BGP Code Dive (4): Starting a Peer

In the last three episodes of this series, we discussed getting a copy of SnapRoute’s BGP code using Git, we looked at the basic structure of the project, and then we did some general housekeeping. At this point, I’m going to assume you have the tools you need installed, and you’re ready to follow along as we ask the code questions about how BGP actually works.

Now, let’s start with a simple question: how does BGP bring a new peer up?

It seems like we should be able to look for some file that’s named something with peering in it, but, looking at the files in the project, there doesn’t seem to be any such thing (click to show a larger version of the image below if you can’t read it).

Hmmm… Given it’s not obvious where to start, what do we do? There are a number of options, of course, but three options stand out as the easiest.

First, you can just poke around the code for a bit to see if you find anything that looks like it might be what you’re looking for. This is not, generally, for the faint of heart. Over time, as you become Continue reading

Chinese $1.2B deal for Opera crumples

The planned sale of Opera Software to a group of Chinese companies for $1.2 billion has foundered, the Norwegian browser maker announced today.Instead, an alternate deal has been struck to sell the Opera desktop and mobile browsers, and other small pieces, to a Chinese private equity firm for $600 million.The original transaction folded after it failed to win regulatory approval from the U.S. and People's Republic of China (PRC) by a July 15 deadline. Opera did not specify whether approval was lacking from both countries, or just one. "The Offeror and Opera have used their best efforts to obtain the regulatory approvals required for the consummation of the Offer, but the condition...was not satisfied," Opera said in a Monday statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Algorithm to predict at birth if a person will be a criminal?

Technology is not a bad thing; it’s not inherently scary. Sometimes new technology gets misused or tainted with mission creep. Most of the time, tech actually makes our lives easier and better. Here are two tales about “new” tech that could potentially predict the future. One seems scarier than the other.Algorithm to predict at birth if a person will be a criminal Algorithms control aspects of your life whether you are aware of it or not. They are used to come up with risk scores and even predict the future. But how would you feel about an algorithm that seems to be ripped straight from Minority Report? It would identify criminals far before they could commit a crime, since it would “predict at the time of someone’s birth how likely she is to commit a crime by the time she turns 18.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Algorithm to predict at birth if a person will be a criminal?

Technology is not a bad thing; it’s not inherently scary. Sometimes new technology gets misused or tainted with mission creep. Most of the time, tech actually makes our lives easier and better. Here are two tales about “new” tech that could potentially predict the future. One seems scarier than the other.Algorithm to predict at birth if a person will be a criminalAlgorithms control aspects of your life whether you are aware of it or not. They are used to come up with risk scores and even predict the future. But how would you feel about an algorithm that seems to be ripped straight from Minority Report? It would identify criminals far before they could commit a crime since it would “predict at the time of someone’s birth how likely she is to commit a crime by the time she turns 18.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SoftBank Offers $32B for ARM as Megamerger Season Continues

ARM gets a buyer; SoftBank gets ... more debt?

How Does Google do Planet-Scale Engineering for a Planet-Scale Infrastructure?

How does Google keep all its services up and running? They almost never seem to fail. If you've ever wondered we get a wonderful peek behind the curtain in a talk given at GCP NEXT 2016 by Melissa Binde, Director, Storage SRE at Google: How Google Does Planet-Scale Engineering for Planet-Scale Infrastructure.

Melissa's talk is short, but it's packed with wisdom and delivered in a no nonsense style that makes you think if your service is down Melissa is definitely the kind of person you want on the case. 

Oh, just what is SRE? It stands for Site Reliability Engineering, but a definition is more elusive. It's like the kind of answers you get when you ask for a definition of the Tao. It's more a process than a thing, as is made clear by Ben Sloss 24x7 VP, Google, who defines SRE as:

what happens when a software engineer is tasked with what used to be called operations.

Let that bounce around your head for awhile.

Above and beyond all else one thing is clear: SREs are the custodian of production. SREs are the custodian of customer experience, for both google.com and GCP.

Some Continue reading

PS Core Network Concepts

Most of the educational documents related to PS Core Network start with Call Flows. Attach Call Flow, PDP Context, Paging, etc. So, Basically that was my problem when I started working in PS Core because the Call Flows include a lot of messages that in turn include a lot of parameters and Information Elements so […]

The post PS Core Network Concepts appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Microsoft’s new service is like YouTube for the enterprise

It's called Stream, and it's supposed to let people easily work together with one another on videos, and then share that content both inside and outside their company.In the realm of consumer web services, video is ascending. Facebook has been emphasizing video posts on its popular social network, while YouTube is still going strong. Microsoft is trying to take some of that mojo and bring it to the business world with the launch of an open beta for Stream on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mainstream VR for sports still 2-5 years off, says Warriors’ digital chief

Professional sports teams around the world—including the NBA’s Golden State Warriors—are working furiously to leverage all kinds of technology, from mobile connectivity and social media to player analytics and augmented reality. But according the Warrior’s vice president of marketing and digital, Kenny Lauer, it will be at least two to five years before virtual reality (VR), perhaps the most exciting new development, will achieve widespread adoption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CloudFlare sites protected from httpoxy

CC BY 2.0 image by Joe Seggiola

We have rolled out automatic protection for all customers for the the newly announced vulnerability called httpoxy.

This vulnerability affects applications that use “classic” CGI execution models, and could lead to API token disclosure of the services that your application may talk to.

By default httpoxy requests are modified to be harmless and then request is allowed through, however customers who want to outright block those requests can also use the Web Application Firewall rule 100050 in CloudFlare Specials to block requests that could lead to the httpoxy vulnerability.

Worth Reading: Digital intoxication

The time has come to speak of digital intoxication: an excessive use of the most common digital tools, such as a computer, tablet or smartphone, to the point of dependency. A frantic and imbalanced use of these new media can result in more or less serious consequences, be it on the physical or psychological levels, with symptoms and disorders that mirror those of the classic drunkard. —Connecting

The post Worth Reading: Digital intoxication appeared first on 'net work.

Box moves telephony, Web conferencing to the cloud

You would be forgiven for assuming that a native cloud company -- a company whose raison d'etre is selling cloud applications and platforms -- wouldn't have a lick of on-premises software. But the reality is that for companies founded as recently as 10 to 15 years ago, SaaS analogs for every core computing operation did not exist. For that reason, migrating to SaaS solutions is still very much the mission for Box CIO Paul Chapman. Box CIO Paul Chapman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to build a strong employee referral culture

A strong referral culture not only helps streamline the recruiting and hiring process, but also delivers benefits such as increased engagement, collaboration and job satisfaction -- not to mention improving retention and loyalty. The recent Active Job Seeker Dilemma survey from Future Workplace, a research firm and workforce management consultancy, and Beyond.com, a career and hiring marketplace, polled 4,347 U.S. job seekers and 129 HR professionals and found that 71 percent of those surveyed say referrals from existing employees were the source of their best hires. Culture club What makes a great employee want to refer their friends, family and former colleagues? Culture, benefits, flexibility and a sense of mission and purpose, says Dan Schawbel, partner and research director at Future Workplace. "Culture is your most important competitive advantage. As long as you're paying people fairly, of course, then they are going to look for factors aside from that as positives or negatives -- they want meaningful work, solid benefits, flexibility, and those are the things they'll talk about with friends, former colleagues, family," Schawbel says. If you already have those things, you're well on your way to building a referral culture. [ Related story: 4 Continue reading

27% off 3 Squares TIM3 MACHIN3 Rice and Multi Cooker – Deal Alert

The 3 Squares TIM3 MACHIN3 Rice Cooker, Slow Cooker, Yogurt Maker & Food Steamer will make a lot more time for you while making great meals for your family. The TIM3 MACHIN3 cooks rice up to 45% faster than competing rice cookers. With Fuzzy Logic 2.0 and a 20% thicker cooking pot ensure that quickly cooked rice comes out delicious - with no burning. This unit is currently rated 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews) and is currently selling for $50.99 on Amazon .To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPC Flows Into Hyperscale With Dell Triton

Dell recently unveiled its datacenter liquid cooling technology under the codename of Triton. Dell’s Extreme Scale Infrastructure team originally designed and developed Triton as a proof of concept for eBay, leveraging Dell’s existing rack-scale infrastructure.

In addition to liquid-cooled cold plates that directly contact the CPUs, Triton is also designed with embedded liquid to air heat exchangers to cool the airborne heat of a large number of tightly packed and hot processor nodes using 80% of the cooling capacity of the heat exchangers. That leaves 20% of Triton’s cooling capacity as “overhead”. The overhead cooling capacity is then used to …

HPC Flows Into Hyperscale With Dell Triton was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Deloitte goes cognitive, partners with IPSoft

Cloud computing delivers many benefits for end user organizations, but for consulting firms, whose bread and butter is long (some would say torturous) technology implementation projects, the cloud tends to be somewhat toxic to traditional revenue streams.Seeing this impending hole, the big consulting firms have to find new ways to replace existing revenue streams. As a result, we've seen the formation of digital transformation units within the large consulting firms.Another trend is to jump into emergent technologies. We have a good example of this today from Deloitte, which is announcing a partnership with IPSoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Deloitte goes cognitive, partners with IPSoft

Cloud computing delivers many benefits for end user organizations, but for consulting firms, whose bread and butter is long (some would say torturous) technology implementation projects, the cloud tends to be somewhat toxic to traditional revenue streams.Seeing this impending hole, the big consulting firms have to find new ways to replace existing revenue streams. As a result, we've seen the formation of digital transformation units within the large consulting firms.Another trend is to jump into emergent technologies. We have a good example of this today from Deloitte, which is announcing a partnership with IPSoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microservices Gone Wild – Tech Dive Part 1

I’ve heard a lot of noise about microservices in the last couple of years, perhaps most notably when I attended ONUG in Spring 2015 and Adrian Cockcroft from Battery Ventures (previously from Netflix) was pushing the idea of building applications using container-based microservices very convincingly. In this short series of posts, I’ll look at what microservices are, why you might want them (particularly in containers) and — because it would be no fun if this was all just theory — I’ll run through a demonstration where I take a simple monolithic application and successfully break it out into containerized microservices. I’ll share the code I use because I just know you’ll enjoy playing along at home.

Monolithic Applications

In order to consider the benefits of microservices it’s important first to get some context by looking at what is arguably the polar opposite, the monolithic application. I should preface this by saying that defining what constitutes a monolithic application can be a rather nuanced task, depending on the perspective from which one looks. For my purposes though, a monolithic application is typically one where the entire application is delivered in a single release. Even if the application is logically deployed across Continue reading

HP’s Elite X3 smartphone with Windows 10 will ship this month for $699

Not many are using smartphones with Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile, but HP's flagship Elite X3 -- which ships this month -- could boost the OS's sagging fortunes. The premium smartphone will be priced starting at US$699 in the U.S. It feels more like a phablet, but HP believes it could also be a PC in a pinch with its top-line mobile processor, OS and innovative accessories. HP first announced the Elite X3 at the Mobile World Congress trade show in February. It has a 5.96-inch AMOLED screen that can display images at a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, matching top smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy S7 and LG's G5. The rugged screen has Gorilla Glass 4 technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NSF and GR on Nexus 5000

NSF and GR are two features in Layer 3 network elements (NEs) that allows two adjacent elements to work together when one of them undergoes a control plane switchover or control plane restart.

The benefit is that when a control plane switchover/restart occurs, the impact to network traffic is kept to a minimum and in most cases, to zero.

NSF

• Non-Stop Forwarding
• When a control plane protocol such as BGP, OSPF, or EIGRP restarts and neighbors/adjacencies are reset, NSF will allow the data plane to hold onto the routes that were learned via that control plane protocol and continue to forward traffic while the neighbors/adjacencies are re-established.
• Control plane restarts occur when you have a router or switch with dual route processors or supervisor engines and there is a switchover from the active to the hot standby. When the newly active RP/sup takes over, it has to re-establish neighbors/adjacencies because that information is not part of the synchronization that occurs between the two RPs/sups.
• NSF keeps traffic moving — without the need to reroute — while the switchover is happening.
• NSF happens locally, all within the network element where the switchover is happening.

GR

• Graceful Restart
• GR is the procedure Continue reading