This Mirai malware vaccine could protect insecure IoT devices

The hazard of unsophisticated and poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices came to the front last year with the Mirai DDoS attack that involved nearly a million bots. Many of these devices remain a threat.Researchers have posed an original solution to the problem: Use the vulnerability of these devices to inject a white worm that secures the devices. It is an epidemiological approach that creates immunity with a vaccine by exposing the immune system to a weakened form of the disease.+ Also on Network World: How to improve IoT security + These devices are still a threat because some cannot be fixed because they have hard-coded back doors. Other insecure devices have software or firmware vulnerabilities that cannot be fixed because product designers did not include a software updates mechanism.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For August 25th, 2017

Hey, it's HighScalability time: 

 

View of the total solar eclipse from a hill top near Madras Oregon, August 21, 2017. As totality approaches, dragons gorge on sun flesh; darkness cleaves the day; a chill chases away the heat; all becomes still. Contact made! Diamonds glitter; beads sparkle; shadow band snakes slither across pale dust; moon shadow races across the valley, devouring all in wonder. Inside a circle of standing stones, obsidian knives slash and stab. Sacrifices offered, dragons take flight. In awe we behold the returning of the light.

• ~5: ethereum transactions per second; 29+M: Snapchat news viewers; 100K: largest Mastodon instance; 2x: Alibaba's cloud base growth; 1B: trees planted by a province in Pakistan; 90.07%: automated decoding of honey bee waggle dances; $86.4B: Worldwide Information Security Spending; 1200: db migrations from Mysql to Postgres; $7B: Netflix content spend (most not original); 13%: increased productivity by making vacation mandatory; 75%: US teens use iPhones; 30,000x: energy use for Bitcoin transaction compared to Visa; ~1 trillion: observations processed for Gaia mission; 50% Continue reading

VMware Scores ‘Huge Win’ with Vodafone for NFV

It's VMware's largest-ever telco deal.

RFC 8215: Local-Use IPv4/IPv6 Translation Prefix published

RFC 8215 “Local-Use IPv4/IPv6 Translation Prefix” was recently published, reserving the IPv6 prefix 64:ff9b:1::/48 for local use within domains enabling IPv4/IPv6 translation mechanisms.

This allows the coexistence of multiple IPv4/IPv6 translation mechanisms in the same network, without requiring the use of a Network-Specific Prefix assigned from an allocated global unicast address space.

The well-known prefix 64:ff9b::/96 was originally reserved by RFC6052 for IPv4/IPv6 translation, but several new translation mechanisms such as those in RFCs 6146 and 7915 have subsequently been defined that target different use cases. It’s therefore possible that a network operator may wish to make use of several of these simultaneously, hence why a larger address space has been defined to accommodate this.

The shortest translation prefix being deployed in a live network was observed as being a /64, hence /48 was chosen as being on a 16-bit boundary whilst being able to accommodate multiple instances of /64.

If you’re interested in finding out more about IPv4/IPv6 translation mechanisms, there’s a few Deploy360 blogs on NAT64 and 464XLAT amongst others.

The post RFC 8215: Local-Use IPv4/IPv6 Translation Prefix published appeared first on Internet Society.

Dictionary: Grayfield

What does grayfield mean in IT ?

The post Dictionary: Grayfield appeared first on EtherealMind.

Worth Reading: Open core, open perimeter

Today, software development is built around APIs. Instead of embedding a vendor’s product into their application, developers can call an API to consume services from a vendor. The developers don’t need to know what’s responding to their calls on the backend; they simply need to know what the vendor’s API expects from their code and what they can expect to receive back from the API. It is, in many senses, wonderfully non-intimate. —Brian Reale @ Opensource

The post Worth Reading: Open core, open perimeter appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: Seeing double: why IoT digital twins will change the face of manufacturing

If your organization is planning to leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to gather data from products and systems, see how goods are performing in the field, enhance factory production, or any other reason, it needs to become familiar with the concept of the “digital twin.”A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical asset, process, or system that can be used for a variety of purposes. The digital representation of an object provides both the elements and the dynamics of how the object operates throughout its life cycle.The digital twin is intended to be an up-to-date and accurate replica of all elements of a physical object for which sensor data is available. Digital twins integrate technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, and sensor telemetry to create digital clones of live and historical performance of physical machines and idealized digital simulation models that evolve based on the data collected from real-world instances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Abidjan Holds a Successful AfPIF 2017

Abidjan became the third West African city to hold the annual Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF), attracting top African and global players in the Internet ecosystem.

This year’s forum attracted 227 participants working in IXPs, ISPs, governments, content carriers, network providers, hardware providers, and software service providers among others. The meeting tool, which allows participants to discuss ways to exchange content, had 276 registered users who scheduled 170 meetings. Twenty networks introduced themselves during “Peering Introductions” session, held every day. This year there were 23 sponsors: Seacom, Liquid Telecom, Angonix, Angola Cables, De Cix, Linx, Adva, Afrinic, Akamai, Dolphin, Facebook, Flexoptix, France IX, Google, icolo.io, Main One, Netflix, Netnod, Yahoo, Medalion, MTN, Teraco, and ARTCI.

Getting more statistics

Research conducted by PCH reinforced the fact that most peering agreements have no formal agreement. The study done in 2016 found that 99 per cent of peering agreements in 148 countries were through a handshake. The study asked questions such as: are there formal agreements, is the peering arrangement symmetrical, is the content is IPv6 or IPv4, and what are the laws governing the agreement. Out of the 1,935,822 agreements, 49 percent comprised of matching peers, meaning it was easy Continue reading

Abidjan Holds a Successful AfPIF 2017

IDG Contributor Network: The 3 types of SD-WAN architecture

If you’re contemplating whether SD-WAN will improve your company’s Wide Area Network, I’ve learned it’s important to first get a grasp of the different SD-WAN architectures.As a long-time business ISP and cloud broker, I’ve had the best seat in the house for watching the SD-WAN craze take flight. As dozens of SD-WAN product offerings pop up, I have the enviable job of making sense of it all. [sigh]In my observation, there are 3 main buckets of SD-WAN architecture, each of which benefit certain types of companies. Which architecture is “best” depends on the applications your company is accessing through your WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The 3 types of SD-WAN architecture

If you’re contemplating whether SD-WAN will improve your company’s Wide Area Network, I’ve learned it’s important to first get a grasp of the different SD-WAN architectures.As a long-time business ISP and cloud broker, I’ve had the best seat in the house for watching the SD-WAN craze take flight. As dozens of SD-WAN product offerings pop up, I have the enviable job of making sense of it all. [sigh]In my observation, there are 3 main buckets of SD-WAN architecture, each of which benefit certain types of companies. Which architecture is “best” depends on the applications your company is accessing through your WAN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How the end of net neutrality could affect IoT development

With the development of the Internet of Things approaching breakneck speeds, many aspiring developers and consumers alike are asking themselves what’s next for the internet-driven phenomenon that’s come to define the market of today. More often than not, these innovators are coming to the same conclusion that the battle over net neutrality will be the defining aspect of the IoT’s future.So how exactly is the battle over net neutrality and internet-connectivity playing out, and what connotations does it carry for IoT development? What steps are the industry’s leaders taking to prepare themselves for the future, and just what should consumers and producers of IoT gadgets and software expect for the rest of the 21st century?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New Coder: Real World Code Development

It’s one thing to learn the syntax for a programming language, but it’s another to have the ability to think through a problem and break it down into a logical set of tasks which the code can execute.

On the Solarwinds Thwack Geek Speak blog I worked through a real world automation process to see what the steps might be, and how it can sometimes be possible, and even advantageous, to reuse code or hand off a task to another tool. Please do take a trip to Thwack and check out my post, “New Coder: Real World Code Development“.

Please see my Disclosures page for more information about my role as a Solarwinds Ambassador.

If you liked this post, please do click through to the source at New Coder: Real World Code Development and give me a share/like. Thank you!

Prime Members Get 60% off Nucleus Anywhere Intercom with Amazon Alexa Right Now – Deal Alert

Nucleus is a family communication device that connects you with the people you love, whether they're downstairs or across the country. Make audio and video calls by simply asking Alexa. Designed with the kids and Grandma in mind, making it easier than ever to set up and just say "hello."  Chat on the go: Use the mobile app to check in with from anywhere.  Right now Prime members get 60% off Nucleus Anywhere Intercom, so you can buy it on Amazon now for just $99.99. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What is Colocation, POP , Carrier Hotels and Meetme Room ?

What is Colocation, POP , Carrier Hotels and Meetme Room ?   If you are working in operator domain or a network engineer who wants to learn what is colocation , what is POP (Point of Presence) , how POPs are physically connected , POP terminology , understand meetme room and carrier hotel, this post […]

The post What is Colocation, POP , Carrier Hotels and Meetme Room ? appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Technology Short Take #86

Welcome to Technology Short Take #86, the latest collection of links, articles, and posts from around the web, focused on major data center technology areas. Enjoy!

Networking

• Csilla Bessenyei has a series of articles on step-by-step automation that you might find helpful. I found the articles at step 5, the benefits of Git for network engineers, but the previous four articles also look helpful.
• James Governor provides a useful explanation of a service mesh in the context of Istio and Linkerd; this is helpful for those of you out there who’ve heard the terms/names but haven’t had time to really dig in and understand what’s happening here.
• Speaking of service mesh: a couple related articles passed across my desk(top) recently. The first of these is an article on using Traefik with Kubernetes and Let’s Encrypt (throwing in a Consul back-end for the fun of it). The second is this post on Istio plus Linkerd, which talks about how to use Linkerd in conjunction with Istio to build a service mesh. (Do I need to talk about how understanding a service mesh is a good thing for networking professionals? That might be a good blog post topic right there! Continue reading

Challenges of Data Center Fabric Deployments [Video]

One of the use cases we covered in Network Automation Use Cases webinar is a fully-automated data center fabric deployment. Dinesh Dutt (Cumulus Networks) started this section with an overview of challenges you might face in data center fabric deployments.

If you want to automate your fabric with Ansible, enroll into the Ansible for Networking Engineers course, or attend the Building Network Automation Solutions course if you want to get a broader view.

VMware NSX-V: Security for VxRAIL Hyper-Converged Solutions

Check-out the new white paper on leveraging NSX-V for security within the VxRAIL hyper-converged platform. The paper outlines how VxRAIL hyper-converged solutions leveraging NSX-V for security solves many of the security challenges with traditional silo-based architectures. A brief outline is provided below. Make sure to checkout the white paper for additional details.  Continue reading

Woot! Passed My CCDE Recert (2nd Attempt)

Friday, August 18th was the day. Yup. Just last week.   My 2nd attempt at the CCDE written to re-certify my 3 “Es”.  To say I was nervous would very much be a decided understatement.  I don’t think I have ever been so nervous to take a Cisco written exam ever before.  Seriously ever before.

It’s funny… in all these years of taking the recert exams… I pretty much have always had the same pattern and same view on it.  My pattern usually is to take the 1st attempt 6-9 months before my 2 years is slated to be up.  My view on it has always been that of “time to refresh my broader knowledge again” and make it deep again.  There is that old adage “if you don’t use it you lose it”.   Teehee… yeah… that is typically IS-IS for me. 

My view this time around was different.  And given that my first CCIE was from 1997…. this change in view was a surprise to me.  My view was more of it being something I “had to do” instead of “wanted to do”.

Why?  Because for the first Continue reading

AfPIF Day Two: Identifying Challenges and Opportunities