A vector is a collection of items of the same type. Vector Considerations When an empty vector is created with Vec::new it is un-allocated until elements are pushed into it. A vector with elements has allocated memory and lives on the heap. A vector is represented as a pointer to the...continue reading
A HashMap is a generic collection of key/value pairs. All of the keys must have the same type, and all of the values must have the same type. HashMap Considerations A hash maps data is stored on the heap. A hash maps size is not known at compile time, they can grow or shrink at run...continue reading
An enum is a type which can be ONE of a FEW different variants. // Create an instance of the enum variants with the double colon. let blah = StuffAndThings::Blah; let bleh = StuffAndThings::Bleh(42); let stuff = StuffAndThings::Stuff(String::from("Stuff"), true); let things =...continue reading
For whatever reason, most IT vendors attach “you cannot use this for performance testing and/or publish any results” caveat to their licensing agreements, so it’s really hard to get any independent test results that are not vendor-sponsored and thus suitably biased.
Justin Pietsch managed to get a permission to publish test results of Junos container implementation (cRPD) – no surprise there, Junos outperformed all open-source implementations Justin tested in the past.
What about other commercial BGP stacks? Justin did the best he could: he published Testing Commercial BGP Stacks instructions, so you can do the measurements on your own.
For whatever reason, most IT vendors attach “you cannot use this for performance testing and/or publish any results” caveat to their licensing agreements, so it’s really hard to get any independent test results that are not vendor-sponsored and thus suitably biased.
Justin Pietsch managed to get a permission to publish test results of Junos container implementation (cRPD) – no surprise there, Junos outperformed all open-source implementations Justin tested in the past.
What about other commercial BGP stacks? Justin did the best he could: he published Testing Commercial BGP Stacks instructions, so you can do the measurements on your own.
So there I was, ready to do battle in my blue corner of the ring. Together with Anton Karneliuk from Karneliuk.com — author of pyGNMI among other things — we got started on a multi-vendor NAPALM driver using gNMI as a backend.
Working around the clock in our different time zones, in full blown follow-the-moon style, we managed to get a basic NAPALM get_facts working for both Arista cEOS and Nokia SR Linux, at some point late Saturday night.
On Sunday a group of students from University of Colorado Boulder joined the party, and it quickly became apparent that our hacking plans would have to change. Because important as multi-vendor compatibility issues are, inter-generation transfer of knowledge is even more critical. We already barely understand the networks we have built today — how could we ever expect the next generation to keep things running if we don’t help them understand what we did?
Long story short: I teamed up with Dinesh Kumar Palanivelu and he ended up submitting his first Pull Request: A small step for a man, but a huge win for the NANOG community!
Thanks again Continue reading
A trait in Rust is similar to an interface in other languages. Traits define the required behaviour a type MUST implement to satisfy the trait (interface). // Structs that implement the `Greeter` trait. struct Person struct Dog } // Implement the `Greeter` trait for the...continue reading
A struct in Rust is used to encapsulate data. structs can have fields, associated functions and methods. // Instantiate an immutable struct. let sat = StuffAndThings Associated Function Associated functions are tied to an instance of a struct and are usually used as...continue reading
A trait in Rust is similar to an interface in other languages. Traits define the required behaviour a type MUST implement to satisfy the trait (interface). // Structs that implement the `Greeter` trait. struct Person struct Dog } // Implement the `Greeter` trait for the...continue reading
On today’s Heavy Networking episode we talk with sponsor Console Connect, which provides software-defined interconnections for enterprises and service providers. Guests Paul Gampe and Jay Turner dig into the Console Connect catalog, including Internet On-Demand, CloudRouter, and some of the interesting partner integrations that provide unique connectivity options.
The post Heavy Networking 618: Building Virtual Networks With Console Connect (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.
In this week’s issue of the Packet Pushers Human Infrastructure newsletter, there was an excellent blog post from Kam Lasater about how talking about technical debt makes us sound silly. I recommend you read the whole thing because he brings up some very valid points about how the way the other departments of the organization perceive our issues can vary. It also breaks down debt in a very simple format that takes it away from a negative connotation and shows how debt can be a leverage instrument.
To that end, I want to make a modest proposal to help the organization understand the challenges that IT faces with older systems and integration challenges. Except we need some new branding. So, I propose we start referring to technical debt as “underperforming technical investments”.
Technical debt is just a clever way to refer to the series of layered challenges we face from decisions that were made to accomplish tasks. It’s a burden we carry negatively throughout the execution of our job because it adds extra time to the process. We express it as debt because it’s a price that must be paid every time we need Continue reading
During CIO week we announced the general availability of our client-side security product, Page Shield. Page Shield protects websites’ end users from client-side attacks that target vulnerable JavaScript dependencies in order to run malicious code in the victim’s browser. One of the biggest client-side threats is the exfiltration of sensitive user data to an attacker-controlled domain (known as a Magecart-style attack). This kind of attack has impacted large organizations like British Airways and Ticketmaster, resulting in substantial GDPR fines in both cases. Today we are sharing details of how we detect these types of attacks and how we’re going to be developing the product into the future.
Magecart-style attacks are generally quite simple, involving just two stages. First, an attacker finds a way to compromise one of the JavaScript files running on the victim’s website. The attacker then inserts malicious code which reads personally identifiable information (PII) being entered by the site’s users, and exfiltrates it to an attacker-controlled domain. This is illustrated in the diagram below.
Magecart-style attacks are of particular concern to online retailers with users entering credit card details on the checkout page. Forms for online banking are also high-value Continue reading
A few weeks ago, Nick Buraglio and Chris Cummings invited me for an hour-long chat about netlab on the Modem Podcast1.
We talked about why one might want to use netlab instead of another lab orchestration solution and the high-level functionality offered by the tool. Nick particularly loved its IPAM features which got so extensive in the meantime that I had to write a full-blown addressing tutorial. But there’s so much more: you can also get a fully configured OSPFv2, OSPFv3, EIGRP, IS-IS, SRv6, or BGP lab built from more than a dozen different devices. In short (as Nick and Chris said): you can use netlab to make labbing less miserable.
netlab was known as netsim-tools when we were recording that podcast. ↩︎