Freedom to

Pardon me if I go a little bit on the philosophical side of life as a network engineer this week, but we need to have a little talk about freedom. This last week, Ethan wrote a post on his new criteria for network design and architecture. While I agree with the points Ethan makes in his post, there was one thing that put me sideways. In fact, this one thing has always put me sideways to our modern world.

Freedom.

Ethan gives what is a pretty standard (Lockian) definition of the idea when he says, “Freedom is the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.”

But, harking back to the story of Ishmael and Isaac, we need to remember there is a real difference between freedom from and freedom to. Freedom from constraint might feel like real freedom, but it’s the freedom of the wilderness. Freedom to create might feel like slavery with its self-discipline and bounds, but it’s the freedom to build — to create.

Let’s turn to one of Ethan’s examples here — open standards, and vendors sticking to them, to bring the point to the world of network Continue reading

Schneier on ‘really bad’ IoT security: ‘It’s going to come crashing down’

Bruce Schneier Security expert Bruce Schneier has looked at and written about difficulties the Internet of Things presents - such as the fact that the “things” are by and large insecure and enable unwanted surveillance– and concludes that it’s a problem that’s going to get worse before it gets better.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The shocking truth (and lies) about ESD

A participant in Reddit’s forum devoted to networking asks: “Has anyone here ever destroyed anything via ESD (electronic static discharge)?”Oh, yes, indeed they have, as a sampling of the anecdotes will reveal, though there were also skeptics and one fellow who told me via email “that most failures claimed to be ESD-related are probably covers for something else.”First time for everything I recently had a user plug an HDMI cable into a Dell E7440. He was touching the shielding and a nice big blue spark jumped from the cable to the laptop and cooked the motherboard. It was the first time in 12 years doing IT that I've ever seen something die from ESD.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 04.13.2015

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow. Aerohive AP130Key features: Aerohive’s AP130 is an enterprise-grade 2x2, 2-stream, 802.11ac access point. With the AP130, organizations can now upgrade their wireless networks to 802.11ac without having to upgrade existing Power over Ethernet (PoE) infrastructure. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Monday, April 13

Transforming robot gets stuck in nuclear reactorThe ability to change shape hasn’t saved a robot probe from getting stuck inside a crippled Japanese nuclear reactor. On Friday, the utility sent in the pipe-crawling, snake-like robot, which can transform itself into several configurations depending on the terrain, to determine the state and location of melted-down fuel in the reactor.Microsoft, robot firm demo industrial IoT based on WindowsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

RFCs You Should Know: 5218

Quite often RFCs in the “earlier days” discussed not only process but also design. Looking back now, considering the complexity of the network engineering world, these RFCs might seem even a little trite. But these “architectural RFCs” often still carry thoughts and records of experience that are important, even if they aren’t so much followed […]

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Russ White

Principal Engineer at Ericsson

Russ White has scribbled a basket of books, penned a plethora of patents, written a raft of RFCs, taught a trencher of classes, nibbled and noodled at a lot of networks, and done a lot of other stuff you either already know about — or don't really care about. You can find Russ at 'net Work, the Internet Protocol Journal, and his author page on Amazon.
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The post RFCs You Should Know: 5218 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Russ White.

Sprint offers home delivery and setup of smartphones, tablets

Faced with a highly competitive market, U.S. wireless operator Sprint is now offering to deliver and set up phones, tablets and other connected devices for free at homes, offices and other locations chosen by the customer.The offer is currently limited to eligible upgrade customers, but starting September, new customers in selected markets will be able to choose the new Direct 2 You option, when buying online or through call centers.Launching in Kansas City metropolitan area on Monday, the program will be expanded across the country using about 5,000 branded cars and employing 5,000 staff by year end. A rollout in Miami and Chicago is scheduled for April 20.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Watch orders nearly topped 1 million on first day – Report

While we won't have official figures on Apple Watch orders until Apple issues a statement, some preliminary figures suggest paint a rosy picture for Apple.According to the research firm Slice Intelligence, Apple Watch orders on day 1 nearly topped one million units. The report was initially relayed by QZ which summarized pertinent portions of the report as follows: Almost two-thirds of pre-orders were for the less expensive, aluminum Sport line, which starts at $349. About one-third of pre-orders were for the stainless-steel Apple Watch collection, which starts at $549. The gold “Edition” series, which starts at $10,000, didn’t represent enough US pre-orders to show up in Slice’s report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC net neutrality rules published to Federal Register

The new net neutrality rule of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was published over the weekend to the Federal Register, the daily journal of U.S. government actions, raising the possibility of a spate of lawsuits from broadband companies that oppose the rule.The FCC decided in a 3-2 vote in February to reclassify broadband as a regulated public utility, by invoking Title II of the Communications Act, thus prohibiting providers from selectively blocking or throttling or offering paid prioritization of Internet traffic.The new rules apply to both fixed and mobile broadband Internet access services. They aim to regulate both services on the lines of traditional telephone companies, which are required to deliver service at “just and reasonable” rates and interconnect with each other.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chinese hacker group among first to target networks isolated from Internet

An otherwise unremarkable hacking group likely aligned with China appears to be one of the first to have targeted so-called air-gapped networks that are not directly connected to the Internet, according to FireEye.The computer security firm released a 69-page technical report on Sunday on the group, which it calls APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) 30, which targeted organizations in southeast Asia and India.FireEye picked up on it after some of the malware used by the group was found to have infected defense-related clients in the U.S., said Jen Weedon, manager of strategic analysis with FireEye.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 rumor rollup: May the Force Touch be with you

Perhaps because of this past week’s buzz about Apple Watch going on sale, the iPhone 7 rumor mill has spit out relatively little for Apple fans and the media to overreact about. About the biggest excitement has been figuring out if the next phone will be called the iPhone 6C, 6S or 7. Although the reason for that renaming is of interest. Namely, that Apple might be planning to fit its next iPhone with a variation of the Force Touch technology going into its Apple Watch and 12-inch Retina MacBook. Comments to this effect from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made the rounds after he issued a note to clients and the note was quoted by MacRumors: “We believe that iPhone’s Force Touch sensor doesn’t directly detect the pressure applied by fingers. Instead, it monitors the contact area on which the finger touches the screen to decide how big the pressure is.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The oldest trick in the ASCII book

If you're old enough (or interested enough) to have spent a lot of time messing around with the ASCII table then you might have run into a strange fact: it's possible to uppercase ASCII text using just bitwise AND.

And it turns out that in some situations this isn't just a curiosity, but actually useful. Here are the ASCII characters 0x20 (space) to 0x7E (tilde).

     0123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF
    +--------------------------------
0x20| !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?
0x40|@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[]^_
0x60|`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

It's immediately obvious that each lowercase letter has an ASCII code 0x20 more than the corresponding uppercase letter. For example, lowercase m is 0x6D and uppercase M is 0x4D. And since 0x20 is a single bit then it's possible to uppercase an ASCII letter by taking its code and applying AND 0xDF (masking out the 0x20 bit).

Performing AND 0xDF has no effect on the first two rows above: they, including the uppercase letters, are unchanged. Only the third row is affected. There the lowercase letters get uppercased but there's some collateral damage: ` { | } ~ change to @ [ ] ^.

But if you know that a string has a limited character set then this trick can come in handy. Lots of old protocols Continue reading

Smarter Hosts Would Make A Simpler Network

(or Magical Things I Would Do if Hosts Weren’t Stupid) Introduction I’m a firm believer that many of the apparent problems in networking today are caused by stupid hosts.  The hosts are stupid and, we are told, cannot be fixed. Instead, we are forced to add on more and more “intelligence” to the network. This […]

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Sam Stickland

Sam Stickland

Sam Stickland, CCIE #21455, is a software developer turned network engineer.

The post Smarter Hosts Would Make A Simpler Network appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Sam Stickland.

Should billionaires have to disclose their political contributions?

The Intercept has a story about a billionaire sneaking into a Jeb Bush fundraiser. It points out:
"Bush’s campaign operation has taken steps to conceal the names of certain big-money donors. ... Bush’s Right to Rise also formed a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy wing, which, like a Super PAC, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — but unlike a Super PAC, never has to reveal donor names."
This leads me to ask two questions:

  1. Should billionaires be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money promoting their politics?
  2. If they can spend unlimited amounts, should they be forced to disclose them?

If you know me, you know that I'm asking a trick question. I'm not referring to venture capitalist Ron Conway, the billionaire mentioned the story. I'm instead referring to Pierre Omidyar the billionaire founder of eBay who funds The Intercept, which blatantly promotes his political views such as those on NSA surveillance. Can Omidyar spend endless amounts on The Intercept? Should he be forced to disclose how much?

This question is at the heart of the Supreme Court decision in Citezen's United. It comes down to this: the Supreme Court was unable to craft rules that could tell Continue reading

Network Break 35

Excerpt: Coffee, doughnuts and networking. A perfect combination with Brocade, CloudRouter, HP, PacketZoom, Pertino, Juniper and much more.

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Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post Network Break 35 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

Cisco NXAPI

Earlier, I had written about Cisco NXOS device configuration/monitoring using Python and OnePK. Recently, I came across NXAPI approach to configure and monitor NXOS  devices. NXAPI uses either http/https to connect to NXOS devices and talk using NXOS CLI. For configuration, CLI is encoded in XML/JSON. For monitoring, CLI is encoded in XML/JSON and the … Continue reading Cisco NXAPI →
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