“Much more than just writing.” How I got started as a content designer

Content design is a relatively new discipline, but one that deeply affects how users perceive, choose, and use products. People who work in content design can take many names (content designers, UX writers, product writers, just to name a few) but in a nutshell, our job is to help users accomplish goals on an interface by providing them with the right guidance at the right time. Unlike visual designers, content designers are not responsible for the graphic layout or the look and feel of a given interface — instead, we own what we call the conversation between product and user along each journey to ensure that the user has all the information they need to reach their goal.

The interesting thing is — when interfaces are concerned, the more effective the text, the less noticeable it will be to users. Great content on an interface “just works”; it disappears into a delightful user experience while leading happy users to success, whatever it is they’re trying to get done with a given product. Content designers achieve that by making sure they know user needs inside out and which problems the product is trying to solve. Next, in partnership with visual designers, Continue reading

VPNs can complement SASE

The pandemic has accelerated the development of better ways to serve and secure remote workers, which make it a good time to rexamine VPNS.Recently VPNs have received technical boosts with the addition of protocol options that improve functionality far ahead of where they were when first invented. At the same time, new security architectures zero trust network access (ZTNA), secure access service edge (SASE), and security service edge (SSE) are making inroads into what had been the domain of remote-access VPNs.To read this article in full, please click here

VPNs can complement SASE

The pandemic has accelerated the development of better ways to serve and secure remote workers, which make it a good time to rexamine VPNS.Recently VPNs have received technical boosts with the addition of protocol options that improve functionality far ahead of where they were when first invented. At the same time, new security architectures zero trust network access (ZTNA), secure access service edge (SASE), and security service edge (SSE) are making inroads into what had been the domain of remote-access VPNs.To read this article in full, please click here

Linux malware is on the rise—6 types of attacks to look for

Malware targeting Linux environments has increased massively in the past year, with threat actors using a variety of techniques to carry out operations.

Linux malware is on the rise—6 types of attacks to look for

Malware targeting Linux environments has increased massively in the past year, with threat actors using a variety of techniques to carry out operations.

Linux malware is on the rise—6 types of attacks to look for

Malware targeting Linux environments has increased massively in the past year, with threat actors using a variety of techniques to carry out operations.

Frontier: Step By Step, Over Decades, To Exascale

Any time you build anything with more than 60 million parts, it is going to be a headache. …

Frontier: Step By Step, Over Decades, To Exascale was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

At Long Last, HPC Officially Breaks The Exascale Barrier

Significant business and architectural changes can happen with 10X improvements, but the real milestones upon which we measure progress in computer science, whether it is for compute, storage, or networking, come at the 1,000X transitions. …

At Long Last, HPC Officially Breaks The Exascale Barrier was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

netlab Simple VLAN Example

I had no idea how convoluted VLANs could get until I tried to implement them in netlab.

We’ll start with the simplest option: a single VLAN stretched across two bridges switches with two Linux hosts connected to it. netlab can configure VLANs on Arista EOS, Cisco IOSv, Cisco Nexus OS, VyOS, Dell OS10, and Nokia SR Linux. We’ll use the quickest (deployment-wise) option: Arista EOS on containerlab.

netsim-tools Simple VLAN Example

I had no idea how convoluted VLANs could get until I tried to implement them in netsim-tools. We’re not done yet – we have access VLANs, VLAN trunks (including native VLAN support), and VLAN (SVI) interfaces, but we’re still missing routed VLAN subinterfaces – but we have enough functionality to show you a few VLAN examples.

We’ll start with the simplest option: a single VLAN stretched across two bridges switches with two Linux hosts connected to it. netsim-tools can configure VLANs on Arista EOS, Cisco IOSv, VyOS, Dell OS10, and Nokia SR Linux. We’ll use the quickest (deployment-wise) option: Arista EOS on containerlab.

Worth Reading: ACI Terraform Scalability

Using Terraform to deploy networking elements with an SDN controller that cannot replace the current state of a tenant with the desired state specified in a text file (because nobody ever wants to do that, right) sounds like a great idea… until you try to do it at scale.

Noël Boulene hit interesting scalability limits when trying to provision VLANs on Cisco ACI with Terraform. If you’re thinking about doing something similar, you REALLY SHOULD read his article.

Worth Reading: ACI Terraform Scalability

Using Terraform to deploy networking elements with an SDN controller that cannot replace the current state of a tenant with the desired state specified in a text file (because nobody ever wants to do that, right) sounds like a great idea… until you try to do it at scale.

Noël Boulene hit interesting scalability limits when trying to provision VLANs on Cisco ACI with Terraform. If you’re thinking about doing something similar, you REALLY SHOULD read his article.

Infrastructure 4. How to Run Cisco Nexus 9000v in Proxmox to Lab Cisco Data Centre

Hello my friend,

We use Proxmox in our Karneliuk Lab Cloud (KLC), which is a driving power behind our Network Automation and Nornir trainings. It allows to run out of the box the vast majority of VMs with network opening systems: Cisco IOS or Cisco IOS XR, Arista EOS, Nokia SR OS, Nvidia Cumulus, and many others. However, when we faced recently a need to emulate a customer’s data centre, which is build using Cisco Nexus 9000 switches, it transpired that this is not that straightforward and we had to spend quite a time in order to find a working solution. Moreover, we figured out that there are no public guides explaining how to do it. As such, we decide to create this blog.

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No part of this blogpost could be reproduced, stored in a 

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any 

means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, 

or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the 

prior permission of the author.

How Does KLC Help with Automation?

A lot of network automation trainings worldwide imply that a student has to build a lab his/her-own. Such an approach, obviously, is the easiest for Continue reading

Worth Reading: Automation Report From 1958

Are you afraid the network automation will eat your job? You might have to worry if you’re a VLAN-provisioning CLI jockey, but then you’re not alone. Textile workers faces the same challenges in 19th century and automation report from 1958 the clerical workers were facing the same dilemma when the first computers were introduced.

Guess what: unemployment rate has been going up and down in the meantime (US data), but mostly due to various crisis. Automation had little impact.

Worth Reading: Automation Report From 1958

Are you afraid the network automation will eat your job? You might have to worry if you’re a VLAN-provisioning CLI jockey, but then you’re not alone. Textile workers faces the same challenges in 19th century and automation report from 1958 the clerical workers were facing the same dilemma when the first computers were introduced.

Guess what: unemployment rate has been going up and down in the meantime (US data), but mostly due to various crisis. Automation had little impact.

Git Difftool and Meld as a Flatpak

I’ve recently started migrating many of the applications on my Fedora 36 laptop to their Flatpak versions. For the most part, this has been pretty straightforward, although there isn’t really any method for migrating configuration and data. Today I ran into a problem with Meld, a graphical diff utility, and using it with the git difftool command. Below I’ll share how I worked around this problem.

Normally, the integration between Git and Meld—which is what enables you to run git difftool and have the results show up in Meld—would look something like this (this is from ~/.gitconfig):

[merge]
    tool = meld
[diff]
    tool = meld
[difftool]
    prompt = no
[difftool "meld"]
    cmd = /usr/bin/meld "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"
[mergetool "meld"]
    cmd = /usr/bin/meld "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"

However, when Meld is installed as a Flatpak, /usr/bin/meld doesn’t exist. In order to continue using Meld with the git difftool command, you must change the Git configuration to look like this instead:

[merge]
    tool = meld
[diff]
    tool = meld
[difftool]
    prompt = no
[difftool "meld" Continue reading

Weekend Reads 052722

networks and policy

Leading off this weekend, an article by Simon Sharwood on the impact of the centralization of the Internet. I wrote a somewhat longer article on the Public Discourse a while back on the same topic.

The internet has become smaller, the result of a rethinking of when and where to use the ‘net’s intended architecture. In the process it may also have further concentrated power in the hands of giant technology companies.

Is softwarization really going to change the way we build networks from the ground up? I suspect things will change, but they’ve always changed. I also suspect we’ll be hearing about how software is going to eat the world ten years from now, and IPv6 still won’t be fully deployed.

DOCSIS 4.0 is set to deliver faster speeds for cable network operators, but the next generation technology will also spur an operational sea change, telecom consultant Sean McDevitt told Fierce.

By default, the Docker server configures container networks for IPv4-only, so I had a hard time running it in this environment.

security and other technologies

This one on Costa Rica is a serious warning—

A ransomware gang that infiltrated some Costa Rican government computer Continue reading

Mind the Air Gap

I recently talked to some security friends on a CloudBytes podcast recording that will be coming out in a few weeks. One of the things that came up was the idea of an air gapped system or network that represents the ultimate in security. I had a couple of thoughts that felt like a great topic for a blog post.

The Gap is Wide

I can think of a ton of classical air gapped systems that we’ve seen in the media. Think about Mission: Impossible and the system that holds the NOC list:

Makes sense right? Totally secure unless you have Tom Cruise in your ductwork. It’s about as safe as you can make your data. It’s also about as inconvenient as you can make your data too. Want to protect a file so no one can ever steal it? Make it so no one can ever access it! Works great for data that doesn’t need to be updated regularly or even analyzed at any point. It’s offline for all intents and purposes.

Know what works great as an air gapped system? Root certificate authority servers. Even Microsoft agrees. So secure that you have to dig it out of storage Continue reading

Heavy Networking 632: How Juniper’s RAN Intelligent Controller Enables 5G Automation (Sponsored)

Heavy Networking 632: How Juniper’s RAN Intelligent Controller Enables 5G Automation (Sponsored)

Today's Heavy Networking dives into the automation and orchestration of 5G networks with sponsor Juniper Networks. We discuss Juniper's RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), Service Management and Orchestration (SMO), how Juniper works with the Open RAN ecosystem, and more. Our guest is Constantine Polychronopoulos, Vice President of 5G and Telco Cloud at Juniper Networks.

The post Heavy Networking 632: How Juniper’s RAN Intelligent Controller Enables 5G Automation (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.