Troubleshooting: Basics

It’s 2AM, the network is down, and the CEO is on the phone asking when it is going to be back up—the overnight job crucial to the business opening in the morning has failed, and the company stands to lose millions of dollars if the network is not fixed in the next hour or so. Almost every network engineer has faced this problem at least once in their career, often involving intense bouts of troubleshooting.

And yet—troubleshooting is a skill that is hardly ever taught. There are a number of computer science programs that do include classes in troubleshooting, but these tend to be mostly focused on tools, rather than technique, or focused on practical skill application. I was also trained in troubleshooting many years ago as a young recruit into the United States Air Force—but the training was, again, practical in bent, with very few theoretical components.

Note to readers: I wrote a short piece on troubleshooting here on rule11, but I have taken that piece down and replaced it with this short series on the topic. I did start writing a book on this topic many years ago, but my co-authors and I soon discovered troubleshooting was going Continue reading

Announcing Cumulus Linux 3.3: Buffer monitoring, PIM-SSM + more!

We’re excited to announce the release of Cumulus Linux 3.3! This product update was designed to enhance the performance and usability of your network. This release includes several enhancements to many existing features, like NCLU and EVPN, as well as brand new features, like buffer monitoring, PIM-SSM, 25G support and more, for increased reliability. The following paragraphs cover the key updates in this release.

Buffer monitoring

Proactively detect congestion events that result in latency and jitter by monitoring traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks early and effectively plan for capacity. This new feature available on Mellanox hardware alerts for congestion & latency thresholds, helping you understand traffic patterns and model network operations based on buffer utilization data.

Ideal for customers using latency Sensitive Apps such as for HFT, HPC, distributed in-memory apps, buffer monitoring will allow you to proactively detect congestion events that result in latency and jitter by monitoring traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks early and effective plan for capacity.

PIM-SSM

Get Source-Specific Multicast for more efficient multicast traffic segmentation and higher scalability.

Having intermittent sources is a common issue when market data applications are used as servers to send data to a multicast group and then go silent Continue reading

Cisco fires back at VMware decision to whack third party virtual switches

Cisco today said it would offer its virtual switch users technology to get around VMware’s recent elimination of support for third party virtual switches such as Cisco’s Nexus 1000V.VMware in March announced that going forward it would no longer support third party virtual switch (vSwitch) programs and that customers should just work with VMware’s  vSphere products.+More on Network World: Cisco grabs-up SD-WAN player Viptela for $610M+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco fires back at VMware decision to whack third party virtual switches

Cisco today said it would offer its virtual switch users technology to get around VMware’s recent elimination of support for third party virtual switches such as Cisco’s Nexus 1000V.VMware in March announced that going forward it would no longer support third party virtual switch (vSwitch) programs and that customers should just work with VMware’s  vSphere products.+More on Network World: Cisco grabs-up SD-WAN player Viptela for $610M+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

58% off Anker Portable Charger PowerCore – Deal Alert

The powerful 20000mAh PowerCore 20100 from Anker weighs just 12.5 oz, but fully charges most phones and tablets to 100% several times over without needing to be recharged. It charges the iPhone 6s seven times, the Galaxy S6 five times or the iPad mini 4 twice. Industry leading output of 4.8 amps provides enough power to simultaneously charge any combination of devices at full speed. Surge protection, short circuit protection and more advanced safety features keep your devices safe. For additional peace of mind, the Anker PowerCore 20100 comes with an 18 month warranty and easily accessible customer service. It currently averages 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 9,200 people (84% rate it 5 stars -- read reviews). With a regular list price of $79.99, Amazon has it discounted by $46, making it available right now for just $33.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Cisco needs SD-WAN vendor Viptela

Cisco, the acquisition machine, is at it again. It’s been about three months since the company plunked down $3.7 billion for AppDynamics, so I’m sure all that cash was burning a hole in Chuck Robbins pockets and making another acquisition seem long overdue. Well, speculation about who Cisco might buy next ended yesterday when the company announced its intent to acquire SD-WAN vendor Viptela for $610 million. The price tag seems fairly modest for a company that was valued at $875 million about a year ago. Even at the lower price, Viptela investors should be satisfied with the return, given the total investment in the company was about $110 million. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Cisco needs SD-WAN vendor Viptela

Cisco, the acquisition machine, is at it again. It’s been about three months since the company plunked down $3.7 billion for AppDynamics, so I’m sure all that cash was burning a hole in Chuck Robbins pockets and making another acquisition seem long overdue. Well, speculation about who Cisco might buy next ended yesterday when the company announced its intent to acquire SD-WAN vendor Viptela for $610 million. The price tag seems fairly modest for a company that was valued at $875 million about a year ago. Even at the lower price, Viptela investors should be satisfied with the return, given the total investment in the company was about $110 million. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

These new super fast Intel SSDs provide a bridge to Optane

If you can't afford Intel's super fast Optane SSDs but need a massive speed boost, the company's latest DC P4600 and DC P4500 SSDs may fill the need.The new SSDs are based on conventional 3D NAND and targeted at data centers. The SSDs will be used in servers or storage arrays to serve up quick video streams, voice-assistant AI responses, and even pull out information from databases.These SSDs are a reliable upgrade for those who don't want to mess with Optane, which is based on brand-new memory technology. According to Intel's rough estimate, the P4500 and P4600 drives provide two times faster read and write performance compared to predecessors, the DC P3520 and P3600 drives.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dataset of scraped Tinder pics poof from Kaggle after Tinder complains

Tinder was ticked after 40,000 profile photos were scraped to create the People of Tinder dataset, accused the person behind the script of violating its terms of service, and asked Kaggle to remove the dataset from the platform. Nevertheless, it was downloaded hundreds of time before the take-down which now results in a 404 error.The People of Tinder dataset was created by Stuart Colianni; it consisted of 40,000 images from Tinder users in the San Francisco Bay Area – half were of women and half were of men. He intends to use the dataset with Google’s TensorFlow’s Inception to create a neural network capable of distinguishing between male and female images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dataset of scraped Tinder pics poof from Kaggle after Tinder complains

Tinder was ticked after 40,000 profile photos were scraped to create the People of Tinder dataset, accused the person behind the script of violating its terms of service, and asked Kaggle to remove the dataset from the platform. Nevertheless, it was downloaded hundreds of time before the take-down which now results in a 404 error.The People of Tinder dataset was created by Stuart Colianni; it consisted of 40,000 images from Tinder users in the San Francisco Bay Area – half were of women and half were of men. He intends to use the dataset with Google’s TensorFlow’s Inception to create a neural network capable of distinguishing between male and female images.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What Pepsi’s failed ad can teach us about data privacy

By now, you've probably seen the ad that Pepsi released to the world and then quickly withdrew when it became obvious how tone deaf it was.I don't have anything to say about the ad that hasn't been said already, but I do want to examine the conditions that led to an ad of such obliviousness to be released. Why? Because Pepsi’s failed attempt to promote itself may have some lessons for those anxious to keep their company from experiencing a similar calamity when it comes to the release of personal data. I’d like to use this post to explore how the Privacy By Design approach to improving organizational awareness about data protection may offer a way to avoid such pitfalls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: What Pepsi’s failed ad can teach us about data privacy

By now, you've probably seen the ad that Pepsi released to the world and then quickly withdrew when it became obvious how tone deaf it was.I don't have anything to say about the ad that hasn't been said already, but I do want to examine the conditions that led to an ad of such obliviousness to be released. Why? Because Pepsi’s failed attempt to promote itself may have some lessons for those anxious to keep their company from experiencing a similar calamity when it comes to the release of personal data. I’d like to use this post to explore how the Privacy By Design approach to improving organizational awareness about data protection may offer a way to avoid such pitfalls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Android gets patches for critical flaws in media handling, hardware drivers

Android is getting security fixes for more than 100 vulnerabilities, including 29 critical flaws in the media processing server, hardware-specific drivers and other components.Android's monthly security bulletin, published Monday, was split into two "patch levels," which are represented as date strings on the "About" page of Android devices.The 2017-05-01 security patch level covers fixes for vulnerabilities that are common to all Android devices while the 2017-05-05 level covers additional fixes for hardware drivers and kernel components that are present only in some devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Android gets patches for critical flaws in media handling, hardware drivers

Android is getting security fixes for more than 100 vulnerabilities, including 29 critical flaws in the media processing server, hardware-specific drivers and other components.Android's monthly security bulletin, published Monday, was split into two "patch levels," which are represented as date strings on the "About" page of Android devices.The 2017-05-01 security patch level covers fixes for vulnerabilities that are common to all Android devices while the 2017-05-05 level covers additional fixes for hardware drivers and kernel components that are present only in some devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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