Video: Control Plane Protocols in OpenFlow-Based Networks

One of the typical questions I get in my SDN workshops is “how do you run control-plane protocols like LACP or OSPF in OpenFlow networks?”.

I wrote a blog post describing the process two years ago and we discussed the details of this challenge in the OpenFlow Deep Dive webinar. That part of the webinar is now public: you’ll find the OpenFlow Use Cases: Control-Plane Protocols video on the ipSpace.net Free Content web site.

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For November 6th, 2015

Hey, it's HighScalability time:


Cool geneology of Relational Database Management Systems.

  • 9,000: Artifacts Uncovered in California Desert; 400 Million: LinkedIn members; 100: CEOs have more retirement assets than 41% of American families; $160B: worth of AWS; 12,000: potential age of oldest oral history; fungi: world's largest miners 

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • @jaykreps: Someone tell @TheEconomist that people claiming you can build Facebook on top of a p2p blockchain are totally high.
    • Larry Page: I think my job is to create a scale that we haven't quite seen from other companies. How we invest all that capital, and so on.
    • Tiquor: I like how one of the oldest concepts in programming, the ifdef, has now become (if you read the press) a "revolutionary idea" created by Facebook and apparently the core of a company's business. I'm only being a little sarcastic.
    • @DrQz: +1 Data comes from the Devil, only models come from God. 
    • @DakarMoto: Great talk by @adrianco today quote of the day "i'm getting bored with #microservices, and I’m getting very interested in #teraservices.”
    • @adrianco: Early #teraservices enablers - Diablo Memory1 DIMMs, 2TB AWS X1 instances, in-memory databases and analytics...
    • @PatrickMcFadin: Average DRAM Contract Price Continue reading

ProtonMail recovers from DDoS punch after being extorted

The last few days have not been easy for ProtonMail, the Geneva-based encrypted email service that launched last year. Earlier this week, the service was extorted by one group of attackers, then taken offline in a large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by a second group that it suspects may be state sponsored. ProtonMail offers a full, end-to-end encrypted email service. It raised more than US$500,000 last year after a blockbuster crowdfunding campaign that sought just $100,000.  Now, it bills itself as the largest secure email provider, with more than 500,000 users. Creating an account is free, although ProtonMail plans to eventually introduce a paid-for service with additional features.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How a mobile app company found the XcodeGhost in the machine

Nick Arnott couldn't figure out recently why Apple kept rejecting an update to a mobile app his company developed.It turned out the problem was a ghost in the machine.His company, Possible Mobile, is well versed in the App Store submission rules and has built apps for JetBlue, Better Homes & Gardens and the Major League Soccer.The rejection came after it was discovered in mid-September that thousands of apps in the App Store had been built with a counterfeit version of an Apple development tool, Xcode.The fake version, dubbed XcodeGhost and probably developed in China, had been downloaded by many developers from third-party sources, apparently because getting the 4GB code from Apple took too long.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

007 Tips for keeping your business as secure as MI6

As James Bond has shown, even a sophisticated MI6 operative with a nearly limitless budget and an array of hi-tech gadgets has to take into account existing security measures when formulating a plan to infiltrate a building or system. And while online criminal organizations don’t have Bond’s resources, they are sophisticated and well funded, which means you have to continually up your efforts to reduce the threat surface of your business.As you begin planning for 2016, here are 007 tips for bringing your business closer to an MI6 level of security, without a nation-state budget:1. Auto expiring credentials for new recruits: While we hope your corporate hiring process isn’t as intense as that of a secret agent, at the end of the day not everyone who signs up ends up making the final cut. To minimize your risk of rogue access, implement a policy that requires system admins to always create expiring credentials for new hires. It’s best practice to implement this for any temporary hires, but if your company offers an employment grace period, consider applying the expiration for the end of that time period, just in case. It’s always easier to re-implement than revoke once things Continue reading

Five things you should know about unlicensed LTE

1. It's the spectrum that's unlicensed, not the LTE.The acronyms are flying: LTE-U, LAA, MuLTEfire. They're all forms of LTE tweaked to send signals over unlicensed frequencies, which are open to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and any other technology that plays fair. Carriers could use it as soon as 2016 to add frequencies without spending billions to license them. At first, unlicensed LTE will only be used to supplement a carrier's own bands to make downloads faster. Later, it might send traffic both directions and even be used by enterprises that have no licensed spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five things you should know about unlicensed LTE

Here are five things you should know about unlicensed LTE, the concept of sending 4G cell traffic over channels also used by Wi-Fi and other networks.1. It's the spectrum that's unlicensed, not the LTE.The acronyms are flying: LTE-U, LAA, MuLTEfire. They're all forms of LTE tweaked to send signals over unlicensed frequencies, which are open to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and any other technology that plays fair. Carriers could use it as soon as 2016 to add frequencies without spending billions to license them. At first, unlicensed LTE will only be used to supplement a carrier's own bands to make downloads faster. Later, it might send traffic both directions and even be used by enterprises that have no licensed spectrum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

14 strange but true tech facts you (probably) don’t know

Hardly trivialImage by Mahender G/FlickrAs computers grow ever more powerful, we humans have to figure out where we still remain superior. Here's one suggestion: although the Internet is full of endless reams of data, it takes a human mind to suss through it all and determine what qualifies as interesting to other humans. Thus, we at ITworld present you with the following anecdotes about technology and the Internet, guaranteed to have been selected by the human hand and eye to pique your interest. Hopefully robots won't take this job for another few years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Automating a Multi-Platform World

Just because your organization has a multi-OS strategy should not automatically increase the complexity of your environment management. Each OS vendor likely drags along its own ecosystem of partners, development platforms, support and capability matrixes, and for the most part, once a system is developed on a particular OS platform, it tends to stay there.

Enter cloud. With growing abstraction of the infrastructure layer, cloud has done a great job of providing enterprise IT organizations with a level of control and flexibility once only available to the most advanced of greenfield deployments.

Even in a cloud-deployed environment, there is still a lot of potential baggage based on your particular cloud vendor, let alone your entire development suite and application platform.  In nearly all cases, once an app is written for a particular platform, it stays on that platform for the entirety of its lifecycle. If your primary cloud vendor doesn’t provide you an easy way to deploy-- in a supported manner-- your preferred application platform, customers face yet another area of complexity. Just like that, you could be stuck with few choices.

This is precisely why the joint Red Hat/Microsoft announcement today is a huge win for customers, and further Continue reading

Your Docker Agenda for November

  DockerCon EU 2015 is definitely a main highlight for Docker events in November, but there are so many other awesome events scheduled this month in Docker communities all over the world and online! From meetups to conference talks, webinars to workshops, … Continued

IT Vendor Risk Management: Improving but Still Inadequate

One of the fundamental best practices of cyber supply chain security is IT vendor risk management.  When organizations purchase and deploy application software, routers, servers, and storage devices, they are in essence placing their trust in the IT vendors that develop and sell these products. Unfortunately, this trust can be misplaced.  Some IT vendors (especially startups) focus on feature/functionality rather than security when they develop products resulting in buggy vulnerable products.  In other cases, hardware vendors unknowingly build systems using malicious components sourced through their own supply chain.  IT products are also often purchased through global networks of third-party distributors that have ample opportunity to turn innocent IT products into malicious confederates for cybercrime.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here