Extending Ansible action plugins for Cisco IOS

It started out as a question. If you are using several networking modules in a playbook, do you really have to repeat the same credentials on every task? Just like the last few articles about Ansible this one came to life after answering questions in a chat room. The short answer is; No you don’t have to include all of the required parameters for every task, you can use an action plugin to work around that.

Great! So what’s an action plugin? Continue reading

RIPE 75

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today’s Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centres, IPv6, the DNS, routing and network measurement. If that's not enough, the topic of the Internet of Things has been added as a Working Group in the RIPE pantheon. If you add address policy, database and RIPE services to the mix you get a pretty packed five days with topics that would appeal to most Internet folk

RIPE 75

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today’s Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centres, IPv6, the DNS, routing and network measurement. If that's not enough, the topic of the Internet of Things has been added as a Working Group in the RIPE pantheon. If you add address policy, database and RIPE services to the mix you get a pretty packed five days with topics that would appeal to most Internet folk

Extreme Transition At Last

It is now almost 12 months since the first announcement that Broadcom was to acquire Brocade, and sell off the IP parts of the business. It took another 6 months to get confirmation that Extreme Networks would be buying my business unit (SRA).

For regulatory reasons, the Broadcom/Brocade transaction has still not closed. The original plan was to close that deal first, then close the Extreme transaction. But due to the delays, they re-arranged things, and now the Extreme deal has finally closed. Desks have been cleared, moving crews are working all weekend, and come Monday, I will have a new “Extreme Networks” badge.

What does this mean for me? My group is moving to become part of Extreme Networks. In the short term, I keep working with the same core group of people. But now we will be part of a new wider group, with a different strategic focus.

We will have new systems and applications to integrate StackStorm with, new use-cases, and maybe further opportunities beyond StackStorm. So far all signs are pointing to this being a positive move, and I am looking forward to getting this transition behind us.

Cisco PIX Security Appliances Firewall modes

Today I am going to talk about the different modes of Cisco PIX firewall. By default if you talk about the mode of the firewall, a firewall is a routed hop and acts as a default gateway for hosts that connect to one of its screened subnets. 

In recent years, a growing best practice has been to deploy firewalls not only at the traditional network perimeter-where the private corporate network meets the public Internet-but also throughout the enterprise network in key internal locations, as well as at the WAN edge of branch office networks. This distributed-firewall strategy helps protect against internal threats, which have historically accounted for a large percentage of cyber losses, according to annual studies conducted by the Computer Security Institute (CSI).

Now let's talk about the different firewall modes. There are two modes of firewalls and they are as routed mode and transparent mode.

Cisco PIX Security Appliances Routed mode
Default mode of an ASA. The ASA acts as a single firewall and all interfaces are provisioned to be managed through a single firewall configuration.

Fig 1.1- Firewall Routed mode
Configuration Example for Cisco PIX security appliances in routed mode

Below is the basic way Continue reading

Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) 7750 Service routers

Today I am going to talk about the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service routers as they are very much robust in nature and in demand with many of the enterprise networks. Now the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service routers are now rebranded and renamed as Nokia 7750 Service routers. The Nokia 7750 service routers are delivers the performance, service richness, and intelligence to drive the converged IP network edge.

The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 service Router (SR) portfolio is a collection of multi-provider edge routing structures that supply high performance, carrier richness, and creates first-rate value for networking in the cloud generation. it's far designed for the concurrent delivery of advanced residential, business and Wi-Fi broadband IP offerings, and gives cloud, records middle and department office connectivity for corporation networking on a commonplace IP part routing platform.

Fig 1.1- Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia 7750 service Routers

Leveraging Alcatel-Lucent 400 Gb/s FP3 silicon technology and a comprehensive suite of IP/MPLS routing capabilities, the 7750 SR has the flexibility to be deployed in a wide range of applications:
  • Broadband network gateway for residential service delivery with advanced subscriber management
  • Multiservice edge router for business VPN/Internet access, cloud and data center interconnect services
  • Enterprise router providing intelligent connectivity to the Continue reading

MPLS 101 – The Basics

In this series of posts, I want to spend some time reviewing MPLS fundamentals.  This has been covered in many places many times before – but I’ve noticed lately that often times the basics are missed or skipped when looking at MPLS.  How many “Introduction to MPLS” articles have you read where the first step is “Enable LDP and MPLS on the interface” and they dont actually explain whats happening?  I disagree with that being a valid starting point so in this post I’d like to start with the basics.  Subsequent posts will build from here as we get more and more advanced with the configuration.

Warning: In order to get up and running with even a basic configuration we’ll need to introduce ourselves to some MPLS terminology and concepts in a very brief fashion.  The descriptions of these terms and concepts is being kept brief intentionally in this post and will be covered in much great depth in a future post.

Enough rambling from me, let’s get right into it…

So what is MPLS?  MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching and it provides a means to forward multiple different protocols across a network.  To see what it’s capable Continue reading

Intel’s Data Center Group Has Its Head In The Clouds

The cloud gives, and it takes away.

The big hyperscalers, public cloud builders, and telecom, wireless, and cable service providers who are all collectively called “cloud” when it comes to the infrastructure they build, and they are increasingly driving shipments and revenues of all manner of components. But they command, by virtue of their huge volumes, discounts that are much deeper than the typical enterprise customer can get when they buy through an OEM or, if they are large enough, an ODM.

The fact that Intel’s Data Center Group is managing to profit pretty handsomely and reasonably predictably despite this …

Intel’s Data Center Group Has Its Head In The Clouds was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Nominations Now Open for 2018 ISOC Board of Trustees Election

The ISOC Nominations Committee is now inviting nominations for candidates to serve on the ISOC Board of Trustees.

In this years election cycle one Trustee will be elected by ISOC Organizational Members, one trustee by ISOC Chapters, and two will be selected by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

The Trustee positions are 3-year terms that will begin mid-year 2018 and expire mid-year 2021.

The Board of Trustees provides strategic direction, inspiration, and oversight to advance the Internet Society’s mission of preserving the open, global Internet.

If you or someone you know is interested in serving on the Board, please see the official Call for Nominations, additional information, and links to online nomination forms at www.internetsociety.org/trustees

Nominations close at 15:00 UTC on 15 December 2017.

The post Nominations Now Open for 2018 ISOC Board of Trustees Election appeared first on Internet Society.

One Step Closer to Easier Quantum Programming

For quantum computing to make the leap from theory and slim early use cases to broader adoption, a programmability jump is required. Some of the first hurdles have been knocked over in the last few weeks with new compiler and API-based development efforts that abstract some of the complex physics required for both qubit and gate-based approaches to quantum devices.

The more public recent effort was the open source publication of OpenFermion, a quantum compiler based on work at Google and quantum startup, Rigetti Computing, that is focused on applications in quantum chemistry and materials science. OpenFermion is …

One Step Closer to Easier Quantum Programming was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Automation Field Guide: Quick AWS NextCloud Instance

Automation-Field-Guide-AWS-Next-Cloud-Instance.png

This is a practical use story utilizing Ansible to solve a small hurdle in an everyday workflow. 

Code for this can be found here. 

In this post, I’ll be sharing a practical situation where Ansible makes tasks easier. The Getting Started team works with organizations who may be putting together a proof-of-concept to evaluate Red Hat® Ansible® Tower. If troubleshooting gets into the weeds, it can include sharing documentation, instructions for common setup scenarios, or going through system settings to make sure everything’s in order.

Sometimes there's no other way: we need to get a full environment report from the system to troubleshoot, mostly in the form of a sosreport. We found that getting the report to us can be challenging, so we had to find a reliable way for people to send us their log files. A file drop web app that could be spun up on demand fit the need nicely. A Nextcloud install with a CentOS LAMP stack turned out to be a great tool, using Ansible to automate the provisioning and installation for us. Because this little trick proved so helpful, I wanted to share how I put the short playbook together, Continue reading

5 Strategies to Promote Your App

5 Strategies to Promote Your App

5 Strategies to Promote Your App

Brady Gentile from Cloudflare's product team wrote an App Developer Playbook, embedded within the developer documentation page. He decided to write it after he and his team conducted several app developer interviews, finding that many developers wanted to learn how to better promote their apps.

They wanted to help app authors out in the areas outside of developer core expertise. Social media posting, community outreach, email deployment, SEO, blog posting and syndication, etc. can be daunting.

I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the tips from the App Developer Playbook because I think Brady did a great job of providing clear ways to approach promotional strategies.

5 Promotional Strategies

1. Share with online communities

Your app’s potential audience likely reads community-aggregated news sites such as HackerNews, Product Hunt, or reddit. Sharing your app across these websites is a great way for users to find your app.

5 Strategies to Promote Your App

For apps that are interesting to developers, designers, scientists, entrepreneurs, etc., be sure to share your work with the Hacker News community. Be sure to follow the official guidelines when posting and when engaging with the community. It may be tempting to ask your friends to upvote Continue reading

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