Why Linus is right (as usual)

People are debating this email from Linus Torvalds (maintainer of the Linux kernel). It has strong language, like:
Some security people have scoffed at me when I say that security
problems are primarily "just bugs".
Those security people are f*cking morons.
Because honestly, the kind of security person who doesn't accept that
security problems are primarily just bugs, I don't want to work with.
I thought I'd explain why Linus is right.

Linus has an unwritten manifesto of how the Linux kernel should be maintained. It's not written down in one place, instead we are supposed to reverse engineer it from his scathing emails, where he calls people morons for not understanding it. This is one such scathing email. The rules he's expressing here are:
  • Large changes to the kernel should happen in small iterative steps, each one thoroughly debugged.
  • Minor security concerns aren't major emergencies; they don't allow bypassing the rules more than any other bug/feature.
Last year, some security "hardening" code was added to the kernel to prevent a class of buffer-overflow/out-of-bounds issues. This code didn't address any particular 0day vulnerability, but was designed to prevent a class of future potential exploits from being exploited. This is reasonable.

Network Automation Engineer Persona: Proof-of-concepts

If you’ve chosen to do a proof-of-concept (PoC), you should already know what the challenge or requirement is, what your satisfactory results look like and what the product or tool set is that will deliver on your commitment. A proof-of-concept is a recipe that should give you a well baked set of results.

Approaching a PoC

Approaching a PoC is a conscious decision to trial an idea that if successful, your business will put in to daily production to satisfy one or more business requirements.

So why aren’t the results more apparent in our day to day lives? Why do we not see these decision points more transparently?

Some people approach PoCs as a tyre kicking exercise, or a means to get a vendor to commit to them and then use as leverage against cost. If you’re just playing, you’re wasting time. If you’re tyre kicking then be prepared for lack of commitment or interest in the future from individuals or organisations. Genuine PoCs and evaluations are a normal and acceptable part of business, so the responses are different from those assisting with PoCs.

Approach a PoC with clear intent and understanding of the challenge that faces you. You must Continue reading

5 ways to design your container network

There’s been a lot of talk about container networking in the industry lately (heck, we can’t even stop talking about it). And it’s for a good reason. Containers offer a fantastic way to develop and manage microservices and distributed applications easily and efficiently. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we launched Host Pack — to make container networking even simpler. Between Host Pack and NetQ, you can get fabric-wide connectivity and visibility from server to switch.

There are a variety of ways you can deploy a container network using Host Pack and Cumulus Linux, and we have documented some of them in several Validated Design Guides discussed below. Wondering which deployment method is right for your business? This blog post is for you.

Docker Swarm with Host Pack

Overview: The Docker Swarm with Host pack solution uses the connectivity module within Host Pack, Free Range Routing (FRR) in a container. The FRR container runs on the servers and uses BGP unnumbered for Layer 3 connectivity, enabling the hosts to participate in the routing fabric. We use Docker Swarm as the container orchestration tool for simplicity.

Choose this deployment if:

Cisco Wireless Solution : Local Mode Vs Flex Connect

Today I will talk about the Wireless deployment modes and will discuss which and why to use that deployment mode in the your wireless network. 


Wireless Deployment :Local Mode
In local mode, an AP creates two CAPWAP tunnels to the WLC.  One is for management, the other is data traffic.  This behaviour is known as "centrally switched" because the data traffic is switched(bridged) from the AP to the controller where it is then routed by some routing device.
Locally switched means the traffic is terminated at the local switch adjacent to the access point. 

Fig 1.1- Local Mode behind Mesh Network

Its a good idea if you have traffic that the client is sending to the local site rather than it going via the controller and travelling over the WAN link twice say for file or print services

Wireless Deployment : Flex Mode
Flex Connect also known as HREAP by the old timers, allows data traffic to be switched locally and not go back to the controller.  It basically causes the AP to behave like an autonomous AP, but be managed by the WLC.  In this mode, the AP can still function even Continue reading

Software Defined Networking : Introduction to VeloCloud SD-WAN Solution

Today I am going to talk about the another article on the Software defined networking and that is SD-WAN. SD-WAN stands for the software defined WAN. Earlier i talk about the SD-WAN solution from the Viptela which is now acquired by Cisco systems.

As I earlier talked about the SD-WAN architecture and the main focus on the control, Data and management plane. The intent is to separate the Data and control plane from the devices. Data plane as usual will be there at the box level (Routers, switches) while separated the control plane to centralised management systems where all decisions will be taken care.

For Viptela SD-WAN solution, please go through the below link for further study

Viptela SD-WAN Solution - Cisco Systems Company

I would like to tell you guys that we have our own youtube channel for various network videos that can further help you guys to study further. I will going to add many more videos soon on the channel, Please subscribe to the channel for the study network related videos

Subscribe us on Youtube: http://y2u.be/0c4lMYVp9go

VeloCloud SD-WAN Solution
Let's talk about the VeloCloud SD-WAN solution, as similar to the other vendors, Velocloud uses the same Continue reading

How to read newspapers

News articles don't contain the information you think. Instead, they are written according to a formula, and that formula is as much about distorting/hiding information as it is about revealing it.

A good example is the following. I claimed hate-crimes aren't increasing. The tweet below tries to disprove me, by citing a news article that claims the opposite:




But the data behind this article tells a very different story than the words.

Every November, the FBI releases its hate-crime statistics for the previous year. They've been doing this every year for a long time. When they do so, various news organizations grab the data and write a quick story around it.

By "story" I mean a story. Raw numbers don't interest people, so the writer instead has to wrap it in a narrative that does interest people. That's what the writer has done in the above story, leading with the fact that hate crimes have increased.

But is this increase meaningful? What do the numbers actually Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For November 17th, 2017

Hey, it's HighScalability time: 


The BOSS Great Wall. The largest structure yet found in the universe. Contains 830 galaxies. A billion light years across. 10,000 times the mass of the Milky Way.

 

If you like this sort of Stuff then please support me on Patreon. And there's my new book, Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10, for complete cloud newbies. 


  • $25 billion: Alibaba's Singles' Day sales; 6+ million: Slack daily active users; 4ms: boot time for a unikernel based VM; 1 billion: out of date Android devices; 10-20%: increase in RAM prices; 8 million: lines of code in F-35; $3 million: lost by Isaac Newton in the stock market; 30: it's RAID's birthday!; thousands: bugs fixed with Pentagon hackathon; 6+ terabytes: earth satellite data downloaded per day; 

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • Berners-Lee: When I invented the web, I didn’t have to ask Vint Cerf [the ‘father of the internet’] for permission to use the internet
    • Germaine de Stael: Ridicule dries up the imagination.
    • Alex Hudson: A lot of technical write-ups focus on scaling, performance and large-scale systems. It’s definitely interesting to see what problems Netflix have, and how Continue reading

Weekend Reading: 2017-11-17

There’s an “automation meteor” headed right at us, according to financial adviser and Reformed Broker blogger Josh Brown, who used this troubling “chart o’ the day” from Wharton to show just “how quickly things have changed” over the past decade. And how they’re going to keep on changing. — Sean Langlios @ MarketWatch

Andrew Ng, formerly the head of AI for Chinese search giant Baidu and, before that, creator of Google’s deep-learning Brain project, knows as well as anyone that artificial intelligence is coming for plenty of jobs. And many of us don’t even know it. — Racel Metz @ MIT Technology Review

Cloudflare provides security and domain name services for millions of the most prominent sites on the web. The company has built a solid reputation for its secure encryption and one of the key factors in its system is a wall of 100 lava lamps in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters. — Rhett Jones @ gizmodo

Predictions As A Service

It’s getting close to the end of the year and it’s time once again for the yearly December flood of posts that will be predicting what’s coming in 2018. Long time readers of my blog know that I don’t do these kinds of posts. My New Year’s Day posts are almost always introspective in nature and forward looking from my own personal perspective. But I also get asked quite a bit to contribute to other posts about the future. And I wanted to tell you why I think the prediction business is a house of cards built on quicksand.

The Layups

It’s far too tempting in the prediction business to play it safe. Absent a ton of research, it’s just easier to play it safe with some not-so-bold predictions. For instance, here’s what I could say about 2018 right now:

  • Whitebox switching will grow in revenue.
  • Software will continue to transform networking.
  • Cisco is going to buy companies.

Those are 100% true. Even without having spent one day in 2018. They’re also things I didn’t need to tell you at all. You already knew them. They’re almost common sense at this point. If I needed to point out that Cisco Continue reading

What do John Chambers and crickets have in common? The IoT

Earlier this year, Cisco announced the man who turned it from a small router company into the world’s dominant network vendor, John Chambers, was exiting his post as executive chairman of the board and it turned the mothership fully over to Chuck Robbins. This raised the question: What has Chambers been up to? Retired?Also on Network World: IoT catches on in New England fishing town Hardly. I met with Chambers near the end of his tenure as CEO, and he most emphatically stated he was not retiring. There are many things I admire about Chambers, but two of his more notable attributes are that he has a knack of catching market transitions and he has a burning desire to change the world. In fact, under Chambers, Cisco put together perhaps the best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in the industry, and that legacy has carried over in the Chuck Robbins era.To read this article in full, please click here

1 … 1,815 1,816 1,817 1,818 1,819 … 3,836