Wireless As We Know It Is Dead

Congratulations! We have managed to slay the beast that is wireless. We’ve driven a stake through it’s heart and prevented it from destroying civilization. We’ve taken a nascent technology with potential and turned it into the same faceless corporate technology as the Ethernet that it replaced. Alarmist? Not hardly. Let’s take a look at how 802.11 managed to come to an inglorious end.

Maturing Or Growing Up

Wireless used to be the wild frontier of networking. Sure, those access points bridged to the traditional network and produced packets and frames like all the other equipment. But wireless was unregulated. It didn’t conform to the plans of the networking team. People could go buy a wireless access point and put it under their desk to make that shiny new laptop with 802.11b work without needing to be plugged in.

Wireless used to be about getting connectivity. It used to be about squirreling away secret gear in the hopes of getting a leg up on the poor schmuck in the next cube that had to stay chained to his six feet of network connectivity under the desk. That was before the professionals came in. They changed wireless. They put a Continue reading

Bridge vs Macvlan

Bridge

A bridge is a Layer 2 device that connects two Layer 2 (i.e. Ethernet) segments together. Frames between the two segments are forwarded based on the Layer 2 addresses (i.e. MAC addresses). Although the two words are still often used in different contexts, a bridge is effectively a switch and all the confusion started 20+ years ago for marketing purposes.

Switching was just a fancy name for bridging, and that was a 1980s technology – or so the thinking went.

A bridge makes forwarding decisions based on the MAC address table. Bridge learns MAC addresses by looking into the Frames headers of communicating hosts.

A bridge can be a physical device or implemented entirely in software. Linux kernel is able to perform bridging since 1999. By creating a bridge, you can connect multiple physical or virtual interfaces into a single Layer 2 segment. A bridge that connects two physical interfaces on a Linux host effectively turns this host into a physical switch.

Switches have meanwhile became specialized physical devices and software bridging had almost lost its place. However, with the advent of virtualization, virtual machines running on physical hosts required Layer 2 connection to the physical network Continue reading

Prepare to patch a critical flaw in Windows and Samba file sharing in 3 weeks

Systems administrators should get ready to fix a critical vulnerability on April 12 that affects the Windows and Samba implementations of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. The vulnerability was discovered by Stefan Metzmacher, a core developer of the Samba software, which is a popular open-source implementation of the SMB/CIFS (Server Message Block/Common Internet File System) networking protocol. SMB/CIFS is implemented by default in Windows, where it's used for network file and printer sharing. Linux and other Unix-like systems can interoperate and share resources with Windows systems over the same protocol using the Samba software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Should your board of directors include a cybersecurity expert?

Should companies have a cybersecurity expert on their board of directors? The federal government seems to think so, and increasingly so do security and risk professionals, although companies would prefer to make that decision without government involvement, according to a sampling of industry pros. A disclosure bill introduced by the U.S. Senate in December would ask companies to disclose whether they have a “cyber security expert” or equivalent measure on its board of directors. While no action is required if no expert currently has a seat on the board, the company would need to provide an explanation for how it is approaching cybersecurity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Should you worry that your car will be hacked?

The federal government's warning last week about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in vehicles is a well-intentioned public service announcement that has little value for consumers.The warning noted the highly publicized wireless vehicle hack of a Chrysler Jeep Cherokee last July, where two security experts demonstrated they could control critical functions of the vehicle. The revelation lead to Chrysler recalling 1.4 million vehicles to update software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Security spring cleaning time

Get rid of that stuff collecting dustImage by ThinkstockAs new security threats continue to emerge and security teams find themselves stuck in the cycle of piling on new products and policies each time they receive an alert notification, true functions of security programs get lost in the clutter. As melting snow and longer days promise that spring is right around the corner, take this time to start fresh and “spring clean” your security ecosystems. To help get you started, these infosec professionals provide guidelines for what to check off on a security spring-cleaning list.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Understanding OpenStack: Capabilities & Challenges

10 SDN Startups Driving Innovation

Male computer programmers shown to be right up there with chefs, dentists on gender pay gap scale

Glassdoor Economic Research A deep dive into crowdsourced salary data from more than half a million employees shows that the gender pay gap is very real, and that male computer programmers make far more than their female counterparts.The Economic Research arm of online jobs marketplace Glassdoor has issued a report titled Demystifying the Gender Pay Gap that attempts to explain why males are making so much more than females across industries and countries. While the researchers have come up with explanations for much of the pay gap in the United States, about a third of the gap is unexplained and presumed to be due to factors such as intentional or unintentional bias as well differences in pay negotiations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Learn SDN And OpenFlow Fundamentals

I’m New to SDN. Where Should I Start?

One of my readers sent me this question:

Considering I know nothing about anything SDN-related (and considering it seems "SDN" means something different depending to whom you are asking), where should someone with no knowledge of SDN start?

The obvious answer: sdn.ipSpace.net. On a more serious note:

Network-CI Part 3 – OSPF to BGP Migration in Active/Standby DC

The final post in a series demonstrates how to use the network-ci tools to safely replace a core routing protocol inside a small Active/Standby Data Centre.

This bag of tricks may help stop a Locky ransomware infection

A malware researcher has found a few tricks to stop one of the latest types of ransomware, called Locky, from infecting a computer without using any security programs.Ransomware is malware that encrypts a computer's files. Users are shown instructions for how to pay a fee to get the decryption key. The costs can range from a few hundreds dollars to thousands, payable to cybercriminals in bitcoin.Locky is a relative newcomer to the ransomware scene, which computer security researchers first saw over the last few months. It is primarily distributed through spam messages that try to trick people into opening attachments, such as fake invoices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Syrian Electronic Army was careless with Gmail, Facebook

If you're a hacker, it's a good idea to stay away from Facebook and Gmail to communicate with your colleagues.Three men, who allegedly were part of a multi-year hacking campaign executed by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), left a long digital trail that didn't make them hard to identify, according to court documents.The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges on Tuesday against the men, who are accused of hacking companies and defacing websites.The SEA, which emerged around July 2011, claimed credit for prominent hacks that sought to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The group targeted the White House, Harvard University, Reuters, the Associated Press, NASA and Microsoft, among others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper Targets Tier 2s With IP & Optical Integration

It will integrate optical technology in its routers.

The Next Level: Mindfulness And IT

On this episode of the Next Level we talk about mindfulness and what it means to IT performance, and whether mindfulness benefits such as relaxation and focus can be separated from its spiritual context.

The post The Next Level: Mindfulness And IT appeared first on Packet Pushers.

The Next Level: Mindfulness And IT

On this episode of the Next Level we talk about mindfulness and what it means to IT performance, and whether mindfulness benefits such as relaxation and focus can be separated from its spiritual context.

The post The Next Level: Mindfulness And IT appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Include the why

I recently stumbled upon an interesting speech from 1984 by Charlie Munger of Bershire Hathaway fame. Charlie is Warren Buffet’s right-hand-man, and a straight talking genius in his own right. It’s a fairly long speech and Charlie has a few very interesting things to say, but one particular section on ‘explaining the why’ really struck home.
Here’s a brief quote:

….if you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply. Even if they don’t understand your reason, they’ll be more likely to comply.
So there’s an iron rule that just as you want to start getting worldly wisdom by asking why, why, why, in communicating with other people about everything, you want to include why, why, why. Even if it’s obvious, it’s wise to stick in the why.

The ‘why’ is notably absent from most conversations in our high-tech sphere. I’ve wasted countless hours interpreting solutions to ill-defined or undefined problems. I’m guilty of writing many ‘why-less’ documents and emails also. Upon reflection, I can recognise the folly of not explaining the problem at hand before launching into the solution.
When I drop the reasoning and background and Continue reading

Include the why

I recently stumbled upon an interesting commencement speech by Charlie Munger of Bershire Hathaway fame. Charlie is Warren Buffet’s right-hand-man, and a straight talking genius in his own right. It’s a fairly long speech and Charlie has a few very … Continue reading →

The post Include the why appeared first on The Network Sherpa.

Startup Sigfox wins over a carrier as new radios battle for the future of IoT

Altice, a network operator active in the U.S. and across Europe, is betting on French company Sigfox to expand its machine-to-machine business even as it tests LTE-M, a narrowband version of the 4G standard slimmed down for the Internet of Things. One technology it won't touch, though, is LoRa, the fledgling standard backed by a number of mobile operators, including Orange and Bouygues Telecom, the main rivals of Altice's French subsidiary, SFR. Machine-to-machine communications already constitute a significant market for Altice, which connects 5 million machines or objects via its cellular networks and has 2,600 enterprise clients in this field, company executives said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here