Briefing: Project Calico – BGP-driven SDN Without Overlays

The following is a "paper review" of Project Calico following a recent briefing. I've conducted a short review of the technology and business issues around the product and conclude that its unlikely to be competitive with Docker libnetwork that was announced a few weeks back or existing SDN Solutions in the market today.

The post Briefing: Project Calico – BGP-driven SDN Without Overlays appeared first on EtherealMind.

Risky Business #374 — Anti-Flash sentiment sweeps the globe

On this week's show we'll be checking in with Richard Forno on the fallout from the OPM breach. Richard has been kicking around in DC infosec circles for a long time now and he let's us know what the mood is like inside the beltway.

In this week's sponsor interview we chat with Chris Gatford of HackLabs! HackLabs is an Australia-based pentesting and consulting firm and we're speaking to Chris about the changing nature of security consultancies.

Adam Boileau, as usual, joins the show to discuss the week's news, which has been dominated by calls for the axing of the Flash plugin and the continued fallout from the Hacking Team breach.

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Over 200 Docker Meetups!

Big thank you to our Docker community for the support in helping us grow to now over 200 Docker meetup groups! Without all of the Docker meetup organizers, sponsors, speakers and attendees, none of this would be possible – we are … Continued

Intel profit falls as PC slump continues

Intel’s revenue and profit both dropped last quarter as people held off on buying new PCs ahead of the Windows 10 launch later this year.Revenue from Intel’s Client Computing Group, which sells processors for desktops, laptops and smartphones, fell 14 percent from this time last year to $7.5 billion, the chip maker said Wednesday.Its Data Center Group, which makes the Xeon server processors, performed better, but not well enough to offset the ongoing slump in the PC industry.Intel’s total revenue for the quarter ended June 27 was $13.2 billion, down 5 percent from a year earlier. Net income was $2.7 billion, down 3 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How NASA is (slowly) talking to the spacecraft snapping pictures of Pluto

How do you talk to a spacecraft that’s three billion miles away circling around Pluto? Very slowly.It’s a challenge NASA is dealing with right now. By now you’ve heard about New Horizons, the spacecraft launched in 2006 to take close-up shots of what was once the most distant planet in our solar system. So far New Horizons have sent back some of the best images we’ve ever had of Pluto and its moon Charon. NASA New Horizons has an 83-inch antenna that is sending radio waves at 1,000 to 2,000 bits per second. It takes them 4.5 hours to travel 3 billion miles back to earth. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Making use of Cisco’s labs to practice for certifications

A major hurdle for students wanting to achieve the various Cisco Certifications has always been equipment. Sure, a student could purchase a few used devices via an auction site for something like the entry-level CCENT Certification, but what about more complex certifications that might require thousands (or more) worth of gear? Rack rental companies tend to come and go and can be very unreliable. Cisco is finally really attacking this issue for students thanks to exciting virtualization technologies. This article presents some current options available today. First up is Cisco VIRL. VIRL stands for Virtual Internet Routing Labs. What makes VIRL so exciting is a low price tag for its annual subscription (approximately $150 per year with a $50 off coupon) and a decent variety of devices for virtualization. The list includes:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Software and the bogeyman

This post about the July 8 glitches (United, NYSE, WSJ failed) keeps popping up in my Twitter timeline. It's complete nonsense.

What's being argued here is that these glitches were due to some sort of "moral weakness", like laziness, politics, or stupidity. It's a facile and appealing argument, so scoundrels make it often -- to great applause from the audience. But it's not true.

Legacy


Layers and legacies exist because working systems are precious. More than half of big software projects are abandoned, because getting new things to work is a hard task. We place so much value on legacy, working old systems, because the new replacements usually fail.

An example of this is the failed BIND10 project. BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, is the oldest and most popular DNS server. It is the de facto reference standard for how DNS works, more so than the actual RFCs. Version 9 of the project is 15 years old. Therefore, the consortium that maintains it funded development for version 10. They completed the project, then effectively abandoned it, as it was worse in almost every way than the previous version.

The reason legacy works well is the enormous regression testing Continue reading

Installing netmiko on Windows

Netmiko is a Python module by Kirk Byers that provides a wrapper around the Paramiko SSH module for doing screen scraping and CLI automation on network devices.

Paramiko has some dependencies that make installation on Windows a tad tricky. Here's a quick way to get it done:

  1. Install Anaconda.
  2. From the Anaconda shell, run "conda install paramiko".
  3. From the Anaconda shell, run "pip install scp".
  4. Install git for Windows.
  5. Clone netmiko with "git clone https://github.com/ktbyers/netmiko"
  6. cd into the netmiko directory and run "python setup.py install".
Done! Screen scrape away, and don't forget to hound your vendors for real APIs... :-)

Installing netmiko on Windows

Netmiko is a Python module by Kirk Byers that provides a wrapper around the Paramiko SSH module for doing screen scraping and CLI automation on network devices.

Paramiko has some dependencies that make installation on Windows a tad tricky. Here's a quick way to get it done:

  1. Install Anaconda.
  2. From the Anaconda shell, run "conda install paramiko".
  3. From the Anaconda shell, run "pip install scp".
  4. Install git for Windows.
  5. Clone netmiko with "git clone https://github.com/ktbyers/netmiko"
  6. cd into the netmiko directory and run "python setup.py install".
Done! Screen scrape away, and don't forget to hound your vendors for real APIs... :-)

Here’s how Google wants you to buy stuff on mobile

Google is rolling out a new service that lets users buy retail items directly from the search results page on mobile devices, in an effort to make mobile search more useful and give advertisers a new way to attract customers.A new link reading “Buy on Google” will appear in the ads that show up after users search for certain retail items. Clicking on that link will take you to a retailer-branded product page hosted by Google where you can get more information about the product, like reviews, and select item quantities. A checkout button will let you enter and save payment information, and provide a shipping address, before placing the order.Google had been rumored to be prepping the service, which it calls Purchases on Google. On Wednesday, the company talked a little more about how it will look and work, in announcements online and during a retail-focused event in New York.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Playing in the Lab: LiveAction Administrative Fun

I’m newer to LiveAction but what I have seen thus far I have definitely liked.  But admittedly with GUIs I sometimes still feel like a “CLI girl living in a GUI world”.

During the past week I was noticing that when I was in my Live Action client view… looking at the “dashboard” I would suddenly find myself back at the main LiveAction client view.  I asked a co-worker name Robert if he had ever seen that before.  He had not.  So I showed it to him.  He noticed something I had not.  There seemed to be a “trigger event” that was associated with the changing screens.

…. Hope you have fun with the video and playing in the lab with me.  :)

Click on the diagram below to go play.  :)

Approx time: 16 Minutes

 

LA_Admin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cisco indirect infringement case against Arista dismissed

A federal judge dismissed Cisco’s indirect infringement claims against Arista Networks, a complaint that accompanied a patent and copyright infringement case against its data center rival.The patent and infringement litigation, filed late last year, still stands and is proceeding.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Suing Arista was always the plan+According to Courthouse News Service, U.S. Federal Judge Beth Labson Freeman earlier this month dismissed the pre-suit indirect infringement claims since Cisco conceded that it is not seeking damages for those claims.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google, ISPS offering free broadband to low-income families

Google and seven other ISPs have joined a new U.S. government pilot program to connect 275,000 low-income households to the Internet for free or at reduced rates.U.S. President Barack Obama will discuss the initiative, called ConnectHome, Wednesday in Durant, Oklahoma. Durant serves as the capital of the Choctaw Tribal Nation, one of the communities taking part in the program.In Durant, like in many parts of rural Oklahoma, the library is a town’s only location with a high-speed Web connection, the state’s director of libraries said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More ProxyHam stuff

Somebody asked how my solution in the last post differed from the "ProxyGambit" solution. They missed my point. Just because I change the tires on the car doesn't mean I get credit for inventing or building the car. The same thing with this ProxyHam nonsense: nobody is "building a solution". Instead, we are all just using existing products the way they are intended. We are all just choosing a different mix of components.

People get all excited when they see a bare Raspberry Pi board, but the reality is that there's nothing interesting going on here, no more than lifting the hood/bonnet on your car. This is photograph from ProxyGambit:


What ProxyGambit is doing here is using cellular data on the far end rather stealing WiFi from Starbucks or the local library. Their solution looks fancy, but you can do the same thing with off-the-shelf devices for a lot cheaper. Here is the same solution with off-the-shelf products:


This is just a TL-WR703N ($26) router with a 3G USB dongle. You can get these dongles cheap off eBay used, or new for around $17. Combined, they are cheaper than a Raspberry PI. If you want to customize this, Continue reading

EU air passenger data retention system ready for take-off, says Parliament

Air passengers entering or leaving the European Union could soon have their personal details stored and shared among EU countries, after lawmakers voted Wednesday to move forward with the proposal.The creation of the passenger name record (PNR) system, recording such details as who flew where, when, and how they booked, is intended to help law enforcers fight terrorism and serious crime, but civil rights groups say it is disproportionate and undermines fundamental privacy rights.The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) quickly dealt with almost 900 amendments filed on the proposal, including two calling for its outright rejection, before agreeing to enter negotiations on a final text with the European Commission and the Council of the EU, composed of representatives of national governments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open Compute Software Interface Platform Control Demonstration

This four minute demonstration from Mellanox is really well done. It provides a simple and direct demonstration of the OCP Platform Control system. I note the simplicity of the linux commands to drive the configuration of the switch. Especially, if you use Ansible/Puppet etc, you will appreciate how easy it is to configure and monitor […]

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