Programmable hardware: Barefoot Networks, PISA, and P4

Barefoot Networks recently came out of stealth to reveal their  Tofino 6.5Tbit/second (65 X 100GE or 260 X 25GE) fully user-programmable switch. The diagram above, from the talk Programming The Network Data Plane by Changhoon Kim of Barefoot Networks, shows the Protocol Independent Switch Architecture (PISA) of the programmable switch silicon.
A logical switch data-plane described in the P4 language is compiled to program the general purpose PISA hardware. For example, the following P4 code snippet is part of a P4 sFlow implementation:
table sflow_ing_take_sample {
    /* take_sample > MAX_VAL_31 and valid sflow_session_id => take the sample */
    reads {
        ingress_metadata.sflow_take_sample : ternary;
        sflow_metadata.sflow_session_id : exact;
    }
    actions {
        nop;
        sflow_ing_pkt_to_cpu;
    }
}
Network visibility is one of the major use cases for P4 based switches. Improving Network Monitoring and Management with Programmable Data Planes describes how P4 can be used to collect information about latency and queueing in the switch forwarding pipeline.
The document also describes an architecture for In-band Network Telemetry (INT) in which the ingress switch is programmed to insert a header containing measurements to packets entering the network. Each switch in the path is programmed to append additional measurements to the packet header. The Continue reading

Starbucks launches its Outlook add-in for coffee fiends

Nothing says "I vaguely appreciate you in a professional manner" quite like a Starbucks gift card. It's great for coworkers because Starbucks cafes are everywhere, and you don't actually have to spend time thinking about a personalized gift, or how you might go about giving the gift of actually good coffee.Starbucks and Microsoft are capitalizing on that with the launch Wednesday of an Outlook add-in that lets users easily send those ubiquitous gift cards to one another in an email. Users have to install the add-in, then connect to a Starbucks account, which they also need. After that, they can pull up a sidebar that makes it easy to add a gift card to future emails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Diversity at the top can help attract tech talent

Hiring a diverse workforce is proven to positively impact a company's bottom line and improve performance. But diversity, inclusion and equal representation also are increasingly factors job seekers consider when they're looking for employment. In other words, diversity and inclusion all the way up to the board level makes you a more attractive workplace."We started to see a trend emerge among our job seeker users who wanted to learn about particular hiring companies' diversity, inclusion and representation statistics and information. More and more candidates have this as one of their criteria when they're researching potential companies -- and we see that for every 10 job seekers on our site, six to seven of them are women. What that says to us is that employers who emphasize diversity at all levels, but especially at the more public-facing C-levels and at the board level, have a greater competitive advantage for about 60 to 70 percent of job seekers," says Anthony VanHorne, CEO of job search and culture matching site CareerLabs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AT&T to support Wi-Fi calling on the LG G4

Wi-Fi calling is becoming commonplace.AT&T announced Wednesday it will support calling over a Wi-Fi network from the LG G4 phone, with other Android devices to follow.Wi-Fi calls recently became available to customers using iPhones and other iOS 9.3 devices on all four major U.S. carriers, which includes AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. That iOS update first became available March 21.Wi-Fi calling is ideal for places were there is limited or no cell coverage. Many indoor spaces don't provide good cellular connections, so Wi-Fi calling is a suitable alternative. Travelers abroad can reduce roaming costs by using Wi-Fi calling as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Visual highlights: The E3 gaming Expo

Looking upImage by Reuters/Lucy NicholsonA boy samples the Vuzix iWear video headphones, which are billed as the equivalent to a 125 inch screen.RELATED: 47 must-see PC gaming gems revealed at E3 2016: Watch every trailerTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Running Barefoot – Thoughts on Tofino and P4

barefootgrass

The big announcement this week is that Barefoot Networks leaped out of stealth mode and announced that they’re working on a very, very fast datacenter switch. The Barefoot Tofino can do up to 6.5 Tbps of throughput. That’s a pretty significant number. But what sets the Tofino apart is that it also uses the open source P4 programming language to configure the device for everything, from forwarding packets to making routing decisions. Here’s why that may be bigger than another fast switch.

Feature Presentation

Barefoot admits in their announcement post that one of the ways they were able to drive the performance of the Tofino platform higher was to remove a lot of the accumulated cruft that has been added to switch software for the past twenty years. For Barefoot, this is mostly about pushing P4 as the software component of their switch platform and driving adoption of it in a wider market.

Let’s take a look at what this really means for you. Modern network operating systems typically fall into one of two categories. The first is the “kitchen sink” system. This OS has every possible feature you could ever want built in at runtime. Sure, you get Continue reading

30 days in a terminal: Day 0 — The adventure begins

Last summer, I wrote an article series called "Kicking Google out of my life." It was an attempt to remove all Google services entirely from my daily usage for 30 days—a surprisingly daunting challenge for someone who had become deeply dependent on Google. I was mostly successful. I chronicled my experience—detailing how I approached replacing Google services with non-Google variants—and in the end, my life was better for it.Did I return to Google for a few things (such as YouTube and G+)? You bet I did. But my heavy reliance on a single company finally came to an end, and I learned a great deal (both about available alternatives and my own personal preferences) in the process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A black market is selling access to hacked government servers for $6

Want access to a government server? An online black market is selling access to thousands of hacked servers for as little as US$6.Known as xDedic, the market has a catalog of over 70,000 compromised servers for sale, Kaspersky Lab said Wednesday.The servers are in 173 countries and used by governments, businesses and universities. The owners likely have no idea they’ve been hacked, the security firm said.Hackers at xDedic breached many of the servers through trial-and-error using different passwords. They catalogued the servers' software, browsing history and other details buyers might like to know.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A black market is selling access to hacked government servers for $6

Want access to a government server? An online black market is selling access to thousands of hacked servers for as little as US$6.Known as xDedic, the market has a catalog of over 70,000 compromised servers for sale, Kaspersky Lab said Wednesday.The servers are in 173 countries and used by governments, businesses and universities. The owners likely have no idea they’ve been hacked, the security firm said.Hackers at xDedic breached many of the servers through trial-and-error using different passwords. They catalogued the servers' software, browsing history and other details buyers might like to know.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Next-Gen Network Adapters: More Oomph, Switchless Clusters

There are two endpoints in any network connection, and you have to focus on both the server adapter and the switch to get the best and most balanced performance out of the network and the proper return on what amounts to be a substantial investment in a cluster.

With the upcoming ConnectX-5 server adapters, Mellanox Technologies is continuing in its drive to have more and more of the network processing in a server node offloaded to its adapter cards. And it is also rolling out significant new functionality such as background checkpointing and switchless networking, and of course there is …

Next-Gen Network Adapters: More Oomph, Switchless Clusters was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

FBI: Business e-mail scam losses top $3 billion, a 1,300% increase in since Jan.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) this week said the scourge it calls the Business Email Compromise continues to rack-up victims and money – over $3 billion in losses so far.+More on Network World: FBI/FTC: Watch those e-mails from your “CEO”+The BEC scam is typically carried out by compromising legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds, the IC3 stated.The impact of the scam is detailed I the IC3 stats released this week including:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The case for WAN acceleration as NFV

Previously, I discussed the benefits of using regional performance hubs to support new data patterns associated with the increasing use of cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and Office365.Just as business applications have transitioned to an “as a service” model, so will many network-based functions such as firewalls, IPS, IDS, etc. using network function virtualization (NFV). Although there hasn’t much been public discourse yet on WAN Optimization as a service, it is ideally suited for being “NFV-ed.”+ Also on Network World: Reinventing the WAN +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The case for WAN acceleration as NFV

Previously, I discussed the benefits of using regional performance hubs to support new data patterns associated with the increasing use of cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and Office365.Just as business applications have transitioned to an “as a service” model, so will many network-based functions such as firewalls, IPS, IDS, etc. using network function virtualization (NFV). Although there hasn’t much been public discourse yet on WAN Optimization as a service, it is ideally suited for being “NFV-ed.”+ Also on Network World: Reinventing the WAN +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mirantis throws another hand grenade: Services are cool again

I'm a big fan of Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack vendor. It is one company that has no problem at all being contentious. Where other vendors tend to think deeply about the impacts of what they say and process their messages through multiple levels of communication staffers, Mirantis has an "ask forgiveness, not permission" approach. This must cause serious headaches for its long-suffering press staff, but it certainly provides serious fodder for the commentators out there.Looking back over the years, Mirantis has been the source of many high-profile cloud stories. Of course, high-profile is a relative term, and it is, admittedly, a small number of people who watch the space that Mirantis plays in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Image Optimization Technology that Serves Millions of Requests Per Day

This article will touch upon how Kraken.io built and scaled an image optimization platform which serves millions of requests per day, with the goal of maintaining high performance at all times while keeping costs as low as possible. We present our infrastructure as it is in its current state at the time of writing, and touch upon some of the interesting things we learned in order to get it here.

Let’s make an image optimizer

You want to start saving money on your CDN bills and generally speed up your websites by pushing less bytes over the wire to your user’s browser. Chances are that over 60% of your traffic are images alone.

Using ImageMagick (you did read ImageTragick, right?) you can slash down the quality of a JPEG file with a simple command:

$ convert -quality 70 original.jpg optimized.jpg

$ ls -la

-rw-r--r--  1 matylla  staff  5897 May 16 14:24 original.jpg

-rw-r--r--  1 matylla  staff  2995 May 16 14:25 optimized.jpg

Congratulations. You’ve just brought down the size of that JPEG by ~50% by butchering it’s quality. The image now looks like Minecraft. It can’t look like that - it sells your products Continue reading

AT&T moves Wi-Fi calling needle forward for users of some Android devices

Having provided the option for iPhone users looking to make such international calls back in March, AT&T today announced that owners of certain Android devices will now also have access to Wi-Fi calling.So if you’re stuck in a spot with lousy to non-existent cell coverage – my kids’ school, for example – you’ll be able to call and text without stepping outside.The Android option is limited for starters to LG G4 but AT&T indicated that others will follow “soon.”From an AT&T blog post:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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