Exam-ining recent Internet shutdowns in Syria, Iraq, and Algeria

The practice of cheating on exams (or at least attempting to) is presumably as old as the concept of exams itself, especially when the results of the exam can have significant consequences for one’s academic future or career. As access to the Internet became more ubiquitous with the growth of mobile connectivity, and communication easier with an assortment of social media and messaging apps, a new avenue for cheating on exams emerged, potentially facilitating the sharing of test materials or answers. Over the last decade, some governments have reacted to this perceived risk by taking aggressive action to prevent cheating, ranging from targeted DNS-based blocking/filtering to multi-hour nationwide shutdowns across multi-week exam periods.

Syria and Iraq are well-known practitioners of the latter approach, and we have covered past exam-related Internet shutdowns in Syria (2021, 2022, 2023) and Iraq (2022, 2023) here on the Cloudflare blog. It is now mid-June 2024, and exams in both countries took place over the last several weeks, and with those exams, regular nationwide Internet shutdowns. In addition, Baccalaureate exams also took place in Algeria, and we have written about related Internet disruptions there in the past ( Continue reading

VPP with loopback-only OSPFv3 – Part 2

Bird

Introduction

When I first built IPng Networks AS8298, I decided to use OSPF as an IPv4 and IPv6 internal gateway protocol. Back in March I took a look at two slightly different ways of doing this for IPng, notably against a backdrop of conserving IPv4 addresses. As the network grows, the little point to point transit networks between routers really start adding up.

I explored two potential solutions to this problem:

  1. [Babel] can use IPv6 nexthops for IPv4 destinations - which is super useful because it would allow me to retire all of the IPv4 /31 point to point networks between my routers.
  2. [OSPFv3] makes it difficult to use IPv6 nexthops for IPv4 destinations, but in a discussion with the Bird Users mailinglist, we found a way: by reusing a single IPv4 loopback address on adjacent interfaces

Canary

In May I ran a modest set of two canaries, one between the two routers in my house (chbtl0 and chbtl1), and another between a router at the Daedalean colocation and Interxion datacenters (ddln0 and chgtg0). AS8298 has about quarter of a /24 tied up in these otherwise pointless point-to-point transit networks (see what Continue reading

Consistency – Making Progress One Step at a Time

Consistency - Making Progress One Step at a Time

People often ask me how I manage to write so many blog posts. With 5-6 posts a month, it might seem like a lot, but my answer is always the same, consistency. I’ve been blogging for over three years now, and writing has become a part of my daily life. It’s all about sticking to it day after day. In this post, I’ll share how maintaining consistency has not only improved my blogging but can also help you in any area of your life.

I want to start off by acknowledging that while it’s easy to talk about being consistent, actually implementing it can be really tough. Take my own struggle with running, for example. I’ve been trying to make it a consistent part of my life for the past few years, but it’s been a real challenge. I might run for a week, then give up, start again, and then stop. It’s a cycle that’s hard to break. So, I understand that being consistent isn’t always straightforward or easy. I just wanted to get that out of the way before we proceed into this topic.

Palo Alto Firewall Packet Capture

Palo Alto Firewall Packet Capture

Packet capture is very useful when you troubleshoot network connectivity issues or monitor suspicious activity.

Diagram

Palo Alto Firewall Packet Capture
Diagram

Few things to consider

  1. Four packet capture filters can be added with a variety of attributes.
  2. Packet captures are session/flow based, so having a single filter is enough for capturing both inbound and outbound traffic.

Packet Capture Stages

There are four stages:

  1. drop - where packets get discarded. Example, security polciy denying the traffic
  2. firewall - captures packets in the firewall stage.
  3. receive - captures the packets as they ingress the firewall interface before they go into the firewall engine (pre-NAT)
  4. transmit - captures packets as they egress out of the firewall engine (post-NAT)

Example 1 - Packet Capture without NAT

Initiate a ping from CLIENT to the SERVER and capture both ICMP echo request and ICMP echo reply.

You can configure packet capture by going to Monitor > Packet Capture

Palo Alto Firewall Packet Capture
RECEIVE AND TRANSMIT STAGES
  • Packets 1 & 2 are ingressing the firewall
  • Packets 3 & 4 are egressing the firewall
  • Packets 1 & 3 are the same
  • Packets 2 & 4 are the same

Step 1 - Configure capture filters

The filter shown below captures both echo request and echo reply on Continue reading

Patrick Finn: why I joined Cloudflare as VP Sales for the Americas

I’m delighted to be joining Cloudflare as Vice President of Sales in the US, Canada, and Latin America.

I’ve had the privilege of leading sales for some of the world’s most iconic tech companies, including IBM and Cisco. During my career I’ve led international teams numbering in the thousands and driving revenue in the billions of dollars while serving some of the world's largest enterprise customers. I’ve seen first-hand the evolution of technology and what it can achieve for businesses, from robotics, automation, and data analytics, to cloud computing, cybersecurity, and AI.

I firmly believe Cloudflare is well on its way to being one of the next iconic tech companies.

Why Cloudflare

Cloudflare has a unique opportunity to help businesses navigate an enduring wave of technological change. There are few companies in the world that operate in the three most exciting fields of innovation that will continue to shape our world in the coming years: cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity. Cloudflare is one of those companies. When I was approached for this role, I spoke to a wide range of connections across the financial sector, private companies, and government. The feedback was unanimous that Cloudflare is poised on the edge Continue reading

Introducing Stream Generated Captions, powered by Workers AI

With one click, customers can now generate video captions effortlessly using Stream’s newest feature: AI-generated captions for on-demand videos and recordings of live streams. As part of Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet, this feature is available to all Stream customers at no additional cost.

This solution is designed for simplicity, eliminating the need for third-party transcription services and complex workflows. For videos lacking accessibility features like captions, manual transcription can be time-consuming and impractical, especially for large video libraries. Traditionally, it has involved specialized services, sometimes even dedicated teams, to transcribe audio and deliver the text along with video, so it can be displayed during playback. As captions become more widely expected for a variety of reasons, including ethical obligation, legal compliance, and changing audience preferences, we wanted to relieve this burden.

With Stream’s integrated solution, the caption generation process is seamlessly integrated into your existing video management workflow, saving time and resources. Regardless of when you uploaded a video, you can easily add automatic captions to enhance accessibility. Captions can now be generated within the Cloudflare Dashboard or via an API request, all within the familiar and unified Stream platform.

This feature is designed with Continue reading

D2C245: Don’t Fear Database DevOps

Most platform engineers are scared of databases, and most database administrators prefer it that way. But our guest today says it’s time to move forward together toward a future of database linters, observability, and abstraction. Adam Furmanek makes the case that just like how developers had to learn some networking, and networking tools were created... Read more »

50 Years Later, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn Remember the Birth of TCP/IP

Last month viewers from 56 countries tuned in for a very special livestreamed event: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers reunited 80-year-old a special presentation from the very room where they first wrote the TCP/IP protocol together more than 50 years ago. “It’s truly an exciting honor to be here to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the work that Bob Kahn and I started, and so many have contributed to,” Cerf said during a Google vice president and their chief internet evangelist. Kahn is now chair and CEO of the not-for-profit

HS075: How to Ask Questions

Asking questions is a critical skill whether you’re an outside consultant or on an internal IT team. In today’s episode, Greg and Johna review what kind of questions to ask and how to ask them. They discuss the ‘Five Whys,’ identifying points of invariance, discovering unknown unknowns, and watching out for landmines. They also cover... Read more »

Automated Validation of BGP Labs

In late 2023, I started playing with the idea of having automated validation in netlab. The early implementation was used in BGP labs, and a user liked it so much that he opened an issue saying:

I would suggest providing netlab validate for each lab.

Numerous rounds of yak-shaving later, I merged a humongous commit that adds automated validation to these lab exercises:

Read more …

NB483: Cisco Hopes To Be Ikea For AI Infrastructure; Is Anyone Besides Nvidia Making Money From AI?

Take a Network Break! We start with an announcement from Greg about his impending retirement. After we dust ourselves off from that, we pivot to this week’s tech news. Fortinet acquires a company to bolster its offering in securing cloud deployments and workloads, Cisco announces an Ikea-like kit to build AI infrastructure on prem, and... Read more »

Live Training: Build Your Own Networking Lab

This Friday at 1pm ET, Bruce McDougall and I are teaching a live class on using Containerlab to build and automate network labs. From the course description:

This course will guide learners through the tools and techniques to build virtual labs either locally or on common cloud services, so you can become more proficient at understanding, designing, monitoring, and troubleshooting networks. The course begins with obtaining and starting the basic tools required to build and test network labs using open-source and freely available tools. The instructors will build a variety of network topologies, including data center and campus, to help learners understand how to test in different environments.

Register here.

netlab 1.8.3: RIPv2, BGP Route Servers

During the ITNOG8 netlab presentation, I jokingly said something along the lines “all that’s missing is RIPv2 and Babel.” That’s no longer true; someone asked me how hard it would be to add RIPv2 to netlab, and I said, “give me a few days 😎”

Other new features in netlab release 1.8.3 include support for BGP route servers (and route server clients), BGP Link Bandwidth community, and OSPF/BGP validation plugins for Arista EOS, Cumulus Linux and FRR. We also fixed the installation scripts to work with Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian Bookworm.

For more details, read the release notes.

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