2016 Recap and 2017 Goals

Yet another recap post to follow up on last year’s. 2015 was a big transition year for me, and last year I wanted to make sure I kept the momentum going.

I make this post yearly to publicly track my own professional development goals. I find this helps me stay accountable to these goals, and it also allows others to give me a kick in the butt if I’m falling behind.

2015 Goal Recap

First, let me recap some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, and see how well I did.

Network Automation Book - At this time last year, I announced that I was working on a network automation book with Scott Lowe and Jason Edelman. This has certainly taken a bit more time than any of us would have liked, but we’re very near the end. The three of us have had a very busy year, and there are very few things to do for this release. However, we have pushed several additional chapters to O’Reilly, so you can still read these via Safari.

Open Source - Given that I now work for a company centered around an open Continue reading

34% off TurboTax Deluxe 2016 Tax Software Federal & State – Deal Alert

TurboTax coaches you every step of the way and double checks your return as you go to handle even the toughest tax situations, so you can be confident you’re getting every dollar you deserve. Its typical list price of $59.99 has been reduced a generous 34% to $39.86, a deal that is exclusive to Amazon. Learn more, or take advantage of the deal now, on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PIXEL, the latest Raspberry Pi OS … for x86!

Apparently Santa thought that Raspberry Pi users deserved something special this Christmas because there, underneath the digital Christmas tree, was the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s x86 port of its Debian + PIXEL Linux desktop environment designed to run on pretty much any hardware even old, pensioned-off gear. Lovers of horrible backronyms might have rejoiced at the name PIXEL which is derived from “Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight” but as clumsy as the name’s derivation might be, the PIXEL distro is way cool and a seriously good idea.  Mark Gibbs PIXEL is a highly modified version of the LXDE X11 desktop environment on Debian “Jessie” and was originally released in September 2016 but only for Raspberry Pi boards. This Christmas release now allows you to run PIXEL on most X86 devices including many machines that are veritable antiques.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Panama expands Cloudflare network to 50 countries

Panama expands Cloudflare network to 50 countries

A man, a plan, a canal, a data center. Over 5 million Internet properties are now faster across Panama, as Cloudflare turned up its newest data center in Panama City. This is our 102nd data center globally, and brings us to a special milestone as our network now spans 50 countries. While perhaps not quite as big an announcement as the $5B Panama Canal expansion, the websites of many important newspapers, TV stations, banks and airlines can be accessed directly from Panama.

‘A man a plan a canal’ y un data center! A Partir de hoy más de 5 millones de sitios en internet serán mas rápidos desde Panamá, ya que hemos introducido nuestro más reciente centro de datos en Ciudad de Panamá. Es nuestro centro de datos número 102 a nivel mundial. Es una hito especial ya que la red global de Cloudflare alcanza 50 países a nivel mundial. Tal vez no es un anuncio tan grande como la inauguración de la expansión del canal, pero a partir de hoy muchos de los sitios importantes de diarios, Televisoras, bancos y aerolíneas serán servidos directamente desde Panamá.

Panama expands Cloudflare network to 50 countries

Bridge of the Americas
Puente de las Américas

Internet in Panama

El Internet Continue reading

New Year’s Resolution: Learn Docker

Remember last year when I said the market for Docker jobs was blowing up? Well, it’s more than doubled in the last year. And Swarm is also rising quickly, growing 12829%, almost all of that in the last year. We expect that with our partnership with Microsoft and Windows Docker containers, that this will grow even faster in the next year as .NET developers start to containerize their applications and Windows IT Professionals start porting their infrastructure to Docker. Take a look at this trendline from indeed.com.

Learn Docker to get a Docker job

So what are you doing to increase your Docker skills? Want a few suggestions?

Whether you’re a developer or more an ops person, a great place to start is the Docker Labs repository, which has currently 28 labs for you to choose from. They range from beginner tutorials, to orchestration workshops, security and networking tutorials, and guides for using different programming languages and developer tools.

Of course there’s also the Docker Documentation, which has a rich set of resources.

At Dockercon 2017 in April, there will be rich set of material for beginners and experts alike, and you will get to meet people from all over the world Continue reading

Quickly Adding an NMS to VIRL

I’ve spent the last few days experimenting with APIC-EM and the path trace capabilities. My lab environment is currently leveraging VIRL (Virtual Internet Routing LAB). Since it wasn’t obvious how to integrate APIC-EM with the lab platform, I wanted to share my configuration.

TL;DR–When building the topology, click the background and view the properties for the Topology. Change the Management Network to “Shared flat network”. This will put the all of the devices ‘Mgmt-intf’ vrf on the ‘flat’ (172.16.1.0/24 by default) network when the topology is built. 

When I started this process, I really didn’t realize how easy it could be. I actually tried to leverage a manual connection to L2 External (FLAT) to do the management in-band for the topology. This is certainly possible, but there is a much easier way. As most VIRL users have noticed, there is a management IP address that gets assigned to each device. There is a simple configuration change that will allow that address to be one from the ‘FLAT’ pool and connected externally to the ‘L2 External (FLAT)’ network.

flatmgmt

My configuration 

  1. APIC-EM built with IP address 172.16.1.2/24 (172.16.1.2-49 are unassigned and part of the Continue reading

Automating Your Job Away Isn’t Easy

programming

One of the most common complaints about SDN that comes from entry-level networking folks is that SDN is going to take their job away. People fear what SDN represents because it has the ability to replace their everyday tasks and put them out of a job. While this is nowhere close to reality, it’s a common enough argument that I hear it very often during Q&A sessions. How is it that SDN has the ability to ruin so many jobs? And how is it that we just now have found a way to do this?

Measure Twice

One of the biggest reasons that the automation portion of SDN has become so effective in today’s IT environment is that we can finally measure what it is that networks are supposed to be doing and how best to configure them. Think about the work that was done in the past to configure and troubleshoot networks. It’s often a very difficult task that involves a lot of intuition and guesswork. If you tried to explain to someone the best way to do things, you’d likely find yourself at a loss for words.

However, we’ve had boring, predictable standards for many years. Instead of Continue reading

2017 and the Internet: our predictions

An abbreviated version of this post originally appeared on TechCrunch

Looking back over 2016, we saw the good and bad that comes with widespread use and abuse of the Internet.

In both Gabon and Gambia, Internet connectivity was disrupted during elections. The contested election in Gambia started with an Internet blackout that lasted a short time. In Gabon, the Internet shutdown lasted for days. Even as we write this countries like DR Congo are discussing blocking specific Internet services, clearly forgetting the lessons learned in these other countries.

CC BY 2.0 image by Aniket Thakur

DDoS attacks continued throughout the year, hitting websites big and small. Back in March, we wrote about 400 Gbps attacks that were happening over the weekend, and then in December, it looked like attackers were treating attacks as a job to be performed from 9 to 5.

In addition to real DDoS, there were also empty threats from a group calling itself Armada Collective and demanding Bitcoin for sites and APIs to stay online. Another group popped up to copycat the same modus-operandi.

The Internet of Things became what many had warned it would become: an army of devices used for attacks. A botnet Continue reading

When IOS XR Licenses Don’t Activate, What Then?

I came across a small but irritating issue with ASR / IOS XR licensing today, and since I found a way to fix it, I’m sharing my results.

Cisco ASR9006/ IOS XR

Licensing IOS XR on the ASR9k

I have an ASR9006 with two A9K-MOD160-TR linecards on which I need to run VRFs, so I purchased two of the A9K-IVRF-LIC linecard-based VRF licenses. I got the PAK keys from my reseller, and went to Cisco’s licensing portal to fulfill both of them following the usual process with the PID and S/N information taken from admin show license udi. I downloaded the license file and transferred it to an accessible jump server, then from the regular privileged exec mode (rather than the admin exec mode), I used sftp to transfer the file to the router.

Why not use the admin exec to transfer the licenses?

Simple: to transfer the license file within the admin exec means using tftp or ftp:

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:asr9006-1(admin)#copy ?
  /recurse        Recursively list subdirectories encountered
  WORD            Copy from file
  bootflash:      Copy from bootflash: file system
  disk0:          Copy from disk0: file system
  disk0a:         Copy from disk0a: file system
  disk1:          Copy from disk1: file system
  disk1a:         Copy from disk1a: file system
  disk2:          Copy from disk2: file system
 Continue reading

4 information security threats that will dominate 2017

As with previous years, 2016 saw no shortage of data breaches. Looking ahead to 2017, the Information Security Forum (ISF), a global, independent information security body that focuses on cyber security and information risk management, forecasts businesses will face four key global security threats in 2017."2016 certainly lived up to expectations," says Steve Durbin, managing director of the ISF. "We saw all sorts of breaches that just seemed to get bigger and bigger. We lurched from one to another. We always anticipate some level of it, but we never anticipate the full extent. I don't think anybody would have anticipated some of the stuff we've seen of late in terms of the Russians getting involved in the recent elections."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 information security threats that will dominate 2017

As with previous years, 2016 saw no shortage of data breaches. Looking ahead to 2017, the Information Security Forum (ISF), a global, independent information security body that focuses on cyber security and information risk management, forecasts businesses will face four key global security threats in 2017."2016 certainly lived up to expectations," says Steve Durbin, managing director of the ISF. "We saw all sorts of breaches that just seemed to get bigger and bigger. We lurched from one to another. We always anticipate some level of it, but we never anticipate the full extent. I don't think anybody would have anticipated some of the stuff we've seen of late in terms of the Russians getting involved in the recent elections."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

15 technologies that died in 2016

Gone but not forgottenImage by Dat7 via Creative Commons2016 was brutal year in the tech business. Ambitious projects sputtered out, beloved niche products became unsustainable, and there was at least one colossal corporate embarrassment. Take a look back at all the technology that died this year—then console yourself by imagining it’s still being enjoyed by David Bowie and Prince.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016 in review: The year in Android

Android is in a very different place than it was when 2016 began. While the last 12 months were filled with much of the usual pomp and circumstance surrounding the release of new handsets, connected gadgets, and OS refreshes, the state of Android has never been more promising or less predictable. Google stepped out from behind the curtain and into the spotlight. Headsets took over smartwatches as the trend of the moment. And Samsung’s phablet woes opened the door for smaller players to make big gains.Through it all, one thing was constant: Android’s dominance. Throughout 2016’s wild ride, the mighty platform continued its reign, extending its penetration to a near-90 percent of the global market, and all but ending the OS wars once and for all. And somehow it still seems like Android is still just getting its feet wet. So before we step into what’s shaping up to be an exciting 2017 for Android, let’s take a look at everything that made this year so memorable:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Outsourcing trends to watch in 2017

This year, we saw outsourcing integration challenges multiply, production workloads and enterprise systems hit the cloud, and security hit the top of the agenda.So what’s ahead for 2017? Uncertainty for one thing. Industry watchers expect a number of shifts in the IT and business process services space — not least of which will be the initiation of more flexible outsourcing terms as the world watches and waits to see what happens once president elect Donald Trump takes office and Brexit takes hold.[ Related: Trump presidency could sound death knell for offshore outsourcing ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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