2017 End of Year Blog Statistics

Didn't I just write the 2016 statistics post like… last week? Another year has flown by and with it another year of attempting to prioritize my writing. I'll be honest, I'm not optimistic about what I'm going to find when I compare 2017 to 2016. It was a year filled with a lot of change and opportunity so I'll use that as my excuse as to why I didn't write as much or as often as I had planned.

I was thinking though: every year I set a goal of writing more posts than the previous year, but that's only 1 metric to go by. Most of my posts are very detailed and fleshed out. It's nothing to write a post that's 1000 words. I regularly eclipse 2000 words and have even hit 3000 words. Perhaps I should be thinking more about word count and not post count? Certainly a 2000 word post takes more effort than a 1000 word post. On the other hand, word count says nothing about quality and could easily lead to excessive wordiness and run-on posts just to tilt the metrics.

Enough musing. Let's review the data!

Digital DVB-T on Raspbian

Recently, I have been asked to get working Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestria (DVB-T) tunner on Raspberry PI 3. The tunner is Cinergy DVB-T stick from Terratec. Below are my notes describing installation of the stick on Raspbian Linux 9.1 Stretch. I hope someone find them useful.

1. Copy Raspbian to SD CARD (on Ubuntu)

First, we need to copy Raspbian installation image to SD card. Below is the example using dd command on Linux.

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=2017-09-07-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress conv=fsync

Insert SD card to Raspberry and power on the box. The default user is pi with the password raspberry. Enable SSH and VNC server for remote box administration. Navigate to Menu-> Preferences-> Raspberry PI Configuration.

2. Install Firmware

Inspect kernel for any error message connected with DVB-T tunner.

$ dmesg

Picture 1 - Missing firmware isdbt_rio.imp

Download firmware file isdbt_rio.imp (md5 - 9b762c1808fd8da81bbec3e24ddb04a3) from here. I have also uploaded it to Google disk. You can download and copy the file to the directory /lib/firmware with the command below.

$ sudo wget https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1MwDGSG4ZEm3eeJuf0gS686Be-ngx4rKR -O /lib/firmware/isdbt_rio.inp

Reboot PI and check kernel for any other kernel error messages.

Picture 2 - Continue reading

Reading EEPROM – Obtaining the GE Concord Express Installer Code

One of the more frustrating things for me is when someone, or some company, attempts to control me. Typically having the desire for less responsibility, I have no desire to control individuals in this way. Recently, I started looking into what moving my alarm system to a new monitoring service would entail. The primary goal included eliminating the dependence on a landline and getting the flexibility to do reconfigurations myself. I own the alarm system and I felt like I should be able to make those changes.

Upon investigation, I found that my alarm system was a bit challenging to reset the installer code. Searching the Internet yielded several options to try–1234, 9876, 4112 and 6112. Unfortunately, none of those worked for my system and a call to my current alarm service company was met with, “We don’t provide those, we want to protect you from

making accidental changes.” They eventually agreed to try to change the code to another value  and called me back a few times. Eventually, their remote effort fizzled out, but I’m

sure they would’ve changed them with an on-site visit and a $75 service fee.

A few searches on the internet suggested copying Continue reading

Making a Lasting Impact: A Look Back at 2017

As just a couple of days remain in 2017, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the year’s highlights! It was an extraordinary year, with the Internet Society celebrating its 25th anniversary and launching a new website – while continuing to advocate for an Internet that is open, globally connected, and secure. These values were evident in the many projects undertaken throughout the year and in some of my favorite blog posts:

Access is fundamental.

We shared stories of people working to create community networks around the world, including remote Tusheti, Georgia, where pack horses carried equipment up mountain peaks; rural South Africa, where one of the most economically disadvantaged communities in the country became a telecom operator; and Yemen, where the Internet@MySchool project connected classrooms in four secondary schools. We also published resources such as Spectrum Approaches for Community Networks and the Small Island Developing States report, which offered practical solutions to building community networks. But access also means accessibility, and the Internet Society recently launched the Accessibility Toolkit, which aims to reduce barriers so that people with disabilities can get online.

So is privacy and trust.

The WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks Continue reading

2018 Predictions: a new year for the Net

Happy New Year! I was thinking back on the last year, reflecting on all of the changes in the IT industry, and in true nerd fashion, I opened a bottle of wine in search of the most poignant change that I expect to see in 2018. In the end, I ended up with two predictions linked to a common theme: the repeal of net neutrality.

First, I predict that we’ll start seeing effects of that legislation early in 2018, likely by the summer time. The anti net neutrality sponsors won’t be able to help themselves; they’ve got to institutionalize changes before the winds can blow in a different direction. I predict the first signs to emerge will be Internet access plans that distinguish based on access to content. These won’t be subtle plans — they’ll look a lot like your TV subscription in the flavor of something like “basic browsing” that will cost less than your current rate and a more expensive “streaming media” package that gives you access to content outside of that offered by your service provider.

The second is that we’ll see an emergence of one or more access/service providers that use this as a land grab Continue reading

Linux resolutions for 2018

It’s always a good idea to start a new year with renewed intentions to be even better users and administrators of our Linux systems. For auld lang syne (for the sake of old times), let's touch on some of the ways we might improve our system practices in 2018.1: Automate more of the boring stuff There are several good reasons to turn tedious tasks into scripts. The first is to make them less annoying. The second is to make them less error-prone. And the last is to make them easier to turn over to new team members who haven't been around long enough to be bored. Add a small dose of meaningful comments to your scripts and you have a better chance of passing on some of your wisdom about how things should be done.To read this article in full, please click here

Top 5 Blogs of 2017: Docker Platform and Moby Project add Kubernetes

As we count down the final days of 2017, we would like to bring you the final installment of the top 5 blogs of 2017. On day 5, we take a look back DockerCon EU, when we announced Kubernetes support in the Docker platform. This blog takes an in-depth look at the industry-leading container platform and the addition of Kubernetes.

The Docker platform is integrating support for Kubernetes so that Docker customers and developers have the option to use both Kubernetes and Swarm to orchestrate container workloads. Register for beta access and check out the detailed blog posts to learn how we’re bringing Kubernetes to:

Docker is a platform that sits between apps and infrastructure. By building apps on Docker, developers and IT operations get freedom and flexibility. That’s because Docker runs everywhere that enterprises deploy apps: on-prem (including on IBM mainframes, enterprise Linux and Windows) and in the cloud. Once an application is containerized, it’s easy to re-build, re-deploy and move around, or even run in hybrid setups that straddle on-prem and cloud infrastructure.

The Docker platform is composed of many Continue reading

VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX: Connecting SDDCs Across Different AWS Regions

I prior shared this post on the LinkedIN publishing platform and my personal blog at HumairAhmed.com. In my prior blog post, I discussed how with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) customers get the best of both worlds for their move to a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) – the leading compute, storage, and network virtualization stack for enterprises deployed on dedicated, elastic, bare-metal, and highly available AWS infrastructure. Another benefit of VMC on AWS, and the focus of this post, is that you can easily have a global footprint by deploying multiple VMC SDDCs in different regions. Continue reading

How “expensive” is crypto anyway?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the title of this post attracts some Bitcoin aficionados, but if you are such, I want to disappoint you. For me crypto means cryptography, not cybermoney, and the price we pay for it is measured in CPU cycles, not USD.

If you got to this second paragraph you probably heard that TLS today is very cheap to deploy. Considerable effort was put to optimize the cryptography stacks of OpenSSL and BoringSSL, as well as the hardware that runs them. However, aside for the occasional benchmark, that can tell us how many GB/s a given algorithm can encrypt, or how many signatures a certain elliptic curve can generate, I did not find much information about the cost of crypto in real world TLS deployments.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Michele M. F.

As Cloudflare is the largest provider of TLS on the planet, one would think we perform a lot of cryptography related tasks, and one would be absolutely correct. More than half of our external traffic is now TLS, as well as all of our internal traffic. Being in that position means that crypto performance is critical to our success, and as it Continue reading

How “expensive” is crypto anyway?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the title of this post attracts some Bitcoin aficionados, but if you are such, I want to disappoint you. For me crypto means cryptography, not cybermoney, and the price we pay for it is measured in CPU cycles, not USD.

If you got to this second paragraph you probably heard that TLS today is very cheap to deploy. Considerable effort was put to optimize the cryptography stacks of OpenSSL and BoringSSL, as well as the hardware that runs them. However, aside for the occasional benchmark, that can tell us how many GB/s a given algorithm can encrypt, or how many signatures a certain elliptic curve can generate, I did not find much information about the cost of crypto in real world TLS deployments.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Michele M. F.

As Cloudflare is the largest provider of TLS on the planet, one would think we perform a lot of cryptography related tasks, and one would be absolutely correct. More than half of our external traffic is now TLS, as well as all of our internal traffic. Being in that position means that crypto performance is critical to our success, and as it Continue reading

From Zero to One Hundred in the Arctic Slope

In November 2017, the Internet Society hosted the inaugural Indigenous Connectivity Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event brought together community network operators, Internet service providers, community members, researchers, policy makers, and Indigenous leadership. One of the participants shared her story.

“‘Mom, did you have YouTube?’” Patuk Glenn, recalls her six year old son asking. Glenn, who lives in Utqiaġvik – a city in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle – laughs as she remembers one of his first words: “loading,” thanks to the sluggish Internet speeds on the Arctic Slope. But things are changing, and soon. Fiber optic cable is going live in Glenn’s community and she has travelled to the Indigenous Connectivity Summit looking for lessons from other Indigenous communities. “We’re going from zero to one hundred overnight,” says Glenn. “How can we best prepare our people?”

It’s not just a question of digital literacy. Glenn’s looking for information on cybersecurity and entrepreneurship – as high-speed Internet opens avenues for economic development and for community members to share their own content with the rest of the world. Like many summit participants, Glenn sees connectivity as a pathway to enable education: not only unlocking online courses, but Continue reading

Top 5 blogs of 2017: Spring Boot Development with Docker

We’ve rounded up the top five most popular Docker blogs of 2017. Coming in at number four is, Spring Boot Development With Docker, part of a multi-part tutorial series.

The AtSea Shop is an example storefront application that can be deployed on different operating systems and can be customized to both your enterprise development and operational environments. In my last post, I discussed the architecture of the app. In this post, I will cover how to setup your development environment to debug the Java REST backend that runs in a container.

Building the REST Application

I used the Spring Boot framework to rapidly develop the REST backend that manages products, customers and orders tables used in the AtSea Shop. The application takes advantage of Spring Boot’s built-in application server, support for REST interfaces and ability to define multiple data sources. Because it was written in Java, it is agnostic to the base operating system and runs in either Windows or Linux containers. This allows developers to build against a heterogenous architecture.

Project setup

The AtSea project uses multi-stage builds, a new Docker feature, which allows me to use multiple images to build a single Docker image that includes all the components needed for Continue reading

Twinax – Cheap, Cheerful and Annoyingly Chubby

What’s not to love about twinax? Formerly the exclusive domain of IBM systems, twinax has seen itself reborn in the last few years in the form of the Direct Attach Cable (DAC) used to connect systems at speeds of 10Gbps and 40Gbps (by way of bundling four twinax pairs in a single cable).

Twinax

Direct Attach Cables

Before diving into the pros and cons of DAC, it’s important to understand the different varieties that are available. A DAC is a cable which has SFP+ format connectors hard-wired on each end; plug each end into an SFP+ socket and, vendor support notwithstanding, the link should come up. A direct attach cable is frequently and erroneously referred to as a “DAC cable”, so if the words “PIN number” give you the jitters, working anywhere with DACs is likely to drive you to drink.

Passive Copper DAC (Twinax)

The most common kind of DAC is the passive DAC. The SFP+ connector on a passive DAC, give or take some electrical protection circuitry, is pretty much a direct connection from the copper in the twinax to the copper contacts which connect to the host device:

Passive Copper DAC

Sending a 10G signal over a single copper pair requires Continue reading

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