Rust is a functional language, it may or may not be shocking to discover that functions are a big part of the language. A function is defined with the fn keyword. fn is pronounced: fun 🥳 // Function with parameters that returns an i32 fn add(i: i32, j: i32) -> i32 // The `main`...continue reading
As (also) explained in this vodcast by Jeff Doyle and Jeff Tantsura (April 2020), BGP remains a key protocol in networks of all sizes. As part of a global drive for simplification and automation, the engineers at Cumulus Networks have pioneered a feature called “BGP unnumbered” to simplify the configuration of large data center fabrics: RFC8950 (formerly RFC5549) describes how extended next-hop encoding can be negotiated and used to exchange IPv4 prefix routes using IPv6 next hops, such that the fabric interfaces can use auto-assigned IPv6 link-local addresses (only), with no IPv4 at all. In combination with AS number discovery, this greatly simplifies the configuration.
SR Linux inherits its BGP stack from Nokia SR OS, a robust mature hardened software product that runs the internet. It already supports the majority of features that one would expect in a data center context: Besides IPv4/v6 and EVPN address families, there is support for RFC8950 extended next-hop encoding, extensive BGP import/export policies, and much much more. However, in the case of large service provider networks and the internet at large, BGP is often and commonly used between Continue reading
The IT industry is at the doorstep of the long-awaited exascale era, which promises massive systems that can run at least one exaflops, or a quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second, at 64-bit precision and a lot more than that at lower precision and even more using low-precision integer data pumped through their vector and matrix engines. …
HPC As A Service Comes Full Circle And Will Help Take HPC Mainstream was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
I’m at Networking Field Day this week and it’s good to be back in person around other brilliant engineers and companies. One of the other fun things that happens at Networking Field Day is that I get to chat with folks that help me think about things in new ways and come up with awesome ideas for networking blog posts.
One of the ones that was discussed quickly this week really got me thinking again about fragility and complexity. Thanks to Carl Fugate for reminding me about it. Essentially, networks are inherently unstable because they are doing far too much heavy lifting.
Have you heard about the AxeSaw Reddit? It’s a page dedicated to finding silly tools that attempt to combine too many things together into one package that make the overall tool less useful. Like making a combination shovel and axe that isn’t easy to operate because you have to hold on to the shovel scoop as the handle for the axe and so on. It’s a goofy take on a trend of trying to make things too compact at the sake of usability.
Networking has this issue as well. I’ve talked about it before here Continue reading
MSPs can help enterprises get their SASE projects online faster, from initial design to deployment to full-time operation.
The post MSPs And SASE: How Enterprises Can Get The Right Fit appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Never fear, HighScalability is here!
I have a confession to make: I am not currently using ZeroTier. It turns out that in this respect I am in a minority among my peers at Networking Field Day 27 and after listening to a great introduction to ZeroTier by company founder and original software author Adam Ierymenko, I now know that I need to change this.
ZeroTier facilitates the creation of an arbitrarily distributed virtual ethernet switch through which devices can communicate. Since it’s not immediately obvious what that means, here are a few scenarios where ZeroTier can provide a solution:
Imagine that you want to access your home network when you’re out on the road. ZeroTier can hook you up.
What if you would like compute instances in multiple cloud providers to be able to communicate directly with one another as if they were on the same VLAN? What if you could also allow your developers to connect to that VLAN and seamlessly access the compute instances without any knowledge or care about which cloud provider is hosting the instance? Or maybe you’d like the cloud instances to appear as if they were on the data center VLAN? ZeroTier can do Continue reading
Happy Data Privacy Day 2022! Of course, every day is privacy day at Cloudflare, but today gives us a great excuse to talk about one of our favorite topics.
In honor of Privacy Day, we’re highlighting some key topics in data privacy and data protection that helped shape the landscape in 2021, as well as the issues we’ll be thinking about in 2022. The first category that gets our attention is the intersection of data security and data privacy. At Cloudflare, we’ve invested in privacy-focused technologies and security measures that enhance data privacy to help build the third phase of the Internet, the Privacy phase, and we expect to double down on these developments in 2022.
The second category is data localization. While we don’t think you need localization to achieve privacy, the two are inextricably linked in the EU regulatory landscape and elsewhere.
Third, recent regulatory enforcement actions in the EU against websites’ use of cookies have us thinking about how we can help websites run third-party tools, such as analytics, in a faster, more secure, and more privacy-protective way.
Lastly, we’ll continue to focus on the introduction of new or updated data protection regulations around the world, Continue reading
Yesterday I mentioned the giant glob of complexity called Kubernetes (see also more nuanced take on the topic). If you want to slowly unravel it, Kubernetes Architecture video from the excellent Kubernetes Networking Deep Dive webinar by Stuart Charlton is a pretty good starting point.
Yesterday I mentioned the giant glob of complexity called Kubernetes. If you want to slowly unravel it, Kubernetes Architecture video from the excellent Kubernetes Networking Deep Dive webinar by Stuart Charlton is a pretty good starting point.
There is a new tick–tock at work at chip maker Intel, and one that overlays the normal metronome cadence of manufacturing process shrinks and architecture advancement. …
Enterprises Fill In The Hyperscaler Gap For Intel’s Datacenter Business was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Yesterday I set up a simple serial console over bluetooth as a backup console.
Today I’m running SSH over bluetooth. Raw SSH, no IP. I only use IP on the two ends to talk to the SSH client and server. It doesn’t actually go over the bluetooth.
This fixes the security aspects with the previous solution. As long as you make sure to check the host key signature it’ll be perfectly secure.
No need for one-time passwords. You can even use SSH pubkey auth.
Server:
rfcomm watch hci0 2 socat TCP:127.0.0.1:22 file:/proc/self/fd/6,b115200,raw,echo=0
Client:
sudo rfcomm bind rfcomm2 AA:BB:CC:XX:YY:ZZ 2
ssh -oProxyCommand="socat - file:/dev/rfcomm2,b115200,raw,echo=0" dummy-hostname
If you’re messing around with an OpenSSH config then it may be a good idea to set up a minimal config on another port. Maybe port 23. Not like that port is used for anything else anymore.
Central processing units (CPUs) can be compared to the human brain in that their unique architecture allows them to solve mathematical equations in different ways. x86 is the dominant architecture used in cloud computing at the time of this writing; however, it is worth noting that this architecture is not efficient for every scenario, and its proprietary nature is causing an industry shift toward ARM.
ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) is a type of CPU architecture that powers most tablets and smartphones, as well as the fastest supercomputer in the world (supercomputer Fugaku). ARM’s low power consumption and high computational performance make it a worthy rival for x86 in cloud computing.
In this article, I will talk about a few popular ARM projects, the main difference between x86 and ARM architectures, and explore how we can prepare developers for the future by providing them with an ARM-based container environment.
Companies are increasing their pursuit to leverage ARM in order to reduce both cost and energy consumption. While x86 remains a proprietary CPU architecture, ARM provides licenses to other companies allowing them to design their own custom-built processors using ARM’s patented technology.
Amazon’s custom-designed Graviton processor is a great Continue reading
Jack Schofield, a prolific journalist covering computers and computing, developed three “laws” across his thirty years of reporting that have come to be known as Schofield’s Laws of Computing. What are these laws, and how do they apply to the modern computing landscape—especially for the network engineer? Join Tom Ammon and Russ White as they discuss Schofield’s Laws of Computing.
Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day, we commemorate the victims that were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices.
During the Holocaust, and in the events that led to it, the Nazis exterminated one third of the European Jewish population. Six million Jews, along with countless other members of minority and disability groups, were murdered because the Nazis believed they were inferior.
Cloudflare’s Project Galileo provides free protection to at-risk groups across the world including Holocaust educational and remembrance websites. During the past year alone, Cloudflare mitigated over a quarter of a million cyber threats launched against Holocaust-related websites.
In the Second World War and the years leading up to it, antisemitism served as the foundation of racist laws and fueled violent Pogroms against Jews. The tipping point was a night of violence known as the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"). Jews and other minority groups were outlawed, dehumanized, persecuted and killed. Jewish businesses were boycotted, Jewish books burned and synagogues destroyed. Jews, Roma and other “enemies of the Reich'' were forced into closed ghettos and concentration camps. Finally, as part of the Final Solution for the Jewish Question, Continue reading