A new role for network pros: application-flow architect

There are a lot of issues that network-management people worry about. We all have heard about faults, failures, breaches. But want to know what long-term problem is keeping the smart members of the network leadership of enterprises up at night? It’s an empty chair. Their chair, at the table that makes the plans that set network requirements and directions today and for years to come. These leaders used to sit in that chair, but now they say there’s no place for them.Application designs determine network requirements We used to build networks from primitive pieces, like digital trunks and routers. Then we built them from services, like IP VPNs. That transformation was jarring to many who’d cut their teeth on real private-network technology, but they were still a big part of the game. Today, we’re still building networks from services, but the services of today are application services that include implicit network features. The really new network is built from connectivity services that are included in cloud and even data-center hosting packages. Application planners design these services, and the decisions they make frame the building-blocks of the network. One chief network officer said he’d gone from building technology to stocking Continue reading

netlab: Building a Layer-2 Fabric

A friend of mine decided to use netlab to build a simple traditional data center fabric, and asked me a question along these lines:

How do I make all the ports be L2 by default i.e. not have IP address assigned to them?

Trying to answer his question way too late in the evening (I know, I shouldn’t be doing that), I focused on the “no IP addresses” part. To get there, you have to use the l2only pool or disable IPv4 prefixes in the built-in address pools, for example:

Read more …

netlab: Building a Layer-2 Fabric

A friend of mine decided to use netlab to build a simple traditional data center fabric, and asked me a question along these lines:

How do I make all the ports be L2 by default i.e. not have IP address assigned to them?

Trying to answer his question way too late in the evening (I know, I shouldn’t be doing that), I focused on the “no IP addresses” part. To get there, you have to use the l2only pool or disable IPv4 prefixes in the built-in address pools, for example:

Read more …

Worth Reading: Do We Need Network Automation

A long, long time ago, Mircea Ulinic (the author of Salt networking modules) wrote a long and thoughtful blog post on whether we need network automation (TL&DR spoiler: yes).

After reading the article, you might want to listen to the Salt and SaltStack podcast we did with Mircea a long while ago, and watch his presentation in Building Network Automation Solutions online course (also accessible with Expert Subscription).

Worth Reading: Do We Need Network Automation

A long, long time ago, Mircea Ulinic (the author of Salt networking modules) wrote a long and thoughtful blog post on whether we need network automation (TL&DR spoiler: yes).

After reading the article, you might want to listen to the Salt and SaltStack podcast we did with Mircea a long while ago, and watch his presentation in Building Network Automation Solutions online course (also accessible with Expert Subscription).

IP Addresses through 2022

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.

IP Addresses through 2022

Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let's see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.

Controversial Reads 012023


As this technology is perfected, AI writing may render most of the English composition curriculum and other writing skills irrelevant. Like penmanship being displaced by word processors, and memorization by books or databases, writing itself may soon be seen as an archaic novelty.


How to properly balance the commercial rights of a complainant with the free speech rights of a respondent has challenged a generation of Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) panelists.


New York City Mayor Eric Adams responded to criticism over increasing the use of facial recognition technology by declaring, Big Brother is protecting you!


Whether someone will get a loan for buying a house is dependent on the opaque policy instantiated in some black box algorithm. Ditto whether someone’s parole application will get approved, some startup entrepreneur will get capital for his venture, or someone on an organ donation waitlist will get his life-saving treatment.


Blaise Arcas, the head of Google’s AI group in Seattle, recently argued that although large language models (LLMs) may be driven by statistics, statistics do amount to understanding.


Crypto bros still blather on about how their Bitcoin, Ethereum or what have you will go to the Moon. They also insist that Continue reading

Weekend Reads 012023


However, since growing online content consumption put networks under increasing pressure during the peaks of the Coronavirus lockdowns, some political support in Europe seems to have been garnered (e.g. France, Italy, and Spain).


On the other hand, the digital sphere has become a dangerous space. The Ukrainian war pulled cyber into real military fighting.


The recent adoption at the end of December of the new EU Directive for a high level of cybersecurity across the Union—commonly referred to as “NIS2”—paved the way for important updates to the domain name system (DNS).


Domain names are associated with the full spectrum of internet content, from legitimate use by brands or individuals, to infringing or criminal activity. CSC has observed that certain TLDs get used more for egregious content.


Heata has developed a novel way to use the waste heat generated by servers: mounting them on domestic hot water tanks to cut energy bills for homeowners.


It’s time for you and your colleagues to become more skeptical about what you read. That’s a takeaway from a series of experiments undertaken using GPT-3 AI text-generating interfaces to create malicious messages designed to spear-phish, scam, harrass, and spread fake news.


Randy Anders is VP Continue reading

Buffer overflow — Linux Process — Stack Creation and Inspection

< MEDIUM: https://raaki-88.medium.com/buffer-overflow-linux-process-stack-creation-and-i-d6f28b0239dc >

Process and what happens during process creation have been discussed in this post previously — https://medium.com/@raaki-88/linux-process-what-happens-under-the-hood-49e8bcf6173c

Now, let’s understand what is buffer overflow:

A buffer overflow is a type of software vulnerability that occurs when a program tries to store more data in a buffer (a temporary storage area) than it can hold. This can cause the program to overwrite adjacent memory locations, potentially leading to the execution of malicious code or the crashing of the program. Buffer overflow attacks are a common method used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to a system.

Generally, C and C++ languages are more vulnerable to Buffer Overflow while programming languages like Python and Go have implementations which protect stack.

I have written the program in Python but had to use underlying C functionality to achieve similarly.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import ctypes
import pdb
buffer = ctypes.create_string_buffer(8) 
ctypes.memmove(buffer, b"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA",1000)
print('end of the program')

This is a very simple implementation where we created a buffer which can hold 8 bytes of memory, next we will create a new object which moves from one block of the memory to another but with a newer size, which will Continue reading

Friday Networking Field Day Thoughts

I’m wrapping up Networking Field Day 30 this week and as is always the case there was a lot of great discussion from both the presenters and the delegates outside of the presentations. It’s one of the reasons why I love doing this job even after almost ten years. I get to meet fun people and have an impact on so many things in the tech industry.

  • Network-as-a-Service is coming. We recorded a roundtable discussion about it and I think the impact that it’s going to have on mid-sized businesses is massive. It’s going to be like cloud. Not just in operational capability. It’s also going to be a huge driver for what you can do with your network in support of applications. The snowflakes may melt under the weight of the cookies we make from the cookie cutter deployments.
  • It feels like a lot of companies are trying to find what’s next. Part of that is coming from the ways that organizations are changing their outlook for what an office should be after the pandemic shutdowns. But still others are realizing they can’t use the same revenue stream for the next five years and hope to survive. This isn’t Continue reading

IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability

Cutting-edge server chips are turning heads for their potential to boost performance, but next-generation processors also run hotter than older designs, and data-center operators will struggle to figure out what to do with limited guidance from chip makers.At the same time, there’s going to be increased scrutiny on the role that IT equipment can play in energy efficiency efforts. These interrelated trends are among the top predictions Uptime Institute is making for data centers this year.“Operators will struggle with new, hotter server chips,” said Jacqueline Davis, research analyst at Uptime, during a web conference on the institute’s 2023 data-center predictions. Meanwhile, “energy-efficiency focus is going to expand to include the IT equipment itself, something that we think is overdue.”To read this article in full, please click here

IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability

Cutting-edge server chips are turning heads for their potential to boost performance, but next-generation processors also run hotter than older designs, and data-center operators will struggle to figure out what to do with limited guidance from chip makers.At the same time, there’s going to be increased scrutiny on the role that IT equipment can play in energy efficiency efforts. These interrelated trends are among the top predictions Uptime Institute is making for data centers this year.“Operators will struggle with new, hotter server chips,” said Jacqueline Davis, research analyst at Uptime, during a web conference on the institute’s 2023 data-center predictions. Meanwhile, “energy-efficiency focus is going to expand to include the IT equipment itself, something that we think is overdue.”To read this article in full, please click here

Deploy production grade automation technology at scale with Red Hat and F5

 

The complexity of enterprise networks is increasing with the widespread adoption of networks spanning on premises data centers and cloud.  To meet the challenge of this complexity, automation technology specifically designed for a NetOpps approach for Hybrid Cloud environments has been jointly developed by Red Hat and F5.  Its focus on security, scale, and speed are all goals inherent in a NetOpps strategy that allow teams to thrive in the increasingly complex world of enterprise networking.

Network teams also need to work well with groups across the IT stack while also taking advantage of the benefits of infrastructure as code.  When everyone speaks the same language and uses the same revision control tools to deploy and update their infrastructure, IT infrastructure is more reliable, secure, downtime is reduced, and organizations save money.

F5 and the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform delivers the features and functionality needed for a NetOpps team - with a powerful automation platform designed for simplicity and inter team cooperation. You will learn how F5 and Red Hat assist network teams transitioning to a NetOps workflow, while reducing risk and increasing productivity.  From on-prem to the cloud, F5 and Red Hat can Continue reading

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