Rehashing Certifications

While at Cisco Live in Barcelona this week, I had a chat with someone—I don’t remember who—about certifications. The main point that came out of the conversation was this:

One of the big dangers with chasing a certification is you will end up chasing knowledge about using a particular vendor feature set, rather than chasing knowledge about a technology.

At some point I’m going to edit a post a video short on engineering versus meta-engineering (no, it won’t be next week), but the danger is real. For instance, in an article I’ve had in my bookmarks pile for a long while, the author says—

My boss advised me that getting my WPCE (WordPerfect Certified Resource) cert would accomplish two things: 1. It would establish my credibility as a trainer; and 2. If I didn’t know a feature before the test, I sure as heck would afterward.

I’m not going to name the author, because this is his description of thinking through a certification many years ago, rather than his current thinking on certifications—but the example is telling. I know a lot of folks studying for certifications. They mostly spend their time labbing up various protocols and… features. The temptation to Continue reading

Cloudflare Workers is now on Open Beta

Cloudflare Workers Beta is now open!

Cloudflare Workers lets you run JavaScript on Cloudflare’s edge, deploying globally to over 120+ data centers around the world in less than 30 seconds. Your code can intercept and modify any request made to your website, make outbound requests to any URL on the Internet, and replace much of what you might need to configure your CDN to do today. Even better, it will do this from all our edge locations around the world, closer to many of your users than your origin servers can ever be. You will have a fully functional Turing-complete language in your fingertips which will allow you to build powerful applications on the edge. The only limit is your imagination.

To get started:

• Sign in to your account on cloudflare.com.
• Visit the Workers tab.
• Launch the editor.
• Write some code and save it.
• Go to the routes tab and prescribe on what requests you want to run Workers for

That’s it!

You can start by writing a simple ‘hello world’ script, but chances are that you are going write Workers that are more complicated. You can check out our page with recipes to:

• Run A/B tests on the Continue reading

Heptio Sideswipes Other Container Distros with ‘True’ Kubernetes Platform

The HKS container platform is targeted at technically sophisticated organizations.

The Machine Learning Opportunity in Manufacturing, Logistics

There is increasing pressure in such fields as manufacturing, energy and transportation to adopt AI and machine learning to help improve efficiencies in operations, optimize workflows, enhance business decisions through analytics and reduce costs in logistics.

We have talked about how industries like telecommunications and transportation are looking at recurrent neural networks for helping to better forecast resource demand in supply chains. However, adopting AI and machine learning comes with its share of challenges. Companies whose datacenters are crowded with traditional systems powered by CPUs now have to consider buying and bringing in GPU-based hardware that is better situated to …

The Machine Learning Opportunity in Manufacturing, Logistics was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Addressing 2017

Let’s see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. —Geoff Huston @APNIC

Prying The Lid Off Black Box Switch SDKs

It would be hard to find a business that has been more proprietary, insular, and secretive than the networking industry, and for good reasons. The sealed boxes that switch vendors sell, and that are the very backbone of the Internet, have been wickedly profitable – and in a way that neither servers nor storage have been.

There are so many control points in the networking stack that it is no wonder the hyperscalers and cloud builders have been leaning so heavily on switch ASIC vendors to open up their entire stack. The only reason they don’t build their own switch …

Prying The Lid Off Black Box Switch SDKs was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

BrandPost: Should We Virtualize Functions or Virtualize Networks?

I gave a keynote presentation at MEF and answered two questions that I’m commonly asked: What’s next after SD-WAN? What’s the relationship between SD-WAN and NFV? If you’ve read my previous blogs, you can probably guess my answer to the first question. I believe the software-defined WAN must evolve into the self-driving WAN. By augmenting automation with machine learning and AI, we can build WANs that dynamically translate business intent into action, with central orchestration working in tandem with the WAN edge. For this blog, I will focus on answering the second question.To read this article in full, please click here

3 Bad Habits NetOps Should Avoid

How Flash Storage Supports Broadway Video’s 4K Growth

Enterprise Network on GNS3 – Part 6 – Edge Router and ISPs

This is the sixth article from the series of the articles discussing the configuration of an entire enterprise network. The article explains the configuration of the edge router vIOS-EDGE-I and configuration of ISP routers.  Now let's say few words about the router vIOS-EDGE-I. The router is Cisco IOSv Qemu appliance, version 15.6(2)T. It has assigned 512MB RAM by GNS3. The router connects all three parts of the company network to the Internet. These parts are the the campus network, data center and DMZ.

Picture 1 - Company Connection to the Internet via vIOS-EDGE-I

The company has assigned the prefix 195.1.1.0/24. Devices located in DMZ have assigned the prefix 195.1.1.128/25. The prefix 195.1.1.0/25 is assigned for devices hidden behind NAT. NAT is configured on vIOS-EDGE-I router, translating campus and data center subnets to the subnet 195.1.1.128/25. The router is connected to the upstream providers via their Ethernet ports Gi0/1 and Gi0/3. This is a single multi homed topology when a company is connected to two upstream providers with a single edge router. The entire prefix 195.1.1.0/24 is advertised to the both ISPs via BGP routing protocol. Continue reading

Enterprise Network on GNS3 – Part 6 – Edge Router and ISPs

This is the sixth article from the series of the articles discussing the configuration of an entire enterprise network. The article explains the configuration of the edge router vIOS-EDGE-I and configuration of ISP routers.  Now let's say few words about the router vIOS-EDGE-I. The router is Cisco IOSv Qemu appliance, version 15.6(2)T. It has assigned 512MB RAM by GNS3. The router connects all three parts of the company network to the Internet. These parts are the the campus network, data center and DMZ.

Picture 1 - Company Connection to the Internet via vIOS-EDGE-I

The company has assigned the prefix 195.1.1.0/24. Devices located in DMZ have assigned the prefix 195.1.1.128/25. The prefix 195.1.1.0/25 is assigned for devices hidden behind NAT. NAT is configured on vIOS-EDGE-I router, translating campus and data center subnets to the subnet 195.1.1.128/25. The router is connected to the upstream providers via their Ethernet ports Gi0/1 and Gi0/3. This is a single multi homed topology when a company is connected to two upstream providers with a single edge router. The entire prefix 195.1.1.0/24 is advertised to the both ISPs via BGP routing protocol. Continue reading

How to eliminate the default route for greater security

If portions of enterprise data-center networks have no need to communicate directly with the internet, then why do we configure routers so every system on the network winds up with internet access by default?Part of the reason is that many enterprises use an internet perimeter firewall performing port address translation (PAT) with a default policy that allows access the internet, a solution that leaves open a possible path by which attackers can breach security.+Also on Network World: IPv6 deployment guide; What is edge computing and how it’s changing the network?+To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

How to eliminate the default route for greater security

If portions of enterprise data-center networks have no need to communicate directly with the internet, then why do we configure routers so every system on the network winds up with internet access by default?To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

How to eliminate the default route for greater security

If portions of enterprise data-center networks have no need to communicate directly with the internet, then why do we configure routers so every system on the network winds up with internet access by default?To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

How to eliminate the default route for greater security

If portions of enterprise data-center networks have no need to communicate directly with the internet, then why do we configure routers so every system on the network winds up with internet access by default?Part of the reason is that many enterprises use an internet perimeter firewall performing port address translation (PAT) with a default policy that allows access the internet, a solution that leaves open a possible path by which attackers can breach security.+Also on Network World: IPv6 deployment guide; What is edge computing and how it’s changing the network?+To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

First Speakers in Building Next-Generation Data Center Online Course

Although it’s almost three months till the start of the Building Next-Generation Data Center online course, we already have most of the guest speakers. Today I’d like to introduce the first two (although they need no introduction).

You might have heard about Russ White. He was known as Mr. CCDE when that program started and recently focused more on data centers, open networking and whitebox switching. He’s also an authority on good network design and architecture, network complexity, and tradeoffs you have to make when designing a network.

How AlphaGo Sparked a New Approach to De Novo Drug Design

Researcher Olexandr Isayev wasn’t just impressed to see an AI framework best the top player of a game so complex it was considered impossible for an algorithm to track. He was inspired.

“The analogy of the complexity of chemistry, the number of possible molecule we don’t know about, is roughly the same order of complexity of Go, the University of North Carolina computational biology and chemistry expert explained.

“Instead of playing with checkers on a board, we envisioned a neural network that could play the game of generating molecules—one that did not rely on human intuition for this initial but …

How AlphaGo Sparked a New Approach to De Novo Drug Design was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Why you should use named pipes on Linux

Just about every Linux user is familiar with the process of piping data from one process to another using | signs. It provides an easy way to send output from one command to another and end up with only the data you want to see without having to write scripts to do all of the selecting and reformatting.There is another type of pipe, however, one that warrants the name "pipe" but has a very different personality. It's one that you may have never tried or even thought about — the named pipe.Also read: 11 pointless but awesome Linux terminal tricks One of the key differences between regular pipes and named pipes is that named pipes have a presense in the file system. That is, they show up as files. But unlike most files, they never appear to have contents. Even if you write a lot of data to a named pipe, the file appears to be empty.To read this article in full, please click here

Why use named pipes on Linux?

Just about every Linux user is familiar with the process of piping data from one process to another using | signs. It provides an easy way to send output from one command to another and end up with only the data you want to see without having to write scripts to do all of the selecting and reformatting. There is another type of pipe, however -- one that warrants the name "pipe", but has a very different personality. It's one that you may have never tried or even thought about -- the named pipe.One of the key differences between regular pipes and named pipes is that named pipes have a presense in the file system. That is, they show up as files. But, unlike most files, they never appear to have contents. Even if you write a lot of data to a named pipe, the file appears to be empty.To read this article in full, please click here

Don’t Miss Our LIVE CCNA Kickoff Tomorrow!

Tune into our live CCNA Kickoff session to get advice from a seasoned professional on what to expect during the CCNA Certification exam, and how to pass the first time.

When: February 1st at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST

Estimated Length: 3 hours

Instructor: Keith Bogart CCIE #4923

Cost: FREE

Who Should Watch:
This webinar is for anyone and everyone! Since this webinar is geared towards those who are just starting out on their journey towards CCNA certification, no prior knowledge is needed in order to participate, just an interest in earning your CCNA.

What We’ll Discuss:
We will cover common trouble areas that most people experience when getting started with their CCNA certification, such as how to approach making a study schedule and strategies for not becoming overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of topics to be learned. We will also discuss the testing experience and the CCNA Certification test format. Topics include: Deciding whether to take one test or two to get your CCNA, What to expect when you walk into the testing center, which topics to study and how in depth, and what study tools can be useful. Last, Keith will talk about his own experience taking Continue reading