Codec Negotiations in Your CCIE Collaboration Preparation

Codec negotiation is a topic that gets glossed over without much consideration in the studies of most students. There’s really not much to it, right? All we have to do is slap a couple of Regions on two different system endpoints and…voila, we have successfully negotiated a codec! Can it be that simple? Like most answers to rhetorical questions in the tech world, “It depends.” A simplistic approach like the one just described above is a great place to start, but it doesn’t take into account key call flow elements such as early/delayed offer, Audio Codec Preference Lists, or call routing across CUBE, CUCM or CUCME. What if the codec should be different based on the originator of the call? These are all examples of key issues involving codec negotiation that we must wrap our mind around if we are to be successful in our CCIE Collaboration endeavors.

Let’s examine the requirement of routing a call between a 9971 Phone registered to the HQ CUCM cluster (HQ Phone 1) and a 7965 Phone registered to the SB CUCM cluster (SB Phone 1). In this example, consider that a SIP Trunk is configured directly between clusters in order to route Continue reading

Linux Core 6.3 as Routing and Switching VMware Appliance

Two weeks ago I finished creating a network host based on Linux Core 6.3 installed on WMware x86-64 virtual machine. I loaded Core Linux with several network extensions that allows host to generate, measure, route network traffic and scan networks. I also wrote a short article that contains a list of loaded extension.

Then I went further with the ​project and my goal was to build L3 switch and router based on  Core Linux 6.3 loaded with Open vSwitch, Quagga, Bird and Keepalived extension. Those are the right extensions that turned the network host  to routing and switching appliance. Furthermore the routing daemons Quagga and Bird and multilayer switch Open vSwitch are used in many large production networks.

The R&S appliance I built can be used for learning networking on Linux, routing and switching. It is available for download in Download section. For those who are interested in installation steps the whole process of extension installation  is described in this article.

The virtual VMware appliance is based on Linux Core network host image and it contains all the extensions listed here plus the following extensions:

openvswitch - 2.4.90
quagga - 0.99.24.1
bird - 1.5.0
keepalived - 1.2.19

Note Continue reading

Smart refrigerator hack exposes Gmail login credentials

A team of hackers recently discovered a man-in-the-middle vulnerability in a Samsung smart refrigerator that can be exploited to steal Gmail users' login credentials, The Register reported this week.Hackers from security company Pen Test Partners discovered the flaw while participating in an Internet of Things (IoT) hacking challenge at the Def Con security conference earlier this month. The smart refrigerator, Samsung model RF28HMELBSR, is designed to integrate the user's Gmail Calendar with its display. Samsung implemented SSL to secure the Gmail integration, but the hackers found that the device does not validate SSL certificates, opening the opportunity for hackers to access the network and monitor activity for the user name and password used to link the refrigerator to Gmail.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Open Source (Part 1)

How is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) broken? Can you count the ways? The process is too slow, the standards are often opaque, the results are often complex and difficult to deploy; any engineer who’s been in the networking field long enough most likely can recite a litany of complaints. via network computing


This is the first of a four part series on open source versus open standards.

The post Worth Reading: Open Source (Part 1) appeared first on 'net work.

7 Strategies for 10x Transformative Change

Peter Thiel, VC, PayPal co-founder, early Facebook investor, and most importantly, the supposed inspiration for Silicon Valley's intriguing Peter Gregory character, argues in his book Zero to One that a successful business needs to make a product that is 10 times better than its closest competitor. 

The title Zero to One refers to the idea of progress as either horizontal/extensive or vertical/intensive. For a more detailed explanation take a look at Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup - Class 1 Notes Essay.

Horizontal/extensive progress refers to copying things that work. Observe, imitate, and repeat.  The one word summary for the concept is  "globalization.” For more on this PAYPAL MAFIA: Reid Hoffman & Peter Thiel's Master Class in China is an interesting watch.

Vertical/intensive progress means doing something genuinely new, that is going from zero to one, as apposed to going from one to N, which is merely globalization. This is the creative spark. The hero's journey of over coming obstacles on the way to becoming the Master of the Universe you were always meant to be.

We see this pattern with Google a lot. Google often hits scaling challenges long before anyone else and because they have a systematizing culture they Continue reading

Uncontaina-bull: The love for Ansible + Docker

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Here at Ansible, we normally leave it up to our good friend @Ansibull to deploy the puns. But having just joined Ansible in the past few weeks, I’ve been spending some time getting acquainted with the vast quantity of Ansible resources produced by the lovely folks in the community, and I have to say, the amount of great content out there is just…

In-cow-cula-bull.

This is especially great for those of us looking how to do Ansible + $justaboutanything: Ansible + OpenStack, Ansible + Drupal, Ansible + CoreOS, or, as you may have guessed, Ansible + Docker.

Of course, Ansible has some useful resources for how to use Docker with Ansible. But the beautiful thing about what all of our friends in the community are writing is that they’re sharing all the things they learned along the way, how it helped out their company or workplace, what puzzles they had to solve; basically, things you may run into yourself, or ideas that may be inspiring to you that you hadn’t thought of just yet.

And to not share those things with everyone else? That would be, ahem, unthinka-bull. So without further ado: Here’s just a little bit of the latest Continue reading

STEM fields dominate ranking of college majors

Petroleum engineering majors earn the highest mid-career salaries, followed by nuclear engineering majors, according to a new ranking from PayScale.The research company, which specializes in compensation data, ranked 319 majors at the bachelor level based on how much money graduates in each field are making. The top 25 bachelor-level majors all have mid-career median pay numbers above $100,000, and the vast majority of them are STEM majors. RELATED STORIES: Not your father's computer science building Computer science surge sparks campus building boom Maker spaces boost student tech innovation Among many disciplines in the compsci arena, graduates who earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering were ranked highest (6th place), reporting a median mid-career salary of $115,000. Computer science majors (ranked 18th) earn a median mid-career salary of $105,000. (See also: Top 25 computer science colleges)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tor security concerns prompt largest dark market to suspend operations

Agora, the Tor network's largest black marketplace, has been temporarily shut down because its administrators worry the website is vulnerable to recent methods of exposing Tor Hidden Services.Hidden services are websites that can only be accessed from within the Tor network, which is specifically designed to hide the IP address of both servers and users. The built-in anonymity safeguards have made Tor Hidden Services the preferred method for running online marketplaces that allow buying and selling illegal goods like drugs, guns, stolen credit card details and more.The largest of these so-called dark markets was Silk Road, which was eventually shut down by the FBI in 2013. Many similar websites have appeared since then and some were targeted in subsequent international law enforcement raids, but Agora survived and surpassed even Silk Road in size and popularity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Recap: Docker 1.8 Online Meetup Series

Missed our three-part series of Docker Online Meetups on the Docker 1.8 release? Don’t worry! We recorded each session and posted the videos for you to watch.   Our series of Docker Online Meetups on the Docker 1.8 release started with Core Maintainer David Calavera presenting … Continued

Worth Reading: Micromanaging Compute

In people management, it’s generally accepted that micromanaging a person is often a bad idea. Micromanagement removes the opportunity for the individual to find a better path than originally conceived. It also often focuses on the specific steps of a process, but unfortunately removes the context that would help someone understand how to improve the process. via infoworld

The post Worth Reading: Micromanaging Compute appeared first on 'net work.

Real-time computing: Gateway to the Internet of Things?

Real-time computing means much more than getting a seemingly immediate response after hitting Enter. In fact, its real meaning involves interfacing to real machines doing real things in, well, their own real time.Take, for example, the Gleason 600HTL Turbo Lapper, whose controller was designed by Viewpoint Systems in Rochester, N.Y. Basically, it laps beveled gears (that is, polishes them by grinding an abrasive slurry between them) until they mesh so perfectly they purr rather than clatter -- an attribute important to the car makers that use the beveled gears in car differentials, explains John Campbell, vice president at Viewpoint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 security metrics that matter

As security gains greater visibility in boardrooms and C-suites, security professionals are increasingly asked to provide metrics to track the current state of a company's defenses. But which numbers really matter?More often than not, senior management doesn't know what kind of questions it should be asking -- and may concentrate too much on prevention and too little on mitigation. Metrics like the mean cost to respond to an incident or the number of attacks stopped by the firewall seem reasonable to a nonsecurity person, but they don't really advance an organization's security program.[ Deep Dive: How to rethink security for the new world of IT. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security newsletter. ] Instead, experts recommend focusing on metrics that influence behavior or change strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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