VPNs, ICMPv6, OAM in Segment Routing Networks with an IPv6 Data plane, allowing low or zero valid lifetimes to be accepted in Router Advertisement Prefix Information Options where it’s known that there can only be one router on the link; as well as introducing a new IPv6 ‘unrecognised’ option for ICMPv6 that conveys whether an underlying network can transmit IPv6 packets.

There are also three working group sponsored drafts, adopted from the last meeting. Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6 describes an extension that causes nodes to generate global scope addresses from interface identifiers that change over time; IPv6 Segment Routing Header specifies how a node can steer a packet through a controlled set of instructions (segments) by prepending an SR header Continue reading

Cerberus For Schema Validation

Cerberus is a lightweight python library that can be used to validate the correct data is being supplied to configuration management tools such as Ansible and Salt or perhaps even Jinja directly. Along with having many useful built in features, Cerberus also makes it relatively straight...

DNS-Over-TLS Built-In & Enforced – 1.1.1.1 and the GL.iNet GL-AR750S

DNS-Over-TLS Built-In & Enforced - 1.1.1.1 and the GL.iNet GL-AR750S

DNS-Over-TLS Built-In & Enforced - 1.1.1.1 and the GL.iNet GL-AR750SGL.iNet GL-AR750S in black, same form-factor as the prior white GL.iNet GL-AR750. Credit card for comparison.

Back in April, I wrote about how it was possible to modify a router to encrypt DNS queries over TLS using Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS Resolver. For this, I used the GL.iNet GL-AR750 because it was pre-installed with OpenWRT (LEDE). The folks at GL.iNet read that blog post and decided to bake DNS-Over-TLS support into their new router using the 1.1.1.1 resolver, they sent me one to take a look at before it's available for pre-release. Their new router can also be configured to force DNS traffic to be encrypted before leaving your local network, which is particularly useful for any IoT or mobile device with hard-coded DNS settings that would ordinarily ignore your routers DNS settings and send DNS queries in plain-text.

DNS-Over-TLS Built-In & Enforced - 1.1.1.1 and the GL.iNet GL-AR750S

In my previous blog post I discussed how DNS was often the weakest link in the chain when it came to browsing privacy; whilst HTTP traffic is increasingly encrypted, this is seldom the case for DNS traffic. This makes it relatively trivial for an intermediary to work out what site you're sending Continue reading

Crypto Energy Consumption Overtakes

I am more than happy to publish the new infographic " Crypto Energy Consumption Overtakes" with the help of my friends from btxchange.io. As we know, cryptocurrency mining is very popular nowadays but it comes with huge drawback in form of huge electricity consumption. The infographic finds out the most surprising numbers for crypto energy volumes. Enjoy reading.

Crypto Energy Consumption Overtakes

I am more than happy to publish the new infographic " Crypto Energy Consumption Overtakes" with the help of my friends from btxchange.io. As we know, cryptocurrency mining is very popular nowadays but it comes with huge drawback in form of huge electricity consumption. The infographic finds out the most surprising numbers for crypto energy volumes. Enjoy reading.

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