What is DNS and how does it work?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the foundations of the internet, working in the background to match the names of web sites that people type into a search box with the corresponding IP address, a long string of numbers that no one could be expected to remember.It's still possible for someone to type an IP address into a browser to reach a website, but most people want an internet address to consist of easy-to-remember words, called domain names. (For example, Network World.)To read this article in full, please click here

Many ways to use the echo command on Linux

The echo command (a bash built-in) is one of the very basic commands on Linux. As with ls and pwd, you can't sit on the command line very long without using it. At the same time, echo has quite a few uses that many of us never take advantage of. So, this post looks into the many ways you can use this command.What is the echo command on Linux? Basically, echo is a command that will display any text that you ask it to display. However, when you type “echo hello”, the echo command isn't only spitting out those five letters, it's actually sending out six characters – the last one being a linefeed. Let's look at a couple of commands that make this obvious.To read this article in full, please click here

Details Emerge On Europe’s First Exascale Supercomputer

Some details are emerging on Europe’s first exascale system, codenamed “Jupiter” and to be installed at the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany in 2024. …

The post Details Emerge On Europe’s First Exascale Supercomputer first appeared on The Next Platform.

Details Emerge On Europe’s First Exascale Supercomputer was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Generative AI set to reshape SD-WAN market

There are baseline security and connectivity requirements for any SD-WAN service, and then there are optional, emerging product capabilities that indicate how the market is maturing and customer requirements are expanding. AI networking support – such as for proactive remediation and incident management – is one of those optional capabilities, according to Gartner, which just released its latest analysis of the SD-WAN vendor landscape.There’s a trend toward AI capabilities that enable networking decisions to be made with little or no human intervention. These capabilities can help enterprises to streamline network design, configuration and ongoing management as well as increase agility and improve performance, according to Gartner. The research firm predicts that by 2026, generative AI technology embedded in SD-WAN offerings will be used for 20% of initial network configuration, up from near zero in 2023.To read this article in full, please click here

Generative AI set to reshape SD-WAN market

There are baseline security and connectivity requirements for any SD-WAN service, and then there are optional, emerging product capabilities that indicate how the market is maturing and customer requirements are expanding. AI networking support – such as for proactive remediation and incident management – is one of those optional capabilities, according to Gartner, which just released its latest analysis of the SD-WAN vendor landscape.There’s a trend toward AI capabilities that enable networking decisions to be made with little or no human intervention. These capabilities can help enterprises to streamline network design, configuration and ongoing management as well as increase agility and improve performance, according to Gartner. The research firm predicts that by 2026, generative AI technology embedded in SD-WAN offerings will be used for 20% of initial network configuration, up from near zero in 2023.To read this article in full, please click here

Intel plans spinoff of FPGA unit

Intel announced plans to spin off its programmable solutions group (PSG) as a standalone business beginning January 1, with an IPO to follow in about two to three years. The group will operate as a separate unit in the company’s financials.PSG is the group that handles field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors made by Altera, which Intel acquired for $16.7 billion in 2015. Sandra Rivera, who currently runs Intel’s data center and AI (DCAI) group, will lead PSG as CEO. The company also plans to search for a new chief financial officer for the group.To read this article in full, please click here

Intel plans spinoff of FPGA unit

Intel announced plans to spin off its programmable solutions group (PSG) as a standalone business beginning January 1, with an IPO to follow in about two to three years. The group will operate as a separate unit in the company’s financials.PSG is the group that handles field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors made by Altera, which Intel acquired for $16.7 billion in 2015. Sandra Rivera, who currently runs Intel’s data center and AI (DCAI) group, will lead PSG as CEO. The company also plans to search for a new chief financial officer for the group.To read this article in full, please click here

Uncovering the Hidden WebP vulnerability: a tale of a CVE with much bigger implications than it originally seemed

Uncovering the Hidden WebP vulnerability: a tale of a CVE with much bigger implications than it originally seemed
Uncovering the Hidden WebP vulnerability: a tale of a CVE with much bigger implications than it originally seemed

At Cloudflare, we're constantly vigilant when it comes to identifying vulnerabilities that could potentially affect the Internet ecosystem. Recently, on September 12, 2023, Google announced a security issue in Google Chrome, titled "Heap buffer overflow in WebP in Google Chrome," which caught our attention. Initially, it seemed like just another bug in the popular web browser. However, what we discovered was far more significant and had implications that extended well beyond Chrome.

Impact much wider than suggested

The vulnerability, tracked under CVE-2023-4863, was described as a heap buffer overflow in WebP within Google Chrome. While this description might lead one to believe that it's a problem confined solely to Chrome, the reality was quite different. It turned out to be a bug deeply rooted in the libwebp library, which is not only used by Chrome but by virtually every application that handles WebP images.

Digging deeper, this vulnerability was in fact first reported in an earlier CVE from Apple, CVE-2023-41064, although the connection was not immediately obvious. In early September, Citizen Lab, a research lab based out of the University of Toronto, reported on an apparent exploit that was being used to attempt to install spyware on the iPhone Continue reading

Internet eXchange Provider (IXP) Metrics

IXP Metrics is available on Github. The application provides real-time monitoring of traffic between members of an Internet eXchange Provider (IXP) network.

This article will use Arista switches as an example to illustrate the steps needed to deploy the monitoring solution, however, these steps should work for other network equipment vendors (provided you modify the vendor specific elements in this example).

git clone https://github.com/sflow-rt/prometheus-grafana.git
cd prometheus-grafana
env RT_IMAGE=ixp-metrics ./start.sh

The easiest way to get started is to use Docker, see Deploy real-time network dashboards using Docker compose, and deploy the sflow/ixp-metrics image bundling the IXP Metrics application. 

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: sflow-rt-ixp-metrics
    metrics_path: /app/ixp-metrics/scripts/metrics.js/prometheus/txt
    static_configs:
    - targets: ['sflow-rt:8008']
Follow the directions in the article to add a Prometheus scrape task to retrieve the metrics. 
sflow source-interface management 1
sflow destination 10.0.0.50
sflow polling-interval 20
sflow sample 50000
sflow run

Enable sFlow on all exchange switches, directing sFlow telemetry to the Docker host (in this case 10.0.0.50).

Use the sFlow-RT Status page to confirm that sFlow is being received from the switches. In this case 286 sFlow datagrams per second are being received from 9 switches.
The IX-F Member Export JSON Schema Continue reading

Cloudflare’s a Top 100 Most Loved Workplace for the second consecutive year in 2023

Cloudflare's a Top 100 Most Loved Workplace for the second consecutive year in 2023
Cloudflare's a Top 100 Most Loved Workplace for the second consecutive year in 2023

We have always strived to make Cloudflare somewhere where our entire team feels safe and empowered to bring their whole selves to work. It’s the best way to enable the many incredible people we have working here to be able to do their best work. With that as context, we are proud to share that Cloudflare has been certified and recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2023 by Newsweek and the Best Practice Institute (BPI) for the second consecutive year.  

Cloudflare's a Top 100 Most Loved Workplace for the second consecutive year in 2023

Cloudflare’s ranking follows surveys of more than 2 million employees at companies with team sizes ranging from 50 to 10,000+, and includes US-based firms and international companies with a strong US presence. As part of the qualification for the certification, Cloudflare participated in a company-wide global employee survey — so this award isn’t a hypothetical, it’s driven by our employees’ sentiment and responses.

With this recognition, we wanted to reflect on what’s new, what’s remained the same, and what’s ahead for the team at Cloudflare. There are a few things that especially stand out:

It starts with our mission and people

Helping to build a better Internet.

If you speak to any member of Continue reading

UK regulator launches antitrust probe into Microsoft and Amazon cloud services

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to launch an investigation into the country’s cloud computing market, after a new report from the communications regulator uncovered a number of market features that it said could limit competition among providers.The move comes seven months after the communications regulator Ofcom first raised “significant concerns” about Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, alleging that they were harming competition in cloud infrastructure services and abusing their market positions with practices that make interoperability difficult.To read this article in full, please click here

Notes from OARC 41

OARC held a 2-day meeting in September in Danang, Vietnam, with a set of presentations on various DNS topics. Here’s some observations that I picked up from the presentations that were made that meeting.

Cisco Intent Based Networking: Part I, Overview

This post introduces Cisco's approach to Intent-based Networking (IBN) through their Centralized SDN Controller, DNA Center, rebranded as Catalyst Center. We focus on the network green field installation, showing workflows, configuration parameters, and relationships and dependencies between building blocks.

Figure 1-1 is divided into three main areas: a) Onboard and Provisioning, b) Network Hierarchy and Global Network Settings, c) and Configuration Templates and Site Profiles. 

We start a green field network deployment by creating a Network Design. In this phase, we first build a Network Hierarchy for our sites. For example, a hierarchy can define Continent/Country/City/Building/Floor structure. Then, we configure global Network Settings. This phase includes both Network and Device Credentials configuration. AAA, DHCP, DNS serves, DNS name, and Time Zone, which are automatically inherited throughout the hierarchy, are part of the Network portion. Device Credentials, in turn, define CLI, SNMP read/write, HTTP(S) read/write username/password, and CLI enable password. The credentials are used later in the Discovery phase.

Next, we build a site and device type-specific configuration templates. As a first step, we create a Project, a folder for our templates. In Figure 1-1, we have a Composite template into which we attach two Regular templates. Regular templates include Continue reading

netlab 1.6.2: More Reporting Goodies

netlab release 1.6.2 improved reporting capabilities:

  • BGP reports and IP addressing reports are fully IPv6-aware
  • Some columns in BGP reports are optional to reduce the width of text reports
  • You can filter the reports you’re interested in when using netlab show reports command
  • Reports relying on ipaddr Ansible filter display warnings (instead of crashing) if you don’t have Ansible installed.

In other news:

Read more …

netlab 1.6.2: More Reporting Goodies

netlab release 1.6.2 improved reporting capabilities:

  • BGP reports and IP addressing reports are fully IPv6-aware
  • Some columns in BGP reports are optional to reduce the width of text reports
  • You can filter the reports you’re interested in when using netlab show reports command
  • Reports relying on ipaddr Ansible filter display warnings (instead of crashing) if you don’t have Ansible installed.

In other news:

Read more …

1.1.1.1 lookup failures on October 4th, 2023

1.1.1.1 lookup failures on October 4th, 2023
1.1.1.1 lookup failures on October 4th, 2023

On 4 October 2023, Cloudflare experienced DNS resolution problems starting at 07:00 UTC and ending at 11:00 UTC. Some users of 1.1.1.1 or products like WARP, Zero Trust, or third party DNS resolvers which use 1.1.1.1 may have received SERVFAIL DNS responses to valid queries. We’re very sorry for this outage. This outage was an internal software error and not the result of an attack. In this blog, we’re going to talk about what the failure was, why it occurred, and what we’re doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Background

In the Domain Name System (DNS), every domain name exists within a DNS zone. The zone is a collection of domain names and host names that are controlled together. For example, Cloudflare is responsible for the domain name cloudflare.com, which we say is in the “cloudflare.com” zone. The .com top-level domain (TLD) is owned by a third party and is in the “com” zone. It gives directions on how to reach cloudflare.com. Above all of the TLDs is the root zone, which gives directions on how to reach TLDs. This means that the root zone is important Continue reading

Les échecs des recherches sur le résolveur 1.1.1.1 le 4 octobre 2023

Le 4 octobre 2023, Cloudflare a rencontré des problèmes de résolution DNS à partir de 7 h UTC, et ce jusqu'à 11 h UTC. Certains utilisateurs de 1.1.1.1 ou de produits tels que WARP, Zero Trust ou d'autres résolveurs DNS tiers utilisant 1.1.1.1 peuvent avoir reçu des réponses SERVFAIL DNS à leurs requêtes, pourtant valides. Nous sommes sincèrement désolés pour cette panne. Celle-ci était due à une erreur logicielle interne et n'était aucunement le résultat d'une attaque. Cet article de blog va nous permettre de discuter de la nature de cette défaillance, des raisons pour lesquelles elle s'est produite et des mesures que nous avons mises en œuvre pour nous assurer qu'une telle situation ne se reproduise jamais.

Contexte

Dans le Domain Name System (DNS, système de noms de domaine), chaque nom de domaine existe au sein d'une zone DNS. Cette zone constitue un ensemble de noms de domaine et de noms d'hôte, contrôlés conjointement. Pour prendre un exemple, Cloudflare est responsable du nom de domaine cloudflare.com, que nous disons se trouver dans la zone « cloudflare.com ». Le domaine de premier niveau (TLD, Top-Level Domain) « .com » est détenu par Continue reading

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