Exam time means Internet disruptions in Syria, Sudan and Algeria

Exam time means Internet disruptions in Syria, Sudan and Algeria
Exam time means Internet disruptions in Syria, Sudan and Algeria

It is once again exam time in Syria, Sudan, and Algeria, and with it, we find these countries disrupting Internet connectivity in an effort to prevent cheating on these exams. As they have done over the past several years, Syria and Sudan are implementing multi-hour nationwide Internet shutdowns. Algeria has also taken a similar approach in the past, but this year appears to be implementing more targeted website/application blocking.

Syria

Syria has been implementing Internet shutdowns across the country since 2011, but exam-related shutdowns have only been in place since 2016. In 2021, exams took place between May 31 and June 22, with multi-hour shutdowns observed on each of the exam days.

This year, the first shutdown was observed on May 30, with subsequent shutdowns (to date) seen on June 2, 6, and 12. In the Cloudflare Radar graph below, traffic for Syria drops to zero while the shutdowns are active. According to Internet Society Pulse, several additional shutdowns are expected through June 21. Each takes place between 02000530 UTC (0500–0830 local time). According to a published report, the current exam cycle covers more than 500,000 students for basic and general secondary education certificates.

Exam time means Internet disruptions in Syria, Sudan and Algeria

Consistent with Continue reading

Multicast PIM Dense Mode vs PIM Sparse Mode

Multicast PIM Dense mode vs PIM Sparse mode is one of the most important things for every Network Engineer who deploys IP Multicast on their networks. Because these two design option is completely different and the resulting impact can be very high. In this post, we will look at, which situation, which one should be used, and why.

Although we will not explain PIM Dense or PIM Sparse mode in detail in this post, very briefly we will look at them and then compare them for clarity. First of all, you should just know both PIM Dense and PIM Sparse are the PIM Deployment models.

 

pim dense vs pim sparse mode

PIM Dense Mode

PIM Dense mode work based on push and prune. Multicast traffic is sent everywhere in the network where you enable PIM Dense mode.

This is not necessarily bad.

In fact, as a network designer, we don’t think there is bad technology. They have use cases

If Multicast receivers are everywhere or most of the places in the network, then pushing the traffic everywhere is not a bad thing.

Because when you push, you don’t build a shared tree, you don’t need to deal with the RP – Rendezvous Point, because Multicast Continue reading

How Does Satellite Internet Work?

The orbiting satellite transmits and receives its information to a location on Earth called the Network Operations Center (NOC). NOC is connected to the Internet so all communications made from the customer location (satellite dish) to the orbiting satellite will flow through the NOC before they reached the Internet and the return traffic from the Internet to the user will follow the same path.

 

satellite internet

 

How does Satellite Internet work?

Data over satellite travels at the speed of light and Light speed is 186,300 miles per second. The orbiting satellite is 22,300 miles above earth (This is true for the GEO-based satellite)

The data must travel this distance 4 times:

1.  Computer to satellite

2.  Satellite to NOC/Internet

3.  NOC/Internet to satellite

4.  Satellite to computer

Satellite Adds latency

This adds a lot of time to the communication. This time is called “Latency or Delay” and it is almost 500 milliseconds. This may not be seen so much, but some applications like financial and real-time gaming don’t like latency.

Who wants to pull a trigger, and wait for half a second for the gun to go off?

But, latency is related to which orbit the Continue reading

When You Find Yourself on Mount Stupid

The early October 2021 Facebook outage generated a predictable phenomenon – couch epidemiologists became experts in little-known Bridging the Gap Protocol (BGP), including its Introvert and Extrovert variants. Unfortunately, I also witnessed several unexpected trips to Mount Stupid by people who should have known better.

To set the record straight: everyone’s been there, and the more vocal you tend to be on social media (including mailing lists), the more probable it is that you’ll take a wrong turn and end there. What matters is how gracefully you descend and what you’ve learned on the way back.

Read more …

When You Find Yourself on Mount Stupid

The early October 2021 Facebook outage generated a predictable phenomenon – couch epidemiologists became experts in little-known Bridging the Gap Protocol (BGP), including its Introvert and Extrovert variants. Unfortunately, I also witnessed several unexpected trips to Mount Stupid by people who should have known better.

To set the record straight: everyone’s been there, and the more vocal you tend to be on social media (including mailing lists), the more probable it is that you’ll take a wrong turn and end there. What matters is how gracefully you descend and what you’ve learned on the way back.

Read more …

Content vs Carriage – Who Pays?

The Internet may be many things, but its definitely not free. One way or another the users of the Internet pay for the Internet. But this does not stop various players in the space jostling for relative advantage, claiming others should be paying more while they pay less. This tension is often reflected between carriage providers and content service providers when they try and figure out who should pay whom and how much.

Removing duplicate characters from a string on Linux with awk

The awk command can make it easy to remove duplicate characters from a string even when those characters aren’t sequential, especially when the process is turned into a script.First, the awk command that we’ll be using starts by running through each letter in the string. In a more common command, you might see awk doing something like this:$ echo one:two:three | awk ‘BEGIN {FS =":"} ; { print $2 }’ two [ Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]   The FS portion of that command specifies the field separator—the character that is used to separate the fields in the string so that they can be processed separately.To read this article in full, please click here

Removing duplicate characters from a string on Linux with awk

The awk command can make it easy to remove duplicate characters from a string even when those characters aren’t sequential, especially when the process is turned into a script.First, the awk command that we’ll be using starts by running through each letter in the string. In a more common command, you might see awk doing something like this:$ echo one:two:three | awk ‘BEGIN {FS =":"} ; { print $2 }’ two [ Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]   The FS portion of that command specifies the field separator—the character that is used to separate the fields in the string so that they can be processed separately.To read this article in full, please click here

BGP RTBH – Remotely Triggered Blackholing

BGP RTBH – Remotely triggered blackholing is used for DDOS prevention for a long time by many companies. DDOS – Distributed Denial of Service Attacks have an economic impact. According to an NBC News article, More than 40% of DDOS Attacks cost $1 million per day.

Remote Triggered Blackhole is a technique that is used to mitigate DDOS attacks dynamically.
Before RTBH, customers used to call the Operator when there is an attack, Operator NOC engineers used to connect to the attacked network, trace the source of the attack, place the filters accordingly and the attack goes away.
•Manual operation is open to configuration mistakes, cannot scale in large networks, and between the attack and the required action, services stay down

There are two types of RTBH

Destination based RTBH
Source-based RTBH
Let’s have a look at both of them in this blog post.

Destination-Based BGP RTBH – Remotely Triggered Blackholing

The first RTBH idea was Destination-based RTBH.With this technique, SP and the Customer agree on the discard community.
When there is an attack on the server, the victim (customer) sends the server prefix with the previously agreed community value.
When SP receives the update with that community, action Continue reading

Qualcomm finalizes Cellwize deal, in pursuit of 5G RAN improvements

Wireless equipment manufacturer Qualcomm Monday announced that it had finalized a deal to acquire Israel-based Cellwize, a maker of radio access network (RAN) management technology that uses AI-based automation to streamline the deployment of 5G infrastructure.In particular, the company's offerings aim to simplify the process of designing and deploying 5G networks for both mobile operators and enterprises looking to set up private 5G networks of their own, by automating the deployment of access points, simplifying site deployments, and more.To read this article in full, please click here

On Building a Personal Brand

How do you balance loyalty to yourself and loyalty to the company you work for?

This might seem like an odd question, but it’s an important component of work/life balance many of us just don’t think about any longer because, as Pete Davis says in Dedicated, we live in a world of infinite browsing. We’re afraid of sticking to one thing because it might reduce our future options. If we dedicate ourselves to something bigger than ourselves, then we might lose control of our direction. In particular, we should not dedicate ourselves to any single company, especially for too long. As a recent (excellent!) blog post over at the ACM says:

Loyalty is generally a good trait, but extreme loyalty to the organization or mission may cause you to stay in the same job for too long.

The idea that we should control our own destiny, never getting lost in anything larger than ourselves, is ubitiquos like water is to a fish. We don’t question it. We don’t argue. It is just true. We assume there are three people who are going to look after “me:” me, myself, and I.

I get it. Honestly, I do. I’ve been there Continue reading

Free Online Games You Can Play With Your Friends

Whether you’re looking for a way to stay connected with friends during quarantine or you’re just looking for a fun way to pass the time, playing online games is a great option. But with so many games out there, it can be tough to choose which one to play. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the best online games to play with friends. From classic games like Monopoly and Scrabble to newer favorites like Among Us and Jackbox Party Pack, there’s something for everyone on this list.

Free Online Games to Play With Friends

Monopoly

One of the most classic board games out there, Monopoly is a great option for online play. You can find a Monopoly app for both iPhones and Android devices, or you can play the game on your browser.

Words With Friends

Another classic board game, Words with Friends is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family. You can play the game on your browser or download the app for both iPhones and Android devices.

Scrabble

Like Words with Friends, Scrabble is a great option for those looking for a classic board game experience. You can play Scrabble on your Continue reading

BGP-LS BGP Link State – What is it? Why BGP LS is used?

BGP LS, BGP Link-State is used to distribute Link state information and traffic engineering attributes from the network nodes to the Centralized TE controller. RSVP-TE has been providing resource allocation and providing an LSP with the distributed path computation algorithm (CSPF) for decades. It requires topology information from the network and only link-state IGP protocols such as OSPF and IS-IS can carry the topology information required for the controller to set up a shortest from each node to each destination prefix. 

In order to overcome Bin Packing, Dead Lock, or Network-wide optimal traffic engineering, centralized controllers have been used for a long time. Because with the distributed computation for Traffic Engineering, the above issues might arise.
RFC 7752 specifies the details of North-Bound Distribution of Link-State and Traffic Engineering (TE) Information Using BGP.
PCE (Path Computation Element) is an SDN controller which provides optimal path computation in Multi Area and Multi AS (Autonomous System) deployments.
It requires Link State and Traffic Engineering attributes such as Link coloring, SRLG, reserved bandwidth, etc., from the network.
Link state IGP protocols (OSPF, IS-IS) can be used for this purpose but they are considered chatty and non-scalable, thus BGP with Continue reading

Pure Storage upgrades AI platform built on Nvidia DGX systems

Pure Storage announced updates to its AIRI//S line of AI-ready infrastructure, which it co-developed with Nvidia.The two vendors launched AIRI in 2018, claiming it was the first AI-oriented reference architecture that simplified the process of building an AI infrastructure by connecting compute with storage. AIRI is essentially a combination of Pure’s scale-out FlashBlade//S and Nvidia’s DGX ultra-dense GPU box. Pure provided the storage, and Nvidia provided the compute.This latest move, unveiled at the Pure//Accelerate techfest22 conference in Los Angeles, is quite an advancement, however.The new release of AIRI//S is powered by Nvidia DGX A100 systems, featuring end-to-end networking provided by Nvidia’s Quantum InfiniBand and Spectrum networking. A DGX A100 system comes with eight Ampere-generation A100 GPUs and up to ten ConnectX-6 network adapters from Mellanox.To read this article in full, please click here

Pure Storage upgrades AI platform built on Nvidia DGX systems

Pure Storage announced updates to its AIRI//S line of AI-ready infrastructure, which it co-developed with Nvidia.The two vendors launched AIRI in 2018, claiming it was the first AI-oriented reference architecture that simplified the process of building an AI infrastructure by connecting compute with storage. AIRI is essentially a combination of Pure’s scale-out FlashBlade//S and Nvidia’s DGX ultra-dense GPU box. Pure provided the storage, and Nvidia provided the compute.This latest move, unveiled at the Pure//Accelerate techfest22 conference in Los Angeles, is quite an advancement, however.The new release of AIRI//S is powered by Nvidia DGX A100 systems, featuring end-to-end networking provided by Nvidia’s Quantum InfiniBand and Spectrum networking. A DGX A100 system comes with eight Ampere-generation A100 GPUs and up to ten ConnectX-6 network adapters from Mellanox.To read this article in full, please click here

CCIE Service Provider v5.0 What, Why, When?

In this post, we will look at what is CCIE Service Provider v5.0, what comes with it, which technologies we need to learn, what is the difference between CCIE SP v4 and CCIE SP v5, why you should study for CCIE Service Provider v5, when you should study for CCIE SP exam, after which certificate you should aim it for, we will look at all of these questions.

What is the Cisco CCIE Service Provider v5 Exam?

The CCIE Service Provider  v5 lab exam is testing skillsets related to the service Provider solutions integration, interoperation, configuration, and troubleshooting in complex networks. CCIE SP v5 is the latest version of the CCIE Service Provider lab exam. When the candidates pass this exam, they get their CCIE number.

This certification syllabus covers most, if not all real-life Service Provider network technologies.

What is the difference between CCIE SP v4 and CCIE SP v5?

From the technology standpoint, the biggest difference between CCIE SPv4.1 and the CCIE SP v5.0 exam is Network Programmability and Automation Module. It is 20% of the entire exam, thus very important in the CCIE Service Provider exam. You can access Orhan Ergun’s CCIE SP Network Continue reading

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