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Technology Short Take 148

Welcome to Technology Short Take #148, aka the Thanksgiving Edition (at least, for US readers). I’ve been scouring RSS feeds and various social media sites, collecting as many useful links and articles as I can find: from networking hardware and networking CI/CD pipelines to Kernel TLS and tricks for improving your working memory. That’s quite the range! I hope that you find something useful here.

Networking

• Here’s an article on the recently-introduced pwru tool, which aims to help with tracing network packets in the Linux kernel. It seems like it may be a bit too debug-level to be useful to the average person, but I have yet to lay hands on it myself and find out for sure.
• Matt Mullen has a pretty lengthy (and informative) article on using the Python requests module to work with REST APIs. Good stuff here.
• While reading Tom Hollingsworth’s article regarding “slower” Wi-Fi on the M1-based MacBook Pro laptops (a good read, BTW), he shared a link to this post about drag racing the bus. Hilarious—but very true. Also found via Tom’s article was this post on Wi-Fi throughput, which I found to be a very informative read.
• Ivan Pepelnjak explains the concepts Continue reading

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A CIO’s Introduction to the Metaverse

The metaverse has arrived. Here's what CIOs need to know about it -- from business use cases, to risks, to vendor offerings from companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Facebook.

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FCC auction for prime 5G bandwidth rakes in $21.8B

The FCC auction for a prime band of 5G wireless spectrum has attracted $21.8 billion in bids, underscoring the importance of the frequency blocks that range from 3.5GHz to 3.55GHz.Of the 4,060 blocks available for discrete geographic areas throughout the country, all but 19 sold during the 29-day auction, according to the FCC.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Carriers have been hungrily buying up this mid-range spectrum that some call the Goldilocks Zone because its transmissions propagate over a significant distance and also support high data rates. Earlier this year an auction for blocks of spectrum in the 3.7GHz (C-band) range raised more than $81 billion. To read this article in full, please click here

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IP Class is Now in Session

You may have seen something making the rounds on Twitter this week about a couple of proposed drafts designed to alleviate the problems with IPv4 exhaustion by repurposing some old IP spaces that aren’t available for use right now. Specifically:

• 0/8
• 127/8 except for 172.0.0/16
• 240/4

Ultimately, this is probably going to fail for a variety of reasons and looks like it’s more of a suggestion than anything else but I wanted to take a moment to talk about why this isn’t an effective way of fixing address issues.

Error Bearers

The first reason that the Schoen drafts are going to fail is because most of the operating systems in the world won’t allow you to use reserved spaces for a system address. Because we knew years ago that certain spaces were marked as non-usable the logic was configured into the system to disallow the use of those spaces. And even if the system isn’t configured to disallow that space there’s no guarantee the traffic is going to be transmitted.

Let’s take 127/8 as a good example. Was it a smart idea to mark 16 million addresses as loopback host-only space? Nope. But that ship has sailed and Continue reading

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Xilinx launches a data-center accelerator for HPC

Xilinx has introduced its latest data-center accelerator, the Alveo U55C, which it says is its most powerful accelerator yet thanks to a memory change.For the most part, the FPGA-powered Alveo U55C is similar to its predecessor, Alveo U280. But the U280 has 8GB of HBM2 memory and 16GB of DDR4 DRAM, while the U55C comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and no DDR4. HBM2 is considerably faster and more expensive than DDR4 memory.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] By going to all HBM2 and removing the DDR4, Xilinx is able to increase performance and considerably reduce power and size. The Alveo U55C card is a single-slot full height, half length (FHHL) form factor vs. the full height, full length, dual width form of the U280. It also has a much lower power draw, 150W vs. 215W.To read this article in full, please click here

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Xilinx launches a data-center accelerator for HPC

Xilinx has introduced its latest data-center accelerator, the Alveo U55C, which it says is its most powerful accelerator yet thanks to a memory change.For the most part, the FPGA-powered Alveo U55C is similar to its predecessor, Alveo U280. But the U280 has 8GB of HBM2 memory and 16GB of DDR4 DRAM, while the U55C comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and no DDR4. HBM2 is considerably faster and more expensive than DDR4 memory.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] By going to all HBM2 and removing the DDR4, Xilinx is able to increase performance and considerably reduce power and size. The Alveo U55C card is a single-slot full height, half length (FHHL) form factor vs. the full height, full length, dual width form of the U280. It also has a much lower power draw, 150W vs. 215W.To read this article in full, please click here

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Spinoffs Kyndryl and VMware team up on multicloud

The two new spinoffs on the block—Kyndryl and VMware—have expanded their relationship and promised to help customers with their app modernization and multicloud plans.Under the agreement the companies say they will focus on developing a range of services aimed at multicloud infrastructure and management, digital workspace, managed applications, and other areas.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] “Our combination with VMware is especially important as Kyndryl continues to invest in our industry-leading skills in key areas, most notably in cloud, network and edge computing, and in security and resiliency services,” said Martin Schroeter, Chairman and CEO of Kyndryl in a statement. Through previous agreements, Kyndryl already has thousands of staffers with VMware certifications.To read this article in full, please click here

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VMware Wins Best Network Detection and Response Award From SE Labs 

After months of in-depth testing by SE Labs across a vast spectrum of security products, VMware is honored to receive the 2021 Best Network Detection and Response award.  This award comes on the heels of the announcement earlier this year that SE Labs awarded the industry’s first NDR AAA rating to VMware NSX Network Detection and Response (NDR).   

According to the U.K. based independent testing lab, each of the award winners has demonstrated its excellence in its category. SE Labs bases their conclusions on a combination of continual public testing, private assessments and feedback from corporate clients who use SE Labs to help choose security products and services. 

The efficacy of VMware NSX NDR is clear, proving  100 percent protection across multi-cloud environments from four major advanced and persistent threats (APT) groups—including FIN7&Carbanak, OilRig, APT3 and APT29—while returning zero false positives. This ability allows security operations teams to rapidly detect malicious activity and stop the lateral movement of threats inside the network.  

A Sea Change in Independent Security Testing 

This award and AAA rating from SE Labs is the first in the industry. It is well-known that today’s attackers continually evolve and chain together an ever increasingly complex chain of events. These techniques, tactics and procedures occur across networks and often traverse and bypass traditional security tools like firewalls and antivirus. As our understanding of attacker’s behaviors evolve, so must our engineering and Continue reading

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Heavy Networking 607: ZTNA Everywhere With VMware SASE (Sponsored)

In today's sponsored Heavy Networking show with VMware, we take a fresh look at VMware's SASE and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution. VMware has a breadth of products that allow for a differentiated overall solution. Joining us today is Craig Connors, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Service Provider and Edge at VMware.

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Heavy Networking 607: ZTNA Everywhere With VMware SASE (Sponsored)

In today's sponsored Heavy Networking show with VMware, we take a fresh look at VMware's SASE and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution. VMware has a breadth of products that allow for a differentiated overall solution. Joining us today is Craig Connors, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Service Provider and Edge at VMware.

The post Heavy Networking 607: ZTNA Everywhere With VMware SASE (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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AWS Networking Fundamentals book: Table of Contents

Here is the Table of Contents of my AWS Networking Fundamentals book. I have added the figures which illustrate the example scenarios in each chapter. The book is available at Leanpub.com. It is still in progress, and there will be additional chapters soon.

 

Continue reading

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Announcing native support for Stripe’s JavaScript SDK in Cloudflare Workers

This post is also available in 日本語, 简体中文.

Handling payments inside your apps is crucial to building a business online. For many developers, the leading choice for handling payments is Stripe. Since my first encounter with Stripe about seven years ago, the service has evolved far beyond simple payment processing. In the e-commerce example application I shared last year, Stripe managed a complete seller marketplace, using the Connect product. Stripe's product suite is great for developers looking to go beyond accepting payments.

Earlier versions of Stripe's SDK had core Node.js dependencies, like many popular JavaScript packages. In Stripe’s case, it interacted directly with core Node.js libraries like net/http, to handle HTTP interactions. For Cloudflare Workers, a V8-based runtime, this meant that the official Stripe JS library didn’t work; you had to fall back to using Stripe’s (very well-documented) REST API. By doing so, you’d lose the benefits of using Stripe’s native JS library — things like automatic type-checking in your editor, and the simplicity of function calls like stripe.customers.create(), instead of manually constructed HTTP requests, to interact with Stripe’s various pieces of functionality.

In April, we wrote that we were focused on Continue reading

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New Stream Player customizations to boost your video experience

When we launched Stream, one of our goals was to provide the most performant video player. We focused on building a player that loads fast, works across different browsers and frameworks, and intelligently switches video quality levels depending on your end user’s connectivity.

We are expanding the Stream Player vision, so you can control the look and feel of the viewing experience. Today, we are announcing a series of new customization options to help you deliver the best video playback experience.

Add Your Own Color

One thing we kept hearing from customers is that they would like to be able to customize the Stream Player to better reflect their brand. Stream Player now supports setting a primary color to match your company’s color. Here is an example of us using the primaryColor property to set the primary color to the Cloudflare Orange.

To use the primaryColor property, simply add it to the iframe URL. In this example, the hex code is #F48120 and the uri-encoded value is %23F48120.

https://iframe.videodelivery.net/fcfa5c97795ba90251cbbae1880a0e18?primaryColor=%23F48120

If you are using the React or Angular wrapper, you can use the primaryColor prop to customize the player color.

Currently, setting the primary color property will change Continue reading

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Launching a Startup on Cloudflare Workers

Closing out the Developer Spotlight series for this week is Tejas Mehta who shares how he built his startup, cClip.

cClip is a great tool that allows you to “copy/paste” and transfer files between any of your devices, regardless of what OS they run.

What is so interesting about cClip though is that it is a fully serverless application built on top of Workers and KV, but not exclusively. It uses Firebase for authentication, RevenueCat for a consolidated view over the Apple and Google Play store, and Stripe for all other billing related work.

This is a peek into the future of application development. This is a future where we will be “importing” other SaaS applications as easily as we currently import a package from a package manager. And not only unidirectional by calling APIs on that external application, but bi-directional communication through events with Webhooks.

Here is Tejas telling his story.

The origins of cClip

The abrupt transition to virtual schooling last year led to all my school communications and assignments transitioning online. With a MacBook laptop and an Android phone, submitting my precalculus homework meant I had to take a picture of each page, email each picture to Continue reading

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An Open-Source CMS on the Cloudflare Stack: Introductory Post

The Cloudflare documentation is a great resource when learning concepts, reviewing API usage notes, or when you’re in need of a concise snippet to illustrate those APIs or concepts. But, as comprehensive as it is, new users to the Cloudflare Workers platform must bridge a large gap to go from the introductory example snippets to a real, production-ready application. While some of this may be specific to Workers (as with any platform), developers everywhere are figuring out how applications should be built in a serverless world. Building large serverless applications entails a learning curve journey, regardless of a developer’s experience level.

At Cloudflare, we’re intimately aware of this because we also had to go through the same transition. Our engineers are world-class and expertfully design and craft products that compliment the distributed paradigm… but experts aren’t born overnight! We have been there, and we want to help jumpstart and aid others’ understanding.

With this in mind, we decided to do something unique to the industry: we are developing an example feature-complete SaaS application that will be built entirely on the Cloudflare stack. It is and will continue to be completely free, open-sourced on GitHub, and developed in public. This Continue reading

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Build your next video application on Cloudflare

Historically, building video applications has been very difficult. There's a lot of complicated tech behind recording, encoding, and playing videos. Luckily, Cloudflare Stream abstracts all the difficult parts away, so you can build custom video and streaming applications easily. Let's look at how we can combine Cloudflare Stream, Access, Pages, and Workers to create a high-performance video application with very little code.

Today, we’re going to build a video application inspired by Cloudflare TV. We’ll have user authentication and the ability for administrators to upload recorded videos or livestream new content. Think about being able to build your own YouTube or Twitch using Cloudflare services!

Fetching a list of videos

On the main page of our application, we want to display a list of all videos. The videos are uploaded and stored with Cloudflare Stream, but more on that later! This code could be changed to display only the "trending" videos or a selection of videos chosen for each user. For now, we'll use the search API and pass in an empty string to return all.

import { getSignedStreamId } from "../../src/cfStream"

export async function onRequestGet(context) {
    const {
        request,
        env,
        params,
    } = context

    const { id  Continue reading

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One of these JPEGs is not like the other

One of these JPEGs is not like the other

“JPEG” or the image encoding specification by the “Joint Photographic Experts Group” (JPEG) is a truly universal format at this stage. You really cannot go very far on the internet without seeing a JPEG file

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How to use the bpytop command: 2-Minute Linux Tips

In this Linux tip, learn how to use the bpytop command. It's one of many "top" commands (like top and htop) that make it easy to gauge many aspects of system performance on Linux.

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Video: Early Data-Link-Layer Addressing

After a brief coverage of the theoretical aspects of network addressing, it’s time to pay a brief visit to the early data-link-layer addressing solutions, from one address per datagram/frame (SDLC, HDLC) and ignore this address (PPP) to no address on P2P links (SLIP).

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Video: Early Data-Link-Layer Addressing

After a brief coverage of the theoretical aspects of network addressing, it’s time to pay a brief visit to the early data-link-layer addressing solutions, from one address per datagram/frame (SDLC, HDLC) and ignore this address (PPP) to no address on P2P links (SLIP).