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Courage to change things

This was an internal email that I sent to the CloudFlare team about how we are not afraid to throw away old code. We thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience.

Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:24:21 +0100
Subject: Courage to change things
From: John Graham-Cumming
To: Everyone

Folks,

At the Q3 planning meeting I started by making some remarks about how much
code we are changing at CloudFlare. I understand that there were audio
problems and people may not have heard these clearly, so I'm just going to
reiterate them in writing.

One of the things that CloudFlare is being brave about is looking at old code
and deciding to rewrite it. Lots of companies live with legacy code and build
on it and it eventuallybecomes a maintenance nightmare and slows the company
down.

Over the last year we've made major strides in rewriting parts of our code
base so that they are faster, more maintainable, and easier to enhance. There
are many parts of the Q3 roadmap that include replacing old parts of our
stack. This is incredibly important as it enables us to be more agile and 
more stable in future.

We should feel good  Continue reading

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Potential Issues with Multicast within a VLAN Spanning Switches

Background

I ran into an interesting issue yesterday at work. There is a new video system
being installed, which takes the video output from computers, encodes it and
sends it as multicast to a controller. The controller then displays it on
a video wall. I had been told that the network has to support multicast.
As all the devices were residing in the same VLAN, I did not expect any issues.
However, the system was not able to receive the multicast. At first we expected
it could be the virtual environment and that the vSwitch did not support multicast,
because one server was deployed on the ESX cluster. The topology was this:

Multicast at Layer 2

Before describing the issue, let’s think about how multicast at layer 2 works.
The source will send to a multicast destination IP. This IP is the converted to a
destination MAC address. If the group is 227.0.0.1, this would map to the MAC
address 0100.5e00.0001. Switches forward multicast and broadcast frames to all
ports in a VLAN. This is not effective in the case of multicast as the traffic
may not have been requested by the host connected to Continue reading

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CloudFlare Joins Three More Peering Exchanges in Australia

In the coming weeks, connectivity to CloudFlare in Australia is going to a new level. As part of CloudFlare’s ongoing upgrades program, we established connections to three new Internet exchanges: the Megaport Internet exchanges in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. These connections doubled the number of Australian Internet exchanges we reach and marked the first exchanges outside of Sydney that Cloudflare participates in.

What is Peering?

When two ISPs peer, they agree to exchange traffic directly between each other rather than sending it a third party. By doing this, both partners avoid congested paths between transit providers, and they avoid paying to ship traffic—it's win-win!

What peering exchanges mean for CloudFlare is that we can significantly increase our service performance to users on ISPs that peer with us. Take Australia for example, for users who are currently on ISPs peering at Megaport, instead of CloudFlare sending traffic to the transit providers of those ISPs, we can now route the traffic directly to them. The result is lower latency, and traffic taking paths that are often less congested.

Low latency is crucial for internet speed due to the nature of TCP, the fundamental protocol on which the internet is built. TCP operates Continue reading

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Summary Post – Methods to Manipulate OSPF Costs

There are three ways to manipulate the interface cost in OSPF.  One is very direct, one changes the presentation of the interface, and the other changes the calculations for every interface.

Set the cost of the interface directly – Just give it the number you want.  Easy.  This is the number OSPF will use in the SPF calculations without doing any math on the interface.

R1(config-if)#ip ospf cost 8482

Set the bandwidth of the interface – The formula that OSPF uses to calculate interface cost is pretty easy to remember – (reference bandwidth) / (interface bandwidth).  Changing the interface bandwidth will obviously change the result of the calculation.  The same caveat for EIGRP route manipulation holds true here; if you change the bandwidth of the interface, you may affect other things like QoS…or EIGRP, now that I mention it.

R1#sh ip ospf inter brief
Interface    PID   Area            IP Address/Mask    Cost  State Nbrs F/C
Fa0/0        1     0               192.0.2.1/24       10    DR    0/0
R1#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
R1(config)#int f0/0
R1(config-if)#bandwidth 10
R1(config-if)#do show ip ospf interf brief
Interface    PID   Area            IP Address/Mask    Cost  State Nbrs F/C
Fa0/0        1     0               192.0.2.1/24        Continue reading

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CCIE RSv5 ATC & Baby 3.0 Status Update

Tomorrow’s CCIE Routing & Switching Advanced Technologies Class v5 is postponed, as baby 3.0’s shipping date has arrived   Class will tentatively return the week of July 21^st, however I will post more information and updates about workbook changes before that.

In the meantime the current CCIE RSv5 ATC streaming playlist can be found here, and the download playlist can be found here. Some videos are still in post processing and will be posted within the next few days.

Although we’re only in week 47 of the class (or so it seems), we’ve put a huge dent in the overall topic scope so far.  You can see our current progress in the overall CCIE RSv5 Expanded Blueprint here.  Some of topics that haven’t been covered in the v5 ATC officially yet can be found in the CCIE RSv4 ATC and the RSv4 to RSv5 Transition Technologies addendum at the end of that playlist.

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RouterOS x86 Qemu and VirtualBox Appliances Download

MikroTik RouterOS is the stand-alone operating system of MikroTik RouterBOARD hardware. It can also be installed on a PC and will turn it into a router with all the necessary features – routing, firewall, bandwidth, management, wireless access point, backhaul link, hotspot, gateway, VPN server and more.

RouterOS x86 installed on Qemu and VirtualBox disks is not licensed, you have 24 hours in total to run these images.

login/pass: admin / password is not set

1. RouterOS x86 6.15

Qemu
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6L2h6R5UKMhQUcxMFl2a1pZZGs/edit?usp=sharing
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gns-3/files/Qemu%20Appliances/routeros-6.15-qemu.zip/download
http://www.4shared.com/zip/HG7nubJlba/routeros-615-qemu.html

VirtualBox
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6L2h6R5UKMhODYyNm0tWnFjXzA/edit?usp=sharingv
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gns-3/files/VirtualBox%20Appliances/routeros-6.15-vbox.zip/download
http://www.4shared.com/zip/qPN2tmD7ba/routeros-615-vbox.html

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SPAN Destination ports and VLAN Membership

Recently at work, a discussion sprouted up around how to handle/configure local session Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) destination ports.  A suggestion was made to create a new VLAN just for these SPAN destination ports and place them there.  The justification was that they would be out of VLAN 1, and easily identifiable.  Personally I thought it was a waste of a VLAN for a few simple SPAN destination ports, as SPAN destination ports do not participate in spanning tree, and do not forward traffic.  However, ultimately in this case it was a good decision due to security requirements.
Some key characteristics to know about SPAN destination ports:

• A destination port can be a physical port that is assigned to an EtherChannel group, even if the EtherChannel group has been specified as a SPAN source. The port is removed from the group while it is configured as a SPAN destination port.
  
• The port does not transmit any traffic except that traffic required for the SPAN session unless learning is enabled.
  
• The state of the destination port is up/down by design. The interface shows the port in this state in order to make it evident that the port Continue reading

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Internets of Interest for 9th July 2014

  Collection of useful, relevant or just fun places on the Internets for 9th July 2014 and a bit commentary about what I’ve found interesting about them: Will Software Defined Networking Actually Happen? – Ethan Banks is blogging at cisco.com on SDN: I understand the cynicism. After all, for a long time, networking had lapsed […]

The post Internets of Interest for 9th July 2014 appeared first on EtherealMind.

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Summary Post – OSPF Network Statement Order and Matching

When you configure OSPF network statements, IOS orders them most-specific to least-specific then does a top-to-bottom match of the interfaces. It doesn’t matter which order you put them in, the configuration will always be ordered with the longest prefix matches first.  Lab time!

I have router R1 with these interfaces.

R1#sh ip int brief
Interface                  IP-Address      OK? Method Status                Protocol
FastEthernet0/0            10.0.0.1        YES manual up                    up
FastEthernet0/1            unassigned      YES unset  administratively down down
Loopback100                10.0.101.1      YES manual up                    up
Loopback200                10.2.101.1      YES manual up                    up

Let’s add the OSPF configuration where 10.0.0.0/8 is in area 2 then check what OSPF thinks is happening.

R1(config)#router ospf 1
R1(config-router)#network 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 area 2
...
R1#show ip ospf interface brief
Interface    PID   Area            IP Address/Mask    Cost  State Nbrs F/C
Lo100        1     2               10.0.101.1/24      1     LOOP  0/0
Lo200        1     2               10.2.101.1/24      1     LOOP  0/0
Fa0/0        1     2               10.0.0.1/24        10    WAIT  0/0

All the interfaces are in area 2 as expected. Now let’s add 10.0.0.0/16 into area 1 to see what happens.

R1(config-router)#network 10.0.0.0  Continue reading

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NSA: walk a mile in their shoes

While this is mostly a technical blog, our most popular posts deal with cyber-rights, supporting Snowden, Weev, and Swartz. Yet sometimes I appear to defend the NSA. People ask me why, so I thought I’d write up a response.

Most American schools force students to read the book To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a great book for many reasons. Most people think it’s about racism, but it’s not – it’s about bigotry. Racism is just one of the forms of bigotry found in the book. The full message, repeated several times, is that we should get along with others by trying to understand their point of view.

Our society is improving with regards to racism, but other forms of bigotry are alive and well. Webster’s defines bigotry as: “obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them”. Our society praises such bigotry. Tolerance and understanding of other opinions is condemned.

People like Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Appelbaum, and others in the ‘activist’ movement are extreme bigots. There is good reason to oppose the NSA and its leaders who have egregiously mislead the public. Yet, this is still not justification for Continue reading

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SDN Started as a Customer Movement (Not a Vendor Innovation)

With the vast marketing budgets from big vendors and their well paid "evangelists", the startups vying to introduce new methods and the clamour of engineers trying to understand new technology it might be time to pause and remember that Software Defined Networking was a customer-driven initiative. Vendors had to be forced to accept that SDN was a necessary change.

The post SDN Started as a Customer Movement (Not a Vendor Innovation) appeared first on EtherealMind.

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Response: RFC 7045 – Transmission and Processing of IPv6 Extension Headers

IETF RFC  on the Standards Tracks that talks about the problem of chaining headers in IPv6. I’m getting a sense of deja-vu since this was also has issue with IPv4 and, ultimately, use of chained IPv4 headers died away. If they encounter an unrecognised extension header type, some firewalls treat the packet as suspect and drop it.  Unfortunately, […]

The post Response: RFC 7045 – Transmission and Processing of IPv6 Extension Headers appeared first on EtherealMind.

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What is Unidirectional Automation?

I was pleased as punch to wake up the other day and read Marten Terpstra’s blog post on getting over the fear of using automation to make changes on our network infrastructure. He illuminated a popular excuse that I’ve heard myself on multiple occasions – that automation is great for things like threshold alarms, or pointing out the percieved root cause of a problem, but not actually fixing the problem. The idea is that the problems that occur on a regular basis, or even performing configuration changes in the first place – is a specialized task that a warm-blooded human being absolutely, no-doubt must take total control of in order to be successful.

With the right implementation, this idea is, of course, rubbish. I asked a question on Twitter not too long ago in preparation for a presentation I was about to give. I have a decent amount of experience working with VMware vSphere, and knew there were some experienced server virtualization folks following me, so I asked about a feature that was thought of in similar light not too long ago:

For those running vSphere, do you have DRS enabled and set to something other than manual? If not, why not? Trying Continue reading

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What is Unidirectional Automation?

I was pleased as punch to wake up the other day and read Marten Terpstra’s blog post on getting over the fear of using automation to make changes on our network infrastructure. He illuminated a popular excuse that I’ve heard myself on multiple occasions - that automation is great for things like threshold alarms, or pointing out the percieved root cause of a problem, but not actually fixing the problem.

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What is Unidirectional Automation?

I was pleased as punch to wake up the other day and read Marten Terpstra’s blog post on getting over the fear of using automation to make changes on our network infrastructure. He illuminated a popular excuse that I’ve heard myself on multiple occasions - that automation is great for things like threshold alarms, or pointing out the percieved root cause of a problem, but not actually fixing the problem.

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Linking Purpose to Profits

Linking Purpose to Profits

---

by Andy McFarland, VP of Customer Care - July 8, 2014

Three bricklayers were working side by side. When asked, “What are you doing?” the first bricklayer replied, “I’m laying bricks.” The second bricklayer was asked and he answered, “Feeding my family.” The third bricklayer when asked the question, “What are you doing?” responded, “I’m building a cathedral.” 

This story illustrates the power of purpose. In a previous post I suggested that we are all in the customer service business, and I posed some questions to help teams see linkages between what they do and how that impacts customers and the company. The reason this is so important is because purpose leads to employee engagement, which leads to profitability. 

To maximize our personal satisfaction and employee engagement, we need three ingredients: purpose, autonomy, and mastery. (See Daniel Pink’s explanation in this video.) As leaders we must work relentlessly to break down barriers to allow our people the freedom to thrive. 

To help people understand the purpose of their work, leaders link tasks to outcomes and benefits. Some people see linkages naturally, while others require leaders to communicate Continue reading

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IP Subnetting Part 3: Understanding the Binary

I’ve often stated how simple subnetting really is. While each individual concept is rather simple, it is the combination that make the holistic process challenging. If we, as humans, could look at the process more like computers and network devices, subnetting would be a much simpler process. In short, some knowledge of binary is an important requirement prior to sharing more complex subnetting examples.

This article will demonstrate the process of converting binary to and from the more familiar decimal numbering system. This will establish the necessary baseline knowledge required to understand when applying subnet masks to IP addresses. The first question we need to answer is–

What is Binary?

Binary, also known as base-2, is a numbering system in which each position only has two possible values. We often represent one possible value as zero and the other possible value as one. Alternatively, it could be represented many other ways including: positive and negative voltage, black and white colors, voltage and no voltage present, or null and not null. This simplicity in representation is what makes the system so advantageous for a computer’s limited discreet capabilities.

In this article, we will represent binary digits using either a one or a Continue reading

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Raspberry Pi as a Deliciously Simple VPN Endpoint

Being the networking nerd I am, I have a pretty big network at home.  And as the denizens of the Packet Pushers IRC channel know, I do a lot of work with VPNs.  One of my use cases is sharing the resources on my home network.  My friends, family, and coworkers sometimes like to use my network […]

Author information

The post Raspberry Pi as a Deliciously Simple VPN Endpoint appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by iggdawg.

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Show 195: HP – Real SDN and Virtual Application Networking

HP and Software Defined Networking. HP was one of the earliest supporters of OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking and have continued to build a portfolio of products. In this podcast we talk about SDN applications on security, application management and QoS management.

Author information

The post Show 195: HP – Real SDN and Virtual Application Networking appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

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Understanding IPv6: The Journey Begins

Why is IPv6 so difficult to understand? Denise Fishburne explains how she began unraveling this complex topic.