Tailscale VPN – A Network Engineer’s Perspective

Tailscale VPN - A Network Engineer's Perspective

Before we get into what Tailscale is or how it compares to a traditional remote access VPN, let’s take a quick look at Tailscale in action. The main problem Tailscale solves is remote access to your internal workloads.

In my homelab, I have a server running Linux. When I’m on my home network, I can access it directly without any issues. But if I step outside and want to access the same server over the Internet, Tailscale makes that much easier and you can have it up and running in about 10 minutes for free.

Typically, you would set up some kind of a VPN, either running on a server or a dedicated firewall. Then, you’d install a VPN client on the devices and point them to the public IP of your VPN server or firewall. That’s exactly what I have at the moment.

Tailscale takes a completely different approach, and you don’t need any of that. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m just pointing this out for comparison. I’ve shared my thoughts on the pros and cons of each solution at the end of this post.

Tailscale Installation and Setup

Head over to the Tailscale Continue reading

From Python to Go 016. Advanced SSH Interaction With Network Devices.

Hello my friend,

This blog continues discussion of how to manage devices (network switches and routers, servers, virtual machines, etc) using SSH, which we started in previous blog. In this discussion we’ll cover advanced interaction with devices, which include multiple commands, change of contexts and validations. Let’s dive in.

If You Say “From Python to Go”, Shall I Learn Python?

Each programming language has its strong and weak capabilities. Golang, by virtue being a low level (or at least much lower level compared to Python) is very good, when performance and efficiency are paramount. However, you don’t need it for all applications. Python give quicker time to market, possibility to iteratively develop your code with Jupyter and vast ecosystem of existing libraries. Both programming languages are important and both of them play crucial role in IT and network infrastructure management. So if you are good with Python, learn Go (Golang) using our blog series.

And if you are not, or you want to have good intro to IT and network automation holistically, enroll to our training programms:

We offer the following training programs in network automation for you:

Auto-expanding aliases in Zsh

To avoid needless typing, the fish shell features command abbreviations to expand some words after pressing space. We can emulate such a feature with Zsh:

# Definition of abbrev-alias for auto-expanding aliases
typeset -ga _vbe_abbrevations
abbrev-alias() {
    alias $1
    _vbe_abbrevations+=(${1%%\=*})
}
_vbe_zle-autoexpand() {
    local -a words; words=(${(z)LBUFFER})
    if (( ${​#_vbe_abbrevations[(r)${words[-1]}]} )); then
        zle _expand_alias
    fi
    zle magic-space
}
zle -N _vbe_zle-autoexpand
bindkey -M emacs " " _vbe_zle-autoexpand
bindkey -M isearch " " magic-space

# Correct common typos
(( $+commands[git] )) && abbrev-alias gti=git
(( $+commands[grep] )) && abbrev-alias grpe=grep
(( $+commands[sudo] )) && abbrev-alias suod=sudo
(( $+commands[ssh] )) && abbrev-alias shs=ssh

# Save a few keystrokes
(( $+commands[git] )) && abbrev-alias gls="git ls-files"
(( $+commands[ip] )) && {
  abbrev-alias ip6='ip -6'
  abbrev-alias ipb='ip -brief'
}

# Hard to remember options
(( $+commands[mtr] )) && abbrev-alias mtrr='mtr -wzbe'

Here is a demo where gls is expanded to git ls-files after pressing space:

Auto-expanding gls to git ls-files

I don’t auto-expand all aliases. I keep using regular aliases when slightly modifying the behavior of a command or for well-known abbreviations:

alias df='df -h'
alias du='du -h'
alias rm='rm -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias ll='ls -ltrhA'

Choosing Manual or Auto-Instrumentation for Mobile Observability

As applications run in production, you’ll need to find out what’s happening. You might want to know if you’re overloading the hardware, moving to the wrong feature in an A/B test or, on the mobile side, even such simple contingencies as whether the battery is running out. Developing an app to send information about itself means adding instrumentation. Apps can send such telemetry as OpenTelemetry (OTel) project. An added benefit is, if most applications in a given language need to observe the same types of operations and workflows, developers building on the OTel standard can identify and build

Dynamically optimize, clip, and resize video from any origin with Media Transformations

Today, we are thrilled to announce Media Transformations, a new service that brings the magic of Image Transformations to short-form video files wherever they are stored.

Since 2018, Cloudflare Stream has offered a managed video pipeline that empowers customers to serve rich video experiences at global scale easily, in multiple formats and quality levels. Sometimes, the greatest friction to getting started isn't even about video, but rather the thought of migrating all those files. Customers want a simpler solution that retains their current storage strategy to deliver small, optimized MP4 files. Now you can do that with Media Transformations.

Short videos, big volume

For customers with a huge volume of short video, such as generative AI output, e-commerce product videos, social media clips, or short marketing content, uploading those assets to Stream is not always practical. Furthermore, Stream’s key features like adaptive bitrate encoding and HLS packaging offer diminishing returns on short content or small files.

Instead, content like this should be fetched from our customers' existing storage like R2 or S3 directly, optimized by Cloudflare quickly, and delivered efficiently as small MP4 files. Cloudflare Images customers reading this will note that this sounds just like their existing Image Transformation Continue reading

GPU Transitions, Aggressive Server Pricing Squeeze HPE Profits

Dell saw a sequential slump in server sales its most recent quarter as customers were awaiting access to systems using Nvidia’s “Blackwell” GPUs, and rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise had a similar issue when it turns in its first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended in early February. …

GPU Transitions, Aggressive Server Pricing Squeeze HPE Profits was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Docker Series – Networking and IP Addresses

Docker Series - Networking and IP Addresses

It’s a bit embarrassing as a Network Engineer that we’ve made it this far into the Docker series without looking into Docker Networking and IP Addresses. So, in this part of the series, let’s take a quick look at the basics of Docker Networking. There’s a lot more to Docker networking than what we’ll cover here, but this should be enough to get most people started. We can always explore advanced topics in future posts.

If you haven’t been following the Docker series and just landed on this post, don’t worry; you can still follow along without any issues. If you’re curious about the previous posts, feel free to check them out below.

Docker Series - Hello Docker
As always, my goal here is to explain what Docker is using plain language and relatable examples, I hope to give you a clear understanding of what Docker is.
Docker Series - Networking and IP AddressesPacketswitchSuresh Vina
Docker Series - Networking and IP Addresses

As always, if you find this post helpful, press the ‘clap’ button. It means a lot to me and helps me know you enjoy this type of content.

Docker Networking Basics

Container networking refers to the ability for containers to connect to and communicate with each other or Continue reading

Making the Fediverse More Accessible With Claude 3.7 Sonnet

A few years ago I abandoned Twitter in favor of Mastodon. Recent events validate that choice and underscore the strategic importance of a decentralized fediverse that can’t be owned by a single corporate or state actor. But while Mastodon meets my needs, much of the Twitter diaspora has gone to Bluesky. That’s fine for now but might not always be. In an article titled “Bridgy Fed — a service that enables you to connect together your website, fediverse account and Bluesky account — will help. But Bridgy Fed needs to be easier to Continue reading

WanAware: 21 Packets’ Affordable Observability Play

21Packets’ infrastructure and customers. The company’s founders promise extensive integration capabilities, significantly reducing the costs organizations typically incur when integrating observability or telemetry data feeds with other sources. The platform extends and integrates with not only multiple data sources but at a significantly lower cost. This aspect of the offering is critical for those organizations that have numerous data feeds that might also be spread around the world geographically, WanAware, chief strategy officer/CISO and CEO of 21Packets, who holds other executive positions concurrently, said. “The reason why customers often come to us is they have resources all over the globe and they don’t have the ability to scale their observability platforms to support their environment. They don’t have teams that can operate it and they don’t have subject matter experts,” Collins said. “So, they need the ability to use an IT generalist and have an Continue reading

Capture to pcap file using sflowtool


Replay pcap files using sflowtool describes how to capture sFlow datagrams using tcpdump and replay them in real time using sflowtool. However, using tcpdump for the capture has the downside of requiring root privileges. A recent update to sflowtool now makes it possible to use sflowtool to capture sFlow datagrams in tcpdump pcap format without the need for root access. 
docker run --rm -p 6343:6343/udp sflow/sflowtool -M > sflow.pcap
Either compile the latest version of sflowtool or, as shown above, use Docker to run the pre-built sflow/sflowtool image. The -M option outputs whole UDP datagrams received to standard output. In either case, type CNTRL + C to end the capture.
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