Datacenter Infrastructure Spending Is Up, And Forecasts Are Even Higher
The AI boom is going sonic, and it looks like we had all better cover our ears if we want to be able to hear by the end of the holiday season if the prognostications of the box counters at IDC are correct. …
Datacenter Infrastructure Spending Is Up, And Forecasts Are Even Higher was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.
Vector Packet Processor (VPP)
The main conclusions based on testing described in the two VPP blog posts are:
- If sFlow is not enabled on a given interface, there is no regression on other interfaces.
- If sFlow is enabled, copying packets costs 11 CPU cycles on average
- If sFlow takes a sample, it takes only marginally more CPU time to enqueue.
- No sampling gets 9.88Mpps of IPv4 and 14.3Mpps of L2XC throughput,
- 1:1000 sampling reduces to 9.77Mpps of L3 and 14.05Mpps of L2XC throughput,
- and an overly harsh 1:100 reduces to 9.69Mpps and 13.97Mpps only.
The VPP sFlow plugin provides a lightweight method of exporting real-time sFlow telemetry from a VPP based router. Including the plugin with VPP distributions has no impact on performance. Enabling the plugin provides real-time visibility that opens up additional use cases for VPPs programmable dataplane. For example, VPP is well suited to packet filtering use cases where the number of Continue reading
NB498: BlueCat Flows Into Network Performance With LiveAction Buy; T-Mobile Ordered to Appoint a CISO
Take a Network Break! DDI specialist BlueCat is getting into network performance monitoring with its LiveAction acquisition, T-Mobile is ordered to spend almost $16 million to improve its infosec practices and get a CISO, and Cisco announced the end of life for its LoRaWAN IoT product line. Verizon recovers from a US-wide outage, security researchers... Read more »Thermal design supporting Gen 12 hardware: cool, efficient and reliable
In the dynamic evolution of AI and cloud computing, the deployment of efficient and reliable hardware is critical. As we roll out our Gen 12 hardware across hundreds of cities worldwide, the challenge of maintaining optimal thermal performance becomes essential. This blog post provides a deep dive into the robust thermal design that supports our newest Gen 12 server hardware, ensuring it remains reliable, efficient, and cool (pun very much intended).
Generally speaking, a server has five core resources: CPU (computing power), RAM (short term memory), SSD (long term storage), NIC (Network Interface Controller, connectivity beyond the server), and GPU (for AI/ML computations). Each of these components can withstand different temperature limits based on their design, materials, location within the server, and most importantly, the power they are designed to work at. This final criteria is known as thermal design power (TDP).
The reason why TDP is so important is closely related to the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. In semiconductors, electrical energy is converted into heat, and TDP measures the maximum heat output that needs to be managed to ensure Continue reading
Egress Peer Engineering: building blocks
Since exploring the EPE basics, now it’s time to understand the building blocks of the solution.
Summary
Overall, there are 3 elements of the EPE solution:
- Egress routers allocate MPLS labels per egress peer and advertise them
- Ingress routers or
netlab 1.9.1: Packet Capture, Routing Improvements
netlab release 1.9.1 brings packet capture capabilities and numerous routing features:
- IS-IS route redistribution and IS-IS VRF instances
- RIPv2/Ripng route redistribution and VRF instances
- Configurable RIPv2/RIPng protocol timers
We also added support for Cisco IOSv layer-2 image. You’ll find more details in the release notes.
Enhance your website’s security with Cloudflare’s free security.txt generator
Meet Georgia, a diligent website administrator at a growing e-commerce company. Every day, Georgia juggles multiple tasks, from managing server uptime to ensuring customer data security. One morning, Georgia receives an email from a security researcher who discovered a potential vulnerability on the website. The researcher struggled to find the right contact information, leading to delays in reporting the issue. Georgia realizes the need for a standardized way to communicate with security researchers, ensuring that vulnerabilities are reported swiftly and efficiently. This is where security.txt comes in.
Security.txt is becoming a widely adopted standard among security-conscious organizations. By providing a common location and format for vulnerability disclosure information, it helps bridge the gap between security researchers and organizations. This initiative is supported by major companies and aligns with global security best practices. By offering an automated security.txt generator for free, we aim to empower all of our users to enhance their security measures without additional costs.
In 2020, Cloudflare published the Cloudflare Worker for the security.txt generator as an open-source project on GitHub, demonstrating our commitment to enhancing web security. This tool is actively used Continue reading
Auto Scaling Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls in AWS
In this blog post, we're going to explore how to Auto-Scale Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls in AWS. It's a known fact that running heavy instances in AWS can be costly, and it's not wise to have more firewalls running than necessary. But what happens when demand spikes unexpectedly? If we're not prepared, things can get messy quickly.
Auto-scaling these firewalls isn't as simple as pressing a button. There are several components to consider, but don't worry - once you grasp the basics, it's as straightforward as any other topic in the cloud and network world.
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Before we dive deeper into auto-scaling Palo Alto VM-Series firewalls, it's worth mentioning that Palo Alto also has a fully managed Cloud Native firewall service called 'Cloud NGFW'. If the idea of handling auto-scaling yourself seems complex, this service might be a great alternative to consider. It's managed entirely by Palo Alto, taking the complexity out of your hands.
This blog post is based on the ideas from the Palo Alto Github repo - https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks/terraform-aws-vmseries-modules/tree/main/examples/centralized_design_autoscale
Assumptions
As we get into the specifics of auto-scaling Palo Alto VM-Series firewalls in AWS, there are a few assumptions I'd like to lay out. This Continue reading
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
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.
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 »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 »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
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:
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
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 »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.
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.