ipSpace.net Subscription Now Available with PayPal

Every second blue moon someone asks me whether they could buy ipSpace.net subscription with PayPal. So far, the answer has been no.

Recently we started testing whether we could use Digital River to solve a few interesting challenges we had in the past, and as they offer PayPal as a payment option, it seemed to be a perfect fit for a low-volume trial.

The only product that you can buy with PayPal during the trial is the standard subscription – just select PayPal as the payment method during the checkout process.

Finally: the first three subscribers using PayPal will get extra 6 months of subscription.

Let’s stop talking about password strength

Picture from EFF -- CC-BY license
Near the top of most security recommendations is to use "strong passwords". We need to stop doing this.

Yes, weak passwords can be a problem. If a website gets hacked, weak passwords are easier to crack. It's not that this is wrong advice.

On the other hand, it's not particularly good advice, either. It's far down the list of important advice that people need to remember. "Weak passwords" are nowhere near the risk of "password reuse". When your Facebook or email account gets hacked, it's because you used the same password across many websites, not because you used a weak password.

Important websites, where the strength of your password matters, already take care of the problem. They use strong, salted hashes on the backend to protect the password. On the frontend, they force passwords to be a certain length and a certain complexity. Maybe the better advice is to not trust any website that doesn't enforce stronger passwords (minimum of 8 characters consisting of both letters and non-letters).

To some extent, this "strong password" advice has become obsolete. A decade ago, websites had poor protection (MD5 hashes) and no enforcement of complexity, so it Continue reading

Introducing the new Cumulus VP of Engineering

It’s a new era for Cumulus technology. We’re thrilled to announce the new Cumulus VP of Engineering – Partho Mishra. Partho joins Cumulus with 25 years of experience in product definition, engineering development and technology evangelization in data science/analytics, wireless and networking.

A truly experienced leader

Prior to joining Cumulus, Partho was running the RASA Network Analytics team at Aruba where he lead as CEO and then VP after RASA was acquired by Aruba in 2016. At RASA analytics, Partho’s team was in charge of developing a product that used ML/AI techniques to analyze data collected from network infrastructure to help Aruba customers with optimizing their wireless network and improving user experience.

Previously, he was Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Access Business Unit with responsibility for Metro-Ethernet and Wireless Backhaul products including the ASR 901, ASR 903, ME 3400 and CPT 50 products.

Partho is no stranger to bringing startups to the next level. Prior to being acquired, RASA was a VC-funded startup with Khosla Ventures as the lead investor. Additionally, he was involved as part of the initial technology/founding teams in two Silicon Valley start-ups: Airgo Networks (acquired by Qualcomm) and Iospan Wireless (acquired by Continue reading

Worth Reading: The Death of Expertise

Bruno Wollman pointed me to an excellent article on the ignorance of expertise and confidence of the dumb. Here’s the TL&DR summary (but you should really read the whole thing):

  • The expert isn’t always right;
  • An expert is far more likely to be right than you are;
  • Experts come in many flavors – usually you need a combination of education and expertise;
  • In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough to make the conversation possible. University of Google doesn’t count;
  • While you’re entitled to have an opinion, having a strong opinion isn’t the same as knowing something.

Enjoy ;)

Embark on your Docker Containerization journey at DockerCon 2018

DockerCon is the premier container conference where the IT industry comes together to learn, belong, and collaborate on the different phases of the containerization journey. This year, we’re focusing on helping our 6,000+ attendees define their containerization journeys. Whether you’re a developer just getting started with Docker or an Enterprise systems architect ready to scale and innovate, at DockerCon we’ll help you map out and implement a containerization strategy for you, your team and your company.

DockerCon 2018

Throughout the four days, you’ll have the chance to design your own DockerCon journey – selecting from 7 different breakout session tracks, a collection of free hands-on labs and workshops, and our peer to peer networking Hallway Track.

This year at DockerCon we’re designing our conference around the containerization journey and providing opportunities for our attendees to create tailored learning and networking experiences for their particular needs.

We’ve identified four stages of the containerization journey that will be present at DockerCon 2018:

The event program is designed to be a “choose your own adventure,” allowing every attendee to find the content, people, trainings, and labs that are right for them. Maybe you’re new to the Docker platform and are looking for more information on Continue reading

The Battle Of The InfiniBands, Part Two

For decades, the IT market has been obsessed with the competition between suppliers of processors, but there are rivalries between the makers of networking chips and the full-blown switches that are based on them that are just as intense. Such a rivalry exists between the InfiniBand chips from Mellanox Technologies and the Omni-Path chips from Intel, which are based on technologies Intel got six years ago when it acquired the InfiniBand business from QLogic for $125 million.

At the time, we quipped that AMD needed to buy Mellanox, but instead AMD turned right around and shelled out $334 million to …

The Battle Of The InfiniBands, Part Two was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Join NSX at RSA, Dell Technologies World, and Interop Conferences

 

Conference season is upon us, and the NSX team will be out in full effect. Join us at any of the following events to get a demo, ask us questions, and hear us wax poetic about all things security and network virtualization!

RSA Conference

April 16–20, 2018
Moscone Center
San Francisco, CA
Booth #4101, North Hall

NSX is delighted to attend everyone’s favorite security conference, RSA. This year’s theme is “Now Matters,” aptly named in time with the astounding number of threats to cybersecurity and data breaches we’ve collectively seen in the news this year. That said, don’t miss a great talk on how app architecture “now matters” when it comes to transforming security by Tomrn, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Security Products, VMware. His session will be on April 17 from 1:00pm–1:45pm. The team will also be doing demos at the VMware booth (#4101 in the North Hall) – so be sure to swing by and chat with us about our offerings. 

 

VMware Speaking Sessions at RSA Conference:

NSX Mindset Reception:

Join us for a NSX Mindset reception with VMware Continue reading

PQ 145: Greg And Ivan Have A Chat

In the ten or so years I ve been blogging, Ivan Pepelnjak has been constant figure in the tech industry. His prolific blogging and sharing of knowledge is one of the inspirations for my own entry into blogging. Over the years, we have usually agreed violently on most things and disagreed on others.

His ipSpace website has grown from a blog into a membership and more recently into a consulting service.

On today’s Priority Queue, Ivan and I talk about automation, intent, product quality and what can be done to improve it, the direction private clouds might take, and whatever else catches our fancy.

Sponsor: Paessler AG

Paessler AG is the maker of PRTG Network Monitor. PRTG monitors your whole IT infrastructure 24/7 and alerts you to problems before users even notice. Find out more about the monitoring software that helps system administrators work smarter, faster, better. Visit paessler.com today.

Show Links:

IPSpace.net

Blog.ipspace.net

Ivan Pepelnjak on Twitter

The post PQ 145: Greg And Ivan Have A Chat appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Link Propagation 114

Welcome to Link Propagation, a Packet Pushers newsletter. Link Propagation is included in your free membership. Each week we scour the InterWebs to find the most relevant practitioner blog posts, tech news, and product announcements. We drink from the fire hose so you can sip from a coffee cup. Blogs Getting started with Salt for […]

IDG Contributor Network: Identifying the top 6 IoT platform microservice categories for small and medium enterprise deployments

Last week, I received an email from Checkfluid, an Ontario, Canada-based enterprise that builds oil quality sensors and oil sampling valves for equipment condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. Like all executives who contact us with good Internet of Things (IoT) questions, Checkfluid’s President Mike Hall was asking my opinion of best-in-class IoT platforms to power his company's journey into IoT. “As we start the product development process, it is important to make the best IoT platform choice possible as this decision could be with us for a long time,” stated Hall. As we know, identifying a high quality, scalable, easy-to-use IoT platform makes a huge difference in an enterprise’s IoT deployment.To read this article in full, please click here

Mellanox, Ixia and Cumulus: Part 3

Last–but not least–in the technology triumvirate presenting a joint session at Networking Field Day 17 was Cumulus Networks. This post looks at the benefits of Cumulus Linux as a NOS on the Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switch platform.

Cumulus/Mellanox/Ixia Logos

Cumulus Networks

I’ve not yet managed to deploy Cumulus Linux in anger, but it’s on a fairly short list of Network Operating Systems (NOS) which I would like to evaluate in earnest, because every time I hear about it, I conclude that it’s a great solution. In fact, I’m having difficulty typing this post because I have to stop frequently to wipe the drool from my face.

Cumulus Linux supports around 70 switches from 8 manufacturers at this time, and perhaps obviously, that includes the Mellanox Spectrum switches that were presented during this session. This is the beauty of disaggregation of course; it’s possible to make a hardware selection, then select the software to run on it. Mellanox made a fairly strong case for why the Spectrum-based hardware is better than others, so now Cumulus has to argue for why they would be the best NOS to run on the Mellanox hardware.

Cumulus Linux, as the name suggests, is based on Debian linux. Continue reading

Plotting the interface flap – That’s some analysis

Hi,

What started to be a exploration project is now turning out to be pretty useful for me in day to day analysis. Back in days when I worked in support, there was nothing to predict or really worry about historical events for any future work, just grep for logs and you are done with the last flap and analysis.

Customers / Networks now look for more data, while there are systems which do the telemetry and prediction, from an analysis point of view, as an engineer I want to know if the device or a circuit over an interface is stable over a period of time or even if it flaps what is the likely time and day it flaps in a week for a smoother migration.

Requirement : Plot a simple graph analyzing the interface flaps over a period of one week for a  specific interface and decide the actions next from the log messages.[in this case i used a junos device]

Well grepping the logs is not something new for a seasoned engineer but having visual data will prove to be useful for a cutover or migration.

There are systems which can do this work on Continue reading

Weekend Reading 041318: GDPR, and the ever deepening pile of security vulnerabilities

I think we are all hoping that when ICANN meets with the DPAs (Digital Protection Authorities) a clear path forward will be illuminated. We are all hoping that the DPAs will provide definitive guidance regarding ICANN’s interim model and that some special allowance will be made so that registrars and registries are provided with additional time to implement a GDPR-compliant WHOIS solution. —Matt Serlin @CircleID

Security researchers at Embedi have disclosed a critical vulnerability in Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, take full control over the vulnerable network equipment and intercept traffic. —Swati Khandelwal @The Hacker News

With the growing presence and sophistication of online threats like viruses, ransomware, and phishing scams, it’s increasingly important to have the right protection and tools to help protect your devices, personal information, and files from being compromised. Microsoft already provides robust security for Office services, including link checking and attachment scanning for known viruses and phishing threats, encryption in transit and at rest, as well as powerful antivirus protection with Windows Defender. Today, we’re announcing new advanced protection capabilities coming to Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers to Continue reading

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