NetBox v1.1.0 Released

One year ago today, I made the first commit to a repository named "netbox" hosted internally at DigitalOcean. It was the first iteration of a tiny little app I scratched together using the Django Python framework to track IP prefix utilization. A year later, NetBox has grown into an extensive tool that we use to track IPs, racks, devices, connections, circuits, and even encrypted credentials. And I'm happy to say that it's now open source!

Continue reading · 21 comments

NetBox v1.1.0 Released

One year ago today, I made the first commit to a repository named "netbox" hosted internally at DigitalOcean. It was the first iteration of a tiny little app I scratched together using the Django Python framework to track IP prefix utilization. A year later, NetBox has grown into an extensive tool that we use to track IPs, racks, devices, connections, circuits, and even encrypted credentials. And I'm happy to say that it's now open source!

Continue reading · 2 comments

24% off TP-LINK AC1900 Wireless Wi-Fi Dual Band AC Router – Deal Alert

The AC1900 router from TP-LINK supports 802.11ac, the latest Wi-Fi tech. It operates on the 5GHz band as well as 2.4 for older devices. Dual USB 3.0 and 2.0 let you easily share files and media across your network. The AC1900 strives to create a stronger, faster and more reliable network that efficiently manages many connected devices simultaneously. Amazon currently has it listed for 24% off its typical list price of $170, so you can buy it now for $130. Over 2,700 customers rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

24% off TP-LINK AC1900 Wireless Wi-Fi Dual Band AC Router – Deal Alert

The AC1900 router from TP-LINK supports 802.11ac, the latest Wi-Fi tech. It operates on the 5GHz band as well as 2.4 for older devices. Dual USB 3.0 and 2.0 let you easily share files and media across your network. The AC1900 strives to create a stronger, faster and more reliable network that efficiently manages many connected devices simultaneously. Amazon currently has it listed for 24% off its typical list price of $170, so you can buy it now for $130. Over 2,700 customers rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars (read reviews). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 tips for buying cloud management software

Managing clouds can be a challenge given that virtual machines and storage are running in two different environments simultaneously. A crowded industry of cloud management platforms (CMP) has emerged to help.Gartner Research Director Mindy Cancila says the CMP market is young and maturing; customers should understand the limitations of various options.Here are four tips from Cancila for organizations considering cloud management products.IaaS needs its own tools Many organizations began their cloud journey by using SaaS tools like Office 365, Salesforce or some other business planning software. These SaaS platforms may require some new skills, but customers don’t usually need to purchase a whole new management platform to use them. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is different. Consuming cloud-based virtual machines, storage, databases and other services is such a complex issue that Cancila says users can benefit greatly from using a dedicated management platform for IaaS, especially if they’re managing a hybrid cloud computing environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to understand your apps better? Put a ThousandEyes on them

Cisco Live, the world’s largest network event, kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Every year at the conference, Cisco and many of its technology partners announce new products or features that hopefully capture the attention of Cisco’s customers. ThousandEyes put some news out ahead of the event by announcing it uses Linux containers to run its network performance monitoring (NPM) software to track Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) and Aggregation Service Routers (ASR).+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to understand your apps better? Put a ThousandEyes on them

Cisco Live, the world’s largest network event, kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Every year at the conference, Cisco and many of its technology partners announce new products or features that hopefully capture the attention of Cisco’s customers. ThousandEyes put some news out ahead of the event by announcing it uses Linux containers to run its network performance monitoring (NPM) software to track Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISR) and Aggregation Service Routers (ASR).+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Absorbing DDoS with Communities

Distributed Denial of Service attacks can damage your business—and they can be difficult to manage or counter. While there are a number of tools available to counter DDoS attacks, particularly in the commercial space, and there are a number of widely available DDoS protection services, sometimes it’s useful to know how to counter a DDoS on your own. One option is to absorb attacks across a broader set of inbound nodes. Let’s use the network below to illustrate (though often the scale needs to be quite a bit larger for this solution to be useful in the real world).

ddos-spreading

Assume, for the moment, that the attacker is injecting a DDoS stream from the black hat, sitting just behind AS65004. There are customers located in AS65001, 2, 3, 4, and 5. For whatever reason, the majority of the attacker’s traffic is coming in to site C, through AS65003. Normally this is a result of an anycast based service (such as active-active data centers, or a web based service, or a DNS service), combined with roughly geographical traffic patterns. Even a DDoS attack from a mid sized or large’ish botnet, or reflection off a set of DNS servers, can end up being Continue reading

4 signs it’s time to look for a new job

Everyone has a bad day at work now and then, but when those bad days start to outnumber the good ones, it’s time to consider looking for a new job. As the economy continues to improve, there’s no reason to stay with a company that’s struggling to survive, or to settle for a role in which you’re not happy, says Howard Seidel, Partner at executive leadership and career consulting firm Essex Partners.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

4 tools for managing firewall rules

Firewall devices are only as good as the hundreds, or even thousands, rules that govern them. Misconfigurations, unused rules and conflicting rules can cause firewalls to fail in their crucial missions. Firewall security management products can help security managers monitor compliance, orchestrate device policies, optimize rules and manage firewall changes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

4 tools for managing firewall rules

Firewall devices are only as good as the hundreds, or even thousands, rules that govern them. Misconfigurations, unused rules and conflicting rules can cause firewalls to fail in their crucial missions. Firewall security management products can help security managers monitor compliance, orchestrate device policies, optimize rules and manage firewall changes. According to the IT Central Station user community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing firewall security management software are visibility for network devices, scalability, and ensured security and compliance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

27% off Canon EOS Rebel T6 Digital SLR Camera Kit with EF-S 18-55mm and EF 75-300mm Zoom Lenses – Deal Alert

The 18.0 megapixel Canon EOS Rebel T6 Digital SLR Camera Kit is currently discounted by 27% on Amazon from $749.99 down to $549.  The complete bundle includes EF-S 18-55mm and EF 75-300mm Zoom Lenses.  It also has built-in Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity, providing easy sharing to compatible smart devices, select social media sites and the Canon Connect Station CS100 device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iOS 10 on the iPad Pro: The 8 features you need to know

The iPad Pro is a productivity powerhouse—or at least, that’s what Apple wants it to be. The 12.9-inch Pro was released last November, and the 9.7-inch model debuted in March, so we weren’t expecting to see any new hardware at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But we were hoping Apple would add some iPad-only features in iOS 10 that would fix a few problems and make the Pros even more awesome, or at least show off some new partner apps that take advantage of all that screen real estate.Alas, the iPad was a footnote in iOS 10’s parade of features. The device gets most of the good stuff, like the revamped Messages app, a new lock screen with rich notifications, and smarter Photos, but the iPad-only tweaks are just that: minor changes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers add software bugs to reduce the number of… software bugs

Researchers are adding bugs to experimental software code in order to ultimately wind up with programs that have fewer vulnerabilities.The idea is to insert a known quantity of vulnerabilities into code, then see how many of them are discovered by bug-finding tools.By analyzing the reasons bugs escape detection, developers can create more effective bug-finders, according to researchers at New York University in collaboration with others from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and Northeastern University.They created large-scale automated vulnerability addition (LAVA), which is a low-cost technique that adds the vulnerabilities. “The only way to evaluate a bug finder is to control the number of bugs in a program, which is exactly what we do with LAVA,” says Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, a computer science and engineering professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers add software bugs to reduce the number of… software bugs

Researchers are adding bugs to experimental software code in order to ultimately wind up with programs that have fewer vulnerabilities.The idea is to insert a known quantity of vulnerabilities into code, then see how many of them are discovered by bug-finding tools.By analyzing the reasons bugs escape detection, developers can create more effective bug-finders, according to researchers at New York University in collaboration with others from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and Northeastern University.They created large-scale automated vulnerability addition (LAVA), which is a low-cost technique that adds the vulnerabilities. “The only way to evaluate a bug finder is to control the number of bugs in a program, which is exactly what we do with LAVA,” says Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, a computer science and engineering professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stretching Software Across Future Exascale Systems

If money was no object, then arguably the major nations of the world that always invest heavily in supercomputing would have already put an exascale class system into the field. But money always matters and ultimately supercomputers have to justify their very existence by enabling scientific breakthroughs and enhancing national security.

This, perhaps, is why the Exascale Computing Project establish by the US government last summer is taking such a measured pace in fostering the technologies that will ultimately result in bringing three exascale-class systems with two different architectures into the field after the turn of the next decade. The

Stretching Software Across Future Exascale Systems was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Cajun redux? Avaya’s focus on data networking misses the mark

While channel surfing recently I landed on a reality TV show where people bid on abandoned homes without knowing what’s inside. Occasionally, something of true value is found—maybe even something that might make the new owners wealthy. One might say that something like this happened when Avaya acquired Nortel Enterprise Solutions (NES) in 2009.Comparatively, Avaya inherited rooms upon rooms where old Aunt Norty had stashed the detritus of her life. There were, however, many treasures. One find, known today as the company’s SDN Fx™ Architecture, might be compared to a Picasso found stashed away in the attic. That’s the good news.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cajun redux? Avaya’s focus on data networking misses the mark

While channel surfing recently I landed on a reality TV show where people bid on abandoned homes without knowing what’s inside. Occasionally, something of true value is found—maybe even something that might make the new owners wealthy. One might say that something like this happened when Avaya acquired Nortel Enterprise Solutions (NES) in 2009.Comparatively, Avaya inherited rooms upon rooms where old Aunt Norty had stashed the detritus of her life. There were, however, many treasures. One find, known today as the company’s SDN Fx™ Architecture, might be compared to a Picasso found stashed away in the attic. That’s the good news.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here