Network observability: What it means to vendors and to you

As an industry analyst who focuses on network management, I make it my business to cut through hype and buzzwords. When vendors started talking about “network observability” last year, I found myself at an impasse. It seemed everyone had their own take on what this term means.Google network observability, and you will find an endless list of varying definitions. I recently read a blog that boiled it down to this: “Network monitoring is fault management. Network observability is performance management.”No! No, it is not!I decided to do something about this chaos. I talked to multiple network tool buyers and users, and I surveyed 402 IT stakeholders. I asked them to define network observability and explore what it means in the context of their network management tools and processes.To read this article in full, please click here

Palo commit and rollback

Palo Alto firewalls use the concept of a running config to hold the devices live configuration and the candidate config is copy of the running config where changes are made. A Commit operation causes the running config to be overwritten by the candidate config activating the changes.

Zero trust in the cloud: Best practices and potential pitfalls

Architecturally speaking, cloud-native applications are broken down into smaller components that are highly dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral. Because each of these components is communicating with other components inside or outside the cluster, this architecture introduces new attack vectors that are difficult to protect against using a traditional perimeter-based approach. A prudent way to secure cloud-native applications is to find a way to reduce the number of attack vectors, and this is where the principles of zero trust come into play.

With today’s multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments, networks are no longer restricted to a clear perimeter with clearly defined borders to defend—and cyber criminals are taking advantage of this fact by tricking users and systems into providing unauthorized access. While a lot of zero trust is focused on limiting access from users and devices, organizations are now also recognizing that in the world of distributed cloud-native applications, workloads themselves are communicating with each other and the same principles of zero trust need to be extended to cloud-native applications.

Because traditional security methods such as network firewalls rely on fixed network addresses, they are insufficient to protect dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral cloud-native workloads, which do not have fixed network addresses. They simply Continue reading

Finding and fixing typos on Linux

If you want to check a text file for typos, Linux can help.It has a couple of tools and a number of commands that can point out the errors including aspell and enchant, and I’ll share a script that I put together recently that looks for typos using the system's words file.Using aspell aspell is very clever tool that will point out typos and make it surprisingly easy to fix them. When used to make changes to a single file, it reverses the text and background colors to highlight misspelled words. You would start it with a command like this:$ aspell check myfile If aspell detects no typos, it simply exits. Otherwise, it will open with a display that contains the file text (or just the top lines depending on the length of the file) followed by a list of suggested replacement words and, below that, a list of the commands that you can run. The first typo (or suspected typo) will be displayed with the text and background colors reversed as shown below.To read this article in full, please click here

Finding and fixing typos on Linux

If you want to check a text file for typos, Linux can help.It has a couple of tools and a number of commands that can point out the errors including aspell and enchant, and I’ll share a script that I put together recently that looks for typos using the system's words file.Using aspell aspell is very clever tool that will point out typos and make it surprisingly easy to fix them. When used to make changes to a single file, it reverses the text and background colors to highlight misspelled words. You would start it with a command like this:$ aspell check myfile If aspell detects no typos, it simply exits. Otherwise, it will open with a display that contains the file text (or just the top lines depending on the length of the file) followed by a list of suggested replacement words and, below that, a list of the commands that you can run. The first typo (or suspected typo) will be displayed with the text and background colors reversed as shown below.To read this article in full, please click here

Email Routing leaves Beta

Email Routing leaves Beta
Email Routing leaves Beta

Email Routing was announced during Birthday Week in 2021 and has been available for free to every Cloudflare customer since early this year. When we launched in beta, we set out to make a difference and provide the most uncomplicated, more powerful email forwarding service on the Internet for all our customers, for free.

We feel we've met and surpassed our goals for the first year. Cloudflare Email Routing is now one of our most popular features and a top leading email provider. We are processing email traffic for more than 550,000 inboxes and forwarding an average of two million messages daily, and still growing month to month.

In February, we also announced that we were acquiring Area1. Merging their team, products, and know-how with Cloudflare was a significant step in strengthening our Email Security capabilities.

All this is good, but what about more features, you ask?

The team has been working hard to enhance Email Routing over the last few months. Today Email Routing leaves beta.

Also, we feel that this could be a good time to give you an update on all the new things we've been adding to the service, including behind-the-scenes and not-so-visible improvements.

Let’s Continue reading

Network Automation Considered Harmful

Some of the blog comments never cease to amaze me. Here’s one questioning the value of network automation:

I think there is a more fundamental reason than the (in my opinion simplistic) lack of skills argument. As someone mentioned on twitter

“Rules make it harder to enact change. Automation is essentially a set of rules.”

We underestimated the fact that infrastructure is a value differentiator for many and that customization and rapid change don’t go hand in hand with automation.

Whenever someone starts using MBA-speak like value differentiator in a technical arguments, I get an acute allergic reaction, but maybe he’s right.

Read more …

Network Automation Considered Harmful

Some of the blog comments never cease to amaze me. Here’s one questioning the value of network automation:

I think there is a more fundamental reason than the (in my opinion simplistic) lack of skills argument. As someone mentioned on twitter

“Rules make it harder to enact change. Automation is essentially a set of rules.”

We underestimated the fact that infrastructure is a value differentiator for many and that customization and rapid change don’t go hand in hand with automation.

Whenever someone starts using MBA-speak like value differentiator in a technical arguments, I get an acute allergic reaction, but maybe he’s right.

Read more …

Oracle and Nvidia expand AI partnership

Oracle and Nvidia have extended their partnership to help speed customer adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) services.As part of the deal, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which is Oracle’s cloud service, will beef up the infrastructure with tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, both the Ampere A100 currently on the market and the upcoming Hopper H100. Oracle will also add Nvidia’s AI software stack that supports AI training and deep learning.This includes an upcoming release of Nvidia AI Enterprise software with access to Nvidia’s AI development and deployment platform that provides processing engines for each step of the AI workflow, from data processing and AI model training to simulation and large-scale deployment.To read this article in full, please click here

Cleaning Out The Cruft

I spent the weekend doing something I really should have done a long time ago. I went through my piles of technology that I was going to get around to using one day and finally got rid of anything I didn’t recognize. Old access points, old networking gear, and even older widgets that went to devices that I don’t even remember owning.

Do you have one of these piles? Boxes? Corners of your office or cave? The odds are good there’s a pile of stuff that you keep thinking you’re eventually going to get around to doing something with some day. Except some day hasn’t come yet. So maybe it’s time to get rid of that pile. Trust me you’re going to feel better for getting rid of that stuff.

What to do with it? It needs to be properly recycled so don’t just toss it in the trash can. Anything with electric circuits needs to be properly disposed of so look for an electronics recycling facility. Yes, there are stories that electronics recycling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be but it’s better than polluting with e-waste everywhere.

Consider donating the devices to a trade school or other maker Continue reading

Network Break 404: Episode Not Found

This week the Network Break covers new SASE capabilities from Fortinet, new 800G hardware from Cisco that uses its homegrown ASIC, and an app from RSA for smart phones that can disable authentication if the app detects malicious behavior. Plus we cover new initiatives from the Open Compute Project, disaggregated Wi-Fi, and more tech news.

Network Break 404: Episode Not Found

This week the Network Break covers new SASE capabilities from Fortinet, new 800G hardware from Cisco that uses its homegrown ASIC, and an app from RSA for smart phones that can disable authentication if the app detects malicious behavior. Plus we cover new initiatives from the Open Compute Project, disaggregated Wi-Fi, and more tech news.

The post Network Break 404: Episode Not Found appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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