On the ‘net: Rethinking Firewalls

In January of 1995, Network Translation’s PIX firewall received the “hot product of the year” award from Data Communications Magazine. While the PIX was originally designed to perform Network Address Translation (NAT), doing for the IP host market what the PBX market did for the telephone, the PIX itself quickly morphed into the original appliance-based firewall. In those heady days in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), we spent hours thinking through how best to build a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) using PIX’s and routers so the network simply could not be penetrated. We built walls around our networks to defend them against the hoards of horseback riding invaders. @ECI

Docker Compose and Kubernetes with Docker for Desktop

If you’re running an edge version of Docker on your desktop (Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows Desktop), you can now stand up a single-node Kubernetes cluster with the click of a button. While I’m not a developer, I think this is great news for the millions of developers who have already been using Docker on their Macbook or Windows laptop because they now have a fully compliant Kubernetes cluster at their fingertips without installing any other tools.

Developers using Docker to build containerized applications often build Docker Compose files to deploy them. With the integration of Kubernetes into the Docker product line, some developers may want to leverage their existing Compose files but deploy these applications in Kubernetes. There is, of course, Kompose, but that’s a translation layer which causes you to have two separate artifacts to manage. Is there a way to keep a native Docker-based workflow?

With Docker on the desktop (as well as Docker Enterprise Edition) you can use Docker compose to directly deploy an application onto a Kubernetes cluster.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s assume I have a simple Docker compose file like the one below that describes a three tier Continue reading

Don’t miss our online live Spanning-Tree Webinar!

Tune in Tomorrow, February 16, 2018 for a FREE online live Spanning-Tree webinar with Keith Bogart.

 

Deciphering Spanning-Tree Technologies
Starts February 16, 2018 at 10:00 AM (PST) 1:00 PM (EST)

Understanding the logic of 802.1d and how it builds a loop-free “tree” is critical to passing any Cisco certification exam. Presented by INE instructor Keith Bogart (CCIE #4923), this session will take you through that logic so that, given any bridged/switched layer-2 network, you can predict what tree will be formed. Ask questions live with an experienced industry expert!

Inference is the Hammer That Breaks the Datacenter

Two important changes to the datacenter are happening in the same year—one on the hardware side, another on the software side. And together, they create a force big enough to blow away the clouds, at least over the long haul.

As we covered this year from a datacentric (and even supercomputing) point of view, 2018 is the time for Arm to shine. With a bevy of inroads to commercial markets at the high-end all the way down to the micro-device level, the architecture presents a genuine challenge to the processor establishment. And now, coupled with the biggest trend since …

Inference is the Hammer That Breaks the Datacenter was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Gen-Z Interconnect Ready To Restore Compute Memory Balance

For several years, work has been underway to develop a standard interconnect that can address the increasing speeds in servers driven by the growing use of such accelerators as GPUs and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and the pressures put on memory by the massive amounts of data being generated and bottleneck between the CPUs and the memory.

Any time the IT industry wants a standard, you can always expect at least two, and this time around is no different. Today there is a cornucopia of emerging interconnects, some of them overlapping in purpose, some working side by side, to break …

Gen-Z Interconnect Ready To Restore Compute Memory Balance was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: DNS resolution to protect networks

The vast majority of DNS Resolvers perform its one core function – taking a unique domain name and resolved queries for these names into IPv4/IPv6 addresses for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide. This is why DNS is Internet critical. Every device is dependent on a DNS Resolver for normal Internet functioning – creating a critical dependency and choke point. —Barry Greene @ Senki

IDG Contributor Network: Leveraging a hybrid cloud model to cope with data growth

In “What the storage industry’s inevitable transition to the cloud means for your business,” I cited the explosive growth of data as one of the primary reasons for a shift in storage architectures from local hardware to the cloud.Let’s take a closer look at this phenomenon and how it impacts your approach to storage, as well as what architecture is the right one for your current and future needs.And what a phenomenon it is! IDC and EMC project that data will grow to 40 zettabytes by 2020, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010. And forget about the importance of data simply for your business. In a recent white paper for storage firm Seagate, research firm IDC estimates that by 2025, nearly 20 percent of the data in existence will be critical to our everyday lives, with almost 10 percent of that being “hypercritical.”To read this article in full, please click here

Small wake-up receivers could extend IoT sensor life

One of the potential hindrances to ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) take-up is related to how one should power the possibly billions of tiny sensors promised over time. Can one expect a homeowner to change out a hundred or so coin batteries every few years in, say, a networked system, for example? That could get old fast.Also on Network World: Testing RFID IoT devices for enterprise deployment The same problem arises at an industrial level. Changing out sensor batteries in a remote installation is equally difficult to achieve, although for different reasons — you need to transport expensive people there to do it, for one thing.To read this article in full, please click here

What is IPv6, and why aren’t we there yet?

For the most part the dire warnings about running out of internet addresses have ceased because, slowly but surely, migration from the world of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6 has begun, and software is in place to prevent the address apocalypse that many were predicting.But before we see where are and where we’re going with IPv6, let’s go back to the early days of internet addressing.+Related: IPv6 deployment guide; How to plan your migration to IPv6+To read this article in full, please click here

What is IPv6, and why aren’t we there yet?

For the most part the dire warnings about running out of internet addresses have ceased because, slowly but surely, migration from the world of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6 has begun, and software is in place to prevent the address apocalypse that many were predicting.But before we see where are and where we’re going with IPv6, let’s go back to the early days of internet addressing.+Related: IPv6 deployment guide; How to plan your migration to IPv6+To read this article in full, please click here

The Ins And Outs Of IBM’s Power9 ZZ Systems

It has taken nearly four years for the low end, workhorse machines in IBM’s Power Systems line to be updated, and the long awaited Power9 processors and the shiny new “ZZ” systems have been unveiled. We have learned quite a bit about these machines, many of which are not really intended for the kinds of IT organizations that The Next Platform is focused on. But several of the machines are aimed at large enterprises, service providers, and even cloud builders who want something with a little more oomph on a lot of fronts than an X86 server can deliver in …

The Ins And Outs Of IBM’s Power9 ZZ Systems was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

How Self-Sufficient Do You Want to Be?

The first car I got decades ago was a simple mechanical beast – you’d push something, and a cable would make sure something else moved somewhere. I could also fix 80% of the problems, and people who were willing to change spark plugs and similar stuff could get to 90+%.

Today the cars are distributed computer systems that nobody can fix once they get a quirk that is not discoverable with level-1 diagnostic tools.

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