Kicking the Tires of GitHub Copilot

A friend sent me a video demo of his AI-driven network device configuration proof-of-concept. Before commenting on that idea, I wanted to see how well AI works as an assistant. Once Kristian Larsson mentioned he was using GitHub Copilot, it was obvious what to do next: try it out while working on the next netlab release.

TL&DR:

  • It works.
  • Some Copilot suggestions are uncannily accurate; others are fishing expeditions.
  • It’s bland.

Kicking the Tires of GitHub Copilot

A friend sent me a video demo of his AI-driven network device configuration proof-of-concept. Before commenting on that idea, I wanted to see how well AI works as an assistant. Once Kristian Larsson mentioned he was using GitHub Copilot, it was obvious what to do next: try it out while working on the next netlab release.

TL&DR:

  • It works.
  • Some Copilot suggestions are uncannily accurate; others are fishing expeditions.
  • It’s bland.

Juniper Version Selection

Picking the right Junos version is important. If you’re not familiar with Juniper, finding and downloading the right software package is confusing. Here’s some guidance on picking the right version.

It’s useful to understand Junos version numbering, and the upgrade policy. Then check the Suggested Releases page to see what they recommend, check if that makes sense, and figure out how to get from here to there.

Understanding Version Numbering

These days Juniper publishes a new release train every quarter. Versioning is simple “<year>.<quarter>.R<release number>”. So 21.4R1 is released in the 4th quarter of 2021. New releases add new features and support new hardware. Configs may break

They then publish “service releases” on top of that, for example 21.4R1-S1 and 21.4R1-S2. These are supposed to only be bugfixes, but complacency breeds contempt. So sometimes they throw in throw in breaking changes that may render your existing config non-bootable, because why the hell not? Continue reading

3 ways network teams can influence SASE decisions

Secure access service edge (SASE) has gotten a lot of attention during the past two years from enterprises interested in improving their security posture, specifically as part of an effort to adopt Zero Trust frameworks.That puts a lot of energy behind cybersecurity initiatives, but what about the network?The fact is, the network is central to Zero Trust and to SASE. When coined by analysts, the concept of SASE rested on several functional pillars including SD-WAN, secure Web gateway, cloud-access security broker, next-generation firewall, and Zero Trust Network Access. SD-WAN is the most foundational, though—so fundamental that, whereas a SASE solution might legitimately omit other pillars and still be classed as SASE, omitting the SD-WAN turns it into something else: a secure service edge solution.To read this article in full, please click here

Google claims AI supercomputer speed superiority with new Tensor chips

A new white paper from Google details the company’s use of optical circuit switches in its machine learning training supercomputer, saying that the TPU v4 model with those switches in place offers improved performance and more energy efficiency than general-use processors.Google’s Tensor Processing Units — the basic building blocks of the company’s AI supercomputing systems — are essentially ASICs, meaning that their functionality is built in at the hardware level, as opposed to the general use CPUs and GPUs used in many AI training systems. The white paper details how, by interconnecting more than 4,000 TPUs through optical circuit switching, Google has been able to achieve speeds 10 times faster than previous models while consuming less than half as much energy.To read this article in full, please click here

Google claims AI supercomputer speed superiority with new Tensor chips

A new white paper from Google details the company’s use of optical circuit switches in its machine learning training supercomputer, saying that the TPU v4 model with those switches in place offers improved performance and more energy efficiency than general-use processors.Google’s Tensor Processing Units — the basic building blocks of the company’s AI supercomputing systems — are essentially ASICs, meaning that their functionality is built in at the hardware level, as opposed to the general use CPUs and GPUs used in many AI training systems. The white paper details how, by interconnecting more than 4,000 TPUs through optical circuit switching, Google has been able to achieve speeds 10 times faster than previous models while consuming less than half as much energy.To read this article in full, please click here

Perfection Paralysis

This is a sort of companion piece to my post last week because I saw a very short post here about doing less. It really hit home with me because I’m just as bad as Shawn about wanting everything to be perfect when I write it or create it.

Maximizing Mistakes

One of the things that I’ve noticed in a lot of content that I’ve been consuming recently is the inclusion of mistakes. When you’re writing you have ample access to a backspace key so typos shouldn’t exist (and autocorrect can bugger off). But in video and audio content you can often make a mistake and not even realize it. Flubbing a word or needed to do a retake for something happens quite often, even if you never see or hear them.

What has me curious and a bit interested is that more of those quick errors are making it in. These are things that could easily be fixed in post production and yet they stay. It’s almost like the creators are admitting that mistakes happen and it’s hard to read scripts perfectly every time like some kind of robot. Honest mistakes over things like pronunciation or difficult word combinations Continue reading

UK regulator slams AWS, Microsoft for cloud interoperability hurdles

UK communications regulator Ofcom has announced a provisional plan to refer Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft to the country's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over “significant concerns” that they are allegedly harming competition in online cloud services and abusing their market positions with practices that make interoperability difficult.A market study carried out by Ofcom has provisionally identified features and practices that make it difficult for customers to switch or use multiple cloud suppliers, the regulator wrote on its website, adding that it was “particularly concerned” about the practices of Amazon and Microsoft because of their market position.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco lays groundwork for 800G networks as AI, 5G and video traffic demands grow

Cisco has amped-up its support for 800G capacity networks with an eye toward helping large enterprises, cloud and service providers handle the expected demand from AI, video, and 5G services.At the core of its recently developments is a new 28.8Tbps / 36 x 800G line card and improved control software for its top-of-the-line Cisco 8000 Series routers.The 28.8T line card is built on Cisco’s Silicon One P100 ASIC, and brings 800G capability to the modular Cisco 8000 Series Router, which can scale to 230Tbps in a 16 RU form factor with the eight-slot Cisco 8808, and up to 518Tbps in the 18-slot chassis, according to Cisco.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco lays groundwork for 800G networks as AI, 5G and video traffic demands grow

Cisco has amped-up its support for 800G capacity networks with an eye toward helping large enterprises, cloud and service providers handle the expected demand from AI, video, and 5G services.At the core of its recently developments is a new 28.8Tbps / 36 x 800G line card and improved control software for its top-of-the-line Cisco 8000 Series routers.The 28.8T line card is built on Cisco’s Silicon One P100 ASIC, and brings 800G capability to the modular Cisco 8000 Series Router, which can scale to 230Tbps in a 16 RU form factor with the eight-slot Cisco 8808, and up to 518Tbps in the 18-slot chassis, according to Cisco.To read this article in full, please click here

Day Two Cloud 189: The Cloud Network Engineer Career Path With Kam Agahian

Today on Day Two Cloud we explore what it takes to transition from traditional networking to a career as a cloud network engineer. Guest Kam Agahian shares insights from his own career journey about what's the same and what's different between on-prem and cloud networking, what skills might you want to pick up to make the transition, recommended certifications, and more.

Day Two Cloud 189: The Cloud Network Engineer Career Path With Kam Agahian

Today on Day Two Cloud we explore what it takes to transition from traditional networking to a career as a cloud network engineer. Guest Kam Agahian shares insights from his own career journey about what's the same and what's different between on-prem and cloud networking, what skills might you want to pick up to make the transition, recommended certifications, and more.

The post Day Two Cloud 189: The Cloud Network Engineer Career Path With Kam Agahian appeared first on Packet Pushers.

HPE unveils a new storage initiative

HP Enterprise this week introduced what it calls “the future of storage,” an array of new hardware and software supported and sold through its GreenLake service that leases hardware on a consumption basis.HPE's new Alletra Storage MP platforms are attached to an NVMe data fabric, delivering file or block storage using a controller that can be configured for either performance or capacity, HPE said. It breaks down into two service categories: HPE GreenLake for Block Storage, which HPE promises scale-out block storage with a 100% data-availability guarantee, and HPE GreenLake for File Storage, which HPE claims will offer hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput.To read this article in full, please click here

Introducing Calico Runtime Threat Defense—The most extensive security coverage for containers and Kubernetes

Containerized applications are complex, which is why an effective container security strategy is difficult to design and execute. As digitalization continues to push applications and services to the cloud, bad actors’ attack techniques have also become more sophisticated, which further challenges container security solutions available on the market.

Despite the discussion around agent vs agentless in the cloud security landscape and which type of solution is better, the most valuable solution is one that provides a wide breadth of coverage. Calico is unique as it is already installed as part of the underlying platform and provides the dataplane for a Kubernetes cluster. When Calico Cloud or Calico Enterprise is deployed, security and observability capabilities can be enabled on top of these core components. We provide a simple plug-and-play active security solution that focuses on securing workloads and the Kubernetes platform with the least amount of complexity and configuration.

Runtime attack vectors

Cloud-native applications are susceptible to many attack vectors. We have broken them down to eight, as seen in the following illustration:

Fig 1: Cloud-native attack vectors

In previous blogs, we have explained how the use of vulnerability management, zero-trust workload security, and microsegmentation can help reduce the Continue reading