Break Those Chains

So because I’m new to this whole blogging at Packet Pushers thing (and blogging in general), I’ve been trying to decide on my place in the grand scheme of things. There are a lot of folks here that do a great job of deep-dives, vendor happenings, and general overviews. I could do those, but what’s the point of rehashing what this site and 100s of others (Google FTW) do?

The post Break Those Chains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Break Those Chains

So because I’m new to this whole blogging at Packet Pushers thing (and blogging in general), I’ve been trying to decide on my place in the grand scheme of things. There are a lot of folks here that do a great job of deep-dives, vendor happenings, and general overviews. I could do those, but what’s the point of rehashing what this site and 100s of others (Google FTW) do?

The post Break Those Chains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Demystifying NFV Infrastructure Hotspots

Slides from the recent Dell NFV Summit 2015 are now available. Steve Wright's 7 Fallacies of NFV talk describes the importance of managing network resources in an NFV stack. The diagram above shows the complex network data paths that result from NFV as packets flow between virtual functions across physical and virtual switches.
The presentation describes how the Fallacies of Distributes Computing apply to NFV, highlighting the importance of effective management of network resources for effective NFV deployment.

Another paper, Demystifying NFV Infrastructure Hotspots by Ramki Krishnan, Anoop Ghanwani, and Michael Tien, demonstrates how industry standard sFlow instrumentation build into physical and virtual switches can provide the comprehensive real-time analytics needed to manage NFV deployments.
The vIMS (virtualized IP Multimedia Subsystem) is used as an example. The diagram below shows the functional elements of the logical architecture deployed on the hardware testbed shown above.
sFlow telemetry from the physical switches in the leaf and spine network, virtual switch instances, and hypervisors is streamed to an instance of the sFlow-RT analytics platform.
The dashboard application running on sFlow-RT demonstrates visibility into the traffic flows between virtual network functions.
The final set of charts in the dashboard shows the multi-media traffic flows running Continue reading

Use Google For Throughput, Amazon And Azure For Low Latency

Which cloud should you use? It may depend on what you need to do with it. What Zach Bjornson needs to do is process large amounts scientific data as fast as possible, which means reading data into memory as fast as possible. So, he made benchmark using Google's new multi-cloud PerfKitBenchmarker, to figure out which cloud was best for the job.

The results are in a very detailed article: AWS S3 vs Google Cloud vs Azure: Cloud Storage Performance. Feel free to datamine the results for more insights, but overall his conclusions are:

Pakistan unblocks YouTube after Google launches local version

Pakistan has lifted a ban on YouTube in the country after Google offered a localized version, which the government claims will allow it to ask for the removal of material considered offensive from the website.YouTube was ordered blocked in Pakistan in 2012 after a controversial video, called the "Innocence of Muslims," created a controversy in many countries for mocking the Prophet Muhammad.Pakistan authorities told a court that they were blocking the whole domain because it was not technically feasible for them to block specific links to the video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

To Infinity and Beyond…

It’s an exciting time in networking!

web-IT

Google and Amazon recently gave the IT community a glimpse behind the curtain of web-IT, revealing the outcome of their pioneering efforts. It’s no surprise that they’ve settled on IP fabrics and network virtualization to provide both scale and isolation. Web giants Facebook and Microsoft are both driving open hardware in an effort to eliminate the lock that industry incumbents have on networking solutions.

You know that you’re onto something when industry analysts start counting things – Gartner’s Andrew Lerner recently published his perspective on the networking industry; by 2017, they expect 50% of global enterprises to embrace web-IT architectures.

Last year, we saw the uptake of modern networking paradigms. Practitioners of NetDevOps are driving automation practices into the network domain. IP storage solutions are rampant, benefiting from high capacity IP fabrics. Brite-box hardware suppliers have enabled web-IT with procurement, logistics, and support capability that meets the needs of any organization. Network virtualization solutions from VMware NSX and up-and-comer Nuage are getting the nod in enterprises. The OpenStack community applied a laser-like focus on Neutron which in turn has promoted virtual network solutions from Akanda and Midokura to be deployed at scale. We’re seeing Continue reading

Advantech industrial serial-to-Internet gateways wide open to unauthorized access

Internet-connected industrial devices could be accessible to anyone, with no password, thanks to a coding error by a gateway manufacturer.Taiwanese firm Advantech patched the firmware in some of its serial-to-IP gateway devices in October to remove a hard-coded SSH (Secure Shell) key that would have allowed unauthorized access by remote attackers.But it overlooked an even bigger problem: Any password will unlock the gateways, which are used to connect legacy serial devices to TCP/IP and cellular networks in industrial environments around the world.Researchers from security firm Rapid7 discovered the vulnerability in the revised firmware, version 1.98, released for the Advantech EKI-1322 Internet protocol (IP) gateway which can connect serial and Ethernet devices to a cellular network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Advantech industrial serial-to-Internet gateways wide open to unauthorized access

Internet-connected industrial devices could be accessible to anyone, with no password, thanks to a coding error by a gateway manufacturer. Taiwanese firm Advantech patched the firmware in some of its serial-to-IP gateway devices in October to remove a hard-coded SSH (Secure Shell) key that would have allowed unauthorized access by remote attackers. But it overlooked an even bigger problem: Any password will unlock the gateways, which are used to connect legacy serial devices to TCP/IP and cellular networks in industrial environments around the world. Researchers from security firm Rapid7 discovered the vulnerability in the revised firmware, version 1.98, released for the Advantech EKI-1322 Internet protocol (IP) gateway which can connect serial and Ethernet devices to a cellular network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GIT Bootcamp: Branching and Merging

Back to GIT! Just to have a quick recap of the things we’ve seen in the first part of our GIT deep dive, I am going to create a brand new repo, some files and commit everything:

$ mkdir myrepo2
$ cd myrepo2

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/huidesa/myrepo2/.git/

$ touch file1
$ touch license_agreement
$ touch installer.exe
$ touch hello.lib

$ git status
On branch master
Initial commit
Untracked files:
(use “git add <file>…” to include in what will be committed)

     file1
     hello.lib
     installer.exe
     license_agreement

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use “git add” to track)

$ git add *

$ git status
On branch master
Initial commit
Changes to be committed:
(use “git rm –cached <file>…” to unstage)

     new file:   file1
     new file:   hello.lib
     new file:   installer.exe
     new file:   license_agreement

$ git commit -m “Creating my project”
[master (root-commit) ac129d8] Creating my project
Committer: Alexandra <[email protected]>
Your name and email address were configured automatically based
on your username and hostname. Please check that they are accurate.
You can suppress this message by setting them explicitly. Run the
Continue reading

OED tools: Linux command alias

After a few posts about Windows software now it’s time for Linux. The problem Working with the Linux bash sometimes requires to type long commands multiple times. Isn’t that a motivation strong enough to look for a better way? The automation Linux alias is quite self-explanatory, it allows to create command aliases like with the […]

Percentage Driven: Should IP Telephony Die?

percentage-drivenIs IP Telephony dead? “When a technology market stops growing, it’s dead” — this is the call and mantra of the technology world. Since we live in a percentage driven world, the first question we seem to ask is, “what story do the percentages tell?” Tom raises the counterpoint — it doesn’t matter if the market is growing or not, there’s still a huge need for phones on desks. Who is right?

But I think this entire percentage driven thing points to a problem in our technology culture. Let me tell you a story…

We have a dog. A black and white (black with white spots as my daughter tells me, because his nose is black) English Cocker Spaniel. With black spots in his white spots. Spaniels, if you’re not familiar with them, are balls of energy. They never really “grow up” — not really, anyway. The most sedate Spaniel breed in the world is a Clumber, and they’re not what you’d call “down” personalities. Now, when we first brought this little bundle of energy home, we weighed him on a regular basis. At some point, he slowed down in gaining weight, and eventually he stopped gaining weight altogether. Continue reading

Network security vs. app security: What’s the difference, and why does it matter?

If you’re familiar with the film The NeverEnding Story, then you know that the goal of the hero, Atreyu, was to reach the boundaries of Fantasia. He’s disappointed to learn that Fantasia has no boundaries because it’s the land of human fantasy. In some ways, the land of Fantasia is like network security. Where once there existed a fortress around the perimeter of a land that needed to be protected, those boundaries have expanded, leaving security professionals scratching their heads trying to discern how best to protect the enterprise against invaders.The idea that time and resources should be invested in either network security or application security is misguided as both are equally as important to securing the enterprise. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 biggest cybersecurity concerns in 2016

Last year began and ended with a series of high-profile cybersecurity attacks, starting with the pilfering of 80 million Social Security records at health insurer Anthem and culminating with infiltrations at Starwood, Hilton and Hyatt hotel chains. Expect digital assaults, -- ranging from standard malware to more sophisticated, clandestine entries -- to continue on leading corporate brands in 2016, according to Raytheon's Websense business. The cybersecurity software maker, which analyzed threat data from 22,000 customers in 155 countries, says hackers will conjure attacks that target emerging technologies, such as mobile payments and top-level domains.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Think Global, Peer Local. Peer with CloudFlare at 100 Internet Exchange Points

Think Global, Peer Local. Peer with CloudFlare at 100 Internet Exchange Points

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) or Network Access Points (NAPs) facilities are where networks meet, participating in what's known as peering, which interconnects various parts of the global Internet.

At CloudFlare we are dedicated to peering. So much so that we just joined our 100th Internet Exchange point!

Think Global, Peer Local. Peer with CloudFlare at 100 Internet Exchange PointsImage courtesy of Martin Levy

What is peering?

According to Wikipedia:

“In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network”

In reality this normally means a physical place where two different networks (they could be backbones, CDNs, mobile networks or broadband ISPs) connect their respective networks together to exchange traffic. Over the last fifteen years, there has been a major expansion in network interconnections, running parallel to the enormous expansion of the global Internet. This expansion includes new data centre facilities being developed to house network equipment. Some of those data centres have attracted massive numbers of networks, in no small part due to the thriving Internet Exchanges Points (both new and existing) that operate within them. London with the LINX and LONAP exchanges, Amsterdam with AMS-IX and NL-IX exchanges, Frankfurt with DE-CIX and ECIX exchanges Continue reading