The Real Need for Cybersecurity

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, “Our daily life, economic vitality, and national security depend on a stable, safe, and resilient cyberspace.” Digital infrastructure has infiltrated most aspects of our daily lives. When you start thinking about this in depth, it is easy to see how quickly things can turn s ugly.

Have you ever considered what would happen if our power grid was attacked? Beyond some of the domino effects the power grid itself has, think about the work to bring it back online. We are all accustomed to managing systems with other systems. A widespread power issue could create some very interesting chicken and egg problems.

Maybe some are smug enough to think they cannot be affected–with their resilient systems and diesel generators. Ever consider the likelihood of that fuel supply being available for the long term if there’s no utility power available at other places? The affected part of the world would be so challenged by such an event that everyone would be impacted, directly and indirectly. No power, no computers, no network and no ability to transact business in the ways that we are accustomed to. In other words, the possibility of impacting physiological layer of Continue reading

The Real Need for Cybersecurity

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, “Our daily life, economic vitality, and national security depend on a stable, safe, and resilient cyberspace.” Digital infrastructure has infiltrated most aspects of our daily lives. When you start thinking about this in depth, it is easy to see how quickly things can turn s ugly.

Have you ever considered what would happen if our power grid was attacked? Beyond some of the domino effects the power grid itself has, think about the work to bring it back online. We are all accustomed to managing systems with other systems. A widespread power issue could create some very interesting chicken and egg problems.

Maybe some are smug enough to think they cannot be affected–they have built resilient systems and have a diesel generator. Ever consider the likelihood of that fuel supply being available for the long term if there’s no electricity? The affected part of the world would be so challenged by such an event that everyone would be impacted, directly and indirectly. No power, no computers, no network and no ability to transact business in the ways that we are accustomed to. In other words, the possibility of impacting physiological layer of Maslow’s pyramid Continue reading

IPSEC configurations between two routers across Internet

Today I am going to talk about the IPSEC configurations between two routers in the LAN segments. I know most of you understand the theoretical and the configurational part of the IPSEC in details. In this article I am just taking the example of the IPSEC configuration between two routers in a LAN network or you can say that it is a LAN to LAN IPSEC configurations between two routers.

The article is based in the assumption of the routers as i took Cisco routers in the example, These models are Cisco 3640 routers which is i knew end of sale as of now. Cisco 3640 is a modular Access routers and uses in small or branch offices.


Lets take below mentioned topology to understand the configuration of IPSEC on one of the router named Router A. So in the below example we have the LAN to LAN IPSEC tunnel between the routers via Internet link. where the host behind the router A wants to talk to host behind the router B. Make sure you know that IPSEC is generally used where the intermediate network is Internet via which you have the secure connectivity.


The other way to connect the same Continue reading

Network Engineer Evolution

About two years ago I made a learning roadmap for network engineers who want to transform their skills towards Software Defined Networking. I presented it at various events including Cisco Live. It was good, but it looks like I didn't provide the full story. So let's discuss it again, and we will start from the very beginning.


Any network engineer who just starts his or her career today will begin in Phase 1: as the User of networking products where the engineer only knows how to configure the product, hopefully by reading the documentation from the vendor's website first. This type of engineer is what I call "Config Monkey" (sorry, monkey!). If you think you are still in this phase, please don't get offended: I started my career here too. There is no innovation at all, only follow the manual to make the products run.

Then we will move to Phase 2: as Advanced User of networking products. This is the phase where the engineer understands how networking protocols work in detail. He is a domain expert now and can start fine tuning the protocols to optimize the infrastructure. IGP timers, fast re-route, BGP attributes etc. and the engineer Continue reading

Ten Years of Spousetivities

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.

Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:

  • On Monday, August 28, Spousetivities will kick the week off with a “Welcome Breakfast”, including—as usual!—the opportunity to win some great prizes. iPads, Apple Watches, VR headsets, GoPro cameras, and more have all been prizes in previous years. (What? You expected me to spill the beans on what’s being given away this year?)
  • The breakfast is followed by a scavenger hunt, including a visit to an ice bar and the chance for more prizes. Veeam is sponsoring the scavenger hunt.
  • On Tuesday, August 29, there is an option for a very cool helicopter tour Continue reading

Ten Years of Spousetivities

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.

Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:

  • On Monday, August 28, Spousetivities will kick the week off with a “Welcome Breakfast”, including—as usual!—the opportunity to win some great prizes. iPads, Apple Watches, VR headsets, GoPro cameras, and more have all been prizes in previous years. (What? You expected me to spill the beans on what’s being given away this year?)
  • The breakfast is followed by a scavenger hunt, including a visit to an ice bar and the chance for more prizes. Veeam is sponsoring the scavenger hunt.
  • On Tuesday, August 29, there is an option for a very cool helicopter tour Continue reading

Ten Years of Spousetivities

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (OK, so it was 2008 and it was here in this galaxy—on this very planet, in fact), I posted an article about bringing your spouse to VMworld. That one post sparked a fire that, kindled by my wife’s passion and creativity, culminates this year in ten years of Spousetivities! Yes, Spousetivities is back at VMworld (both US and Europe) this year, and Crystal has some pretty nice events planned for this year’s participants.

Registration is here, and here’s a quick look at some of the activities planned for VMworld US in Las Vegas:

  • On Monday, August 28, Spousetivities will kick the week off with a “Welcome Breakfast”, including—as usual!—the opportunity to win some great prizes. iPads, Apple Watches, VR headsets, GoPro cameras, and more have all been prizes in previous years. (What? You expected me to spill the beans on what’s being given away this year?)
  • The breakfast is followed by a scavenger hunt, including a visit to an ice bar and the chance for more prizes. Veeam is sponsoring the scavenger hunt.
  • On Tuesday, August 29, there is an option for a very cool helicopter tour Continue reading

Cumulus content round up

To help you stay in the know on all things data center networking, we’ve gathered some of our favorite content from both our own publishing house and from around the web. We hope this helps you stay up to date on both your own skills and on data center networking trends. If you have any suggestions for next time, let us know in the comment section!

Our fav new pieces at Cumulus Networks

BGP in the data center: Are you leveraging everything BGP has to offer? Probably not. This practical report peels away the mystique of BGP to reveal an elegant and mature, simple yet sophisticated protocol. Author Dinesh Dutt, Chief Scientist at Cumulus Networks, covers BGP operations as well as enhancements that greatly simplify its use so that practitioners can refer to this report as an operational manual. Download the guide.

Magic Quadrant report:  Cumulus Networks has been named a “Visionary” in the Data Center Networking category for 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant. With 96% of their survey respondents finding open networking to be a relevant buying criterion and with the adoption of white-box switching to reach 22% by 2020, it’s clear that disaggregation is the answer for forward-looking companies. Continue reading

What is IoT?

The Internet of Things, at its simplest level, is smart devices - from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the Internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What is IoT?

The Internet of Things, at its simplest level, is smart devices - from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the Internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What is IoT?

The Internet of Things, at its simplest level, is smart devices - from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the Internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The System Bottleneck Shifts To PCI-Express

No matter what, system architects are always going to have to contend with one – and possibly more – bottlenecks when they design the machines that store and crunch the data that makes the world go around. These days, there is plenty of compute at their disposal, a reasonable amount of main memory to hang off of it, and both Ethernet and InfiniBand are on the cusp of 200 Gb/sec of performance and not too far away from 400 Gb/sec and even higher bandwidths.

Now, it looks like the peripheral bus based on the PCI-Express protocol is becoming the bottleneck,

The System Bottleneck Shifts To PCI-Express was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: How to plan your successful cloud migration

Recent Accenture Strategy research found that four out of five companies run up to half of their business functions in the cloud. Moreover, that figure is likely to increase significantly over the next few years. The research reveals that a clear majority of business leaders see the cloud platform as a critical enabler of greater innovation and competitive edge.Yet, companies still struggle when it comes to structuring the cloud transformation, beginning with the fundamental first step — planning a successful migration. What’s lacking is a solid comprehension of what value the cloud brings, its potential and its elasticity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For July 14th, 2017

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

 

We've seen algorithms expressed in seeds. Here's an algorithm for taking birth control pills expressed as packaging. Awesome history on 99% Invisible.

If you like this sort of Stuff then please support me on Patreon.

 

  • 2 trillion: web requests served daily by Akamai; 9 billion: farthest star ever seen in light-years; 10^31: bacteriophages on earth; 7: peers needed to repair ransomware damage; $30,000: threshold of when to leave AWS; $300K-$400K: beginning cost of running Azure Stack on HPE ProLiant; 3.5M: files in the Microsoft's git repository; 300M: Google's internal image data training set size; 7.2 Mbps: global average connection speed; 85 million: Amazon Prime members; 35%: Germany generated its electricity from renewables;

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • Jessica Flack: I believe that science sits at the intersection of these three things — the data, the discussions and the math. It is that triangulation — that’s what science is. And true understanding, if there is such a thing, comes only when we can do the translation between these three ways of representing the world.
    • gonchs: “If your whole business relies on us [Medium], you might Continue reading