NAN071: Understanding the Infrastructure Requirements for AI Workloads (Sponsored)
On today’s Network Automation Nerds, we get into the infrastructure required to support AI workloads. We discuss key considerations including bandwidth, the substantial power and cooling requirements of AI infrastructure, and GPUs. We also talk about InfiniBand and Ethernet as network fabrics for AI workloads, cabling considerations, and more. This is a sponsored episode. Our... Read more »Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen11
I’ve recently had the opportunity to start using a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (X1C) Gen11 as my primary work system. Since I am not a Windows person—I don’t think I’ve used Windows as a daily driver since before the turn of the century—I’m running Linux on the X1C Gen11. Now that I’ve had a few weeks of regular use, in this post I’ll provide my review of this laptop.
This is my second ThinkPad X1 Carbon; my first was a Gen 5 that I received when I joined Heptio in 2018 (see my review of the X1C Gen5). I loved that laptop; my experience with the Gen5 was what made me choose the X1C Gen11 when given the opportunity. What I’ve found is that the Gen11 improves upon the X1C experience in some ways, but falls short in other ways.
Before getting into the details, here’s a quick rundown on the specifications:
- 10-core Intel 13th generation Core i7-1365U (two performance cores and eight efficiency cores)
- 32GB of RAM
- 512GB NVMe storage
- 2880×1800 display
- Two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and an HDMI port
As with the Gen5, I’m happy with the build quality and subjective “feel” of the laptop; Continue reading
Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types?
In my previous post Encapsulation of PDUs On Trunk Ports, I showed what happens to PDUs when you change the configuration of a trunk. You may have noticed that there are typically three different types of Ethernet encapsulations that we see:
- Ethernet II.
- 802.2 LLC.
- 802 SNAP.
Historically, there were even more than three, but we’re ignoring that for now. Why do we have three? To understand this, we need to go back in history.
The Origin of Ethernet
In the early 70’s, Robert Metcalfe, inspired by ARPANET and ALOHAnet had been working on developing what we today know as Ethernet. He published a paper in 1976, together with David Boggs, named Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks:
In the paper, they describe the addressing used in Ethernet:
3.3 Addressing
Each packet has a source and destination, both of which are identified in the packet’s header.
A packet placed on the Ether eventually propagates to all stations. Any station can copy a packet
from the Ether into its local memory, but normally only an active destination station matching ‘its
address in the packet’s header will do so as the packet passes. By convention, a Continue reading
Testing bgpipe with netlab
Ever since Pawel Foremski talked about BGP Pipe @ RIPE88 meeting, I wanted to kick its tires in netlab. BGP Pipe is a Go executable that runs under Linux (but also FreeBSD or MacOS), so I could add a Linux VM (or container) to a netlab topology and install the software after the lab has been started. However, I wanted to have the BGP neighbor configured on the other side of the link (on the device talking with the BGP Pipe daemon).
I could solve the problem in a few ways:
NIST’s first post-quantum standards
On August 13th, 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first three cryptographic standards designed to resist an attack from quantum computers: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. This announcement marks a significant milestone for ensuring that today’s communications remain secure in a future world where large-scale quantum computers are a reality.
In this blog post, we briefly discuss the significance of NIST’s recent announcement, how we expect the ecosystem to evolve given these new standards, and the next steps we are taking. For a deeper dive, see our March 2024 blog post.
Why are quantum computers a threat?
Cryptography is a fundamental aspect of modern technology, securing everything from online communications to financial transactions. For instance, when visiting this blog, your web browser used cryptography to establish a secure communication channel to Cloudflare’s server to ensure that you’re really talking to Cloudflare (and not an impersonator), and that the conversation remains private from eavesdroppers.
Much of the cryptography in widespread use today is based on mathematical puzzles (like factoring very large numbers) which are computationally out of reach for classical (non-quantum) computers. We could likely continue to use traditional cryptography for decades to Continue reading
Supermicro Financials Get Better As The Company Gets Bigger
It’s still Ketchup Week here at The Next Platform, and we are going to be circling back to look at the financials of a number of bellwether datacenter companies that we could not get to during a number of medical crisis – including but not limited to our family catching COVID when we took a week of vacation at a lake in Michigan. …
Supermicro Financials Get Better As The Company Gets Bigger was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
HW034: Fixing Your Indoor Cellular Coverage
In this episode of the Heavy Wireless podcast, we talk with Howard Buzick from American Bandwidth about the evolution and current state of wireless connections, particularly in guest network environments. We explore advancements in Wi-Fi technologies, the workings of Passpoint (formerly Hotspot 2.0), and the differences between Passpoint and Open Roaming. Howard explains how American... Read more »PP027: How Wi-Fi Positioning Systems Enable Mass Surveillance
Smartphones use Wi-Fi based Positioning Systems (WPSes) to collect data about nearby Wi-Fi access points and other wireless devices to help determine the phones’ geographic location. Researchers at the University of Maryland show how WPSes from Apple and Google can be used for mass surveillance of access points and, potentially, owners and users of those... Read more »Building Blocks of AI: How Storage Architecture Shapes AI Success
COMMISSIONED On a bustling factory floor, an advanced AI system orchestrates a symphony of robotic arms, each performing its task with precision. …
Building Blocks of AI: How Storage Architecture Shapes AI Success was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
NIST’s first post-quantum standards
On August 13th, 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first three cryptographic standards designed to resist an attack from quantum computers: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. This announcement marks a significant milestone for ensuring that today’s communications remain secure in a future world where large-scale quantum computers are a reality.
In this blog post, we briefly discuss the significance of NIST’s recent announcement, how we expect the ecosystem to evolve given these new standards, and the next steps we are taking. For a deeper dive, see our March 2024 blog post.
Why are quantum computers a threat?
Cryptography is a fundamental aspect of modern technology, securing everything from online communications to financial transactions. For instance, when visiting this blog, your web browser used cryptography to establish a secure communication channel to Cloudflare’s server to ensure that you’re really talking to Cloudflare (and not an impersonator), and that the conversation remains private from eavesdroppers.
Much of the cryptography in widespread use today is based on mathematical puzzles (like factoring very large numbers) which are computationally out of reach for classical (non-quantum) computers. We could likely continue to use traditional cryptography for decades to Continue reading
netlab 1.9.0: Routing Policies, Default Routes, Route Redistribution
netlab release 1.9.0 brings tons of new routing features:
- Generic Routing Configuration Module implements routing policies (route maps), prefix filters, AS-path filters, and BGP community filters.
- Default route origination in OSPFv2 and OSPFv3
- Route import (redistribution) into OSPFv2, OSPFv3, and BGP.
- Named prefixes
Other new goodies include:
Summer 2024 weather report: Cloudflare with a chance of Intern-ets
During the summer of 2024, Cloudflare welcomed approximately 60 Intern-ets from all around the globe on a mission to #HelpBuildABetterInternet. Over the course of their internships, our wonderful interns tackled real-world challenges from different teams all over the company and contributed to cutting-edge projects. As returning interns, we – Shaheen, Aaron, and Jada – would like to show off the great work our cohort has done and experiences we’ve had throughout our time here.
Austin Interns after volunteering at the Central Texas Food Bank.
Putting the SHIP in internSHIP
Cloudflare interns take pride in driving high-impact initiatives, playing a vital role in advancing Cloudflare's mission. With our diverse roles and projects this summer, we'd love to highlight some of the exciting work we've been involved in:
Rahul, a Software Engineer intern, built a system to autograde intern application assignments for future students looking to join Cloudflare. It was built entirely on the Cloudflare Developer Platform, using Cloudflare Access, Browser Rendering, D1, Durable Objects, R2, and Workers!
Jessica, a Software Engineer intern, created a new threads api for the Workers AI team that automatically recalls past messages when running inference, helping developers to Continue reading
NB491: Cisco Revenues Drop 10% in Q4; Texas Instruments Get $1.6 Billion for Chip Factories
Take a Network Break! Hackers may have stolen millions of US Social Security numbers, HPE acquires a multi-cloud management company, and Cisco announces plans to lay off 7% of its employees. Pure Storage joins industry efforts to make Ethernet suitable for AI workloads by signing on to the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, Texas Instruments will add... Read more »Dropped packet metrics with Prometheus and Grafana
Flow metrics with Prometheus and Grafana describes how define flow metrics and create dashboards to trend the flow metrics over time. This article describes how the same setup can be used to define and trend metrics based on dropped packet notifications.
- job_name: sflow-rt-drops
metrics_path: /app/prometheus/scripts/export.js/flows/ALL/txt
static_configs:
- targets: ['sflow-rt:8008']
params:
metric: ['dropped_packets']
key:
- 'node:inputifindex'
- 'ifname:inputifindex'
- 'reason'
- 'stack'
- 'macsource'
- 'macdestination'
- 'null:vlan:untagged'
- 'null:[or:ipsource:ip6source]:none'
- 'null:[or:ipdestination:ip6destination]:none'
- 'null:[or:icmptype:icmp6type:ipprotocol:ip6nexthdr]:none'
label:
- 'switch'
- 'port'
- 'reason'
- 'stack'
- 'macsource'
- 'macdestination'
- 'vlan'
- 'src'
- 'dst'
- 'protocol'
value: ['frames']
dropped: ['true']
maxFlows: ['20']
minValue: ['0.001']
The Prometheus scrape configuration above is used to Continue reading
Why AMD Spent $4.9 Billion To Buy ZT Systems
If AMD is willing and eager to spend $4.9 billion to buy a systems company – that is more than its entire expected haul for sales of datacenter GPUs for 2024 – then you have to figure that acquisition is pretty important. …
Why AMD Spent $4.9 Billion To Buy ZT Systems was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Summer 2024 weather report: Cloudflare with a chance of Intern-ets
During the summer of 2024, Cloudflare welcomed approximately 60 Intern-ets from all around the globe on a mission to #HelpBuildABetterInternet. Over the course of their internships, our wonderful interns tackled real-world challenges from different teams all over the company and contributed to cutting-edge projects. As returning interns, we – Shaheen, Aaron, and Jada – would like to show off the great work our cohort has done and experiences we’ve had throughout our time here.
Putting the SHIP in internSHIP
Cloudflare interns take pride in driving high-impact initiatives, playing a vital role in advancing Cloudflare's mission. With our diverse roles and projects this summer, we'd love to highlight some of the exciting work we've been involved in:
Rahul, a Software Engineer intern, built a system to autograde intern application assignments for future students looking to join Cloudflare. It was built entirely on the Cloudflare Developer Platform, using Cloudflare Access, Browser Rendering, D1, Durable Objects, R2, and Workers!
Jessica, a Software Engineer intern, created a new threads api for the Workers AI team that automatically recalls past messages when running inference, helping developers to Continue reading
Why Are OSPF Type 5 LSAs Flooded?
I recently saw a great question on Reddit, on why Type-5 (AS-external) LSAs are flooded, in comparison to Type-3 (Summary) that are regenerated at the ABR. To investigate this, we’ll use the following simple topology where R2 and R3 are ABRs:
OSPF Behavior Type-3 LSAs
Let’s see how OSPF handles Summary LSAs. Let’s first look at Area 1, where R4 is advertising 169.254.0.0/24 into it. This can be seen in the LSDB of R2:
R2#show ip ospf data router 203.0.113.4
OSPF Router with ID (203.0.113.2) (Process ID 1)
Router Link States (Area 1)
LS age: 74
Options: (No TOS-capability, DC)
LS Type: Router Links
Link State ID: 203.0.113.4
Advertising Router: 203.0.113.4
LS Seq Number: 80000009
Checksum: 0x1DF0
Length: 84
Number of Links: 5
Link connected to: a Stub Network
(Link ID) Network/subnet number: 169.254.0.0
(Link Data) Network Mask: 255.255.255.0
Number of MTID metrics: 0
TOS 0 Metrics: 1
Link connected to: another Router (point-to-point)
(Link ID) Neighboring Router ID: 203.0.113.3
(Link Data) Router Interface address: 192.0.2.14
Number of MTID metrics: 0
TOS 0 Continue reading
BGP Session and Address Family Parameters
As I was doing the final integration tests for netlab release 1.9.0, I stumbled upon a fascinating BGP configuration quirk: where do you configure the allowas-in parameter and why?
A Bit of Theory
BGP runs over TCP, and all parameters related to the TCP session are configured for a BGP neighbor (IPv4 or IPv6 address). That includes the source interface, local AS number (it’s advertised in the per-session OPEN message that negotiates the address families), MD5 password (it uses MD5 checksum of TCP packets), GTSM (it uses the IP TTL field), or EBGP multihop (it increases the IP TTL field).