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Adding Palo Alto PA-440 to My Home Lab

When I started my home lab, I used a Raspberry Pi 4 that functioned as a router/firewall, and I was pretty happy with it. Then, I needed something solid and cost-effective. There were multiple options like VyOS, PfSense, UniFi, etc, but MikroTik, specifically the hAP ax2, stood out for me. I've been using this for almost a year now, and I absolutely love it. It works as a switch, and firewall and runs my WireGuard VPN, and it has never let me down even once.

Why Palo Alto?

Fast forward to today, I started adding more and more devices to the lab, so I was looking for an upgrade. After debating between FortiGate and Palo Alto, I finally settled on buying a Palo Alto PA-440 firewall.

But I would say the main reason behind this decision is that I write a lot of content on Palo Alto, and not having a dedicated device was such a pain. Every time I wanted to write a post, I had to start the lab, and try things out, and not having licenses was preventing me from trying new features and sharing them via a post. Now, with a dedicated unit and Continue reading

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How MCR Memory Can More Than Double HPC And AI Performance

Intel recently demonstrated a new type of DIMM memory technology called Multiplexer Combined Rank (MCR), also referred to as MRDIMMs, that provides up to 2.3X better performance for HPC workloads and up to a 2X better on AI inference workloads in comparison to 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors, based on internal Intel analysis. …

How MCR Memory Can More Than Double HPC And AI Performance was written by Rob Farber at The Next Platform.

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HN752: How Digital Twins Enable Smarter Network Ops, Troubleshooting (Sponsored)

Our topic today is digital twins. Sponsor Forward Networks offers software that creates a “mathematically accurate” copy of your network, be it on prem or in the cloud. We talk about what “mathematically accurate” actually means, and how a digital twin can support network operations including change control, network automation, visibility, and troubleshooting. We also... Read more »

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TNO004: DevOps, NetOps, and Batman – Part 2

Guest Tom McGonagle, the creator of GitNops, is back with host Scott Robohn for part two of their GitNops discussion. They continue their conversation about the principles and applications of GitNops in network operations, including automated testing, the collaborative role of GitHub, and the challenges of ensuring accurate configurations before deployment. Finally, they explore the... Read more »

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Technology Short Take 183

Welcome to Technology Short Take #183! Fall is in the air; the nights and mornings are cooler and the leaves are turning (or have already turned in some areas!). I’ve got a slightly smaller collection of links for you this time around, but I do hope that you’ll find something shared here useful. Enjoy!

Networking

• Network World provides some coverage of the recent 2024 eBPF Summit, discussing why eBPF is critical and how it’s getting better.
• I first learned of Kmesh via this article by Jimmy Song. There’s no doubt eBPF is impacting lots of different areas of networking; this is just one more example.
• ARM-based architectures continue to see expanded usage in lots of different areas; here’s just one more example.

Security

• This article is a fascinating look into a series of misconfigurations and security flaws that culminates with full cluster admin privileges and access to internal software repositories. Wow! Remember, kids: outbound sidecars are not secure enforcement points.
• A group of individuals being able to accidentally become the admins of a top-level domain (TLD) underscores just how fragile many parts of the Internet are today.
• Ricky Mondello (who works on Apple’s new Passwords app) advises people Continue reading

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BGP Labs: Improvements (September 2024)

I spent a few days in a beautiful place with suboptimal Internet connectivity. The only thing I could do whenever I got bored (without waiting for the Internet gnomes to hand-carry the packets across the mountain passes) was to fix the BGP labs on a Ubuntu VM running on my MacBook Air (hint: it all works).

Big things first. I added validation to these labs:

• MD5 Passwords and GTSM
• Use BGP Timers and BFD to Speed Up BGP Convergence
• BGP Route Aggregation
• EBGP Sessions over IPv6 LLA Interfaces
• Establish an IBGP Session
• Build a Transit Network with IBGP
• Use BGP Route Reflectors
• Using No-Export Community to Filter Transit Routes

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Managing Palo Alto App-ID Changes Using Threat Signature Indicators (TSID)

If you rely heavily on Palo Alto App-IDs, you know the challenge of managing new and modified App-IDs. Palo Alto regularly updates its App-ID database, introducing new App-IDs every month (typically on the third Tuesday) and modifying existing ones more often.

Each release can include hundreds of new and updated App-IDs. It's almost impossible to understand each of them and decide whether or not we are affected by the change. In this blog post, we will look at using Threat Signature Indicators (TSID) to help you get an advanced indication of any impact on your traffic as a result of upcoming App-ID changes.

The Problem with App-ID Changes

Let’s imagine for a moment that currently, Palo Alto doesn’t have a specific App-ID for ‘chatgpt’ (although they do, let’s assume they don’t for this example). If there isn’t an App-ID, the traffic would be identified as ‘ssl’. If Palo Alto decides to introduce a new App-ID for ‘chatgpt’, they will announce this in the new App-ID release notes. However, the challenge is that hundreds of other new App-IDs could be introduced at the same time that we might never have heard of.

So, when I go to Continue reading

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IPB161: Compressing the IPv6 Deployment Timeline

In this episode we discuss the complexities of deploying IPv6 on a compressed timeline. We cover the need for careful planning, training, and understanding the protocol’s nuances. The conversation looks at the risks of delaying deployment, the benefits of incremental implementation, and the global momentum towards IPv6 adoption. Misconceptions about IPv6 are addressed, stressing that... Read more »

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Accenture Melds Smarts And Wares With Nvidia For Agentic AI Push

Over the past two years, enterprises have tried to keep up with the staggering pace of the innovation with generative AI, mapping out ways to implement the emerging technology into their operations in hopes of saving time and money, increasing productivity, improving customer service and support, and driving efficiencies. …

Accenture Melds Smarts And Wares With Nvidia For Agentic AI Push was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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Hedge 245: RADIUS and Authentication

RADIUS is one of those protocols we tend to forget about because it is ubiquitous–but authentication protocols are very large attack surfaces network engineers should pay more attention to. Alan DeKok joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the RADIUS protocol.

download

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Cerebras Needs Wall Street To Expand Beyond One Core Customer

Waferscale compute engine and AI system maker Cerebras Systems has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to sell a chunk of itself to the public, giving we outsiders a view of the past two and a half years of its internal financials. …

Cerebras Needs Wall Street To Expand Beyond One Core Customer was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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D2DO252: (Re)Building Cloudflare’s Millions-of-Logs-Per-Second Logging Pipeline

Cloudflare’s transition from SysLog-NG to OpenTelemetry is the topic of discussion on this episode of Day Two DevOps. Guests Colin Douch and Jayson Cena from Cloudflare explain the reasons behind the migration, including the need for better scalability, memory safety, and maintainability. They delve into challenges such as ensuring uninterrupted customer traffic and optimizing performance.... Read more »

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Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public!

Back in February, we celebrated our victory at trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against patent trolls Sable IP and Sable Networks. This was the culmination of nearly three years of litigation against Sable, but it wasn’t the end of the story. 

Today we’re pleased to announce that the litigation against Sable has finally concluded on terms that we believe send a strong message to patent trolls everywhere — if you bring meritless patent claims against Cloudflare, we will fight back and we will win.

We’re also pleased to announce additional prizes in Project Jengo, and to make a final call for submissions before we determine the winners of the Final Awards. As a reminder, Project Jengo is Cloudflare’s effort to fight back against patent trolls by flipping the incentive structure that has encouraged the growth of patent trolls who extract settlements out of companies using frivolous lawsuits. We do this by asking the public to help identify prior art that can invalidate any of the patents that a troll holds, not just the ones that are asserted against Cloudflare. We’ve already given out over $125,000 to individuals since the launch Continue reading

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How Cloudflare auto-mitigated world record 3.8 Tbps DDoS attack

Since early September, Cloudflare's DDoS protection systems have been combating a month-long campaign of hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks. Cloudflare’s defenses mitigated over one hundred hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks throughout the month, with many exceeding 2 billion packets per second (Bpps) and 3 terabits per second (Tbps). The largest attack peaked 3.8 Tbps — the largest ever disclosed publicly by any organization. Detection and mitigation was fully autonomous. The graphs below represent two separate attack events that targeted the same Cloudflare customer and were mitigated autonomously.

^{A mitigated 3.8 Terabits per second DDoS attack that lasted 65 seconds}

^{A mitigated 2.14 billion packet per second DDoS attack that lasted 60 seconds}

Cloudflare customers are protected

Cloudflare customers using Cloudflare’s HTTP reverse proxy services (e.g. Cloudflare WAF and Cloudflare CDN) are automatically protected.

Cloudflare customers using Spectrum and Magic Transit are also automatically protected. Magic Transit customers can further optimize their protection by deploying Magic Firewall rules to enforce a strict positive and negative security model at the packet layer.

Other Internet properties may not be safe

The scale and frequency of these attacks are unprecedented. Due to their sheer size and bits/packets per second rates, these Continue reading

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How XtendISE Helps with 802.1X Management in ISE?

XtendISE is a simple web application connected to your Cisco ISE, which helps with everyday routine tasks and common challenges related to 802.1X without the need to train everyone in Cisco ISE. XtendISE can help you manage MAC addresses and troubleshoot 802.1X authentications. It also helps with managing the switch's 802.1x configuration or validating the configurations to make sure that they are configured as intended.

All the mentioned features save time for us Network Engineers and help us to do our job efficiently as we do not waste our time on routine tasks. It also increases network security because it makes sure that our network is configured correctly and thus is safe and secured.

What Company Is XtendISE Intended For?

XtendISE is suitable for a company of any size with Cisco ISE and Cisco network devices. However medium or large companies will better use XtendISE features because they are more likely affected by the mentioned problems.

XtendISE helps the Helpdesk or IT Support with

• Easy to use MAC address management and troubleshooting
• They save time and there is no need for extra knowledge on ISE
• They can manage switch port configurations
• They do not Continue reading

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HW037: Is Wi-Fi 7 the Game Changer We’ve Been Waiting For?

Wi-Fi 7 brings new features and capabilities to the market, including Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and airtime optimization, which can enhance throughput and reduce latency. In today’s episode of Heavy Wireless, host Keith Parsons and guest Phil Morgan explore the advancements and practical implications of Wi-Fi 7. Phil shares his experiences testing Wi-Fi 7 with various... Read more »

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Even As Bandwidth Needs Explode, Ethernet Spending Is In Recession

No one like the R word, but we don’t shy away from data and calling it like we see it. …

Even As Bandwidth Needs Explode, Ethernet Spending Is In Recession was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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PP033: AI and Machine Learning 101 for Cybersecurity

The terms “AI” and “machine learning (ML)” get thrown around pretty regularly in IT and cybersecurity. On today’s Packet Protector we get an introduction to AI and ML to help you ask the right questions when vendors tout their latest AI-infused products. Our guest is Jeff Crume, a distinguished engineer and cybersecurity architect at IBM.... Read more »

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How hybrid IT is a reality for everyone

SPONSORED POST: The 2024 edition of Lenovo Tech World promises an in-depth discussion on the future of innovation centered on AI and computing. …

How hybrid IT is a reality for everyone was written by Martin Courtney at The Next Platform.

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HS084: Straight Talk from Cisco’s CIO (Sponsored)

Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn visits Heavy Strategy to talk about how to create a technology culture, what it’s like being “customer zero”, and other challenges and tribulations of running IT from inside one of the world’s largest tech companies. Episode Guest: Fletcher Previn, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Cisco Fletcher Previn has over two decades... Read more »